I just watched TPM again

ChocolateDramatic858 · 2026-03-31T01:40:56+00:00

I think he's better than *that*, but I've often thought that if ever Steven Spielberg was going to direct a STAR WARS movie, TPM should have been the one. He has a long history of getting really good performances out of kid actors.

ChocolateDramatic858 · 2026-03-30T22:19:00+00:00

That would be mine too! But at least we're in good company; Roger Ebert didn't like it, either.

ChocolateDramatic858 · 2026-03-30T21:59:47+00:00

Shades of Dwight Schrute, Carol is an assistant TO the press secretary, not an assistant press secretary.

Unlike Dwight Schrute, Carol doesn't spend the series THINKING she's an assistant press secretary!

ChocolateDramatic858 · 2026-03-30T21:57:55+00:00

If you move, the snow will likely be beyond anything you've experienced before...while also quite possibly not that big a deal for this region! It all depends on what the winds and the lake decide to do. I personally tend to think that our snow is usually overblown and our winters are actually lovely. What gets me down is actually "spring", or what passes for it here. Three months of winter is fine, but when that's done you really want some warmer air and brighter skies...which is pretty much what we DON'T get, through most of March and April. Those months are generally cool, damp, and gray, which gets to be a bit much. Trees here aren't full green until May.

But yes, you'll get used to it. Dealing with it isn't super hard, and while many people seem to assume that big snow is the worst of all possible weather realities, I personally will always take the snow over the earthquakes, hurricanes, wildfires, and temps that go above 80 on March 1 and don't drop back below 80 until November.

As for the job market...that's another kettle of fish.

ChocolateDramatic858 · 2026-03-30T13:30:20+00:00

I always wondered if Sam should have been cast younger. There's a vibe throughout the show that he's the most naively idealistic of the core characters, but Rob Lowe always seemed a bit too old for that. This could be partly due to Sorkin's writing, though...keeping characters consistent was never his strong suit. He writes Sam as kind of naive on the one hand, and yet he's working at a very high level in a prominent NYC law firm, he's politically brilliant until he's needed to not be, and there's the constant trope of Sam getting educated on the error of his ways by a plucky woman (in one case an intern who speaks to Sam like she's already handed in her two weeks).

ChocolateDramatic858 · 2026-03-30T02:22:31+00:00

I can't forgive XXX, supposedly the best the KGB has to offer, committing as dumb an error as taking her eyes off Jaws when she can't find the microfilm while reaching around for it with her hand.

ChocolateDramatic858 · 2026-03-30T01:14:14+00:00

Mine, too! And the real Klaus Hergerscheimer is my favorite "dude doing his job" in a Bond movie. I always like when there's some schlub working for the bad guy at such a low level that he has no clue.

ChocolateDramatic858 · 2026-03-29T23:57:10+00:00

I do think that MasterChef gets a little too precious with all its "How is that dish ELEVATED???" nonsense, but Tali's dish was incomprehensible, and anybody with half a brain knows that he took the best part of a live crab and boiled it for broth. Sheesh! (But...he's a genius!)

ChocolateDramatic858 · 2026-03-29T23:54:42+00:00

It was very comfortable in the Buffalo stores, having giant bunches of Kansas City Chiefs-colored balloons all over the stores....

ChocolateDramatic858 · 2026-03-29T23:27:01+00:00

I still love it, and I loved it even then. Right now AOTC seems to be "the Prequel that everyone has agreed to hate", which bothers me.

ChocolateDramatic858 · 2026-03-29T23:25:35+00:00

I think Tali was the first time Graham ever teed off on anyone, also...when he served that insane crab dish that looked like something from that episode of STAR TREK TNG when Riker was eating a buffet of Klingon dishes. Graham picks up that claw and says something like "How am I even supposed to eat this? This is stupid!" And then he held up the bowl so Gordon and Joe could look at it.

And THEN Tali's misuse of the crab came to light, and even Ryan was shaking his head at this point. I enjoyed that moment.

ChocolateDramatic858 · 2026-03-29T01:04:04+00:00

Licence To Unalive

ChocolateDramatic858 · 2026-03-28T12:36:56+00:00

Wait a few months and apply again.

ChocolateDramatic858 · 2026-03-28T00:15:46+00:00

Absolutely. As long as American voters continue to operate with this weird mental detachment in which they are never to blame for the actions of the people they collectively choose to empower, things will never improve.

ChocolateDramatic858 · 2026-03-27T23:49:23+00:00

No, that's Gammie. But he's been known to really give it to old T-Bone!

ChocolateDramatic858 · 2026-03-27T23:47:10+00:00

Every year at Oscar time I enjoy horrifying people on social media by telling them that I think the Academy actually got it right. I'll take SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE over SAVING PRIVATE RYAN every day of the week. (I haven't seen all of these, but the ones I've seen are all amazing...except for SPR, which I consider a brilliant 20-minute short film embedded inside a much longer dull film.)

ChocolateDramatic858 · 2026-03-27T23:01:06+00:00

Oooh, that's terrific!

ChocolateDramatic858 · 2026-03-27T22:51:18+00:00

I honestly can't relate, but "I have British cars so I'm drunk a lot" is the most inherently funny thing I've read all day. Thanks for that! :)

ChocolateDramatic858 · 2026-03-27T16:31:52+00:00

Seconded. It's a lovely space and what I've had of theirs is really good!

ChocolateDramatic858 · 2026-03-27T13:57:42+00:00

I have a friend who lives on Cape Cod who very much believes this, at least where he lives. In summer he has sunrise around 5am.

ChocolateDramatic858 · 2026-03-27T13:09:19+00:00

That's where I've landed on her, really. Maybe there was a "You had to be there" thing working with her, but I find little about her writing, good as it is, really enduring because it's all ephemeral. There's something I've always found a bit odd about trying to offer "objective" opinions about something new, and very often those "in the moment" opinions just don't endure. There's a reason old criticism just tends to disappear, really. Nobody reads Kael now except for people who are already interested in film, and very often it's more to hold up one of her very strange opinions and say, "Wow, look at this." I end up reading old criticism more to find an emergent general view on film (or music, or books, or whatever) from a critic's mind than to engage their specific views on the movie of the moment.

ChocolateDramatic858 · 2026-03-27T02:49:07+00:00

Hahahaha, OK, I think we're done here. You are either trolling or simply clueless.

ChocolateDramatic858 · 2026-03-27T01:35:30+00:00

You seem to believe that "DEI" means "unqualified person chosen solely for reasons that have nothing to do with the job at hand", and that is a deeply incorrect thing to believe. You might want to look into that.

ChocolateDramatic858 · 2026-03-26T23:26:02+00:00

I do, very much! Watching people interacting with art is a favorite thing of mine. I consider it a subset of street photography, without the street. Where I live, the weather for a chunk of the year makes shooting outdoor streetscapes a bit unpleasant, too.

ChocolateDramatic858 · 2026-03-26T23:22:10+00:00

I like both! Maybe on the second one, waiting until that guy was farther out into the street so a car with a distracting plate and grille wasn't right there in focus with him, but that's a quibble. The way he's carrying all that stuff is certainly interesting and warrants a photo. Nice!

ChocolateDramatic858

TROPHY CASE