A sincere list from those sincere film fanboys who yearn to be Roger Ebert. They've outgrowing Lucas and Spielberg, and they know there's a world of film beyond the multiplex. But they haven't seen the best films from that world. In ten years Mizoguchi, Bresson, Powell, Ozu, Tarkovsky, Tati,Godard, Bertolucci,Kiarostami, Chris Marker, the Rays, the Quays, ... may make their list. And they may be properly embarrassed to have thought The Apartment among Billy Wilder's better films. Give'em time. Meanwhile, the Sight and Sound Poll in 2012.

As funny man Bobby Bittman might say, "In all seriousness," SCTV is the show of shows. All modern kultur comes from under Edith Prickly's leopardskin hat or maybe Johnny LaRue's smoking jacket.(Britney Spears and entourage were better as Lola Heatherton and the Jules Haalmeyer dancers.)

Your Show of Shows with Sid Caesar is close, and so is Dennis Potter's Pennies from Heaven and those Ernie Kovacs specials with Eugene and Bela Bartok's music.

Nit-pick:

". . . moments after having gleefully busted the kneecaps of a gambler while Frankie Vallee trilled, 'Don't know why I love you, don't know why I care.'"

His name is spelled Frankie Valli, but he's not the one trilling. It's Dion and the Belmonts singing "I Wonder Why."

"Grammar-challanged" should be "grammar-challenged."

Spelling-challenged Bill

"Then Tony laid bare the existential fog that seems to lay at the heart of the show's final season."

I've gotten used to Washington Post writers and editors not knowing the correct verb forms of "Lie" and Lay"---and even the Times and Bob Dylan falter. But NOT my beloved Heather Havrilesky, the Jennifer Melfi of TV Crit! Tell me, please, it was a grammar-challanged Salon editor who altered your copy. The "laid" is correct ("fog" is the object of that transitive verb), but "lay" should be "lies" since it means "to exist, to reside" and is in the present tense.

The British Council web site offers guidance and quizzes: http://www.learnenglish.org.uk/grammar/archive/lielay01.html

Now it's off to Comedy Central to complain about John Stewart's use of "irregardless" last Wednesday night.