1985. Austrian rock singer Falco records 'Rock Me Amadeus!'

If you're talking literary sci-fi, I agree. But for TV and movies I always thought the issue was less "Hollywood is creatively bankrupt" and more the impossibility of doing a convincingly alien alien using practical effects. Can you imagine a decent Pierson's Puppeteer in pre-CGI days?

"When Louis C.K. features a fat woman…the response is largely, 'How thoughtful,' even as Lena Dunham is lambasted for daring to portray the oft-naked adventures of Hannah Horvath on Girls." The fact that Girls is still on and Dunham is famous suggests that it's not being merely lambasted, but very much embraced as…

We love homosexuals and we love Muslims. And homosexual Muslims? Oh, to die for! But theres' this secret agenda, see…by which I mean "cabal"…by which I mean that the Jews who run everything are making us seem crazy and hateful. What? What'd I say?

I don't understand the hate about Ashlee Simpson. I thought she did a pretty convincing 'Old Man River.'

Yup! I was going to say that but couldn't remember the character's name. And she called them "dirtypillows", onewordlikeacrazyperson.

Also Midas Touch: http://www.beeradvocate.com…

Wait, I thought we did lens flare jokes for Abrams. I guess we could do them about Singer too, but that might seem…forced.

The villain-as-protagonist or villain-reinterpretation thing in popular culture isn't new at all, but some things stand out more than others as good examples of the device. Wicked is definitely one, and at this point probably the most famous.

You know, I didn't realize the Gaiman story predated Wicked (and, for that matter, Ian McDowell's Mordred stuff). But I meant "fairy tale reinterpretation from villain POV" in general, and the Kristin Chenoweth connection confused me.

This summer, Disney presents Angelina Jolie in "We Really Wish We had Thought of 'Wicked' First, Maybe this Will Confuse You."

You beat me to it. Yes, this is AV Club and so of course we're making a big deal about a single line in a show because that's what we do here, but pretending that one thing the character said in a moment of high emotion is the show making "the whole of her journey be reduced to whatever’s tied up in a little placenta…

I realize that it's nitpicky to pounce on somebody's metaphor, and that all argument by analogy breaks down at some point. But every time I hear "You cannot use the master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house" I'm struck by how that doesn't even make sense superficially. Yes, I can totally break a dude's window…

@PhonyPope:disqus it was an Amy Shumer sketch: Operation Enduring Mouth. The male agent (codename: Crossbolt) got to rappel and use lethal force and be otherwise kickass; the female (codename: Butterface) was supposed to cook dinner for the target, and maybe blow him. Funny indictment of the femme fatale spy schtick.

If we're going to nerd out about it, she also has played a pretty big role in the Avengers in the comics, as well. The Avengers, of course, being the team where they try very hard to make it plausible that a team that has the Hulk and Thor on it has a very serious guy-with-a-bow hole it needs filled.

She used "feminine wiles" against Loki, too. She acted like exactly the kind of weak-willed female, pretending to a warrior's ethic but really just driven by emotion, that Loki was expecting. So he underestimated her, tried a little of his 'I know your weakness' bit, and got thoroughly played.

It really doesn't make "perfect sense." Youtube has sponsored/promoted content that the content creators do, in fact, pay for - or rather they pay for their placement on the front page. If you're paying to get your trailer seen, you don't want potential viewers to have to sit through a different ad (possibly for…

He was definitely blasted with genetic material, but not GMOs. In the face.

Is a "rare plushophile" only sexually attracted to rare Pokemon? Because Mewtwo got some leeeegsss….

Vago's trope has an even worse variant: when you can use computers to actually pan to something that *isn't even in the original image*, like the back of something.