I had the same trepidation when I first saw it about 2008 - and the same reaction. It's now an annual watch, at the cinema if possible. And that living room breakdown scene (and the Gower scene at the start) get me every time. More so now I'm a parent. 

Agreed - and It’s a Wonderful Life is my favourite Christmas film.

The reforms of the movement for Black lives make sense, so why promote them with a slogan that immediately turns people off?

A lot of people think humor is about affirmation, which is why so much political humor stinks. I think it is why so many impersonations are awful too — they are more hung up on being accurate and reinforcing ideas about people than being  funny.

a buddy just sent me the ‘oh boy sleep! that’s where i’m a viking!’ thread and i was shocked to learn it’s widely thought that ralph was saying ‘i’m a viking at sleeping’, not ‘when i sleep i dream i’m a viking’, which to me is the only possible interpretation.

I don’t know, through what ‘“magical” Christmas moment’ does George Bailey decide not to commit suicide?

They need to start listening to other people and start being team players.

Did you even skim the article? He’s an incoming congressman. He won his election.

I like Jamaal Bowman. I’m glad to see another POC pushing for meaningful change. I don’t agree with him that the divide/debate within the Democrats is healthy. They’re the same debates that have been happening for a long time and leaving voters feeling disenfranchised. Liberals aren’t going to divorce themselves from…

Nearly fourteen hundred words and I don’t disagree with any of them.

I’ve always felt the exchange between John and Argyle at the beginning about Run DMC and Christmas music was a microcosm of this argument. John hears Christmas in Hollis and asks if Argyle has any (traditional) Christmas music, to which Argyle explains that it IS Christmas music. Die Hard = Christmas in Hollis. It may…

It makes a fucking difference to my religious studies doctoral thesis on John McClane being a stand in for Jesus Christ for one

Of course John McClane goes through a “self realization transformation” - there’s a very pretty obvious thread of him understanding that he needs to support his wife’s career choices, that his lashing out at her was selfish and immature, and that the ball is in his court, with the push to overcome his male ego coming…

I don't know why people keep trying to take down Die Hard as Christmas movie. If it is to you, that's all that matters. There is no definitive answer to this because everyone's criteria is different. 

Die Hard is a documentary and the events happened in real time 

The dumbest fucking thing about “Is Die Hard a Christmas movie?” is that nobody ever bothers to develop a consistent set of criteria for what qualifies as “a Christmas movie” and then consistently apply it to all films. They just come up with whatever bullshit in order to justify their position that Die Hard in…

Star Wars is a Life Day movie.

Speaking of ‘80s action movies set at Christmastime, the other night I watched (some of) Lethal Weapon and you know what? It hasn’t aged all that well. The running gag of Riggs’s inability to get through the day without killing someone is really not funny now.

...Which everybody knows was based on It’s a Wonderful Life.

And that book actually has a quite powerful ending where the “hero” cop realizes he was actually the bad guy of the story, getting in the way of Chilean resistance fighters who were trying to get back the money stolen from the country’s people in Pinochet’s deals with Kissinger.