Shit, "Chinatown" should have won everything . . . except GF2 was the same year. Away with arbitrary award-show honors! They annoy me!

I think Coppola was on a roll summoning all his creative gifts to approach stories that worked both for him on a personal level, and on a dramatic level to express what he felt about America. The "Godfather" films were about his Italian heritage and about corruption in high places; "The Conversation" about his love of…

James Woods. Now there's a guy who's due for a late-career role that taps his weird talent. He was so great in certain specific things (like "True Believer" with Downey) and so annoying in others.

Holden is brilliant in "Boulevard." Ferrer's amazing in "Cyrano," an otherwise pretty low-rent adaptation of the play. It's too bad voters can't choose to honor more than one entry some years and zero in others, which goes for other categories as well. I'd find "and the winner is . . . nothing!" to be more compelling…

I walked out of "Usual Suspects," it annoyed me that much. I should probably see it someday, it might seem less pretentious now and more fun to watch good actors in their younger days.

"Yankee" as a good movie depends on one's tolerance for the super-patriot schtick in it, if you find it charming or tiresome. That said, Cagney's "stage" performances are astounding in that movie, so viewers familiar with the electric edginess of Cagney got to see a whole new side of him. Imagine if Brando had…

Hard to argue against either. Kinda why this whole award bizness is silly!

I like to imagine what would happen if Bill were confronted in a dark alley by Mafia hitmen. Would he actually grovel and whine to someone he finally can't bully, or would he puff up his chest and get even louder? Either scenario is fun.

Limbaugh/O'Reilly/Beck at least explain why we should all be terrified of the thing they're screaming at. Hannity just assumes that his screaming is enough; you rarely even get an explanation of why he's mad.

Well, it's low circulation. So the high rung of journalism must, by definition, belong to the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. Very eye-opening reporting there, with sources unafraid to reveal the naked truth.

Clearly, when Papa Bill claims he's Looking Out For You, he means through the scope of a sniper's rifle. (Or the empty bottom of a whiskey glass.)

Maybe call it something else, too. Few people know what "art direction" is. "Most Original Visual Style" or some such might actually make people seek out these movies, which should be the whole point of awards.

You can watch the episode "Better Call Saul" (it's one of the funnier, less depressing "BB" entries, in season 2) to get a sense of what the lawyer becomes. Mike (the parking-lot attendant) becomes a world-weary fixer/hitman with something of a code of honor. That's pretty much all you're missing from "BB" so far.

I also loved "Little Shop Of Horrors" by Menken/Ashman. The movie was a mess in some ways, but the songs were just terrific, and that's what I want in my musicals.

Personally, my favorite musicals in recent years were "South Park" and "Hedwig," neither of which felt like Broadway shows (although one was a play, and the other written by guys who now have a hit play.) They went straight for what makes a musical good — the songs.

Oh, God, yes.

"There's nothing unbiased in the paper except box scores and stock reports" — HST. (And many sports fans or economists will tell you that box scores and stock reports are biased because of what they omit.)

You can write fiction aimed at kids which omits descriptive sexuality and other things kids aren't ready for (the horrors of war, intense ideological debates, and so on) without being brainless dreck. Rowling did, Paolo Bacigalupi does, many others. There's no point in claiming "Twilight" and "The Hunger Games" aren't…

I was going to complain about ATHF being left off, but you're right, Omitting Futurama for the fucking Flinstones and its one running gag is insane.

Didn't see this one, I still have bad memories of "A Beautiful Mind." That book, a good book, was a detective story with no solution; what made John Nash mentally unstable? A possible reason, among many, was that he was a closeted gay man. You could be openly gay and work for the Pentagon (not many other government…