It’s why I think a lot of the Brits who wind up doing limited-but-believable accents wind up with something close to my accent; I grew up in Massachusetts speaking a rhotic accent so while I don’t have the most obvious signifier people associate with “Boston” (not actually from Boston), I grew up chewing on all these…

Hence some of my frustration with both Lucas and the apparent decisions of the sequel trilogy (of which I’ve only watched the first movie, so for the rest I’m going on plot synopsis). The text of the prequels, as well as a retrospective consideration of Obi Wan (and Yoda!) from the original trilogy, are screaming out…

Does anybody believe Lucas knew Luke was Vader’s son (or that Leia was his sister) when the first movie came out?

I love his performance (and the script) in the second movie when he’s trying to talk Creed out of going after Rocky, trying to walk the line between protecting Creed’s record, his health, and his confidence:

This is a bit of world-building that’s been baked into the franchise since the beginning that has just never made any sense.

To an extent it depends on what you mean in terms of “influence”. Cosby was much more famous than Pryor and had a big cultural impact, which you could fairly characterize as influence, outside of the lens of seeing him as a comedian and actor. Like, Nichelle Nichols wasn’t influential on the way people act in…

If you believe the things Johnson was saying at the time TLJ came out, he asked Abrams questions about where various ideas were going and Abrams basically said “I dunno man, have fun!”

Yeah, the way it plays out makes Manhattan seem like kind of a chump.

I don’t think people are without agency. I’m sure there are performers who are genuinely comfortable with nudity and don’t mind doing it whenever. But it’s basically impossible to tell. Could someone watching The Affair tell that Ruth Wilson was being pressured into stuff she wasn’t comfortable with? We only know that…

The last time I posted something like this someone kept doggedly accusing me of retrograde prudery and I have no idea if it was you, but fair warning: that experience made me feel pretty hostile to this line of conversation.

I read the occasional review of shows I don’t watch I guess because I have some sort of anxious desire to feel like I know what’s going on in the culture, and I was fortunate enough to read the review on the AVClub of whichever episode had the daughter character confronting Ruth Wilson, this perfect quote searing…

Particularly after the last couple of years, I honestly find it hard to believe there’s still much of an appetite to make (or watch) scenes with more-than-implied nudity. I’m not surprised by the appetite. I just don’t understand it.

I don’t mean “it’s not a sport if it’s unhealthy”. The distinction I meant to make is that for aesthetic reasons (as opposed to weight class reasons or athletic reasons) competitive bodybuilders are required to cut themselves into a less-healthy, less-capable, physically unsustainable state. Bodybuilders are better…

Well you can also look at athletes; elite athletes by definition are usually going to be in the kind of shape they need to be to do their sport well. Aside from the ones where max strength outweighs every other concern, they tend to be pretty lean and many have visible abs, just not super-defined in any lighting crazy…

Almost everyone who has headlined a Marvel movie where their physique had to be a certain way has had puff piece magazine and video features done on their training and transformation. I doubt any of them have been honestly comprehensive, and as to my knowledge none of the male Marvel stars have acknowledged steroid…

One of the reasons I refuse to consider bodybuilding a sport despite the obvious athletic nature of the training (and even the competition) is that just objectively the competitors are at their least healthy and least physically capable the day of the competition on purpose.

Manhattan’s powers aren’t a finite thing such that if he passes them on he doesn’t have them any more, because he’s not a regular man who “got” powers and then could lose them and just be a man again. His body was torn apart at the subatomic level, but somehow his dissolute consciousness was able to draw itself back…

Yeah. People need to understand that, for example, Chris Hemsworth knows what days he’s filming with his shirt off WAY in advance, and times his diet and water intake accordingly. It’s no different than being a fitness magazine model: they look awesome almost all the time, but they only look like THAT for a couple of…

Manhattan doesn’t live with foreknowledge, he only appears to. Except for when some tech is messing with his perceptions (Veidt’s tachyons in the comic, here the lithium-line cage) his entire life is an eternal present he experiences simultaneously. (Sorry if you’re familiar with some of these concepts but I’m going…

I think Osterman/Manhattan muddles two things which are to me distinct, and I think Moore meant them to be distinct too: Manhattan’s perception really is an eternal present that encompasses his whole life, and also he’s passively infuriating. But Jon Osterman was ALSO passive (and maybe eventually would’ve become…