Beltmann

Insurance companies don't specialize in medicine; they specialize in making money by helping people as little as possible. My own family has been touched many times by the evil that is the medical insurance business plan.

I agree--we should leave those decisions to the insurance companies.

I would love to hear left-wing voices dominate the airwaves, but I oppose any kind of fairness doctrine. It's cumbersome, ineffective, and totally unnecessary.

Now you know what my last 8 years have been like.

If I still lived in an apartment, I'd be tempted to play that, like, really loud. Maybe on a loop.

But those aren't on TV... who pays any attention to them, besides other critics and movie nerds (like me)? At any rate, I suppose it's nice that there's something for movies like that; music really doesn't have an equivalent.

After enduring Shoah, now everything seems short.

I hope you aren't talking about the Academy Awards.

Heartless Bastards - The Mountain. About halfway through... so far, it compares favorably to All This Time.

I watched that the same week, I think, as Tony Kaye's equally harrowing Lake of Fire.

After that Arizona TD, I leaped up and shouted, um, something. Almost immediately, I heard the pitter-patter of footsteps marching down the hallway. Then I saw my daughter standing there, glaring at me with her arms crossed. "Daddy, why did you say a naughty word? You said a naughty word and woke me up!" "You're right, Kael. I should have said Holy cow."

Rules and facts have nothing to do with the narratives that play in our heads, sucker.

Boy A What is life like for a man who, as a young boy, was a participant in a grisly, highly-publicized child murder? Now released from prison, he is given a new name and a new life, and he is a soft-spoken guy who seems incapable of aggression--he can barely muster the courage to ask out a co-worker--but flashbacks provide complex psychological explanations for how he found himself caught up in violence. Although the movie's style is naturalistic, it often feels like a suspense thriller about guilt and inner struggle. The real theme, though, is forgiveness: Who needs it, who deserves it,

"About Today" is easily one of their very best songs, in my view.

I don't know about 2008, but we already have a winner for best movie of 2009.

I remember Hanks appearing on Family Ties. (Somehow this thread about the Oscar noms is going to wind up at Bosom Buddies.)

I love The Furies (and just about anything by Anthony Mann). GtrPlyr, if you like those Sirk melodramas, then I must recommend Fassbinder's Ali: Fear Eats the Soul. The central May-December romance between an elderly German cleaning lady and an Arab foreign worker can be read, obviously, as allegory: I saw it first as a racial allegory, then a sexual one, then, finally, a historical one--especially since the dialogue alludes to Hitler several times. The movie becomes a complex document of uneasy times, of how society divides itself in order to define itself, and how lingering doubt--in thi

Have you seen Frozen River yet? I watched it tonight, and I think it's about as perfect as a movie can be.

I don't think I'd say '59 Sound is the "best" album of 2008, but it's probably my favorite in the sense that I listened to it more than any other, and still can't put it away. It's an album that means something to me. Also, I think the comparison to Marah makes a lot of sense.

Surely Saving Private Ryan is better than Shakespeare in Love, but that's one of my favorite Oscar moments ever. It's rare when the show actually has a moment that doesn't feel pre-ordained, and that one was a shocker. Great fun, that was. I suppose we could get worked up about who wuz robbed, but seriously: Does Saving Private Ryan, or any other good movie, really need the validation of Oscar to endure or be treasured? A win is merely a footnote, a nice bit of trivia attached to the history of the movie's journey.

Haven't seen it yet, but it's pretty high on my must-see list. If you like it, then I would strongly recommend Akin's earlier Head-On and even earlier In July.

Fixed it for ya. I just don't see it. Benjamin Button is a major wide release, popular with both audiences and critics, starring two major actors. Frost/Nixon is another high-profile Hollywood release, based on a well-known play, made by one of the most successful and popular directors in the industry. Milk is a conventional biopic starring one of Hollywood's top actors, and directed by a highly-regarded artist with a long career. The Reader is an adaptation of a bestseller--an Oprah selection!--starring a major actress and directed by a prior nominee. Slumdog Millionaire is a commercia

Or maybe the Academy adored both Gran Torino and Eastwood in it, but just liked five others a bit more. Yeah, they always give it to squares like Eminem and Bob Dylan.