Oh, I'm fine with them not doing the fast-edit stuff. But I'd like it if they'd continue to be more willing to veer left politically and be more experimental with the structure. And the way Spectre ignored the building blocks Quantum left was dumb.

I wouldn't disagree with you, either. Being a teenage pop star has to be isolating, even on a good day. I more mean that the "Taylor Swift" image casts her in terms of opposite high school archetypes (the Popular Girl AND the Outsider) and the songs themselves aren't really nuanced enough to account for that…

I'm pretty sure there's a much better movie somewhere in the Quantum footage.

Between its negative portrayal of the CIA's South American shenanigans and the villain's plan to privatize water rights, its also the most explicitly left-leaning Bond movie ever in an old-school revolutionary kind of sense (within the bounds of an action movie, of course).

While I go back and forth on how I regard Quantum, I do think its Bourne-iness is much easier to take a few years later, now that every action movie isn't doing the same fast-edit kind of thing. This could be compared to how OHMSS' lack of Connery was distracting on initial release but now isn't a problem.

Stupid sexy Frankenstein's Monster.

I think whether you can believably see Taylor Swift as low in the high school hierarchy affects whether you see the song as immature but sympathetic, or describing an in-fight among popular kids running the self-pity Olympics.

Well said. I'm a grumpy 30-year-old man and thus not in the 'Taylor Swift fan' demographic, and radio-friendly pop is all about pandering to demographics. I can't really fault the song for expressing something that's not healthy, but probably true to the feelings of the people it was made for. Does it not have value…

What's scariest to me is that - as I recently sifted through months of backstory in a few minutes - I find few of the jokes he stole funny. Why would someone write them? Steal them? Re-post them? Is this what Instagram IS? Is this just what its like to be 30? Am I going to start getting confused by flashing lights…

I'd like to imagine the name led them to think basketball is what No-Maj's think "wizarding" is.

Stupid nudge that I am (is it too early to reclaim the word?), I can't help but read the word as an almost-anagram of "Minaj", as in Nicki, whose popularity I associate more with England than America, possibly because I'm exposed to ambient pop radio in the UK that I mostly avoid in the States.

I do kind of wish that American free speech had some sort of 'but you can't just go spouting unsubstantiable bullshit' clause, but I think that sort of thing would lead directly to fascism every time the Republicans got into power and re-defined the "facts".

I was a sophomore at a liberal arts college during the 2004 election. I (and other liberal-leaning) kids couldn't get enough of Michael Moore, even drove a few hours to hear him speak.

The Carrey comparison is an interesting one. Funny People portrays Sandler's meta-avatar as experiencing his career in terms of compromise and regret. Carrey's version, I'd say, is Bruce Almighty, in which his goofy soft-news anchorman aspires to do hard news, fails at it, and then settles comfortably into being an…

Now, now. I hear the upcoming generation is much less cynical about bullshit exercises in marketing and stereotyping.

Since i haven't seen it linked yet here, I think Tasha Robinson's piece on what King changed from his novel in his own TV adaptation is the most insightful thing I've seen written on the topic, and I'm not sure that criticism of King/Kubrick differences are ever going to get beyond that.

Do check out Atari: Game Over - I liked it a lot. I don't think it necessarily claims the game was a lost masterpiece, just that it was aiming to be something new, made to a fast deadline, and that whatever standards you use to complain about E.T. you could find examples of worse offenders from the same era.

The 'save the counselors' dynamic sounds really interesting, kind of reminiscent of the excellent Zombies Ate my Neighbors. Whether it was too damn hard or not by current standards (and - as has been noted - a lot of NES games were), I have respect for the 8-bit era's willingness to try different things with…

Yeah, Agent Doggett was a great character, and placed Scully in the 'believer' role to his skeptic. Season 7's still great and even Season 8's about half-good.

I agree with you and Ronson about the world you want, though I feel (perhaps optimistically) compelled to say that's not always how local news works. I worked at the West Bumfuck Daily for a stint last year. Not every bit of information - including the police blotter - goes online in an easily accessible manner. A lot…