Agreed, two great series that I look forward to even when the film in question is not a fave.

Also, this comments section - with its deep dives into this film and a bunch of others, and genial movie-nerd vibe - is giving me old-school AVClub-comments-section vibes, and I’m enjoying the hell out of it.

Just about all of Graham Greene’s novels will kind of blow your mind, but The Quiet American came near the end of a fifteen-year run when almost everything he wrote was amazing.

This continues to be one of the best interview series on the net, great job!

I think he’s whining over at mumsnet.

Ha ha, no doubt that song is pap by any measure. But to be fair to Buffy, she only wrote the melody (as one of the composers of the film). She did sing it though, and even with her “stripped down” version, it’s still awful. But I hope that’s not the measure of her (give Saskatchewan a listen sometime).

Jack Warden is fantastic in this. “Now that’s what I call fuckin’!” Also, I love his line delivery when he says, “babe, it’s 5 o’clock, have a drink.”

I also grew up in a pretty small town, but it was during that great time (in the US, at least) when independent, or small chain, vid shops were still numerous. You might have to drive to 2 or 3 to get what you were looking for as their selection really depended on the owner’s/management’s tastes. Dave’s was great for…

Wow, we definitely have a different (although probably overlapping) definition of pap. I find most of her stuff pretty fierce, even her 2015 album, which has some dodgy electronic production, is otherwise fabulous. Raw and intense, and so far from the work of the other artists you’ve listed. To each their own, I guess.

I can’t for the life of me conceive of labelling Buffy Sainte-Marie as pap.

You’re right to a certain extent, but how many Hungarians, Iranians and Africans have come to America, influenced its culture (continuing to do so), and (if you know any of them) are constantly trying to send that info “up the chain,” while Americans still remain, for the most part, ignorant of them. But my point was…

My favorite fucking thing is these idiots not knowing shit like what a toaster is, and marveling at cars. How up your own asses WERE YOU for centuries/millenia?

Hermione is the hero of the series, Harry’s just a narrative device to activate her heroism.

Also northern Gen-X and that’s the same story I learned to a T, and repeatedly, through primary and high school. The “reluctant” part is important, I think, because it manages two tricks that help perpetuate some huge myths about the war: it paints his decision to join the Confederacy as noble, adding a sheen of…

I’d love to see a really good adaptation of Mary Stewart’s Merlin Trilogy.

In a lot of ways Manhattan is Allen’s most trenchant deconstruction of his own character (and, since many of his post-Annie Hall characters are thinly disguised versions of himself, a deconstruction of him). Think about the scene when the group is reading from his ex (Meryl Streep)‘s biography and he’s listening as…

If I recall, she was amazing on several movies-of-the-week back then (in addition to being one of TV’s best moms on FT).

Wasn’t that one of Whedon’s important contributions - getting the “buddy comedy” aspect of it right away and realising Woody could continue to be a dick if it was in service to he and Buzz becoming friends.

Does “games on rails” mean linear gameplay (as opposed to, I guess, sandbox)?

Do you mind if I ask which room? A couple of them really stumped me, for sure.