Fun fact; "Everything I Do (I Do it for You)" was the song that made me realize the ridiculousness of Canadian content rules for radio, because even though Bryan Adams is Canadian, and co-wrote the song, it wasn't considered "Canadian" enough.

Finished reading Mark Lewisohn's The Beatles All These Years Vol. 1, an exhaustive (if occasionally exhausting) history of the Beatles from birth to "Love Me Do".

I haven't seen in a long time, but I liked The Son's Room. Because of that ending, it doesn't compare to the other major movie about grief that came out that year (In the Bedroom, my favorite film of the year), but it does hit a lot of emotional truths, and it's the only Moretti film I've liked without much…

Julia Stiles has my favorite line from this movie, when she tells the CIA guys Bourne isn't making any mistakes:

Kael's a good enough writer she gets away with it, but for most of her followers, not so much.

Read In Their Lives, edited by Andrew Blauner. The subtitle of the book explains it: Great Writers on Great Beatles Songs, and while you do get the usual suspects when it comes to songs (there are chapters on "She Loves You", "I Wanna Hold Your Hand", "Yesterday", "A Day in the Life", and so on), but one of the things…

Yes I did, from first airing to the last show (even the movie), but in some ways, that makes it even worse that I ignored The Wire at first, since I should have known the Simon name.

TV: I wish I had been watching The Wire when it first came on, and I have no excuse, since (a) I had loved David Simon's book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, and (b) I had HBO at the time.

I think so, Brain, but me and Pippi Longstocking…I mean, what would the children look like.

You beat me to it, though I disagree with you about a lot of these films (I like Cyrano de Bergerac, Hidden Agenda, and White Hunter Black Heart much more than you, and I didn't like Ju Dou as much as you, except for Gong Li's performance, and I also didn't like Everybody's Fine; I know I've seen Come See the Paradise,…

Does anybody know if the episodes with the original music in them are available anywhere?

I liked Fallout as well, for the same reasons.

Ah, for Christ's sake, Hugh, play the fucking song already!

IV mentioned Citizen's Band, and that's a real underrated film, with Paul Le Mat, Bruce McGill as his estranged brother, Charles Napier, and a few other great character actors and actresses like Ed Begley Jr., Richard Bright, Harry Northrup, and Ann Wedgeworth (only Candy Clark comes off ill-used). It's not as…

Other films in competition that year:

Read some movie-related books - Kurosawa's Rashomon, which is less about the making of the film, and more about what Japan was like at the time, and also Kurosawa's relationship with his family, particularly a brother who died young (though it veers into Donald Spoto territory in that you sometimes feel the writer is…

Gordon Willis never won one either. Not only that, he wasn't even *nominated* for the first two Godfather movies, or Annie Hall, or All the President's Men. Think about that.

The Life of David Gale. The only saving grace is I saw it at a preview screening and didn't have to pay for it. I figure the one thing that could unite both sides of the death penalty debate is the agreement this movie sucks (only Laura Linney manages to escape with her dignity intact).

In Kevin Pollak's book How I Slept My Way to the Middle, he mentions Pesci was the only person on the set of Casino who didn't like Rickles heckling him on the set (even De Niro would always laugh whenever it happened), so when Pesci does that in the movie, there might have been a little reality creeping into the…

It's written by the guy who wrote and directed a movie almost 25 years ago called Watch It, which is 180 degrees in tone from something like this, so I'm curious at the very least, even though it doesn't look or sound good.