Lion in the Living Room had some of the worst documentary narration I've ever heard. Like half the time they were literally repeating the same thing they'd said half a minute ago, and the narrator sounded like someone who was very bored with this whole "cat" thing. Some cool cat pictures though.

The actual, boring explanation is just that Clive Yorkin is what he was called in the comic book. He wasn't a supervillain so much as a mindless science experiment who went on a brief rampage and got framed for one of the Reverse Flash's crimes.

There's no way the show could make Clive Yorkin as creepy as he is in my imagination, because his first comic-book appearances scared the crap out of me as a kid. I mean, look at that freaky dude. He wasn't much of a character, but the way he was drawn, as if he wasn't any smarter than a baby but was having all the…

Beautiful movie. Watching this on a double bill with Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) is a good way to make sure you'll be creeped out by San Francisco forever.

To see this as "dishonest" requires that you think of every scene in a movie as an exact reproduction of what happened, which the viewer must be able to evaluate with godlike objectivity that the characters don't have. Which… I mean, that's one way to make a movie, but it's not the only way; "this thing you're…

Freeman is somehow managing to give a feeling of tragic depth to a character whose whole thing is being uninteresting and unintelligent. Like there's such a huge hole in this guy's brain, and the way he clings to banking and professionalism seems so desperate, that you just want to know how this happened to him and is…

I can't remember, was "I want to complain anyway" in the book?

Mr. Poe had a great little moment where, as he's finally starting to stand up to Olaf (at least verbally), he coughs just one of his coughs directly at Olaf's face. Poe spends so much time ducking away from people and coughing around them that it kind of seems he might have done that one on purpose, like it's the most…

I also liked the idea that the big moment of her rediscovering her courage isn't actually the first time she did that. She did a series of hilariously brave things to get away from Olaf, reverting to her former skydiving/jet-skiing self without even thinking, and when she's telling the kids about it she seems to be…

That's a great read— the amount of local detail gives it a great you-are-there quality that really highlights how superficial the reporting is in most stories of allegedly sensational events.

Don't forget though, they weren't just another case of "UFO witnesses" that got more publicity than the rest, they were really a whole new category: the abduction/examination story (including disturbing physical details which became the template for all similar stories in the future) was a novelty at the time. They…

Yes, I'm sure. You're thinking of an earlier scene where Justice Strauss explained the word "mitzvah" to the kids. "Mazel tov" is what you say to congratulate someone on a happy event, and that's what the henchmen said— because they are assholes, gloating over Olaf's victory over helpless children.

When I think of Sonnenfeld I usually think of lots of swooping camera movement, but there are some really nicely directed slow-paced physical gags here. I was laughing embarrassingly loud at the Jacquelyn/tree/phone booth bit— it's super silly but it's set up so well. I mean, first there's the kidnapping scene, and…

This may be nitpicking but since you've said it twice: no one yelled "mitzvah", since that wouldn't have made any sense. They yelled "mazel tov!"

Since Handler wrote the screenplay for this episode, maybe he doesn't agree with you that this particular point was an essential piece of non-punch-pulling?

Yeah, I always thought Olaf was more of an early-middle-aged guy who looks prematurely horrible due to bad living and being evil, not an actual old guy. (I'm told this is supported by some backstory later in the series, but I haven't read the whole thing)

The goal of Count Olaf
Is getting control of
The fortunes of urchins and orphans…

I have to see this just because the only Sorrentino movie I've seen is Il Divo, and that's just beautifully insane - technically a political docudrama, but more like a gorgeous creepy fever dream. It's kind of incomprehensible unless you know a little bit about Italian government shenanigans pre-1990s, but I think it…

Er… have you seen the show, or are you saying that's what it sounds like to you from the reviews? Because I'd be amazed if Paolo Sorrentino actually intended for the Young Pope to be a sympathetic character or a symbol of what the Church should be.

I don't like Lichtenstein's comics stuff at all (except in a theoretical "painting all those Ben-Day dots by hand is kind of an insane thing to do and I guess I can respect that"), and I agree that it's dismissive of the source material, but I don't really blame him personally. Except for a handful of enthusiasts, the…