Category Archives: TV, Movies & Entertainment

CotW: Social Network: ADVANCED REVIEW

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Mere moments into Social Network it become abundantly clear that this is a script from Aaron Sorkin (A Few Good Men, The West Wing, Malice). As Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) and his soon-to-be ex-girlfriend Erica Albright (Rooney Mara) discuss/spar on the topic of Harvard’s final clubs—think the missing link between fraternities’ and secret societies like Skull and Bones—the dialogue snaps… Read more »

A song for the Tea Party crowd

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Apropos of nothing, inspired by a random aside in comments… Yes, the song is called “The Idiot,” but I’m not being snarky by suggesting it as a Tea Party song. Its reference to idiocy is sarcastic: I could have stayed to take the dole, but I’m not one of those I take nothing free, and that makes me an idiot,… Read more »

CotW: Tim Helps You Plan Your Movie Watching Week, 7/8/10-7/14/10

After a brutally lackluster June (and I say this as a movie fan who can be persuaded to go to the cinema with the weakest of arguments on almost any occasion), July has arrived! And yes, this past week was, shall we say, a bit disconcerting—while I have not seen it, I understand critics and people alike failed to take… Read more »

What’s more annoying than a vuvuzela?

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NPR’s Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me! has the answer. Fast forward to 5:50 in the clip below, then “wait wait” for the punch line at around the 7:10 mark. Heh. I’m not always a huge fan of Wait Wait, but that one made me laugh out loud in my car yesterday. UPDATE: And, speaking of vuvuzelas, here’s the trailer for… Read more »

Summary of Monday’s expansion events

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Commissioner Dan Beebe to Big 12 athletic directors: “Hold your ground, hold your ground! Sons of Texas, of Oklahoma, my brothers! I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the Big Twelve fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship. But it is not… Read more »

Nebraska to leave Big 12, triggering college sports armageddon

So say rumors on the Internets. (Hat tip on the LOTR reference: B. Minich.) P.S. To review why Nebraska’s departure will trigger the epic realignment apocalypse, click here. P.P.S. How about some other Lord of the Rings quotes to sum up various players’ positions in this whole mess? Big East: “Are you frightened?” Big 12: “Yes.” Big East: “Not nearly… Read more »

Mental health break, LOTR edition

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Apropos of nothing: I got to thinking, the other day, about my favorite consecutive movie scenes in all of cinema: the Gandalf/Witch-King confrontation at the gates of Minas Tirith, followed immediately by the very best scene in the Lord of the Rings trilogy: the charge of the Rohirrim. (The Gandalf/Witch-King scene was inexplicably cut from the theatrical edition of Return… Read more »

A scary thought: Hurricane Oil?

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There’s a lot of talk about the allegedly slow reaction to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill being “Obama’s Katrina.” I haven’t followed it closely enough to have an opinion on that. But could the moniker prove more literal than anyone now imagines? Blogger Alan Sullivan, who predicted “significant harm to the Gulf” from the BP explosion at a time… Read more »