Racism is a tricky thing to parse out under the best of circumstances. Racism can exist without any active hate, for example. Disney could have been find with Jews under most circumstances and still held prejudiced views against them. Who really knows? When I looked into this a few years ago, I didn't find…

I'd basically agree with that. Part of my issue with the response to Trump has been how facile and shallow it often is. I get tired of hearing jokes about the amoral demogogue's hair and hands. It's frustrating to see serious activists for social justice get drowned out by silly chatter that convinces nobody. …

I'm sorry, were you saying something? I couldn't hear you over all of the gunshots.

I'd disagree, but not so much with how this situation is playing out. Pop culture can be powerful, but not this way. At most, it can have a general influence on trends. This idea that comedy can somehow OBLITERATE people with clever insults is demonstrably untrue in most cases and kind of a waste of time. Pop…

I've been avoiding saying this because I didn't want to tell anybody what to say or not say, but I have been getting pretty wearied with all of this Trump talk. We have our own political problems in Canada that have been getting increasingly less airtime since the beginning of the Republican primaries. It's harder…

I do miss Swag Onion.

Guess the joke's on her!

She really put a lot of thought and heart into her response. This is an honest person giving an honest explanation of her decision. We should all be so genuine.

Goms jabbar?

Just you wait for Phase II of the wall plan.

We have some connection to Ellen Page too, right? Also Paul Haggis.

I see your side. It does seem reductive to call such an unusual situation by the name of something that appears to be quite different. To me, it seems less like a problem of minstrelsy and more a problem of erasure. Given my conviction that neither Fiennes nor anybody else actually looks like Jackson in the Oughts,…

I get what you're saying about how MJ crossed racial boundaries. It questions what "black" and "white" really mean when someone proves that they can modify their appearance so heavily that their skin is a totally different colour and their face is practically unrecognizable (I actually think of Jackson as an example…

The arrow collection was one of those scenes. It's satisfying and exciting in the best way. Moments like that are why Red Cliff is everything that I think a historical epic should be.

Good point. I think he needs a good five moments to sum up his themes and preoccupations, really.

Depends on what you mean by "better" in this case. If you're just talking PR/optics-type stuff, it's obviously best to avoid anything that has any association with blackface. White makeup on a black actor demonstrably doesn't provoke the same sort of outcry; I'd say that it's because there isn't a terrible history…

I suppose the stereotype would be that you make up for it with copious amounts of screech.

He's from Stratford, which is near my town of London. I remember a point when his star was ascendant and a local radio show was canvassing about to find people who could talk about the Bieber they knew before he was famous. All of the stories they aired were from people talking about what a wiener he was (in the…

I don't think anyone would've been outraged by that, no. They probably would have laughed at it and put screenshots up next to screenshots of Dave Chappelle in white makeup, but it wouldn't have provoked outcry.

There is nothing more John Woo than Detective Tequila comforting a baby while cutting a bloody swathe through uncountable henchmen. Whenever he dies (at least 150 years from now and in the peak of mental health, if the universe is just), that should be his In Memoriam reel clip.