I agree that this seems like a rant aimed at the culture rather than at me or this review, so I'll skip the long answer defending dark/revisionist fairy tales and my love of them. But I will say that for fans of the genre who want to see it done with some depth rather than as a Twilight-aping dreary romance bucking…

Oh, I don't know. Bremner's character is a total ass.

5, but it's all inside Bremner and it's all still left over from Trainspotting. That is one seriously Method actor.

My partner and I were pleasantly surprised. Based on the trailers, we expected this film to be pretty intolerable, heavily focused on lame jokes and subpar Princess Bride imitations. The trailer basically cherry-picked out just about every remotely lighthearted moment to make the film look much more comedic than it…

"I'm pretty sure Burton's scam of an Alice movie started all that shit."

I thought it was deliberate shading, so I asked the artist. She said: "That's 100% cheeto grease. I finished the portrait at night and came back to check on it the next morning to find that lovely layer of grease there. Totally an accident, but it works really well as secondary shading! Also: a great reminder as to…

I hadn't seen that one. Thanks!

Thread hijack to say: We never did get back to listing stuff we liked about the Oscars. My favorite part of the evening that didn't come directly out of a speech was the Sound Of Music gag where the von Trapp Family Singers were repeatedly called upon to come do their thing.

There was a lot of commentary about that from readers on our liveblog. Things like "Oh, Edgar Winter finally won an Oscar!" and "Glad the other half of Nelson got an Oscar too!"

I spent years promising to bring mashed potatoes to my friends' parties just so they'd stop saying that, out of fear of being called upon to actually do it.

Weird. It was showing content in the link field in the CMS, but not the live version. I think I've fixed it, but it'll take a little time to show up on the live site. In the meantime, here's the link:

The Mouse And His Child! I keep almost buying bootlegs of that on eBay because I really want to see a clean copy of it, but I hate supporting bootleggers. Also, I love the book, so I've always been a little worried about what the film would do with it. But very curious nonetheless.

Not all that many, actually. There's no scene where everyone flees through a mall and you get to see what the blue-alien versions of Starbucks and Orange Julius would be, or what punny movies are playing at the blue-alien cineplex.

"Mostly harmless" did come to mind as a description. But I have a habit of overusing "harmless" to describe bland kids' entertainment that isn't egregiously dumb or violent or loud or gross. So I try to avoid it, even with such a HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE-compatible story about space and aliens and Earth's relatively…

You're right, I really should have mentioned that. It's preposterously blatant, with Scorch talking about how beautiful the 7-Eleven is, and a couple of stoner employees making friends with Gary by offering him a Slurpee, which he LOVES. That said, as blatant as it is, it's pretty toothless, like the rest of the film.

Very good call.

*double fist shake at the sky* Miyazakiiiiiiiiiii!

Oh god yes, me too. Good call.

If you mean the Duckman cartoon, as opposed to the weird comic that inspired it, the whole thing is available on DVD, all four seasons in a package for under $50. We own it.

I thought of Witch's Night Out (and its predecessor, The Gift Of Winter) for this too. Those were such unique and unrepeatable projects.