There have been several stories I’ve heard like this, where a person comes out the other end of a medical procedure with a new passion (and aptitude) for music. I sort of wish there were stories of people who were already obsessed with music and trying to make a go of it, recovering from a traumatic brain injury or…

I don’t actually want to be so monstrous as to insist that if you didn’t like a particular book (or even a particular style of book) you’re aesthetically wrong. And clearly there’s a profound gap between us; I started reading Moby Dick a few years after college with a kind of grudging idea that I should make myself rea…

It would be much easier to get on board with the “fun” of Gervais “not pulling any punches” if there weren’t a fair amount of evidence that he’s ludicrously thin-skinned for a man in his position.

I admit I have not read Hugo and therefore cannot honestly stand by his digressions, but I cannot abide the assault on Melville. Lots of ways to write a great book, but a lot of people only want one kind of thing, which I guess bums me out a bit. Prose can do so many fantastic things to your brain, but some folks only …

Sidney Applebaum is both my favorite Stefon punchline and also my favorite Bill Hader break.

This may be of interest:

There’s people with a preexisting belief structure - I don’t know of Nilus’ demon-fearer was specifically religious, for example, or just generally credulous of the supernatural - but also I think people have a hard time disregarding their subjective experiences.

I’m sorry for whatever creative types may be reading and have their idealistic sensibilities bruised, but:

Well, the same one of them also wrote 25th Hour, based on his own novel, and I thought that was pretty good. (In general I’m really hesitant to assign specific credit/blame with modern Hollywood screenplays because who the hell knows who’s really responsible for what?) I’ve heard Benioff’s other novel is pretty good…

With TFA, I actually had a really good time in the theater. It’s that when I walked home I realized I didn’t particularly feel anything about it, and it was like a great revelation: “Oh, I just don’t care!” Not all my childhood enthusiasms continued burning brightly in adulthood, and that’s cool, and it took me kind…

Although I dropped the show after Season 5, I do think they have some abilities; I just found it baffling that they were singled out as the heroes of the show’s creation when they clearly weren’t experienced or able producers - as they themselves were admitting well before the other day - and their writing…

<i>The Force Awakens</i> basically released from me from the desire to watch Star Wars movies anymore, but my first reaction back when Disney announced their concept was “Star Wars won’t be special anymore.” I have learned over time, with some frustration, that mass audiences are often not very like me, but I didn’t…

So unless there’s a timelapse involved in this pilot, uh … how do they know the babies are sighted? Does the “mysterious figure” tell Momoa’s character?

This was one of the few comments quoted that I haven’t basically seen from them before in other circumstances, and since I used to say things like “I don’t think you could use the show as evidence that Benioff and Weiss really understand the books,” I’m feeling smug.

Except very little of this is new information; they’ve said most of this before.

While it wasn’t Tate’s movie, I think she was enormously significant to it in ways beyond - but inextricably tied to - her real life end.

But does an item of African-American vernacular truly exist until it’s been appropriated by white people, redefined, and then hammered into such overuse that it can no longer be used with 100% sincerity?

That the movie fails to do a good job of articulating its own point doesn’t mean it has a different point. Like two months out I was seeing people talking about this as an “incel” movie and I think it’s notable that none of the reviews I’ve read (none of which were positive!) back that up to any degree.

Yeah, these have to be fake names.

He’s pretty much overcome both my hostility to adaptations and extensions of other creator’s ideas which were intended by their creator to not be used that way, AND my hostility toward LOST (not towards its ending, or towards the entire show in light of its ending, but in terms of what it always was); I haven’t…