Nothing, and that's sort of what I'm trying to say. Showcasing normal Muslims/any misrepresented group is unquestionably a good thing. But one can have legitimate concerns about, for example, what is being taught in mosques, Islamic schools (Jews described as pigs, etc) without being unable to understand that these…

Mmmph, I know... He was so up-and-down plain attractive in that movie (it was Lilies of the Field he won for, as I recall?) as well. Got his shirt off a fair few times. Can't think of a better way to drag the Civil Rights era into Hollywood.

Oh God, I did not see this coming. Things are about to get ugly in a liberal-versus-liberal takedown which critics are already describing as "baffling".

Very probably. Like I say, this will do a lot of good. But I just feel it's a bit like saying "Gang crime? Here's a video of Sidney Poitier's Oscar acceptance speech. What gang crime?"

I suppose this is good for people who don't realise that there are loads of awesome, completely normal American Muslims out there. But it strikes me as kind of disingenous also. You'd have to be a pretty hardcore bigot to dislike the guys in this video (also, a racist, given that none of them seem to be overtly…

If Jennifer Aniston goes to this wedding, I fear that gossip will just be over. I think there's a chance that will actually cause the whole world of celebrity gossip to collapse in on itself. We may have found the ending to the final level of the great game of Celebrity Speculation.

What is seen cannot be unseen!

I know what you mean. He looks like a custom-character from The Godfather Xbox game.

I'm not necessarily complaining about her contract being terminated, which is a risk she undertook by taking the job. However, the ideas which underpin the contract are utterly at odds with even the highest standards of draconian Biblical morality ever practiced. By not turning a blind eye and allowing her to marry…

I adore 30 Rock, but that does not stop me from being increasingly sure that Bette Davis was somehow reincarnated as Alec Baldwin.

What hysterical nonsense. EVEN if it is the Christianest school around, EVEN if it insists strictly on unimpeachable 19th century moral standards, recent historical research estimates that 40% of brides in the 19th century went to the altar pregnant (check out the interview on Salon at the moment about the "first…

Nah, it was just a joke. I guess I may well have underestimated how fast YA moves, but I'm 21 and when I was in my early/mid-teens, most of the stuff in our library seemed to fall between those two extremes of Judy Blume/nightmarish dystopia, without an awful lot inbetween. In fact, I once (to my shame) stole a copy…

Yes, I'm sure there's still some awesome stuff out there. Come to think of it, a lot of the good ones (Huck Finn, Mockingbird etc.) end up being considered general literature in the end, so maybe the problem is with the label rather than the work. This sort of thing is the main offender: [www.theawl.com]

At first I could understand most of it (but I came to French through English, which makes the heavy accent less offputting anyway). But after about a minute, a lot of it sounded like gibberish without looking at the subtitles. What I could understand sounded mostly correct, though, just a few little things were off.

"the fingers of a cervix grasping his dick"

Although as I say this I feel my fingers beginning to clench around my peals... That last one seems pretty freaking horrible. I mean, writing books with darker themes can help kids who are going through similar issues, but this doesn't really sound like it fulfills that criteria.

The French was horrific (okay, I know it's only a joke and whatever, but when you actually speak French you can't just overlook that shit), but otherwise A-star for effort. If Henri takes requests, I would like to see his take on Ingmar Bergman.

X-Men: The Bit In-Between The End Of The First One (No, Not That One, The One With James McAvoy) And Start Of The First One (Yes, That One)

I read one once. I think it was Are You There God?... I remember liking it well enough, but only in a sort of scientific interest way. They were just so... American. To me it was like observing an alien lifeform :D

FFS, Quebec. Can you imagine sitting in the audience, humming along. Your mouth opens wide to belt out that powerful final line, and then... silence. What a crime coming from a music teacher, who presumably professes to love art. This a slope slippery with ridiculousness and anticlimactic endings.