Eh, among other things, I'm more than a bit uncomfortable with the idea that "assimilated" and "average dude" are on the same page here, so I think I'm going to bow out of this conversation. Have a good one.

Right, but I think there's some tension between "typical media portrayal of Asians" and "typical GED class" that doesn't resolve so easily. Like I said above, if the writers were starting with the latter, then the character is much more understandable, and much less so if they started with the former. That's not to…

Without disagreeing with your main points (especially re: Vietnamese v. Korean, which confuses the hell out of me), I have a question about this:

If nothing else, loving the Roerich-inspired art in that still. It looks like she's standing right inside his "Overseas Guests" painting.

I've met Leibe-Hart a couple of times, and yes, he's completely in earnest. It actually makes me uncomfortable to watch him, for that reason.

…is pretty much the best American performance of the last ten years?

Oh yeah. I don't know how I convinced myself he had for Gladiator. Too much to drink tonight, I guess.

Or Joaquin Phoenix in Gladiator versus just about everything he's done the last few years.

Reese Witherspoon: Tracy Flick >> June Carter Cash

That is, by far, my favorite Goodman performance… But he was widely overlooked, and Hollywood loooved Lerner that year.

Around 3:00-3:20 in the music video. The camera moves to the balconies and the images become fuzzy, exaggerated (in perspective), etc. It's great - it looks just like real-life Toulouse-Lautrec at his drunken best.

Yeah, Corddry's taste is terrible. This is one of my favorite music videos: Lennox's take on a queered up version of the Moulin Rouge is just great, and the Toulouse-Lautrec effects (the absinthe-drenched color and slightly stretched images) during the bridge still look fantastic.

Oh hush, it's a fine cover. And it got a lot of people listening to both him and The Knife, so it's a win-win all around.

Yeah, if I hadn't seen any of these movies and reacted entirely to what was in that clip, it looks like Wes Anderson plus a bunch of other unexceptional people. These clips get what Anderson does extremely well, but it's hard to highlight the strengths of the other directors (especially Linklater, who I'm pulling for)…

Sure, it's definitely a movie-movie (i.e. a movie about movies that wallows in its movie-ness), but I think it goes in some directions that are genuinely unique and invigorating - which isn't to take away from Haneke's accomplishment, just that watching Holy Motors made me feel like I was experiencing something I…

I think I'd have given it to Holy Motors - very few movies have gotten me to applaud during the film, but I couldn't help myself during the protagonist's (no spoilers) apparent visit "home" near the end. Still, that was a heck of a competition lineup (similarly, I think Moonrise Kingdom is Anderson's best, and would…

"Ma'am, you've got no cause to get snippy with me!"

Petrov's The Cow did have the benefit of being based on a Platonov short story, which is even better than the film.

The Pushie sketch kinda captures what, for me, has been the self-defeating m.o. of a lot of SNL's sketch writing: the premise isn't bad, it builds on increasing absurdity, and instead of riding that crest to a proper comic climax, it dissipates in a wet fart of nothing. Here" "Do you want to murder Pushie"? If he'd…

As Alton Brown always says, never buy a single-purpose kitchen gadget!