Right, I must be blurring the first 2 together a bit. And it's maybe a bit of that annoying habit of seeing one's hobby horses in everything!

Those are the two episodes that stick with me, too. I remember being really struck by the music for the Lucy/Carter stabbing.

It's the contrast too. All the surveillance and tracking tech in amongst the brickwork.

For me it's the locations that really help make the Bourne films what they are. Paris and Berlin aren't dominated by the giant glass blocks that make modern cities look so interchangeable, or maybe the makers are just more committed to the setting as a location rather than a source of funding.

Why do you hate them? Online at least, funding through advertising seems to have been a disaster.

I think the Guardian needs to be bold and get behind a paywall rather than spamming readers with 'support us' ads. This is the right moment to do it - people finally seem prepared to pay for things again, and if the paper didn't have to worry so much about traffic it could stop publishing some of the garbage currently…

It seems so weird that these giant companies have no interest in paying tax. They have so much cash and nothing to spend it on - presumably they'll fritter it away buying random companies for 20 billion a time.

The Sam Neill as Merlin Hallmark version is on Youtube. This does not sound like a worthy replacement.

And the guy who drives the Springfield Elementary school bus.

That sounds nerve-wracking, although I recently read about 'shared space' town planning, which seems to be based on the idea of forcing everyone to concentrate by making things unclear, which is kind of the same, I suppose…

Oh, I'm sure that's the case, yes.

Isn't the idea now that Parker's film wasn't actually very good? There seems to be little argument as to the quality of Affleck's performance.

I think it was much more reasonable to believe in the Right's economic policies then, too. The downside of massive deregulation took a long time to become clear. I'm not from the US, but I think if I were I might have voted for Bush in 2000.

They should have Kirsten Dunst do it. She has comic book links and she's started directing.

Maybe I chose a poor example with Koch. I think I just found your comment a bit starry-eyed, and my feeling is that cultural fights make a useful distraction for Republicans more interested in passing their economic agenda. Still, these are likely exceptional times…

I work for a scumbag financial company in London and vote for parties on the left, but I don't really feel like I'm on the right side of the ledger.

Don't they own loads of oil and gas companies? Fighting a switch to renewables seems logical enough.

Is that really so surprising? It's difficult to either agree or disagree with a person on everything, though often the internet feels like it forces us to try.

If they confronted the conflict between their political stances and the way the arts are frequently funded I would find all this easier to take. I mean, there is a David Koch Theater at the Lincoln Center.

The changing climate seems likely to adversely affect California more than most places, and from what I understand it's already not easy to find enough water to supply the population. A sensible Democratic policy would encourage the dispersal of residents to other states better suited to cope with climate change.…