The Orville is frequently too earnest for a concept that should have more ownership of its satirical nature. I would have preferred to see MacFarlane do a live action series with the Lower Decks concept...

One of my favorite “over the heads of the ostensible target audience” gags from Animaniacs is when Thaddeus Plotz says, “I haven’t been this upset since we made ‘Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead!’”

I usually find that my tastes side more with critics than the populist, “What do they know?” school. But there’s one thing they do that drives me up the wall: If they’re reviewing any kind of anthology film, they will frequently include some sort of critical statement along the lines of, “This is really like a series…

There’s just such a surrealistic, dreamlike aspect to that whole sequence, but the music in particular. Though personally, I think the score for the final duel (which uses many of the same motifs) takes it to an even greater level.

If this guy is supposed to be portraying “early” or “young” Perry Mason, Downey Jr., at 55, is a bit old for that role by this point. Rys is probably a bit up there himself at 45, though when you consider people in those days tended to appear (to us at least) a bit older than somebody about the same age would now, it…

So, having seen the first episode, yeah - this is basically just another generic true crime show that they’ve slapped a familiar name (and that creepy theme music!) on in the hope that it will make it stand out from dozens and dozens of other similar productions.

Indeed, the Portuguese royal family did relocate their capitol to Rio when Napoleon invaded Lisbon, and it remained there for 13 years.

Of course, I get that you can portray a nationality or an ethnic group in a way that isn’t really race specific, and still be offensive. But I think it needs to be noted: There are plenty of “white” people in Brazil. Of course, we could spend hours debating what it even means to be “white” in the first place. But…

Although the quaking itself occupies less than two minutes of screen time (a slight cheat, as the actual quake lasted 42 seconds...

His entrée into the arts came when Reiner’s brother Charlie, who noticed that Reiner was always making the people around him laugh, encouraged him to take a free acting class at a school run by the Works Progress Administration.

Plus, his proto-disco bow tie was so,huge he was able to use it as a hang glider to rescue the survivors with.

Whatever the motivation, it's a brilliant performance. He more than holds his own in a room with TWO Peter Sellers in peak form.

Astaire was their pean to Old Hollywood in what was a younger, hipper slate of nominations that year (the Academy tended to swing like a pendulum between Old Huard and Young Turks in the '70s).

Arguably of the Warner Brothers gangster quartet - Cagney, Bogart, Raft, and Robinson - Robinson's roles were the most varied. He could easily switch from ruthless hood to hen-pecked husband to paternal mentor with ease.

That was sort of a theory across athletics in the 60's. You look at the great sluggers of the 60's - Marris, Mantle, or Yastrzemski, for example, they’re fit but also somewhat lanky. Contrast that with the steroid era stars of the late 80's to early 2000's, like Bonds, Sosa, McGuire, Canseco, etc.

It’s old-fashioned and set-bound.

The “smartest guy in the room who gets everyone in trouble and then skates” is one of the few tropes that’s actually more common in real life than in film.

I’ll go along with you re: Ace in the Hole. That film starts to cross a line where the cynicism becomes almost self-parody. I’ll fight you to the last over Double Indemnity, though. It is the ne plus ultra of all films noir.

Don’t forget Ace in The Hole, in case anyone watches any four of those other movies and asks, “How much bleaker could Wilder’s view of humanity possibly get?”

I would also add the excellent late noir Odds Against Tomorrow to your sub-genre. It’s a rare for the era film produced by and starring black actor (Harry Belafonte), with a pretty frank and realistic depiction of racism and racial relationships in 1950's New York. Plus it has a “murderer’s row” cast featuring…