dusang

She was a semi-regular for a least a couple of seasons -- she was a partner in the LunchBox with Jackie & Rosanne. I just watched the episode and really enjoyed it. As much of a moronic man-child as Jake sometimes appears to be, he seems like he might be a really sweet boyfriend, and he was willing to put in the work. Actually, as I think about it, the gender reversals of the break-up were kind of awesome. I think she was pretty ready to walk away from Jake from the beginning of the episode, that him charming her boss wouldn't have helped the situation, but that his arresting her boss (who then made a big thing of it in front of all her colleagues) made it much much worse. But I can totally see her side of it and respect that -- even the not really being invested in the relationship and just having a breezy good time. And even if I hadn't enjoyed the whole episode (which I did), the ends justify the means when the ends are Holt, Terry, and Jake sitting at a bar getting soused.

I haven't seen Angel Eyes but mentioning Jennifer Lopez's family in a movie reminded me of The Wedding Planner where somehow the entire production confused "Italian-American" with "developmentally delayed." Like, literally to this day I'm unclear on whether we were supposed to believe her father was developmentally delayed. Honestly, can someone tell me?

That was a lot less painful than I imagined. I am impressed that he made it almost all the way through his audition without giggling. Although I couldn't get through the book, have incredibly low expectations for the film, and really feel that the credit will be an embarrassing blight on everyone's CVs, I do think that Jamie Dornan is pretty hot. Also, the only time I've heard him speak is in this interview and it's freaking adorable.

I recently finished Neil Patrick Harris' Choose Your Own Autobiography (which, BTW, is very entertaining -- I'm no NPH superfan but it's very light and witty) and he definitely aims to see the positive in everyone but Anne Heche as his stage partner in Proof gets an extended piece about how difficult and borderline traumatizing she was to work with.

In terms of taking the lesson from John Oliver for the potential length of an audience's attention span, the nightly platform is a detriment. There's little to no chance that a topical, nightly program could produce a 14-minute segment every episode. Combined with the fact TNS has to break for commercial approximately every 8 minutes, John Oliver is not an object lesson for Larry Wilmore.

True, but JO has the benefit of no commercial breaks and a full week to prepare.

Have you ever heard the story of how Jessica Biel posed for Maxim in a deliberate effort to get fired from 7th Heaven? I don't know if it's true or not but the very suggestion of Biel deliberately attempting to get out of that piece of shit makes me like her a little bit. That's kind of how I feel about Megan Fox and Transformers/Michael Bay.

I really enjoyed the "history of thoughts" component of the episode, I actually know someone currently doing a PhD thesis on mindfulness, but the part I keep telling people about is Martin Pistorius -- can you imagine being so horrifyingly trapped in your own body?!?! It looks like episode three is a repeat of the TAL installment. It's also super interesting -- I mean, the main dude they are speaking of/to is pretty fascinating but even just the small detail that blind children will naturally attempt to echo-locate but often don't develop the ability because people discourage them from making the necessary noise.... are you fucking kidding me?!?!

Not that I'm saying he should have won, but don't paint the Gilbert Grape performance with the Iron Mask brush.

I don't know why, but this made me think of Martin Sheen having a heart attack filming Apocalypse Now. Then I went over to the IMDb page and that entire shoot/film was a shit show all-round. Although Marlon Brando appears to have taken the cake as the "difficult actor". I feel like there's some proverb about genius in adversity...

I would stand up for it but at the same time, isn't there something a bit sad in that the simple statement that women deserve equal pay is so brave and revolutionary for the President of the United States to say that it's worthy of a standing ovation?

And that so many of his actors return for other projects -- Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale, the entire cast of Silver Linings Playbook... Although I hated SLP -- I will never understand the acclaim, I wasn't even that impressed with the performances -- he does make some really good films. (Also, I just IMDB'ed him and it's David O. Russell.)

Has anyone started the new NPR podcast, Invisibilia? I've listened to the first two episodes, plus the "cross over" with TAL and it is fascinating! I just want to talk about it with everyone. Thoroughly enjoyable. (I cannot tell the two women apart -- they actually joke in the first episode that their voices are very similar -- but that doesn't particularly bother me on this show.)

I just watched. Larry's Ki100 to Godfrey, if, prior to the 2008 vote, he had witnessed Obama murdering a man would Godfrey have still voted for Obama, is actually upsetting me -- I had to pause for a minute to remember who he was running against in 2008 and when I remembered it was McCain/Palin the very thought or suggestion that there would be a reason to put them in the White House instead of Obama... my heart is racing. I'm like, distraught over a theoretical, past tense issue. Oh GOD! To have PALIN in the White House!! OH GOD!!

It's on YouTube (or "most" of it is). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvs24OvDomo

He's an outlier -- being one trigger-happy mofo.

[OT] I love random spell-check things like that! [/OT]

I sometimes wonder if that would be a fun way to teach history (in highschool) -- have the class watch a film and then challenge them to find the most inaccuracies.

I watched after reading your comment, so was primed for this moment. The problem I had with it is that she clearly misstated the statistics, thus making further discussion very awkward -- I'm pretty sure the way she quoted the stat was "[90-something]% of black people kill black people and [80-something]% of white people kill white people" which is actually saying that 90-something% of black people and 80-something% of white people are murderers, which is not the stat. I suspect the stat is supposed to read that of black people who are murdered, 90-something% of them are killed by black people and of white people who are murdered, 80-something% of them are killed by white people. Furthermore, I take issue with both of those stats because that would (presumably) be based on the results of the justice system, which we know to be biased and inaccurate (and would naturally exclude the stats around police killings, justified or "justified"). Also, I would question of the margin of error since such a huge number of murder cases are unsolved.

Can you imagine if actors were so candid today? Is #25 actually about Michael Caine? He's many things but I would never describe him as "over-fat".

Who makes a joke about someone having a heart attack? And who doesn't know that Emilio Estevez is Martin Sheen's son??

It's more the erratic combination of "methodically planned out" and "spontaneous act of anger" elements that make me uncomfortable with the whole thing. Personally, the ways Adnan appears guilty are the things that seem the most probable to be inconsequential acts of a teenager with a million other explanations. The ways he appears innocent (specifically, the lack of any physical evidence tying him to the crime) are the things that seem so much more significant to me. I guess he could have pinned her arms down but, honestly, I find it hard to imagine (or possibly just unsettling to imagine) that a boy could manually strangle a physically fit teenage girl in the close confines of a car without receiving at least one visible bruise or scratch. Also, if he were the one carefully mapping out the crime why wouldn't he have been the one to get rid of the shovels and clothes? And as the police suggested he went to track exclusively to build an alibi, wouldn't he have known it would be a shaky one at best because the coach didn't take attendance?

This was a weird combination of slightly awkward and totally hilarious.

Merf -- there are 8-10 Best Picture nominees and 5 Best Director, at least 3 best pictures will not get a director nomination. I found Ben Affleck's kvetching rather off-putting.

That's a bit of a double-negative there. I haven't seen any of the movies nominated (which obviously makes my opinion next to worthless in the strictest sense) but I have to say that -- based on Rotten Tomatoes alone, let alone the social, historical, cultural, relevance of the film itself -- the absence of nominations for Selma enrages me.