when I visited, the whole campus was full of big shirtless whiteboys and I almost died.

They could not bring the funk as a cowgirl prefers.

Quick question for parents of small ones in re Mirror Mirror:

Would it be too scary for a 5 year old who is generally fearless in life, but a bit sensitive with regard to movies?

JZ saw it with Matilda and said it was not scary. A few scenes of dramatic tension but not scary. Also the costume and production design was delicious and over the top.

Thanks David. Somehow I knew you'd know!

The Cabin in the Woods remains wildly entertaining on a second viewing. So much fun! I loved the audience anticipation of the SYSTEM PURGE, and the woman behind me exclaimed, "WHAT!" at the Sigourney Weaver reveal. It's definitely a movie that's more fun with a receptive audience.

Also, it is possible that Bradley Whitford steals the movie.

Oh, and this time around, I really watched it with the Ancient Ones = The Audience eye (which I'd picked up on initially but I wasn't thinking about it too hard), and it did become an interesting commentary on audience expectations and reliance on tropes. What I realized about the ending was that it's not really about the destruction of the world but the destruction of the horror genre in order to rebuild it as something original. The old tropes and template are played out; let's do something new.

What I realized about the ending was that

I'm going to argue about this after we don't have to do the whole thing in whitefont.

A list of unused titles for Dr. Strangelove, lifted from Stanley Kubrick’s notebooks. My favorites:

Dr. Doomsday or: How to Start World War III Without Even Trying
Dr. Strangelove's Secret Uses of Uranus
My Bomb, Your Bomb
The Bomb and Dr. Strangelove or: How to be Afraid 24hrs a Day
The Passion of Dr. Strangelove

I did have a couple of minor practical nits to pick with the latter part of CitW, though: there's a button for "System Purge" which releases all those horrors into the complex unharmed rather than killing them off or otherwise disposing of them? Really? How is that not expected to cause a disaster for the people running the system as shown? And the bat thing was smashing through walls like they were cardboard - I can see how there might be specific adjustments to its cage to contain it, but how would they recapture it if it were the method of doom released on the cabingoers?

Matt, you're thinking too hard: The PURGE button is there because you need it to unleash the monsters and create the insane mayhem. It's a cliche, an example of what TV Tropes call Inventional Wisdom: >[link]

Ain't It Cool News has a screencap of the white betting board with the list of monsters (scroll down a little): [link] I love that there is a department called "Internal Logic" that bet on the Giant Snake.

Ahahaha, Vonnie, I was focusing so much on the monsters that I didn't catch the Department of Internal Logic. Awesome.

Here's a pretty interesting interview with Drew Goddard where he finally delves into spoiler territory. He addresses the ending, for instance.