Alison Brie is my dream pick for the role.

I just finished re-reading The Vile Village. God. So sad.

If the twist in Episode 7 feels too mean-spirited, then in the spirit of Mr. Snicket himself I must advise the viewer to stop watching the show immediately, for only the meanest of spirits pervaded the Baudelaires' lives.

Whooooaaaa. Whoa. Miserable Mill is the most true to the books the show has been; in fact it improves upon the source material. Miserable Mill is the worst of the books, in my estimation, but this is the episode that gave me full confidence that this team can nail the meatier stuff that will happen in Season 2.…

Well I would say that's untrue. I'm a (struggling) writer and a (hopeful) illustrator and I loved it. And I know plenty of musical-theater types who loved it. The only actor I know loved it (it's of course, who else, Frank Stallone) I can certainly see why an actor or musician would find it ridiculous, though.

I think we see that Mia is a very good actress from her opening audition. She nails it, but the casting director is so distracted that she doesn't see it. She does very well in her audition montage, but the material is clearly beneath her ("No, Jamal. YOU be trippin.") We know she can sing and dance because she does…

I do think there are valid criticisms of the film. I agree, for example, that it's technically a pretty uneven musical. It starts out with three big numbers and then there's almost nothing in the middle other than a small duet between the two of them, and a very little bit of dancing during the summer montage.

I also hate love letters to Hollywood, but I have to say this isn't quite that. It's much more about these two people, and if anything it doesn't portray the Hollywood institution in a particularly positive light. The few scenes where we see Emma Stone's character on auditions are portrayed as pretty miserable…

No. She doesn't run out of the show, the crowd is so enamored with Seb that they rush the stage, pushing her back farther and farther out of frame. It's meant to be symbolic of how his fame pushes her out of the picture.

Think of someone like Daisy Ridley, who went from an absolute nobody to one of the most recognizable, bankable actresses in Hollywood after just one film.

Interesting! I have now twice "lost" women who I felt I could spend the rest of my life with, and they ended up following a dream that required me to not be in the picture, and met other people. It's an oddly specific thing, so I found the film surprisingly relatable. So I may have been projecting, because I've had…

La La Land is my favorite movie in recent years, to the point where I've seen it three times in the theaters. I'm not overly fond of musicals, but I just adore the songs, the style, the performances, the cinematography and the OPTIMISM of it. I mean Jesus Christ, Superman died this year, Iron Man and Captain America…

And there's hardly any acting in the movie! We don't even see Mia's one woman show! It's almost as if the point of the film is the relationship between the characters and then following their dreams instead of what those dreams specifically are!

I don't understand why you're looking at it that way. The movie is not saying, "a white man believes he can do things better than a black man!" The movie is saying, "this person has a different view of how a jazz club should be run than this other person, and it doesn't really matter what their skin color is because…

That is absolutely not what happens. Her face says, "I'm surprised that this is what he's playing, but I really like it." She looks impressed but surprised. And when Seb asks her if she likes his music, she says, "I do. I really do," very sincerely. The song they play is great. I listen to it all the time. But it's…

Goddamn it. I'm sick of "mansplaining" being used incorrectly. It's not a real word anyhow, but it is meant to be used when a man is condescendingly explaining something to a woman in a way that says "You're a woman, so you wouldn't understand this." It shouldn't apply to any time a man ever explains anything to a…

It'd be like listening to one of his podcasts, all day, every day of your life, and also having to smell him.

He's not exactly the biggest pope hat on a bear in the drawe, either

I also want his next film to be that

Ah, thank you. I started re-reading the books but I started with Austere Academy, so my memory of the first four books is still a little hazy.