Yeah, except Dowd is pissing up the wrong tree here. It's a given that if Alexander Payne directed it, Dowd is going to hate it.

He doesn't seem to have any real authentic love for film, which to me is kind of essential to being a film critic. I honestly get the sense that he doesn't like movies very much.

I'm writing a screenplay adaptation of Dracula for no particular reason that actually removes the entire Transylvania part (which was actually added to the novel after its initial publication), and begins after Dracula has already begun targeting people in London (or rather the contemporary place I've set it in) while…

The people most into grunge in my generation got into it in middle and high school, and didn't have refined tastes one way or another. That's why I mentioned middle school. Essentially the gunge thing is generational, and has nothing to do tastes. She's basically implying that somehow good taste was required to like…

Random idea: do one on "the Leopard" and talk about its influences on "the Godfather" series. Not a super obscure film, but it's a high-quality epic drama that every film lover should see, and a lot of younger people haven't seen it.

This is a weird feature concept. There are thousands of obscure and classic films out there that people should be encouraged to watch, but most of the films features are all-pervasive films that everyone has already seen a thousand times, personal favorites and generally shitty films that we're asked to reconsider…

This is true, but to be fair, "grunge" was commodified almost instantly. There were some bands in Seattle that similar sounds and influences with no name, and they were branded pretty much as soon as they broke.

Yeah, if you go really wide with it, you're probably right. Its impact is still felt.

Yeah, punk has been pretty well dead since '84. I don't like grunge, but I'm not sure where the myth of punk's vitality comes from. The closest thing to punks generally play grindcore and hardcore-derived stuff these days, and there isn't a whole lot of them. Sure there are still punk shows, but does anyone other than…

Clearly.

Given that it didn't actually exist as a genre (but more as a marketing slogan to sell a disparate group of regional bands), that's probably true.

There were plenty of good lyricists, they were just ignored by the mainstream. And if you really want to be honest about it, most mainstream lyrics still suck today even with the grunge period behind us. The whole importance of grunge thing is founded on the notion that a very narrow sliver of mainstream music changed…

Not really. I always thought the late-eighties, early-nineties Anglo-American alternative rock scene was way more interesting than anything the media-labeled grunge bands were doing. Not to mention, hip hop/rap, electronic music and underground metal scenes. It only makes sense if your only point of comparison is…

Ugh grunge. Who cares? The "genre" (insofar as the term actually meant anything) was by and large worthless. Its credibility as a genre is largely based on cultural history (this thing happened at this time), not on anything it was actually doing musically. People can argue about it all they want, but grunge basically…

I think the acceptance thing is best illustrated by the sad little section where he tries to save the homeless guy, and eventually realizes that he cannot be saved. He can however be comforted and given a dignified death. He went from apathy of the person's existence, to awareness, to a proactive desire to save him,…

He's why Ghostbusters works. He shares the audience's skepticism at the material and grounds the progressively ridiculous supernatural stuff in recognizable reality. I can't imagine the movie working without his lines or delivery.

You have to respect a movie that kills off its (jaded, misogynistic, anti-social) moppet in a pile of cash. It always astounds me how much Robocop 2 upped the ante for sheer cynicism in the series. Of course, its very existence was the height of cynicism, so I guess Miller and Kershner figured, fuck it, let's go all…

Better than being 36 bitch.

I love that adaptation. It's so dreamy/nightmarish in all the right ways. One of the best efforts at adapting an older story to a contemporary setting I've seen. It was also a great followup to A little Princess, and really cemented Cuaron's early reputation (at least for me).

It took me a while to fully appreciate Wolverine Blues. I didn't like it when it was released initially because it wasn't Clandestine Redux. But after a while the fun sunk in.