Rory reminds me of an old survey that claimed most women see themselves as a ‘Lisa Simpson’ type. Rory desperately wanted to be Lisa Simpson and grow up to be a romantic ‘reporter’ (didn’t Lisa want to be the same?). Instead she grew up to be Bart, an amoral underachieving slacker with a chip on her shoulder and bad…

In movies the writer is often the lowest person on the totem pole. If the executives don’t change the script beyond recognition the focus group reviewing the film before release will.

I’ve read reports of CxGF writer Gube working on a new series, also writer Patel, and now the writing team of Specter and Wauchope. And McKenna is under contract to ABC to develop new shows. Esther Povitsky already has her own series, of course, already renewed for a second season. It sounds like a renewed season four…

Haw haw, funny how the fucking Russians send out spammers for a freaking movie review. Fuck you.

There’s that famous phrase ‘The banality of evil’. America grew up on a diet of cartoonish movie supervillains. But real world villains tend to be much less cinematic. The humor comes from comparing the dramatic fantasy representations with the petty small mindedness of the reality.

The DC universe has never really done it for me. I’m no more interested in The Joker’s origin story than Jack O’Lantern’s. I used to be a Marvel comics reader, up until the time that I first got laid, then my interest in comic books rapidly waned after that. My thoughts on 500 million dollar superhero movies is they…

The usually reliable CW has been misfiring lately. ‘Riverdale’ reminds me of Steven Spielberg. By that I mean they seem to have learned all the WRONG lessons from the success of season 1 and doubled-down on the worst bits. Like Spielberg did with the Indiana Jones series.

Call me a prude, but I wasn’t especially digging the push-up-bra/bend-over-for-the-money-shot-down-the-blouse Liv we were getting in this episode. Especially since it had nothing to do with her character. When I think iZombie my first thought isn’t ‘T&A’. Though female viewers drooling over Major last year might…

Looks like something ‘borrowed’ from blacksploitation films and kung fu epics of the early 70s.

Back in season 1 it was precisely the grim violence and oppressive bleak vision that turned me off ‘Agents of Shield’. I don’t need this show in my life.

The phrase ‘former astronaut’ doesn’t have the cachet it used to have. Now it conjures up a grey-haired nerd specially selected for his ability to endure endless hours of tedium without going insane.

This was a short Japanese/Korean series (only five episodes) from earlier this year named (translated to) ‘Spring Has Come’.

Wow, right winger sure do love their dick extender firearms movies.

When people seriously set about reducing smoking one important thin was to *stop glamorizing smoking on film and TV*. The tough guy no longer had that cig dangling from his lips, the hot babe no longer had wisps of cig smoke curling up around her face. And smoking rates dropped sharply to an all-time low. The media…

I was watching a recent Japanese TV drama where the middle-aged married couple bonded over their mutual love of ‘Bringing Up Baby’, which had some special significance from when they first dated. The film meant so much to the dad character that when he took to secretly cross dressing he named himself ‘Catherine’…

In the original 1988 Die Hard Willis played a happy-go-lucky guy who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. By Die Hard 4, nineteen years later, he was an angry alcoholic whose family left him, PTSD’d up to his eyeballs after the truma of the previous 3 films. So in this film he’s gone one step beyond to…

So basically, this was ‘Saving Private Ryan’ except the heroes manage to escape unscathed instead of everyone dying.

I’m old enough to remember a 1977 movie marquee with ‘Annie Hall’ next to ‘Star Wars’ next to Robert Altman’s ‘3 Women’ next to ‘The Duelists’ (my favorite film ever). Some years were so jam-packed with great ground-breaking films that its impossible to whittle it down to just 5 or 6. Other years the academy ran out…

I recall it wasn’t until ‘film aficionados’ started complaining about the release version’s voice-over narration that film fans suddenly went “Eeew! voice-over narration! Yuk!” Before it was mentioned to them they were perfectly happy with it.

As excellent as the list is (and it is excellent) the thesis is undermined by the list of films actually nominated. Because, with a few exceptions (1970 Airport for example), the actual nominees were consistently great films. Would you really bump ‘The French Connection’ for ‘McCage & Mrs. Miller’?