Engaging seriously with the negative stories about Scientology inherently brings you into contact with “suppressive persons” and information you’re not supposed to know, and Scientology seems to be very serious about information control not just from the org’s POV, but as a value it instills in its adherents. You’re…

A brief google of Alex Kozinski in conjunction with phrases like “why isn’t he a judge anymore?” and “what sorts of odd behavior did ‘everybody know’ about him?” will corroborate that he is indeed hilariously straight-forward, and probably wishes everybody would just chill.

Possibly the greatest quote from any “celebrity” interview I’ve ever read is from Spencer Pratt, comparing himself and Heidi to Paris Hilton: “[Paris] didn’t make all these surgery mistakes, or crystal mistakes.”

I mean, I do in fact regret that the bit of Westeros Martin is clearly the most interested in (the history of the Targaryen monarchy) is the bit I’m least interested in.

Obviously haven’t read Butler’s book so I don’t know how he goes about parsing this, but there seems to me a huge difference between Method as it was developed - an approach to preparing for a performance and actually delivering it, which as this review describes split into the differing philosophies of Strasberg,…

I’ve never heard Sorokin/Delvey’s real voice, but she was born in Russia and moved to Germany at 16, and reputedly struggled with the language. So, basically: a Russian who has an accent in German, trying to impersonate the way she thinks a German would speak English. Or maybe that’s just how she speaks English. But,…

I think these are two different things. Yes, some people train dogs with commands in other languages so that strangers will be less likely to be able to give the dog a command it will obey. That’s not about the dog being able to differentiate human languages, that’s about the dog only associating verbal commands with…

Given his age I would think the biggest chunk of Zorro in childhood Wilmer’s brain would be the one that ran on the Family Channel when he was a pre-teen, starring Duncan Regehr. I watched that one eagerly, but don’t think I ever saw the Disney show from the 50s.

Towards the end (or maybe soon after it?) of the Obama presidency there was a long magazine profile of Ben Rhodes, who’d worked for Obama as a speechwriter and become a significant advisor (a lot of the substance of the article was about Rhodes’ and Obama’s shared attitudes towards the foreign policy establishment in…

“Perfect play will always result in a draw.” People think this but it isn’t proven. Some games have been “solved,” meaning it’s been proven that with optimal play a certain outcome is guaranteed, and many other games have not been. Tic Tac Toe is so easy to solve that everybody figures it out on their own as a kid.…

People find new strategies working with computers. The game isn’t officially “solved” yet, not even close; despite incredible advances in computing power, there are still just too many permutations for the game to have been “solved” by computational brute force. There are people who work on using computers to…

Yeah, I’ve never understood this very common idea that CK somehow betrayed his audience or was more dishonest than any other comedian is onstage. This only makes sense to me if you subscribe to the idea that a person who does a bad thing must think that thing is actually ok. Which is, I hope, obviously nonsense. Where…

She didn’t even sit down for new interviews for the show.

I don’t know if I’m ruining your day by telling you this, but Annabella Sciorria has spoken about how Gandolfini was very thoughtful as a scene partner when they were doing sex scenes as well as violent scenes, and she noted that this was not the norm in her experience; he was always checking with her about what he…

Michael Bay made Ben Affleck get his teeth ... I’m not sure. Is it fake teeth? Is it veneers? It apparently cost the studio $20k.

Portuguese. At the beginning it’s quite hard to hear so I wasn’t sure, but when she translates Kimmel’s point that only his side of the conversation is getting translated you can hear her say “Portuguese,” and then after that there are some longer stretches that are clearer.

There’s a lot of Ryan Reynolds’ filmography that I haven’t seen. I think that in Smokin’ Aces he did some pretty good acting. But on the other hand, maybe it’s not great that my first thought when I try to summon the image of Ryan Reynolds doing something well other than Being Ryan Reynolds is, uh, Smokin’ Aces.

I saw some people this morning guiltily admitting that they hadn’t liked Hatchet when they read it in school. For me it was the exact opposite; I loved reading but most of what was assigned in middle school I just rolled through without much reaction; I was reading ahead of grade level and the stuff I had to write…

I only saw Skyfall the once in theaters, and it was so pretty, but I hated it so much. It felt so dour, and long, and undeservedly self-serious, not to mention the “Bond’s old and being Bond sucks” thing I keep whining about.

I’ve posted this once or twice a year for several years now, but I remain astonished that the people running the Bond movies decided that what they wanted to do in the wake of the smash success of Casino Royale (and the inevitable writer’s-strike-affected stumble of Quantum of Solace, though I must note that I had a…