Welcome back, your dreams were your ticket out.
Welcome back to that same old place that you laughed about.
Well the names have all changed since you hung around,
But those dreams have remained and they're turned around.

Everyone knows Hitler died in a ditch, covered in petrol, on fire.

Now Perfect Strangers - if that were on a TV channel somewhere and I was surfing, I'd stop for a few minutes and indulge nostalgia.

Well said. I think the new show is banking on the idea that the same people who click on Buzzfeed nostalgia bait would want to indulge that nostalgia in half-hour blocks, and I'm not sure that's going to turn out to be the case in practice.

So what you're saying is that in a more gritty, realistic version of Full House, Uncle Jesse would have been hanging tough with the NKOTB?

It sounded deliberate. That's what's really interesting about SOTN's script and voice acting: it sounded deliberate.

The way I saw it, the movie portrayed his successful suicide attempt as an outgrowth of his earlier one, and both as growing directly from his life experience (which was the movie's primary focus). They had to be acknowledged, but giving them too much screen time would have shifted the narrative focus toward his death…

I think the documentary shows Kurt as being conventional in his life goals. His music doesn't simply rebel against institutions so much as express pain at being failed by them. He wanted his version of the American Dream: success at his craft, a comfortable living, and a family. The fame was secondary, and the drugs…

Glad to hear you've got two grad school offers in the UK! Good luck on the decision. Each choice would make for a really different experience, urban experience-wise. I know a few people who went to U of Westminster for artsy stuff and seemed to like it. Also, don't under-estimate the opportunities that come with…

Isn't the spirit of "Charity CEO and Progressive Political Lobbyist" pretty close to the way Bruce Wayne's parents as portrayed in Batman Begins, building the monorail for the good of the city, especially its impoverished? And doesn't Bruce Wayne donate his mansion and fortunes at the end of The Dark Knight Rises? Of…

Yeah, for being a "Phase ending" movie, it seems really content to ignore the events of Winter Soldier in favor of introducing a new threat that doesn't leave many lingering loose threads plot-wise, other than adding more characters. It's fun, but perfunctory.

A coward many times, the brave man but once.

I like that it provides something of an emotional through-line in the midst of all the mayhem. But like so much in this movie, it doesn't have anywhere of consequence to go.

On the one hand, I'd say the film needs more character development.

The Avengers take a half hour excursion to Iowa where nothing much happens. Tony Stark says he'll fix a tractor but never gets around to it.

I'm sure there's some interesting data out there on the nightly ratings - like, if more people tuned in as interest built. Must have been a helluva week to be chatting about TV around the water cooler.

…advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.

I'm also unreasonably excited that its shot in Namibia, the landscape of which looked freakin' beautiful on film in the medium-vile slasher flick Dust Devil (1992).

It's a metaphor. Like an actual Terminator's genitals, the movie exists as adornment but is likely non-functional.

While I can't speak for the doctor's coherence, I am going to have to agree with the basics of his assessment of Simon's views on data collection: Simon was ENTIRELY dismissive of the outcry over the NSA data collection, calling it a "faux-scandal" and "bullshit" and asking if "the entire news media — as well as all…