Ah, I didn't know that— I've only had Netflix for a couple months and I'm not familiar with the system. I thought it was user-sourced.

Yeah, but ordinary people have shit taste and user reviews for a large service are always useless. A lot of the best movies of last year have three stars on Amazon and a fifth of the reviews are by crazy bigots. The Witch and Solaris got an F CinemaScore. The Master has a Rotten Tomatoes audience rating of 60%.

For as much as Walt says his family "needs" what he does, it's because he put them there. The middle class life and money troubles are entirely because of choices he made.

It's so quiet, which I love. It's dealing with the same core subject matter as BB— the corruption of a human soul—but there's no pyrotechnics or action scenes, just a midwestern guy in a small office who's not being allowed to be good.

That is a big part of the point of the show. I've compared it to the role Satan serves in Paradise Lost before— Milton makes Satan sympathetic to make us aware of how easily we can fall into the same sin. Walt is a sympathetic protagonist to drive home how easy it is to slide into evil.

He's really engaged with the material, but not with the kids. When we see him teach it's obvious he's got a passion for chemistry, but we never see him actually connect to the students, and most of them seem to think he's an asshole.

Fair enough. It's not something I noticed— though I've seen some strips from when she first started dating a man that definitely had that problem —but it's also something I'm less likely to notice. Thanks for pointing it out.

You know it!

I am Sean O'Neal. I am the wrath of God. Who is with me?

Superman, I guess.

Look into the eyes of a stride mother and you will see real stupidity. It is a kind of bottomless stupidity, a fiendish stupidity. They are the most horrifying, cannibalistic and nightmarish creatures in the world.

Those are two of his best, so you're off to a good start! Aguirre's a masterpiece (one of Ebert's top 10 of all time), and Stroszek is another one of the greats, although they're both slower and more clearly New Wave. I really like My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done, which is a very quiet and sad film anchored by a…

(Sorry, bit of a wall incoming as I've been reading about this very matter).

I think that Aronofsky is somehow tied up in the distribution rights to Perfect Blue now, via a weird series of rights deals. Paranoia Agent should have a readymade market here, though— Miyazaki's created a niche for surrealist, political Japanese Magical Realism, and it is just a shockingly good show besides. The…

Huh, it turns out that someone who volunteers to profit from an unconstitutional travesty that spits in the face of electoral democracy may not have a ton of integrity or respect for the law.

It's created this weird situation where Miyazaki gets treated as the be-all, end-all of serious anime in America. People treat Miyazaki as a once-in-a-lifetime visionary who's the unquestioned king of the medium because they don't know that anyone else is out there. Meanwhile, Paranoia Agent and Perfect Blue are out…

I was listening to this album and thought "there's an argument to be made comparing this to My Life In the Bush of Ghosts" and then I fucking hated myself for being such a white dork that this seemed like a natural thing to think.

Oh no! How will I get my fix for Herzog— oh wait, the man puts out nine films a year and his public persona alone counts as great art. It's a shame these two aren't great, but I'm not too torn up. I'm a pretty big Herzog fanboy and I'm still not caught up on all his good stuff.

Oh damn, I've seen you posting around and never pegged who you were until you posted a long and exuberant first post on an anime review.

No, just Daniel Clowes.