Birds of Prey - a couple of posts here have already mentioned the sandwich scene, culminating in Harley’s dramatic, silent scream as the sandwich is destroyed at the end of a chase sequence.

Good to hear!

This movie still has no distribution whatsoever outside the United States, which is incredibly annoying.

The first of several Netflix cheques that Harry Melling would cash this year. Ironically, it was the chess miniseries (on paper the least noteworthy of the three) that turned into a cultural phenomenon.

The release strategy and how it matches the cultural moment, as stated.

I believe he said he’d be covering the #2 film of the year in the increasing instances of crossover.

Porchey is offscreen biding his time for his highly symbolic death on September 11, 2001 (no, really).

From most accounts, she was able to spend more time with Andrew and Edward in their childhoods than with Charles and Anne; but the latter (especially Charles) are much more the focus of the series and also of public attention.

But think of the continuity errors!  Who’s been running Eton all this time?

Is the show ever going to let Martin retire? He’s now logged, what, eleven additional years of service?

I think with Colman’s tenure the main difference is that there was more of an arc for the character as she grew into the role. Now that she’s largely settled into it and is a venerable institution, the drama isn’t really about her character development anymore. Which to some extent was inevitable based on the…

Once I looked into it after the episode, apparently there were photos of her on set for season four. Shows also seldom can plan (or budget) that far in advance.

I was momentarily baffled when Foy showed up in the opening scene, wondering if Netflix had glitched and queued up a season 1 episode.

That wasn’t the most usual way of doing it, by any means, though lying about their whereabouts was certainly common (see also, poor Rosemary Kennedy, though that was also an extreme case in various ways). There’s no way to know why Fenella Bowes-Lyon did that. She herself had passed away about two decades before the…

Yeah, I’ve been a bit baffled by how much Margaret is presented on the show as if she’s completely alone when she had two children who should be young adults by this point in the narrative.

This sort of thing was discussed in relation to the show’s version of the Michael Fagan incident, the ways the show uses historical incidents as a jumping-off point for concepts. In this case, Morgan wanted to get at the issue of heredity.

That would be the “divine right” explanation, but I wouldn’t say that’s the only one (which these days is mainly custom-based).

4. The Academy loves to use its awards to make up for past slights (Classic example: awarding Jimmy Stewart the Oscar for Philadelphia Story, was as much a consolation for not awarding him the previous year for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington). To give an Oscar for Boseman would be a gesture of contrition for not giving…

Given how rare posthumous Oscars are, I would never bet on it happening.

The Crown’s approach to history is rather more like the way we tend to dramatize much older events where people are less likely to care about the particulars.  In this case, the idea of a regular Joe breaking into the palace and trying to talk about how things are in Britain is a neat jumping off point for dramatizing…