That's why the comedy ghetto exists and why critics sneer at comedy. You can go on and on and on analyzing a drama in depth. If it's a comedy, either it's funny or it isn't.

"Why don't you just fall down?"

Lots and lots and lots and lots of people want more Shaun of the Dead. I still do, after they made two more movies.

Oh bullshit, the first Austin Powers movie is still fucking funny. The second is pretty good but is weighed down by Heather Graham being such a non-entity—funny how despite being so absurdly gorgeous she's such a blank on-screen in anything but "Boogie Nights". But still, it's got Fat Bastard and Mini Me, it's funny.

Well, IV was right about one thing, a movie from Denmark got nominated.

The nine films:

In fairness, most blockbusters are really shitty.

Indeed. Ignatius and everybody else who wants the Oscars to give the prize to Korean lesbian movies get mad, and the folks who want all the nominees to be superhero movies can also get mad.

Film snobs love to sneer—surely the snottiest word in criticism is "middlebrow"—and sure, sometimes they miss egregiously badly ("Driving Miss Daisy" when "Do the Right Thing" didn't even get nominated is goddamn painful) but by and large the Oscars are a pretty good sampling of mainstream English-language output.

How is it that people just decided not to do blogs anymore? How did twitter, a platform that by its nature makes in depth discussion impossible, replace blogs?

You're allowed to not watch as many films as you want to not watch. That's not an argument for limiting the Foreign Language field to 5.

Ugh, "ignoring" films from around the world.

Speaking of Olivia de Havilland, this feud resulted in her getting the last great part of her career. Davis and Crawford were supposed to do "Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte", but after two weeks of the two of them bitching at each other, Crawford pretended she was ill and left the set. It was supposed to be a power play…

This is the reason why "Barney Miller" became a thing. The pilot was rejected and then burned off in a summer anthology series. But people liked it so much that ABC changed its mind and picked up the show. It ran for 8 years and is still one of the all time great American sitcoms.

It's a cake. There are some things that people should be allowed to copy.

It seems odd to talk of "plagiarism" of a goddamn cake.

Kickers are the worst. They should make a rule that the only people who can attempt placekicks are people who were on the field for the previous play from scrimmage.

I wish it were a show about two mad scientists who occasionally die.

Ava Gardner wasn't that great of an actress, her Oscar nomination for Mogambo aside.

This thread isn't about following anyone around. That's more bullshit goalpost-moving.