Brütal Legend. The beautiful, beautiful offspring of Legend of Zelda's enthusiastic union with a leather-clad roadie, probably inside a van with a buncha wizards and demons airbrushed on the side.

I was hoping someone would mention Omikron! For Bowie, becoming a God-figure and rock star within a Tron -like computer-world fit naturally in his various personas' evolutionary line. The game's hop-from-body-to-body conceit was better in concept than execution, but - heck, I suppose that was the 90s dot-com boom…

Idea I'll throw out for discussion: I think ambiguity in plotting works best when its in service of themes or suspense or in diverting the audience's attention to more improtant things: we don't need to know what specifically is in the Pulp Fiction briefcase other than that its valuable (so as we can think about other…

Worse than "clumsy tonal shift bound up in a lazy refusal to make a decision about a crucial climactic plot point, causing the audience to fixate on plotting rather than the themes the film ostensibly wants to open to further interpretation"?

That's pretty re-current in this feature: I don't think many of the interviewees do much (any?) research beforehand. Or - indeed - that some are aware that one can research topics, accumulate knowledge, and bash pop music from an informed perspective.

Am I living in a more fortunate universe? In my experience, Mambo #5 is primarily trotted out nostalgically.

It is very 'of its time and place' (which is…the current indie-pop scene, especially post-Owl City Minnesota?), but I think its a legit quality song, and one that gets me tear-y eyed just thinking about.

Sort of, but I think there's a more nuanced, specific history at work here. My (admittedly basic, white-man) understanding of capital-F movement Feminism is that the first two waves largely assumed certain heterosexual-ish, white, middle class norms, with LGBT and Civil Rights movements off doing their own things.…

I does sound like she interpreted winning "Best Actress" as being elected Spokesperson of All Womankind (which, whatever, equal pay's a good thing), then proceed to explicitly construct 'The Cause' in terms of normative whiteness / straight-ness.

That was post-WWII America right there: it didn't matter how crazy or ill-advised or immoral your goals were. With a little luck and a lot of gumption, the future was yours to make.*

"Incomprehensible." The word is "incomprehensible."

That is one of the categories I'm excessively invested in this year: Whiplash deserves the heck out of that Editing Oscar.

I have watched all of the above, and you're absolutely right about both Game and Theory of Everything (though the former works as a genre thriller). I think the general lack of well-deserved, seething hate I've been seeing among friends and the Net for Everything has to do with the sorts of audiences that would…

I think, generally what we've seen this year is that the movies critics (and Internet commentators) really went for were also Academy-friendly, which has, positively, contributed to a greater sense of urgency to the Oscars. Not yet sure if this is representative of long-term trends in either film or the Academy.

Writing books takes a long time - if that's accurate, it still would have been nice if she had opted to read a copy firsthand before completing her final draft.

To try and bring the semantics in line: I think punditry and reportage should be kept separate, and I don't think its ethical to try and engineer a position on a particular hot-button social policy by selectively emphasizing / withholding information. That's a recipe for partisan divisions and endless cries of…

I emphatically agree there's value in 'letting reporters speak with authority', and giving them time to develop expertise - or valuing expertise more generally in society, which is intermingled with the problem of the Rise of the Pundits.

I agree, opinions should be backed up by evidence. And for that matter, quality news is dependent on people willing to make a career out of it (no matter the size of the paper/station), and to learn all the ins and outs and background of an issue. And large / national news organizations have no damn excuse for not…

So did anyone here bashing the article actually read the article, or just judge it based on the title?

Also, looking between the covers, for other perspectives from within the industry: this Jason Pinter interview with Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Weiner after Jonathan Franzen dismissed them, in which Picoult argues the issue was a literary-vs-popular fiction schism and Weiner argues (much like the article above) that the…