A Time to Love and a Time to Die and The Tarnished Angels are definitely Sirk working with "quality" material rather than the usual melodrama he's known for, which could make them good entry points for people who can't get over the silly plots of his other films. However, neither really gets me going like his others,…

Bigger than Life also leaves me cold, to be honest, but I'd go to bat for "Rebel Without a Cause." Elements have definitely aged poorly (Dean's dad in a fruffy apron, a lot of the scenes at the police station), but a lot of it really gets at the conflux of bravado/insecurity/loneliness/disgust with others/blaming…

I don't think Sirk made a film with James Mason? Are you thinking of Bigger Than Life, by Nicolas Ray?

I understand that, and have many friends who feel the same way. But I feel an obligation to defend Sirk because I used to feel that way myself. I'm not sure if it was time, age, repeat viewings, or one film that magically unlocked the secret, but something definitely clicks for me now, even if I can't fully describe…

Well, there's Godard, Resnais, Rivette, Wong Kar-wai, Frank Tashlin, hell even Sirk here, who you could easily call contrived in some sense. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.

Sirk is definitely a director you either connect with or are just left scratching your head. I was initially left cold by this (and other films), but warmed up to him a lot over the years. For me, Written on the Wind and Imitation of Life really clicked, and I grew to appreciate most of his other films later (except…

Which, oddly enough, is another thing that would probably class him as solidly middle class today, not lower class.

Yeah, as Irrelephant says, the film's depiction of class is outdated. It's a bit like watching some Victorian character fret about upstart merchants marrying into the gentry. Hudson's character has taken over his father's gardening business, has his own nice cottage, and studies philosophy (and he cleans up nice). The…

A few weekends ago I finally cleaned up my old PS2's lens and tried to replay Suikoden after 7 years, only to find that component cables can't carry low resolution PS1 games to HDTVs! So now I've got plain boring AV cables hooked up and am a couple hours into Suikoden.

David Lynch's horror over "It's a Small World" (or "Flappy") is also pretty great. I actually kinda like that song, in a childhood nostalgia way, but it's hilarious how Lynch treats it like its anathema to his own existence. And unlike so many of these, he doesn't bother presenting some weak argument about why…

Slain by Pilsner Urquell, the most terrible poison that ever was. Painfully transmogrifies its victims from hulking badasses into sniveling black geeks.

In Westeros, it's known as Archmaester Goldman's History of Princess Ranunculus and The Dread Pirate Waters, a rare tome Oberyn found while studying at the Citadel. He's so upset about his sister's death because she was the only other person he knew who read it and understood all his references to it.

No, that's some other guy of Dutch/Germanic descent with a von in his name.

Todd also produces so much writing on this site that I assume his average article writing time is under a half hour.

My guess:
-Fallout of Tyrion's Trial, Mountain screaming, Lannisters argue, Jaime makes decision
-Wrapup at The Wall, Stannis establishes himself, setup for the election next season (or maybe a condensed version)
-One last check-in with Dany (Selmy talking about madness?)

It'd be pretty sweet if they pulled out a complete version of "Hands of Gold" for the end credits of episode 10.

Competition:
Emmy, the little sister in The Miracle of Morgan's Creek
Very different genre and style, but Amy in The Curse of the Cat People

Hollywood's approach varied from studio to studio (Warner Bros being very, very anti-Nazi and Universal—producers of Destry—being more wishy-washy but also already out of the German market by now. I think Fox and MGM and maybe Paramount were the only ones still with vested German interests by this point). And…

Put another way: It may have problems, but it ain't fucking Woman of the Year.

Oh, I didn't mean to sound like I was correcting you, but it was an opportune moment to mention the Mann-Stewart films, which are really good and more people should see.