@Scrawler2:disqus I didn't know about the birdhouse things. I'll have to check them out. So far, I like Silver Spring a lot. I'm within walking distance of restaurants representing about 15 different ethnicities and two movie theaters. It makes more sense for me to live here than in the district because I…

The review doesn't seem to be online, but here's an article about it. http://blogs.poz.com/peter/… (Check out the first comment, written by Kramer).

I really, really enjoyed Lucky Jim. I read it along with Pnin and The Human Stain as part of a self-created "Professors-in-Peril" series.

Interestingly, Ed Koch reviewed How to Survive a Plague shortly before his death and liked it despite the fact that most of the people in the film, especially Larry Kramer, despise Koch beyond all imagining.

Thanks! I'm living in Silver Spring, and I knew I'd moved to the right neighborhood when I saw this - a bust commemorating a homeless drunk - erected just a few blocks from my house.

I think this needs to be the Year of Ray for me. Meaning, I need to watch a lot more from Nicholas (I've only seen Rebel, In a Lonely Place, and parts of King of Kings) and Satyajit (I've seen nothing!)

I'm a big defender of The Girlfriend Experience - one of my favorite Soderberghs and the first great movie about the new recession (and, along with Magic Mike, still the best).

Have you ever seen Stuart Saves His Family? It's the best movie ever made about going sober! (Though Cops is probably even more motivating.) I think it will be an inspiration to you to keep up the good work.

Well, I moved to D.C. and started my new gubmint job, and all is well on that front.

If this inventory were about TV shows that were better than the movies they spun off from, I'd say the Clerks cartoon would be an essential entry. But I think they were looking more at shows whose popularity eclipsed that of their original films, and — unfortunately! — you can't say that about Clerks.

My final weekend in St. Louis before moving to Washington D.C.

And there's Sylvia Sidney at the top of the page! Star of Sabotage, and the woman of whom Hitchcock said, "It isn’t kind to say this about a woman — she looks a little like Peter Lorre[!]"

I called it!

I'm not sure I agree with much of anything in JFK, though I definitely agree with Medulla that Stone's criticisms of the Warren Commission are the strongest part of the film.

Some I'd like to see:

I'm not sure where I first saw it. I think I taped it off Bravo many, many moons ago in the pre-Queer Eye age when Bravo was still pretty awesome.

That's the only modern Dardennes Bros. movie I haven't seen. I'm planning to check it out from the library this week.

If you like the self-reflectivity of Don Quixote, you might enjoy Paul Auster's New York Trilogy (especially City of Glass), which comments directly on that aspect of Don Quixote. Auster himself is a character in the novel who is writing an essay about the authorship of Quixote.

It helps to remember that Huck Finn was a period piece when it was written. It's set 40-50 years before it was written, and it's certainly meant to criticize/satirize earlier attitudes toward slavery in that earlier time when it was still around.

I'm really excited to see Tabu and to watch Tabu after it.