I have found the writing in these shows exceedingly precious and self-important. It’s never allowed me to enjoy it in full, but I have admired formal aspects of the production: the direction achieves an impressively sustained apocalyptic mood but it all comes across as superficial without any quality writing…

To be honest, the only thing less appealing to me than a live action remake of The Little Mermaid, is a live action remake of The Little Mermaid which is a slavishly faithful recreation of the original.  Who gives a shit what they change, or what dishonest reason they give for changing it.

That Reddit AMA he did where most of the questions were "is it true you're a colossal prick?" was the funniest thing he ever participated in.

I agree. I always worry people are going to think I’m some crazed apologist fan or something, but the likelihood of proving any sort of liability on the part of Baldwin is so miniscule, that “judge seeing their name in lights” is honestly the most plausible reason it’s come this far.

The problem of course is that…

“What’s key[...]is that the world is more important than the story itself.”

Look I’m not historically a defender of Wes Anderson, but there’s loads of directors who require their actors to just stand there and do as they’re told in order to achieve some grander effect that can’t be achieved by having the actor build their own characterisation. Sometimes the process of directing is creating a…

Have found this director to be extremely superficial and thematically weak in the past. Perhaps he still is but for whatever reason this one looks a bit more compelling.  Hopefully this is a quality of the film itself rather than just the trailer.

The merchant guys aren’t an army, it’s meant to be the same guy. If you shoot him in one location he vanishes from the entire game.

What bums me out is that saying things like “racist judge” and “criminals caught in the act” while basically true, might expose him to further legal action.

Right? It gets really weird really quickly too, because it’s like “an entertainment publication exactly like this one, asked the famous person for an answer to a specific question, and now we are going to frame that answer as though it was just unprompted vitriol”.

Haha! I honestly wasn’t trying to kick him at all. The truth is, a lot of these Manic Pixie Thingo Whatever movies are offensive and unhelpful and stupid. Braff’s one was basically just the second two out of the three (from memory), and so hearing him talk about it in relatively pragmatic terms, made me think: that’s…

The weirder claim to me was that anyone in the Pistols crew was ever using the "raising awareness" argument.  None of them ever claimed that.  Pistols, the Bromley Contingent, Siouxsie... over the years they've all been pretty clear it was shock value.

I think that’s one way of looking at it. I think it’s more that the writers at one time were hired according to their alignment to the overall values of the publication. Time was, AV Club actually took a specific position, perspective, worldview etc. So it was sarcastic, smug, snarky in a particular direction.

I’m firmly in the “this was crap at the time” camp, but maybe it’s fine that people like it? Maybe it’s also fine that people liked it then and don’t like it now? Maybe it’s okay to make a film that was resonant with a contemporary audience and then aged into irrelevance as the culture moved on?

Ugggghhh I know that this comment appears on every article that the AV Club posts nowadays but like: why are you being snarky about this?

I dunno, to me it’s like calling someone rude because they don’t give their ex more than a polite smile at a party. That’s not rude, it’s just... not being generous. Lack of generosity is not rudeness. It’s not rude not to be forthcoming if you’re uncomfortable.

Someone help a non-American understand plz:

Well, the point I’m making is that he probably made the least-worst, most pragmatic choice available.

Do you think he was disrespectful? Do you think he owes her his unpaid time?

He’s been pretty accountable and apologetic, it does happen more than it ought to and I’m not proposing he be granted a licence to be endlessly forgiven but it’s a stretch to say it’s a regular occurrence. He made the Christian Bale comparison himself, and he publicly owned up, without a hint of PR spin apology or…