[S04.E06: Bullseye]

It's official-I'm evil.

First, I was annoyed at the show for not killing Ma Petit off-it felt like they were pulling their punches. I was thinking "Just do it! I can handle it."

Second, all I could think as I watched Dandy act all depraved again was "Wow he really is handsome."

 

But this was a great episode. This season is already (IMHO) blowing Coven out of the water.

[2015 Awards Season Discussion]

Selma screened for the first time last night, and the reviews are very strong. Pundits (ugh) are saying the director, Ava DuVernay, could be the first black woman nominated for Best Director and that this could be the first year that (gasp!) two women (yes, two!) could be nominated for Best Director (the other one being Angelina Jolie, contingent on her movie being any good).

[S04.E05: Pink Cupcakes]

 

She got really lucky with the role that won her an Oscar, probably because it was something she sort of lived through.

I can't believe I'm defending her because I wasn't blown away by Precious (Monique was brilliant in it and deserved every award she won though), but no, Sidibe did not win an Oscar (I don't think anyone really though she seriously would) and she's just obese-she wasn't raped by her father, beaten by her mom and all the other stuff she went through in that movie-she was acting, she didn't live through any of it for real. If anything, being black is as much if not more of a hindrance to her getting work-Melissa McCarthy is fat, seems to have a one note shtick and isn't hurting for work.

 

OK...back to the show. I do agree with above posters that this was the first episode that didn't drag in anyway and had a lot of forward momentum. Hopefully they have learned their lesson and won't let the shows go 20 minutes long again. I didn't see the Dell is gay reveal coming and that makes me wonder if that was in the cards the whole time or they just thought it up. However, the Dell is gay thing does also make me think of those guys on Jerry Springer (don't judge me) that would be the boyfriend on the "I'm really a man" episodes. It took me years to figure out that they likely did know that they were dating men and were conflicted about not being completely straight. The fact that the man looked like a woman to everyone was a hedge or a comfort to them. And there is also the anecdotes of sexually conflicted men acting out violently, especially to openly gay men. So maybe all the clues were there all along.

[S40.E05: Chris Rock / Prince]

 

I just feel like this country is too sensitive.

Thank you for saying that. I completely agree. I think it's gotten worse in the last few years. But I come from a family that was making Challenger disaster jokes within a week and I don't see the big deal.

 

I loved the "How's he doing?" sketch. Because it's accurate. I did laugh out loud when they all laughed about voting for Romney.

[Small Talk: Aloha and Mahalo]

I "like" the show in the same way that I like the NCIS shows-it's so crappy but inoffensive-it's like a modern TV version of those 80's action movies. It doesn't reach the level of CSI-Miami where it's so bad it's riveting. I do wish they had not added Chi McBride to the cast-his character or maybe his acting style doesn't seem to fit in with what I think is the tone-he seems crabby and ponderous, like he's seen some hard stuff and this show is IMO, supposed to be breezier than that. Plus I don't think I have ever liked his acting in any of the shows he has done-I don't know why they needed to add him, they have enough people on the show. But this does seem to be a go-to show for me when I am at home on a Friday.

[S04.E04: Edward Mordrake, Part 2]

Summary of my reaction to this (very good) episode:

 

"What. the. fuck -he killed Patti?!?!" "Oh hell no."

 

I assume that the rest of the season will consist of every black and/or gay person in America hunting Dandy down for this crime.

[Season 1 Talk]

For some reason, although it was well done and I like the show, this episode sort of made me uncomfortable. I'm black and I was never spanked-my mother being disappointed in me or my apprehension at what might happen to me if I went crazy held me in line very effectively. Like I would get depressed if my mom expressed disappointment in me or got mad at me. We would jokingly accuse our mother of spanking us and she would be mortified-like we were calling her low class and impulsive. And sometimes I hear other black people talk as if spanking is the norm among us and I feel...detached from that. Like I don't know what they are talking about and I don't know if I want to know. I just think there is a thin line between spanking and violence towards a child in my mind and I wouldn't want to come close to it.

But it helps that I don't have kids.

 

 

Growing up in a black household  i got slapped up for the slightest sign of disrespect towards my elders and I would not be alive typing to you if i talked  to my mother the way I see these kids talking towards their parents in 2014. 

 

I was reading something...I wish I could find it now. It was one of the flurry of articles reacting to the Adrian Peterson case (which I already know was a horrible extreme outlier and not the norm by any definition) and the writer argued that the emphasis on corporal punishment in the black community was a legacy of slavery-that the black parent wanted to discipline their child first and teach their child about boundaries for their own safety in a white supremacist world-where if a black kid acted up like a white kid, the black kid would get killed. The writer also argued that this was a bad thing because it taught black children to sit down and shut up no matter what was being said to them, just because an "elder" or an "authority figure" was speaking.

 

Found it: http://www.salon.com/2014/09/16/the_racial_parenting_divide_what_adrian_peterson_reveals_about_black_and_white_child_rearing/

 

Also, with all due respect, I have to challenge this:

 

It sure is a sign of the times when a spanking is considered child abuse yet we have 14 yrs old raping and killing people. 10 years old having sex and cussing up a storm and teen girls popping out babies left and right  seems like modern day parents don't have control over their kids like people did in the past.

 

I think the idea of kids going wild nowadays is sort of generated by the news to keep people scared and angry. I don't see it-teen pregnancy rates are at record lows now and even through the recession, crime rates continued to go down. Kids today seem all right to me. 

 

And another minority opinion: I think Jack and Diane are too kid-actory and cutesy. The two older kids are great though.

[S04.E03: Edward Mordrake, Part 1]

I can't wrap my mind around how no one thought that Kathy Bates' accent was a bad idea. It's so odd and erratic that it takes me out of the show.

[2015 Awards Season Discussion]

As much as I am mentioning the "overdue" factor, I really hate it. If Julianne Moore is overdue, then so is Amy Adams. If Nolan is overdue, then so are Linklater and Fincher, and Mike Leigh and so on. And it always seems like actors and directors who are viewed as overdue always win for something that is not so great-Al Pacino is a great actor, but he won for Scent of A Woman. Martin Scorsese won for The Departed (it was OK, but come on, it was no Raging Bull or Goodfellas. Not even close). It's like the Oscar voters are like "OK, OK, we know. Here you go."

[2015 Awards Season Discussion]

Couldn't the fact that Jolie already has two Oscars (one of them honorary) possibly work against her? Like she's a movie star and we've already given her two of these before the age of forty-let's slow down a bit?

 

Chastain could also be nominated for Interstellar if it's any good. And Christopher Nolan also arguably falls into the Fincher/Paul Thomas Anderson "overdue" category-the Director's Guild has nominated Nolan three times for their top award (Memento/The Dark Knight/Inception) and the Academy has never nominated him for Best Director.

[2015 Awards Season Discussion]

I think Gone Girl will get those two nominations (Actress and Adapted Screenplay) and likely not much else. I thought it was great and really entertaining, but I am sure other (more boring) movies will come along and overtake it. 

 

My only real prediction is that I will be shocked if Patricia Arquette doesn't win an Oscar for Boyhood.

[Gone Girl (2014)]

I remembered what happened to the cat in Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, so every time I saw the cat, I got a little nervous. It was an adorable cat.

 

I have not read the book, but I knew the gist of the plot and I still loved it. It was just really really fun and entertaining. The best was when the big surprise came out, even though the theater was half full (I saw it last night), you could still hear this shocked murmur go around, like "WTF?" And it was so funny. Tyler Perry's two big lines got the biggest laughs in the theater-he really was saying what everyone was thinking when they were thinking it. The only criticism I would have is that I thought it looked too dark and murky, even for Fincher, though that just may have been a problem at my theater.

[Rhodes Scholar Reporting the News Show Discussion]

 

I'm guessing his politics and mine are far apart on the spectrum

He's a pretty liberal democrat and Dallas County is a pretty blue, liberal place (at least for Texas I guess)-I don't know your politics, but I doubt you and he would clash much. His family was close friends with Ann Richards. The big cities in Texas are more liberal, far more, than people think.