Women had been serving on state juries for years at that point.

But the remake did do one thing that really improved on the original: It used Will Smith—who, admittedly, was made to look absurd. Smith gave the Genie the gravity of a real movie-star presence at its center. Just like Williams, Smith does plenty of riffing, but he balances it out by making the Genie into something…

I remember being kind of astounded by how forthright the movie was about sexuality -- and in particular about endorsing extramarital teen sex (even if, since it’s a soap, it leads to an unplanned pregnancy; but in the context of the 1950s, the movie’s giving them a happy ending is pretty radical too).

Octavia Spencer got a nomination for the C.J. Walker miniseries.

Light in the Piazza (1962) is a late-career highlight, in my view.

The Heiress deservedly gets a ton of praise, but To Each His Own, her first Oscar win, is a really good melodrama weepy that I think gets overlooked these days in part because that genre isn’t as ‘respectable’. And of course you also had The Snake Pit, her third nomination in the 1946-1949 period, which arguably she…

Maybe McTiernan wouldn’t have chickened out of having the film adaptation of Patriot Games feature Prince Charles and Princess Diana in major supporting roles.

Gomez hasn’t said anything, that I’m aware of, but it would especially make no sense for him to cite her as an alibi and even file a lawsuit like this if it wasn’t true, since they parted on bad terms (evidently due to his behaviour) and has zero reason to lie for him.

Gurihiru did a series of Power Pack miniseries for Marvel like 15 years ago — the characters never looked better.

There was nothing for the House to remove the ratification deadline from, since the amendment lapsed, and if it was possible it’d require a two-thirds vote of both houses.

While some of the founding fathers were deists, most weren’t, and one really shouldn’t act like religious influence in government was unusual in the Revolutionary period. The main reason for the rise of the modern evangelical conservative movement is the collapse of the previous widely-shared consensus that America…

The amendment already failed, there’s nothing left to “remove” the deadline from.  And doing so would require a two-thirds majority, anyway.

The GOP is of course opposed to the ERA anyway, but they aren’t really “shrugging off” the recent ratifications, since the amendment clearly lapsed (even if you accept Congress’ original extension of the deadline, which is dubious).

I don’t buy this analysis.  Stories about enjoying great wealth (or just effortless upper-middle class security) are not confined to the 1990s/early 2000s, and I don’t think there’s much case to be made that taste for them has diminished in the last decade or so -- that same period has seen explosive growth in…

I just finished Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park (different from her other novels in compelling ways, but too long, and at times feels like it could have been more provocative than it is), and am now about a hundred pages into James Ellroy’s L..A Confidential. I’ve already seen the movie several times, so comparing the…

“Potemkin villages” were a myth.

Regarding Ferris Bueller, Matthew Broderick has had kind of an interesting career in that his screen persona in subsequent decades (milquetoast nebbish) has become completely disconnected from his star-making role as the confident maybe-sociopath Ferris.

I don’t think it’s a prerequisite that a character arc involve initial character flaws.  Many great stories are about characters dealing with events that arise in the course of the story.

I miss the days when blockbuster movies routinely came with soundtracks of original pop songs. So many indelible/cheesy moments as a result, and Top Gun certainly has one of the better 1980s soundtracks.

This was a state court.