Same—I kind of went to it on a lark but ended up enjoying it—the decision to make it basically a family drama made it seem a bit like an old, meat-and-potatoes Hollywood drama, the sort of film you’d randomly stumble across on TCM, start watching, and realize, “Huh, that wasn’t that bad.”

Yes. Some visiting (stereotypical, played-by-white guys) Polynesians come over to the island, and the Professor sees he has a Zippo, IIRC, so they have trading contact with outside civilization and thus a way out. They came on the island to look for a virgin to throw in the volcano, so they put Gilligan in a blonde…

Don’t worry I just checked and the comments are more a brocialist shitshow.

In the age of polarization the bully pulpit’s probably a net negative, even.

And they gave it a good review! Neoliberal sellouts!

In the actual final episode Gilligan’s dressed up by the other islanders as a woman so he can be thrown into a volcano.

@BinkyGentil:disqus I wasn’t the person who mentioned that (haven’t seen Le Havre either) but I took your ages-old advice to wait a couple of weeks between Domicile Conjugal and L’amour en fuite—really made the final entry land a little better, and it’s actually my most re-watched of all the Doinel films (get a taste…

I could do either of those, but “Antoine & Collette” would be too real for me to watch with a date. “Hi date, welcome to my adolescence. I’ve put it behind me, I promise!”

I’ve actually heard both this and @avclub-589622fb3974db41fbe4a37b78d8585c:disqus ’s version, Kettle’s more often. IIRC with Truffaut the argument’s typically that he falls back too often on sentimentality and established cinema tropes, and (for people who like to compare Truffaut with Godard) that he lacked rigor,…

News flash: movies targeted at specific audiences (I used to live in Hyde Park and damn if this movie isn’t catnip for a solid chunk of Chicago; my first reaction was “Hey, I know those steps!”)

I think this is it, though I’d put it more generally—it’s that the Obamas are human, which is a fact that cuts through a lot of the BS thrown at them. It’s not aimed at people who dislike the Obamas, but the fact that a human, relatable story can be told about them infuriates certain kinds of people. They’re not…

Lord Gloom, you have a visitor.

There’s also this old, America-centric Atlantic article on the history of beards (it’s good, but framed a bit as a hot take: “hipster, your beard is problematic”) that quotes an anonymously-penned article in an 1856 edition of the New York Tribune: “The bearded races are the conquering races.”

I’ll always remember this bit from the NYTimes review of Decline & Fall of the British Empire: “the rise and fall of the British mustache, which Brendon suggests was ‘roughly coterminous with the Raj.’” That alone makes me want to read the book.

He is—the latest series was co-financed by the Italians (probably part of why it took place there), and Miyazaki is on record as having thought Lupin was actually Italian.

A model blimp?

Yes.

Since I was in China for months it might have been a good idea to bring along rather than squeezing the whole thing in over a summer (my Dad’s idea—he’d bought them but never read them). When I was in China—the Kindle was actually released when I was there, so ereading was still very niche—my main read was The…

I’m quite sure one of the reasons for Lupin’s relative unpopularity here is, in addition to the age of the originals, is because the comics are too European-seeming for American manga fans (which was also leveled against it early on in Japan)—he might as well actually be French.

A fair amount of PJ Harvey as penance for not being able to make her concert here on Friday.