Buy Or Don’t Buy

Or, “How A Cliché Changes Its Usage, In Five Easy Steps”
I: Status Quo
November 4, 2005:
What’s more important: talent, coaching, or swagger? These quotes may help you decide. Each tells us something important about that magical gait.
[...] FOX’s Adam Schein, on the Cowboys’ rout of the Eagles a month ago: “Finally, swagger and aggressiveness from the [...]

I owe Jay Leno an apology. For much of my life I’ve thought of him as a complacent old hack on the wrong side of history, with nothing better to do than spent his time telling humorless and mean-spirited jokes to an audience that thinks predictability breeds hilarity. I was making the cardinal sin of [...]

Readers, there are many times in life where you will find yourself presented with a total information overload. The next one minute and 49 seconds will be like that for you:

Where can we even begin to reckon with this? It’s best to start by eliminating the obvious. I’m not going to tread the well-worn path [...]

Jim Emerson, editor of RogerEbert.com and proprietor of the wonderful film blog Scanners, has been re-uploading his video essays to a new server and in the process bringing them to my mind after a long absence. His best so far is this “free association dream sequence” from October 2007 centered around the theme of close-ups:

close-up [...]

I’ve been very busy lately, so I’ve had no choice but to have today’s post ghostwritten by a Foppish Victorian Dandy with a prejudice against gypsies. My apologies for the oversight.
Heavens! The events of recent days have proven to me most distressful! Lest you be IGNORANT, I shall tell the tale:
A young Gibson girl of [...]

Aziz Ansari is a comedic actor. You know him from “Human Giant” and “Parks and Recreation.” But like many comic actors, he also does stand-up comedy. His stand-up comedy is funny, as proven by this clip right here:

In the new Judd Apatow film Funny People, Ansari apparently plays ‘Randy,’ a Dane Cook-style terrible comedian who [...]

The Brothers Bloom is a globe-trotting, rip-roaring con man film directed by Rian Johnson that comes out this summer. I loved Brick, Johnson’s first film, and I’m anxious to see how he manages without that film’s ’40s throwback style to lean on. Judging from the film’s first 10 minutes, some Buys and Don’t Buys:
Don’t Buy: [...]

Back in November, this chart from the sci-fi blog io9 caused a stir in economics- and zombie-loving circles. It purported to show an uptick in the number of zombie movies produced in times of economic or social unrest. As the creators said:
Still, even correcting for the fact that there are more movies being made today, [...]

Of all the recurring characters on SNL, Gilly has by far the most basic of sketches. You could probably make one with a math equation: 3(Forte intro + Moynihan whine + Keenan with broken arms + annoying guest + Wiig) + violence2 = sketch. Her catchphrases (’Uh-huh’ and ‘Sorry’) are so simplistic that you can’t [...]

The 2004 German film Downfall [Der Untergang] was an unflinching look at Hitler’s final days that sparked a national debate in its home country over of its humanizing depiction of the Fuhrer. You’ve probably seen it - or at least, you’ve probably seen clips of it. For in the United States one scene from the [...]