Also (IIRC), the person who said last week that s/he'll never watch The Silence of the Lambs because it seems like it would be boring.

I used to teach a lot of "Intro to writing" type freshman comp classes, and I often included a 3-week mini-unit on feminism. On several occasions had 18-year-old women scorn the unit and huff and puff about the readings, only to write me an email at 20 telling me how they'd become full-blown feminists and thanking me…

Freeway is a great movie. This is only one of the many reasons why:

Agreed . . . all that stuff was totally there, and I'm glad they never did a "connect the dots" type of exposition dump.

and Little Britain, and Dr Who stuff . . .

So sorry to hear that. That episode is harrowing enough in the most normal of circumstances. Can't imagine . . .

It's worth getting around to watching Buffy because it's an incredible show, but you might also get a kick out of seeing somebody you know play one of TV's most reprehensible human beings.

The robot girlfriend episode ("I Was Made to Love You") gets better and better on every viewing. Buffy sitting with her on the swings til her battery runs down is a fantastic moment. Also, it's the ep right before "The Body," and it ends with the "Mom, mom, mommy . . ." line.

The "magic-as-drugs" metaphor really doesn't take up that much space. There's the super forced "Wrecked" and then Willow lays low on the magic for a while. And for me, it always helped to read it as the characters' interpretation of Willow's situation, but not the actual way magic works - a bit of fanwanking, no doubt.

Peter Buck on little sleep?

Yes, which is one reason why I appreciate the Trio (I mean appreciate in a narrative sense, not in "I'd like to hang with those guys" sense) more as time passes. Being human, misogynist fuckwads who could, conceivably, do nearly everything they do without magic/advanced robotics makes them, in a lot of ways, the most…

Yeah, I'd say about half of S2, half of S3, and the back half of S5 are incredible, with some really good eps sprinkled elsewhere.

That's a great transition, but I was thinking more of a particular rogue demon hunter.

To clarify, because I know I was responding to a comment about Star Wars, I meant for her entire career.

Marcia Lucas doesn't get nearly the credit she deserves, full stop.

It may be the case that this time it's mostly about the performance itself. I didn't mean to imply that it's always, or even almost always, about the external circumstances. Only that it's so often about (or at least includes) those circumstances that I think she's genuine in arguing that Oscars can be read as being…

I think her point, though, which is a fair point, is that with a lot of awards (and I'd include the Oscars), it is rarely only about the best performance. So much other cultural cache goes into it (for example, giving long overdue actors awards for less-than-their best performance, or giving awards to performances…

It is an oil can. See also: The Wizard of Oz

Also, that is a lot of cash to be carrying around, but he's traveling and this is pretty much pre-credit card days, so it makes sense.

If you can ever see the film in a cinema, it's sort of amazing to feel the tension that moment still creates in a roomful of people who weren't expecting it.