I hope that the ancient evil they have to defeat is teenage boys.

And that at least one other person in the world let him…

"Instagram-like graphics" is incredibly generous.

It's been like that for me for a few months. I sent tech an email but never heard anything back…

Your other points are well-taken. Mulling over.

Ummm I think I misspoke. When I said "as a white person, who cares" I didn't mean like "who cares, this isn't my problem" but "who cares, I'm not and cannot be an arbiter of racial fairness given my privileged positionality." Sorry.

I'm cynical about that sort of thing. The boys' club system isn't going away, it's getting supplemented by what sounds like an internal diversity quota, even if they wouldn't call it that. The language is troublesome, looking for people who "represent" more diversity, like a signifier. Or, you know, token.

Well, that's what I'm saying, that's BEEN the system and look where it is now.

But that doesn't address the problem of a diverse Academy, only that the Academy itself will have more progressive tastes. I mean, if more people of color get nominated, then the Academy will have more people of color in it, but that's a really circular and inefficient way to go about it, and hasn't worked so far. I…

I guess, but I'm less than optimistic that that's true about younger filmmakers.

The emeritus thing suggests that the problem is old white people who don't die, and that young film people are more diverse. But that clearly isn't true—diversity numbers are basically flat. I don't understand how that will help, the problem is as much one of entry into filmmaking as into the (white) boys' club.

I think, conservative or liberal, critics absolutely get to trash art for garbage politics. Yes, the way the review sounds would be very different with the politics reversed, but that's because…the politics would be reversed. Maybe the problem isn't that it's a double standard, but that conservatism is just a damaged…

The The Pitch about the song argues that its good/useful specifically because it's undercooked and almost unmediated in its self-concern, which reveals both useful things about the emotional life of white privilege and allows him to dodge accusations of self-aggrandizing calculation. Anyway, I don't know if I agree,…

I would say that your stance is anti-critical and doesn't take into account the way that language, and especially aesthetic language (poetry, lyrics), operates. Yeah, when people say "thug" they aren't saying the n-word, but everyone knows what's being said. But the people saying "thug" allow themselves plausible…

I thought the first half-ish was good, right until SPOILER shows up. The sky reveal is great.

You know, I just rewatched Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle for the first time in maybe ten years (I was super bored and didn't want to get off the couch), and that movie is insane, and kind of a breath of fresh air within the crop of hyper-serious, grimly realistic and fatalistic movies. It's not good, but totally its…

"Nation-state" does not mean "country." A country is a legal structure with a government, citizens, tax structures or whatever. A country is a legal entity. A nation-state is an organization of people bound together by a slippery conjunction of race, religion, language, culture, whatever, who have made a government…

I read your second point, that's why I said what I said in the way that I said it. It's the oldest canard in the "culture wars." And it's specious nonsense. What does it mean to say that it's "fine" for Mustaine to express his opinion? What are you claiming? What are you even reacting to? You're only asserting that…

We're in a cultural moment when people are thinking through political content more aggressively. Which is good. Politics matter. They aren't something to be "overcome" by good art. That's impossible. Politics are more important than art, though ideally we get art with smart, morally engaged politics. Actually, we get…

JJ's not the Hague. Album still exists, Mustaine gets to make another one, etc.