Scorsese’s epic was undoubtedly one of the best films of the year.

I love that movie!

He’s such a little bitch. He pitched a season 4 idea to HBO and they didn’t want it. He created a shitty season 2 and a mediocre season 3. He hadn’t proved himself to create a show that’s consistent enough quality each season. HBO likely didn’t trust that he could deliver.

You should have seen the cover they wanted. It wasn’t a glove, believe me.

Wow I didn’t realize the Critical Drinker was writing for the AVClub!

My grandfather flew PBYs in the Pacific Theater. recon, search and rescue and anti submarine. He talked about his service a lot he did 30 years, but never much about his flying days.

The turret actually had a “computing” gunsight and during combat you were supposed to dial in the wingspan of the plane you were tracking and it determined the best firing solution. Unfortunately, it was almost impossible to use in real life, so my father just kept the dial at an average wingspan of all the German…

Being a tail gunner or a ball gunner sounds like the absolute worst fucking job on a bomber.  You either sit and do nothing or panic because a round might cause the glass to shatter.  Unbelievably miserable. 

Yeah my grandfather flew a C-47 back and forth on D-Day plus one, and absolutely refused to talk about it beyond superficial details. Loved to talk about his time in pilot training though

I remember my grandmother asking him if he remembered how many German fighters he shot down. His answer: “I know exactly how many - zero.”

My father was also a ball turret gunner and flew 35 missions when he was only 19-20 years old. He had some crazy stories and liked to say that he can’t imagine how he ever did it, but now that it’s over he’s glad he did. 

My great uncle was a ball turret gunner in the belly of a B-17 (Sean Astin’s spot in Memphis Belle). He didn’t particularly care to discuss it either, I’m sure not least because it was pants-shittingly terrifying being exposed down there like that every time a German fighter came up from below. I finally saw one of…

Genuine question:

“Hey everyone, there’s a spaceship in the sky ... again.”

For the first three seasons, I noticed a kind of steady decline in the moral outcomes of the narrative: first season good pretty solidly triumphs over evil with Malvo and Lester both facing judgement, the second season having some of the antagonists being punished and some escaping free and easy, and the third leaving…

It would have been terribly forced to have say, Mr Wrench show up again or force in something from the film.  I'm fine with visual allusions and reversals.

“Was anyone asking for this” is the most asinine shit. Presumably the producers, with the blessing of the shareholders, based on streaming numbers.

Because of rights issues, the MCU started off with third-string characters. Iron Man was at best a B-level, mostly C-level character, and Captain America was a joke to many modern readers. The big names - the X-Men, Spider-man, Fantastic Four - were all unusable. But then the Iron Man movie was amazing and that…

There’s a version of Man of Steel that can work. A version where the world is a little colder and more hostile than Richard Donner’s, where Clark is a little more unsure of himself and what the right course of action is. There are ideas there that can, with some nurturing and development, create a version of Superman…