The Irish journalist and critic Fintan O’Toole made an interesting comment in a review of a new production of Ibsen’s “Enemy of the People” (a 19th century play about a physician who uses the then new science of germ theory and finds that the famous spa waters of his town are contaminated with bacteria and wants to…

I thought it was a bit like how movies often show hitmen having a drink or two before doing their thing. Obviously getting wasted (or stoned) isn’t going to help matters, but something to take the edge off things before doing something unpleasant makes sense.

Kinda feels like, I don’t know, the people working there kind of give a shit, even if some of the writing makes me feel a million years old?

But that’s not what the show was about. Yes, the film was very loosely adapted, but the conceit of the show was that the stunt man investigated mysteries.

Olivia Wilde, I’ll make my schedule open for you!

I always thought “chick flicks” were more about women bonding with each other (in a non-romantic way) as opposed to rom-coms. Films like “Steel Magnolias” (good) and “Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants” (bad).

And which probably inspired the show “The Good Place”.

But do the attractive women agree to the arrangement? Besides the moral issue, that often seems to be the stumbling block in attempted adultery.

I bet you haven’t seen 1996's Freeway, where she plays a juvenile delinquent who maims an attempted rapist played by Kiefer Sutherland. It’s actually a comedy, although a very dark one.

That’s interesting. I never thought of “Better Off Dead” as a rom-com rather than just a comedy, but I suppose it is. Likewise I suppose “Wayne’s World” is also a rom-com. I guess they don’t have to be cloyingly sincere like the Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan ones.

Yeah, I forget that Nick at Nite existed and probably introduced a lot of Millennials to 1960s shows. I’m GenX and know F Troop, Giligan, Star Trek TOS, etc. because in the 1970s/1980s before cable, that’s what networks showed in the time slot between children returning from school around 4 and prime time.

It’s a Zen Koan!

F-Troop! For some reason that 1960s comedy never got the cultural recognition of Gilligan’s Island, I Dream of Jeanie, etc.

Hey, be straight with us for a second: Is The Acolyte a Star Wars cop show?

The twist (and I’m not spoiling anything that isn’t revealed in the trailer) is that Hartnett’s character may be The Butcher himself. Ever since the trailer dropped there’s been speculation that the film could have another big twist in store

The thing is, was the movie he was in exile for, “Cutthroat Island”, really that bad? Yes, it flopped, but the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, which were basically the same deal, were later hits. Audiences are fickle.

I’m disappointed that “IF” isn’t a remake of “If...” the 1968 film that was basically “Lord of the Flies” set in a fancy boarding school. It’s also the film that Stanley Kubrick saw Malcolm McDowell in and decided to cast him as Alex in “A Clockwork Orange”.

Well, there is also an advantage to the opposite version of stopping time, where time stops for you and not anyone else. That would basically be a version of suspended animation (usually depicted in fiction by a freezing process like in Futurama, 2001, Fallout 4, etc.) that would let you pause your life to resume it…

Look at the numbers. With the exception of GenZ, who have just started voting, and do show a significant difference in favor of Democrats, it’s just a few percentage points either way for the others. Hell, a higher percentage of Boomers and Silents are Democrats than are Millennials! I am surprised at the large number…

I know it’s a stereotype that old people are Republicans and young people Democrats, and yes, there is a few percentage points difference, but the fact is both groups are quite closely split across all age groups.