Good to hear. I wonder if Alexander got improved in the same way. The theatrical version was such a disappointment that I never sought out the director's cut. I was so angry at him for putting a stake through the heart of historical epics for awhile. There are so many other historical epics I'd like to see other than…

Like an Anchorman with all the humor sucked out of it, but the weirdness somehow remaining.

Yeah, I remember that note to his editor now (in the margins of that draft) where he straight up said "no," to the question: "is Coldhands Benjen?" I get why it was a common theory but once that Child of the Forest remarked that Coldhands had died "a long time ago" I threw out the Benjen theory.

If your incredulity about that theory was based on the books, then that is the only rational reaction to have. There is no way Coldhands is Benjen in the books, not without GRRM totally screwing it up.

Chubby Rain was a big boost for me!

It's like the whole thing was constructed to be a magnet for spiritual turbulence.

Except that a bunch of people in a bunch of districts that went for Obama (twice) went to Trump. Mostly in the rust belt. Even Bill Clinton chastised his wife's campaign for not fighting more on the ground for these districts (against his own advice). Frank is right about his central tenet: the Democratic party…

Don't tell me you don't remember rolling that rock back up the hill, because I sure as heck remember you (doing it)!

I don't disagree with anything you just wrote. I'll just add though that I've lived in Russia (early Putin years) where it was transforming from laissez-faire gangsterism to state authoritarianism and Sweden which, while far preferable, often felt a bit crabbed and cramped in terms of individual agency. I'd like to…

Marx was a materialist and put little value on individual human agency. Just about everything to him was solely, drably and bleakly determined by the material environment. At least that's the way I understand it. Soviet architects ran with that line of thinking. Unfortunately, Marx was Prussian, so Germans do kind of…

Just watched. Best ever. So good.

He's looking at his glasses with the kind of alarmed consternation of a man who just watched them fly into the room and perch on his face.

He might have a stable of writers but I've seen him riff into clever esoterica plenty in situations where he wasn't doing standup or one of his rants on his old show. I have a lot of conservatives in my family, so I catch him on O'Reilly ocasionally and he can still be just as clever.

I'll never forget Miller's comment during some blowout Dolphins game. He started talking about dolphins (the mammals) and how they are "nature's most ebullient creature, with a built in grin." No one knew how to respond to him. Crickets. But he was cracking himself (and me) up. I loved it.

Griftopia is probably the most entertaining book I can imagine on the shadowy side of finance. It does cover a lot that world pre 2008 as well. I know it briefly covers the S and L scandal of the 80s and moves forward from there.

Nice to be corrected by an informed commentor. Cheers.

Matt Taibbi talks about it indirectly in Griftopia - a book about the causes of the 2008 financial crisis. David Stockman, (Reagan's former director of OMB and one time cheerleader of trickle down economics, which he now decries) writes about it a lot in his blog ContraCorner. He also wrote a whole book about it…

As the reviewer makes clear, the real problem is that this stuff is so arcane and dry that you have to learn the financial language before you can discern the amorality within and massive social destructiveness that results. It's boring and then it destroys pensions and economies. Finance used to be a relatively small…

Still gonna see this, still excited for it. If the focus of this movie is about the power and limits of nostalgia and masculinity/aging, then I'm all for it. I recently turned 40 and was in college when I saw the original. This review made me wonder how old the reviewer is and I see Wikipedia lists him as 30 years…

It would have somewhat made sense if the Sylvan elves of Mirkwood/Greenwood showed up as Legolas was their heir AND they weren't leaving Middle Earth like the elves of Rivendell and the elves of Lorien were soon to be. And yeah, even though Lorien was closest, they were also super isolationist: they wouldn't have…