I wish there was a way to track streaming screener view data to assess whether Oscar voters (most of whom are white men) are even watching Black-led films. I say this as a Tar-loving white dude.

I think even Apatow would agree that Undeclared was no Freaks and Geeks. Undeclared had some really funny moments but it was quite a bit more conventional. Having Charlie Hunnam filling the James Franco void was one of the key problems. He just operated at a different frequency than all of the more adept comedy people…

Cultural impact of certain high school films was due more to home video/DVD and endless cable replays than to any box office success. Box office for Superbad was great, but that movie has also replayed endlessly on cable. I think Easy A also benefited from that over the years. This also accounts for the deep impact…

Forgot about HDD. Great college movie. 

House Bunny and Everybody Wants Some (film) and Sex Lives of College Girls (TV/streaming) are probably my favorite takes on college post 2000.

I said what I said! 

10 miles west of Boston

In 2022 WBD launched Elvis, Super Pets, Fantastic Beasts, The Batman, Don’t Worry Darling, Black Adam and other films in theaters. Several of those would, if canceled, have offered larger tax write offs than Batgirl. But the studio (rightly in some cases, oh so wrongly in others) believed the theatrical releases were…

If the average waist size is roughly 40 in for men and women, per the CDC stats linked, and the average teen’s waistline might be 29-32 in, and younger kids in the teens and twenties, engineers have their hands full to be inclusive.

I love SMG and I love Fight Club but not sure she’d be a good swap-in for Meatloaf. 

I appreciated that this episode gave us a quick review (through two people’s eyes) of the time that elapsed between the infection flare up and present day. The pilot necessarily fast forwarded through that, so it was nice to get that retroactive world building.

I think those other two shows have the trick of revamping much of the cast season to season, thereby controlling actor salaries. Fixed casts tend to be very costly past the first couple of seasons. 

Gilmore Girls (on Netflix) beat every original show on streaming except Ozark and Stranger Things. And The Office (formerly on Netflix and now hidden away on Peacock) doesn’t even register. Shows matter, but platform and episode counts matter more. I wonder if streamers will ever think to invest in old fashioned…

I mean, here’s the boys playing the French version of beer pong.

The most logical choice of course was for Madonna to play herself under various degrees of deaging CGI. And Nathan Fielder could have directed. Someone please just greenlight this. 

I went in to Banshees with very modest expectations and no idea what it was about. Man, that was a great movie. 

I love small films (The Spectacular Now, Before Sunrise, etc.) but am always troubled when the first thing someone says about it is how great the acting is (or how “authentic” it is). Think of your favorite films. What do you say to people — hey, the acting is great, or hey, this movie rocks? Acting/authenticity…

The best part of the series was merely watching Woliner’s face during all his conversations with Paul. Paul would say something nuts or completely tone-deaf and Woliner would just mutter, “OK.” But, really, what made this work was Woliner’s obvious empathy with Paul. There are so many moments that pivot from a mocking…

He’s the OG of the Chrises 

One of my favorite genres is the alternate timeline. Instead of playing the what-if game, these shows simply steer history into new places (Good Fight played this game well in the last 3-4 seasons). It gives all of the speculative elements a much more lived-in feeling than something like empty sleekness of Westworld.