Yes yes yes. Also the “Ode To Joy” theme is a frequent Christmas item in many traditions.

The first ~hour or so of Rocky is brilliant. Spooky brilliant. The scene were Burgess Meredith comes to visit Rocky’s apartment is one of the greatest scenes in movies. Meredith absolutely slays; and Sly is right there keeping up with him.

If you’re wondering who the one person is who liked Duplicity: it’s me.

Haven’t read the Chernow yet, it’s on my coffee table. I read the Jean Edward Smith years ago: also very compelling.

That was early Grant, later Grant is know for getting arrested for paying Divine Brown for a BJ.

Well, probably not.  But he doesn’t deserve to be ranked among the worst either.

Grant’s “alcoholism” seems largely a myth. There is no support for it in the history of the Civil War: I mean none at all. The contemporary record doesn’t show ANYTHING that we would consider consistent with our modern understanding of alcoholism. There’s no binges, not a single implication of him being drunk during…

This is flat bullshit, and it’s shocking how successful the Lost Cause mythologists have been in injecting this narrative into the popular understanding of Grant over the last century. Go read some accounts of Grant’s funeral to get an appreciation for just how revered Grant was when he died.

I honestly love Downey & Law’s Holmes & Watson. Captures something about the relationship that other portrayals never have. Downy’s dissipated adrenaline junkie Holmes, with the way-overactive brain, who is the worst roommate in the history of the world. Law’s pugnacious tough-guy Watson, and his irritation with…

The “one possible path to victory”, I’m 99% sure it did not involve them overpowering Thanos and taking the gauntlet. Yes, it was worth a try — they came damn close to getting the gauntlet, though what they would do next is an open question — but it wasn’t the path to victory.

You’re 1000% right about the final confrontation. After Dalton has defeated the Afghanistan plan (the plane fight etc), the fight with Joe Don Baker seems anticlimactic and pointless. Who was he, again? But the rest of the movie is quite solid.

No “maybe” about it.  (With appropriate nod to Goldfinger.)

OHMSS is beat-for-beat with its novel.  Stunningly faithful.

The editing here is the precursor to the hyper-kinetic disorienting editing of Bourne 2 & 3. It’s terrible there.  Pretty good here: innovative, given the technical limitations, and expressive.

Chain of brothels?  What’s that a reference to?

“They’re looking for a man and a woman!”
“And a cello.”

It was a noticeable feeling of betrayal for me, when my critical faculties (?) “woke up” in my late teens or so, and I realized that most of all of the James Bond films were terrible. The campy goofiness of the Roger Moore movies went right over my head when I saw them (all of them in the theater!). It was crushing…

Oh fuck! We *DO* disagree on which is which.

God, I hope we agree on which of Dalton’s was the classic and which the clanger.

Soderbergh’s essay on this movie is a great read. He’s changed the way I see it, esp his comments on Lazenby.