Not too much to explain, Spi. Both were made by some of the same people, so it hardly seems to me too outlandish to contrast them, as you yourself have done.

I was just trying to get a handle on how you thought 40 could have been better-realized. For the style of approach that it had (it's much broader comedy than F&G), I thought the characters were well-drawn.

Well, F&G certainly could have been more broadly drawn if the writers had wanted to go that way, but it wasn't, which is what I suspect most of us who loved it thought special about it. Undeclared, however, was pretty broad at times, and seems closer in spirit to 40YOV. Both were good when good, but uneven overall, especially compared to F&G. YMMV.

Right. I don't F&G was meant to be broad. In fact, it's so damned great *because* it feels realistic. It has humor and pain and feels very much like what going to high school in the early '80s felt like. I just wanted to see if I could get you to elaborate on what you felt wasn't fully-realized in 40. Not because I'm trying to argue with you but because I'm genuinely interested in the details of your opinion.

I only saw one ep of Undeclared and didn't like it as well as F&G but I think I'll be returning to it after how much I dug 40.

I just wanted to see if I could get you to elaborate on what you felt wasn't fully-realized in 40

I gotcha. I think we're using the same term differently. I'm comparing the movie with the tv show on my own internal (and therefore perfect, natch) scale of realization, not the internal logic of each. I don't know what would have made 40YOV better, but it wasn't anywhere as close to perfect as F&G.

On other fronts, I caught Rollergirls on cable tonight, which is a surprisingly affecting documentary tv show about the TX Rollergirls here in Austin.

I'm almost through Undeclared, and I've really enjoyed it.

Got Batman Begins for Christmas, watched it last night. Random thoughts:

- Liam Neeson's ears: still pointy.

- Dude! That was Gary Oldman !!!?!? I never even came close to recognizing him.

- Cillian Murphy: still awesome.

- Some really good moments, but a little too weighted down with being a Movie.

- Nice CGI. And nice that with CGI they could open Gotham up and get away from the claustrophoic, enclosed, soundstagy feeling of the other Batman movies.

- The citizens of The Narrows closing in on Batman like a pack of zombies was great imagery on its own, and really fun as a meta-conversation with the scene in Spiderman 2 where the citizens of NYC carry Peter Parker, Christ-like, to safety. And with that contrast in mind, the El battles in both were fun to contrast also.

A non-Batman question: a book I'm reading includes this phrase: "Now largely forgotten, during the 1920s Clara Bow had been one of Hollywood's biggest sex symbols." I didn't think the It Girl was forgotten at all - you guys?

I didn't think the It Girl was forgotten at all - you guys?

Not by people who are buffs of that era, but by the general public? Yes. Most Americans couldn't tell you who she was. But, then again, a shameful percentage of Americans can't even tell you which hemisphere they live in.

I didn't think the It Girl was forgotten at all - you guys?

Not by me, but then I've got a Silent Movies star bookmarked. And JZ is a total silent movie whore. (We went to a bar once because they were showing a Lillian Gish movie.)

There are, of course, the numerous takes during LotR in which Viggo was injured. All of which seemed to be the takes that PJ liked best, and made it in to the final cut.

If I were an actor and got injured during various takes, I'd prefer that those be the ones making the final cut so the pain wasn't all for nothing.