For those lamenting the decline of Wes Anderson, I would say we’re two movies away from what I think of as his masterpiece, Grand Budapest, and that the lull hasn’t been much of a lull. Yes the aesthetic is distinctive, yes French Dispatch had a “this again” sense, but it’s not like a thing not being new makes it bad.…

The problem with this is that X-Files was a lighting-in-a-bottle show. The Duchovny/Anderson chemistry was something truly special and the show was uniquely attached to its time.   You can repeat the formula and make something just fine, but without the particular personalities and cultural contexts that made the…

Or the show tapped into a lack of moral grounding and distrust of institutions in society that was relatively nascent in the 90s but came violently to the surface in later years. In that sense, it’s weird watching X-Files through post-Trump, post-Q, post-everything eyes and realizing what was entertainingly spooky…

The Unpleasant Kerfuffle of Roger Ackroyd.

That’s Gwyneth Paltrow. Different human.

“Now get me another Dewar’s and water, pronto!” 

Jamie Lee Curtis’s Oscar?

Hey, maybe that just means his standards were high!

I’ll just say that I hope everybody’s alright, that whatever relationship problems led to the dispute can be worked out, that this isn’t a chronic thing for Majors, and that she gets the fuck out of there if it is.  

Just to say, “fist time Vagina Egg” is a typo for the ages. 

I mean, I would put the early seasons of The Real World as thoughtful for their time, but that’s one show 30 years ago, and when the culture of the network was dramatically different. 

I just want to say that I never don’t enjoy the use of the word “ludicrous.”

Non-coincidentally, a violent about-face from the establishment politics Sorkin clearly favors.  That from that what you will I guess.  

Of course, that’s a classic. A number of his later “surprising” covers worked well, just not that one. 

I sometimes think the appeal of the West Wing wasn’t so much the badly dated political idealism as its glorification of workaholic tendencies. I wonder if that might actually be why so many people in politics cited it as an inspiration. Have a stroke and, oh tis but a flesh wound, keep on chooglin’. 

I would just like to say that while Johnny Cash covering Personal Jesus seemed like a great idea on paper, it was one the worst ideas of his late career.  No disrespect, the song just didn’t work without the DM production flash.  

Why? The writer didn’t remotely imply the Pistols were fascist. It’s also not like every member’s political stances, then and now, are super progressive.

Basically it’s hard to manufacture mystique. The music on, say, Rumours is meticulous and calculated as hell, but the lightning in a bottle of that album was that the songs had mystique and were interesting, but without sacrificing their universal appeal. That’s a rare thing to do with any kind of consistency. The Mac…

Also, was Jeremy Strong an Assistant Daniel Day Lewis or an assistant to the Daniel Day Lewis?