No, the neutering of Democrats as a whole started when Carter lost to Reagan. It’s just that the West Wing has influenced a lot of how the moderate left thinks in the US. That you can advocate for change, but not all at once and the right will always water it down and we’ll bend over backwards to give them what they…

Oh for sure. When Veep first came out it felt like it was very typical to have it get introduced as the anti-West Wing.

Revelation came to me while I was watching The Death of Stalin last night: Armando Iannucci is the Anti-Sorkin 

Your regular reminder that a majority of boomers started voting republican back in 1980 and never looked back.

David Ehrlich from Indiewire categorised Sorkin’s approach to biopics as not wanting the life story, but the life rights, so he can melt it down and use the parts to tell the story he wants to tell, rather than try to tell what actually happened (which, lets be fair, even the biopics that try to be faithful often…

If you’re interested, check out the podcast The West Wing Thing. It’s an episode-by-episode breakdown about how the show’s centrist politics have negatively influenced the Democratic Party through its advocacy of incremental change.

Note that Jerry Rubin later became a multimillionaire investment banker (before dying early at 58 in 1994). The literal co-founder of the Yippies became a Yuppy. It’s the sort of detail that would seem over-the-top in a fictional character (yeah, we get it — the Boomers sold out, even if Rubin might actually have been…

Vote Pigasus for president!

My takeaway from this review is that “Chicago 10" sounds like it’s worth watching.

Yes! My theater also audibly appreciated Neville’s transformation.

love this and reminds me of the last movie premiere when Hot Neville suddenly appears and the entire audience gasped together and then burst out laughing

The cheery music from the band that dies almost as quickly as it starts is what gets me. Like, everyone is expecting this celebration and it takes a moment to adjust to the horror in front of them.

At a screening of Half-blood Prince, when Harry’s at the train station cafe in the very beginning and that girl starts flirting with him, some girl sitting next to me blurted out, “Who’s this bitch?!” In writing it sounds harsh, but her tone was that of a jealous partner, though it was probably also a reaction to the…

The Boy Who Died runs a nice parallel to The Boy Who Lived.

Amos Diggory screaming over the corpse of his son is pretty much the exact moment the movies went from “mostly lighthearted with a twinge of darkness” to “oh shit, I think things are serious now” and it never looked back.

Leading to a direct tie in with the movie Swiss Army Man. This is all making sense now.

Cedric telling Harry that he told his housemates not to paste anti-Potter flyers across Hogwarts was disingenuous bullshit. He was a priveleged pretty boy whose primary talent was charming people into thinking he was a fierce friend.

Cedric would have reached the goblet first. It was his own sense of fairness that led to his death.

I enjoy the books and movies even though I think the world building is incredibly lazy. However, it’s a stone cold fact that if Harry had left Cedric alone in the maze to be transported back to his house he would have lived.

And Harry’s hysterical refusal to leave his body provides one of the franchise’s most downbeat endings.