9. Darjeeling Express: Adrien Brody running to the Kinks’ “Powerman” is one of Anderson’s best uses of music, but the Black Narcissus-esque meeting with Anjelica Houston to the Stones’ “Play With Fire” is his most contrived. All else is fairly meh.

As an homage to Midsommar I’m sure someone in GotG3 will wear that face at some point.

Are these not included in the Hot Rats Sessions released in 2019? https://www.zappa.com/music/hot-ratssessions

One of Sha Na Na’s biggest fans was Who drummer (and Woodstock veteran) Keith Moon. He would emcee at least one of their concerts ... in drag.

If no self-driving tech will work for a decade why was the Model S allowed to go to market? Are 27 crashes, including one last week that killed two passengers, not significant enough to challenge brand reputation?

The Terror is an interesting indulgence. Nicholson just finished shooting The Raven with Boris Karloff, Vincent Price and Peter Lorre on the same sets. That movie wrapped ahead of schedule, so director Roger Corman used the extra time to keep Nicholson, Karloff and Dick Miller around and shoot another movie. There’s…

Criterion Channel curation does it again. Their Friday double feature introduced me to two key films from Antonio Pietrangeli - The Visitor (1963) and I Knew Her Well (1965). His work splits the difference between the postwar neorealism of De Sica and Rossellini and the arty solipsism of Fellini and Antonioni. The…

Rented Nomadland last weekend. Superb. Rented A Promising Young Woman this weekend. Very good. May watch Minari today. If Carey Mulligan wins the Golden Globe over Frances McDormand I’ll be slightly disappointed but OK with that. If any other nominee in that category wins (even Anna Taylor-Joy), no. Would also like to…

If you’re consuming them in a state that has legalized marijuana, chances are the edibles you’re trying are made under strict regulations and have a relatively minor amount of THC per serving. I live in Washington state, and one makes me feel relaxed but not too buzzed. Two make me feel sleepy, especially the next…

Only if you eat a lot of them at once, or eat pot candy made for those with a medical prescription (much stronger than those available at 21+ legal pot shops). Maureen Dowd wrote an infamous/laughable column about suffering the effects of eating too many edibles at once:…

Irony and surrealism weren’t yet concepts taken for granted in the early ‘80s. “Late Night with David Letterman” brought them to the masses at about the same time The Far Side debuted. But it took many years to weave them into our collective sense of humor. Now they’re foundational. I still remember trying to explain T…

* Mr. Gower crying in gratitude to George for flagging the poison pills *

I want to add to the applause for Jason’s superb history. This is indeed the sort of expansive, compelling and insightful article that was once commonplace in the AV Club. Having said that, I’m writing 14 hours after reading it and see only 22 comments. WTF?! AV Club, you’ve built a state-of-art amusement park in a…

Agreed. Despite the amateur acting, unlikeable characters and contrived confrontations, the fact that Blair Witch is able to convey a convincing sense of dread and doom on a shoestring is an impressive achievement.

It’s been decades since I read Salem’s Lot but I’ll never forget when the school bus driver is lured to his bus in the middle of the night and finds all his “young” passengers waiting. Worthy of EC Comics.

Also good in the True Grit remake.

If you haven’t already, check out Murders in the Rue Morgue and White Zombie. Lugosi is tremendous in both.

As war movies go Ryan is no Paths of Glory, but it’s a good movie. Good call comparing the cultural self-flagellation to Passion of the Christ. Really disliked the Upham arc. I guess if anyone has some degree of cultural literacy they must be pompous cowards. Vin Diesel could have been the Gen-X Lee Marvin. But I…

“North Shore,” an early aughts Fox soap opera starring Kristoffer Polaha as the new assistant manager of a luxury resort in Oahu, mentored by a kindly James Remar with an assist from Brooke Burns, Nikki Deloach, Jason Momoa and other pretty people. That’s how it started, but the happy-hour-at-the-meat-market plots…

The family split our pre-Halloween viewing between ‘70s-’80s classics like Halloween, Poltergeist and Alien with Vincent Price vehicles such as The Raven, House on Haunted Hill and (the brilliant) Theater of Blood. On my own, I watched the find of the weekend - George A. Romero’s The Crazies. An obscure 1973 horror…