Anne - BWAH!

Nora - get thee to a theater.

Snerk, Anne.

Today's Chronicle review of the Village had the little guy sleeping in the chair, which is one step up from an empty chair.

There are people who don't like gerunds?

Dude, don't. Seriously, don't. Three-day argument over whether or not "kissage" is a gerund. (No, wait, I think that was a different grammatical argument...)

Three-day argument over whether or not "kissage" is a gerund.

More like three weeks. (Or did it just feel that way?)

Three-day argument over whether or not "kissage" is a gerund.

running awaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyy....

I think it was a slowish and ongoing argument, but by the end there was all-caps, scrolly-long posts, and people resorting to Fowler's and Latin textbooks. It was a whole big entertaining thing (in Literary 1, if you want to look it up.)

We were breaking new grammatical ground, although almost none of the participants are linguists or formal grammarians in any way. It was awesome.

Harold and Kumar opens this weekend!

I'm really looking forward to this movie.

As well as skimming rottentomatoes.com, I like IMDB's review synopses:

The scariest thing about The Village may be some of the reviews that it's getting. Once the darling of critics following his The Sixth Sense, M. Night Shyamalan has been reduced to a whipping boy with this film. Indeed, New York Post critic Lou Lumenick remarks, "A gifted director and visual stylist, Shyamalan's scripts sadly have gotten progressively clunkier." Roger Ebert writes in the Chicago Sun-Times: "Critics were enjoined after the screening to avoid revealing the plot secrets. That is not because we would spoil the movie for you. It's because if you knew them, you wouldn't want to go." Discussing those plot twists, A.O. Scott in the New York Times remarks: "The last thing I want to do is spoil the fun, meager though it is." As for the surprise ending, Stephen Hunter in the Washington Post comments that it's "quite lame, quite tame and quite old. ... I figured it out plenty early, and the 75 percent of you who are smarter than I will get it even earlier." Jack Mathews in the New York Daily News refers to the movie as "a genuine clinker" and "a dreary mess." Joe Morgenstern writes in the Wall Street Journal: "Movies don't come much sillier, or slower, than The Village." On the other hand, Carrie Rickey in the Philadelphia Inquirer calls it a "hair-raising yarn ... Shyamalan deftly turns a familiar fairy tale into an eerie scary tale." And Eric Harrison in the Houston Chronicle calls it "Shyamalan's best film since The Sixth Sense."

Although numerous writers have questioned the advisability of remaking a movie classic like The Manchurian Candidate, most critics have concluded that the makers of the new film have nothing to apologize for. "They've done a great job of updating The Manchurian Candidate," concludes Bob Strauss in the Los Angeles Daily News."Audiences who don't keep harking back to the twists of the first will find it a head-spinning trip with an undercurrent of cynicism and mistrust that feels in sync with the times," writes Megan Lehmann in the New York Post. Ty Burr in the Boston Globe calls it "a remake that not only is very good but that burns with fervor and up-to-the-minute topicality." Liam Lacey in the Toronto Globe and Mail calls the film "a happy surprise," and notes that it "is genuinely entertaining in its own right." Philip Wuntch in the Dallas Morning News concurs, writing: "What could have been risible folly - remaking an acknowledged movie classic - emerges as riveting victory. is a runaway champion." Nearly all of the reviews refer to the impressive performances of the stars, including Denzel Washington, Meryl Streep, Liev Schreiber, and, in a smaller role, Jon Voight. But Eleanor Ringel Gillespie in the Atlanta Journal says that she agrees with original star Angela Lansbury, that a remake of the classic "is a lousy idea."

One might get the impression from the reviews that the stoner comedy Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle is not only about stoners, but is also for them, and that an altered state may be necessary in order to discover the film's real humor. Some suggest that even a memory of that state may be helpful. Allison Benedikt, for example, writes in the Chicago Tribune that the movie "will resonate deeply with anyone who attended high school in the 1990s and at least saw a joint." Stephen Hunter in the Washington Post concludes: "It isn't great, but what do you expect from the director [Danny Leiner] of Dude, Where's My Car?" Bob Townsend comments in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: "Its up-and-coming stars, Indian-American [Kal] Penn and Korean-American [John] Cho, break out of the stereotypical minor character roles they're usually relegated to and carry out all the goofiness with subversive intelligence and comedic chemistry." Indeed, Kevin Crust observes in the Los Angeles Times: "That Cho and Penn are such likable actors and are so funny in their roles earns the movie more slack than it probably deserves and prevents it from being just another gross-out comedy."

CNN just did a story on White Castle's prominent product placement (apparently Krispy Kreme had initially been approached for the role and turned it down).

When asked whether the company wasn't concerned about the adult themes of drugs and sex, the guy said essentially "yeah, there's stuff in the movie we as a company do NOT endorse, but it's a really good movie and embraces larger themes that we as a company DO approve of."

I like that a lot.

Also, White Castle is NOT a public company, which almost certainly made their decision a lot easier.

But White Castle smells bad, see.