Just speaking for myself here, I think there's a certain amount of social pressure (or at least there was when I was growing up) on boys to avoid anything that even remotely suggested girlishness. It's not so much that I couldn't relate to female protagonists as it was a tendency to avoid any book with a girl on the…

@avclub-cfe912f5cb3aa572bd1c9ae2a9b82207:disqus The problem with the wrestling scene in Barton Fink is that it doesn't last for what feels like 20 minutes like the scene in Night and the City.

"I mean ok its interesting … as a temperature taking thing for the state of the film world at large"

A bit disappointed to see no mention of 1955's Short Film Palme d'Or winner, Norman McLaren's Blinkity Blank, which you can watch here. McLaren created it by scratching directly onto black leader, and the soundtrack was similarly created by scratching onto the optical soundtrack.

Yeah, I shud lern 2 reed mor gud.

Best Greco-Roman wrestling scene in the history of Le Cinéma!

For my money, Taste of Cherry has the happiest ending.

I love that the recent film Mama turned to Douglas Trumbull for a gratuitous shot of Bruce Dern's ass (perhaps Trumbull's greatest effect?).

One of my favorite gags in Rocko's Modern Life is the out-of-left-field Marty gag in the supermarket episode. One of those great parody moments that no kid ever understood.

The booing isn't a recent innovation. People have been booing stuff at Cannes for decades. BAM even had a recent retrospective called "Booed at Cannes" showing, naturally, movies that were booed at Cannes, going all the way back to El in 1953.

Yeah, Thursdays should be reserved for write-ups of all the winners of the Golden Maundy.

You shan't be disappointed. Their films are consistently amazing. Also, if you watch the Criterion DVDs of Rosetta and La Promesse, I highly recommend the extended interview features with Scott Foundas. It will make you appreciate how difficult their seemingly simple technique really is.

That was a weird year. There were a number of really weak films in competition - The Motorcycle Diairies, The Ladykillers, The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, Shrek 2

Is this going in chronological order? Because I have Union Pacific on DVD in a value-priced DeMille box set, and this would give me the jolt to finally watch it.

Rosetta is awesome! Possibly my favorite by the Dardennes, though L'Enfant is pretty close.

He was also in that one first-season episode of Delocated, which was surprising.

Yeah, reading that sentence was the first time I've been tempted to see this movie.

The Weird Al version has lyrics about being fat. I'm surprised you never noticed!

The documentary was pretty cool. Larson was a really odd character. He converted a huge portion of his PYL winnings into $1 bills that he kept in garbage bags around his house. He and his wife would meticulously sort through the bills looking for a precise serial number given out by a local radio station as some kind…

That article is really well-constructed: http://www.esquire.com/feat….