It's Solaris with zombies.

American cinema, but yeah, basically.

I think Yakuza was his first, actually. From 1974.

I love the way that goes down. Friedkin sets up the obvious move, that 99% of directors would take, and then swerves.

It's a treasure. Between the main articles, the honorable mentions, and the comments, I think I could probably find enough movies about tough guys and bad dudes hitting and shooting each other to last a lifetime.

Wow, I haven't seen Marathon Man in forever. The only two people I remember are Hoffman and Olivier. I guess Roy Scheider's in it too? Weird. Another underused/forgotten 70s actor.

Ah yes, the cake. It would have been better if I hadn't been like nine and watching the movie with my parents.

Use tongs.

I've done that. Doesn't help that it hurts like hell for a long time and you have to be careful not to rip more of the nail off.

Well the wrist was still intact, obviously.

I remember a number of years ago the woman I was dating at the time freaked the fuck out in front of my brother and his girlfriend — like, a prolonged fit lasting probably an hour if not more. She eventually left and my brother looked stunned, and I only then realized that while I had become used to her acting that…

Seems to be a trend with Fincher, doesn't it? I'm trying not to think too hard about what that means for Seven or Zodiac.

If there are hundreds of recent examples, why does everyone use the same one?

Does it have a cliff?

Yeah, the real difference is that with AMC the question never came up.

Well, look at the bright side (so to speak) — you're quite good at touch typing!

Don't worry man, I had an idea for a sci-fi story that I thought was great, spent all this time writing it out, and then realized that it would be indistinguishable from the Matrix for most people even if I was trying to make a different point. Being original is hard!

Well, why would they know? A collapse that would take a spacefaring civilization to medieval levels would result in most information about the past being lost along with everything else, and what little remained would become myth or legend. There are similar instances from our own history. Archaic Greeks didn't…

There's a comment elsewhere on this page arguing that Martin finished the story he wanted to tell in the third book; I've not read the books, but watching the show gave me that impression very strongly as well. If you agree with that, then the series might have passed its most satisfactory end point already.

Thing is, that's basically logistically impossible. Even assuming you're not talking about a multi-decade wait, everyone involved is under contract and once their contract is up they have to go do something else. So you wouldn't get anyone back. Plus if the wait is long enough you're talking about either fan revolt…