I don't know whether this film adaptation will be good or not-- I thought the animated adaptation was fine, in any case-- but we've been telling ourselves stories in this vein for the past several thousand years, and I hardly think we're going to stop now. And those television shows you mention all have the same old universal themes.

Further, it's a misperception that old epics like Beowulf lack subtle emotion.

You really are an excellent movie critic, and Salon is lucky to have you. I always enjoy reading your work. Off to the midnight showing of this film!

I disagree with the person quoted who said that these women 'stripped away their sexuality.' Around 1% of any population is asexual, and naturally doesn't desire sex. It seems to me that for women of that orientation, the decision to become a sworn version would be easier--although there would still be the matter of gender identity.

I like Biden, and I think the speech was good, but I don't think 'Barack America' was the biggest goof. What made me chuckle was when Biden said:

"He will have such an incredible opportunity, incredible opportunity, not only to change the direction of America but literally, literally to change the direction of the world."

He'll literally change the direction of the word? Shades of Christopher Reeve. Biden seems to say 'literally' instead of 'uh' or 'ah' or something more traditional like that. Of course I don't think such verbal tics are important--just amusing.

The books for me were The Phantom Tollbooth and Harriet the Spy, which were both pretty explicitly about constructing an inner life, now that I think about it.

Heath Ledger will obviously win, and really, I think he would've won even if he were still alive, because is the THE reason that The Dark Knight has grossed a billion dollars globally. I'm a member of a target demographic for The Dark Knight--guys in their teens and early twenties--and I have to say, all the word of mouth for Dark Knight came from Ledger's performance as the Joker. It wasn't "Holy shit, they blow up a ton of stuff," or "Batman is awesome," it was "You have to see Ledger as the Joker." Gah, I've seen the film three times because friends keep dragging me back to it (for me, once was enough..).

Whether or not Ledger's performance seems artistically sound to some critics, it was a huge hit with the public; I think as an individual performance it's made a larger impression on the public than anything else in YEARS; probably anything else this decade. The Academy is going to respond to that. It's a taste of the kind of universal cultural power the film studios once had.

And by the way, does anyone else feel as though the plot of that movie was basically Othello, with the Joker as the Iago figure? ("Motiveless malice," anyone?)

What's wrong with Chuck D? Chuck D is awesome. But he did say stuff like, "The followers of Farrakhan/Don't tell me that you understand/Until you hear the man."

an embarassment to Obama; Obama didn't care. But it is an embarassment for ASU.

Cjcastor, I would be inclined to describe communion as, "little more than grown men playacting with bits of bread while wearing silly robes and funny hats," and just as I don't think there's any big nefarious secret to freemasonry, I don't think there's any big Catholic conspiracy. All these ritual things seem harmless as far as it goes, and if they make people happy, then fine.

But I think I'll avoid this book if the big secret is that New Age piffle is really true.

What seems more revealing to me in this clip than the President's off-hand remark is the immediate reaction from the press--hysterial, gleeful laughter. I just imagine that they're all thinking about how cool they'll seem at dinner parties later when they tell the story..

They really do need to dig the guy up and see who he is. And if it turns out to be someone they have marked as buried somewhere else, well then they need to go to that other grave and see whose actually in it. Sure it's a lot of trouble and it's probably embarassing, but if Arlington is really meant to be sacred ground for as long as the US exists, it has to be deemed worth it.

This is sort of totally unrelated to the article, but I saw that you wrote a book called '77 Love Sonnets'. Is the title/number of sonnets a reference to Berryman's '77 Dream Songs', or is that just the number of things you both happened to write?