I think Jon Hamm's closer to a William Holden type, in that he's charming and handsome, but tends to put his handsomeness to use in a slightly "sleazy" way (see Sabrina/Picnic for Holden, Bridesmaids/etc. for Hamm) for comic/dramatic effect. I.e. his characters are often clearly seducing a woman, while Grant/Clooney…

Yeah, I would definitely rate I Was a Male War Bride as solid second-tier Grant. Definitely worth checking out if you've seen some of his other films. It's also a good tool for pointing out that the late 40s/early 50s were far more progressive in terms of gender than most people think. Same with His Girl Friday.

The problem with Ezri and Troi is that no one on Star Trek seems to know what a counselor would actually do. Most of the episodes where they're doing their job are just dribbling out ill-informed pop psychology. It's like Star Trek's bad made-up science, but no one created any new technobabble to make the characters…

Yeah, but when you're talking about a show's gender balance does it matter that some of the females are aliens? I could see your point if they were Klingons or some species that didn't look or act "female." But the important thing is that the series not look completely dominated by men, and both Kira and Dax are…

So I love NPR and all, but it does occasionally live up to its reputation of whitebread liberal cluelessness. One of the worst moments was during an interview with Macklemore (on one of the news programs, not Fresh Air), where the interviewer obviously had no clue about hip-hop. They got to "Same Love" and she leaped…

Good cinematography is hard to define. The Academy tends to use the equation "cinematography = lighting x (composition/4)" which makes me think they judge the films based on stills. The motion component, things like Lubezki's amazing ability to to keep consistently beautiful compositions through long tracking shots,…

The one-disc (or now one blu and one DVD) sets are still in the same sized cases. The cases used for 3-disc sets are just barely bigger than regular DVD cases. It's not that bad.

Uh… I know A.A. Dowd Hates Everything is a meme now, but most of the films in his list are ones he reviewed (excepting ones from before the great exodus). The last one on there is still an A- so even by Dowd's own scale that cuts off before Gravity.

Yeah, I don't really think Holt is a problem character, only that he could be if they make bad decisions in the future (in addition to being neutered, he would also just start to get one-note).

Denying sexuality doesn't mean the same thing as censoring sexual acts. American film and TV might have had their periods of playing coy about nudity and penises entering vaginas, but the existence of desire was never repressed—it merely took different forms, as you mention. There are plenty of old movies and TV shows…