Re: The Emerald Atlas-- I'm not sure you have "a timeless writing style" if you evoke two book series published within the last decade and a half.

I was going to mention The Addiction. I'd also mention the British miniseries Ultraviolet (no relation to the Milla Jovovich one), which has a very chilling enviro-fascist vampire in the form of Corin Redgrave, among others.

The Defenders. Socially progressive early legal drama. Johnny Staccato. The late Trio showed some of these shows with John Cassavetes as a jazz-piano-playing private eye. In black and white, of course. The Westerner. Brian Keith in Sam Peckinpah's first major project. And I'd love a best of Tom Snyder's Tomorrow Show. There have to be, say, a dozen really wacked-out episodes (Meat Loaf, for one).

The Defenders. Socially progressive early legal drama. Johnny Staccato. The late Trio showed some of these shows with John Cassavetes as a jazz-piano-playing private eye. In black and white, of course. The Westerner. Brian Keith in Sam Peckinpah's first major project. And I'd love a best of Tom Snyder's Tomorrow Show. There have to be, say, a dozen really wacked-out episodes (Meat Loaf, for one).

Cast iron's not hard to use at all. That said, unless you're cooking the things it's best at (like fried chicken), it's probably less versatile. Generally, the pricing on sets is so advantageous it makes far more sense to get one than to pick and choose.

So what, they didn't get TV in your town until the late 80s or something? Kirk and Uhura Perry Mason and Della Street Rob and Laurie Petrie Mannix and Peggy John Steed and Emma Peel Natasha and Boris Ward and June

"You're saying Wizard of Oz didn't make the cut!?" Wizard of Oz did not do that well in 1939, and was thought of as a bit of a white elephant then. Its reputation came from TV, so while it's surely one of the half dozen most-seen movies of all time, it's not one of the most-seen in theaters. ""Birth of A Nation" from 1915 may beat them all" There's a good discussion about this at the early film site Nitrateville, in which several people argue that there's no way the much lower population and prosperity in 1915 could have produced results that compare with the biggest hits of later decades: http://www.nitrateville.com/viewtopic.php?t=5650

Another Amazon list in which almost all the movies are from the last few years. How about Night and Fog, The Shop on Main Street, The Pawnbroker, The Wannsee Conference, Shoah, Jacob the Liar...

Ah yes, the funniest movies of all time are all from the last 5 years. I guess at least that leaves a lot to be discovered. Like W.C. Fields in It's a Gift.

Actually, my vote would be for a director I'd written off until he came back with two remarkably strong films, All About My Mother and Talk To Her-- Pedro Almodovar. That said, it's always amusing to think, imagine telling people when Every Which Way But Loose came out that someday the guy playing opposite the orangutan would have two Best Director Oscars and have had one film nominated... which was entirely in Japanese.

"to be effortlessly beautiful and thin (The Beauty Myth), to participate in high-level public debates (Fire with Fire), to indulge sexual desire without condemnation or consequence (Promiscuities), to become a mother without hassle or pain (Misconceptions)." You left out "and to be a movie star without actually having been in a movie anyone's seen since about 2001." Really, what's she been in since Tomb Raider? At best you could argue that Wanted was a mild offseason action hit and A Mighty Heart a critical success. But try and think, other than voiceover work in cartoons, what's the last thing you've actually seen her in? (For me it's Sky Captain, woo-hoo.) Wolf's gaseous essay is a perfect match for Jolie's vaporous celebrity, rooted in next to no actual body of work.

So one of your 10 best is a movie whose disc famously used the wrong, dumbed-down set of subtitles (Let the Right One In)? What does it take to make the second 10?

Speaking of La Quercia... they are the subject of my new Sky Full of Bacon video podcast. You get a full tour of their prosciuttificio's Italian-seasons-simulating design, as well as some thoughtful conversation about using humanely raised pigs: http://www.vimeo.com/4763466

I just rented a Vibe, which is supposed to be the same car as the Toyota Matrix. But it definitely gave off a GM vibe, no pun intended. The dashboard design was horsey, the car was jerky (okay, some of that is probably the driver getting used to it, but still, I felt like it couldn't go without a big jerk forward), and there was this annoying piece of plastic trim along the door that I COULD NOT get in or out of the car without catching and pulling out of its place. How long before that's just permanently gone, leaving the rough edges of the car visible and ready to snag you. GM will ever be GM, and only moreso with the government instead of some semblance of private enterprise involved.

It's clear to me what Moynihan is saying, because it's clear to me what you're saying: that Stone was only a Stalinist because that was the way to oppose Hitler. Moynihan is making it clear that Stone was a Stalinist before Hitler was widely seen as a menace, he was a Stalinist after Hitler was dead and Nazism vanquished, and most crucially of course, he was a Stalinist when that also meant being on Hitler's side. [Ummm... No. Moynihan may or may not be "making that clear"--he's not that coherent. But Klehr, Haynes, and Vassilev say that Stone was *not* a Stalinist when that also meant being on Hitler's side: "1944 and 1945 notes do not indicate that Stone was an active KGB agent or even in direct contact with it after 1938, and given Stone’s initial anger over the Nazi-Soviet Pact, it is likely that he broke relations with the KGB in late 1939..."]

"The initial public fascination with Kennedy faded substantially after some inarticulate and uninformed interviews." I think you wrote "public" when you meant "media." I don't think the public has shared the media's lazy, tired Kennedy fascination in some 30 years, beyond the shallowest gossip-prurience level-- and even then, demand has been a fraction of supply.

Since we're talking the Beard awards, I linked to as many of the nominated pieces of journalism as I could find online, starting here on my blog: http://skyfullofbacon.com/blog/?p=190 Lotta good reading there. Oh, and let me recommend this nominee in the Multimedia category: http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/stories/wholehog/ Since the two Sky Full of Bacon video podcasts in the nomination are by me...

"At the same time, I think it is safe to say that (to pick one of many examples) no barbecue joint will ever be reviewed in the little red book." Uh... are there really any barbecue joints in either SF or NY worthy of being reviewed in the little red book? Maybe by the time they get to Austin they'll do Cooper's and Black's.

There are legal issues with posting a health violation-- which is, basically, alleging that someone has broken the law-- that don't enter the picture when you merely say food is lousy. At LTHForum.com we often have to pull these kinds of posts, though as Chowhound refugees ourselves, we ALWAYS send explanatory emails, it's only courteous to your members. If there's any way to salvage part of the message, we send it back to the person and tell them what they need to do to make it acceptable, too. Not to hijack Chez Pim but this brings up another issue-- we've built up a pretty successful Chicago-based site around the dual purposes of talking about food online (like Chowhound) and eating it together in a group (unlike Chowhound, which discourages event planning pretty strongly). There are a lot of things you can do on our board that you can't really do very well on CH, either (photo essays, that kind of thing). Anyway, it seems to us that it would be interesting to branch out more to other cities (for purely non-profit, this-is-cool motives), develop a parallel community in another place which could use the board to plan events and talk about their own local scene in detail. Anyway, if anyone's annoyed with the limitations of CH and would like to explore an alternative, look at how our community works for Chicago and feel free to contact me about the possibilities. (Again, unlike the gambling and nudie sites, this is not for any commercial reason-- just looking to help and share good info with foodites in other cities.) Mike G of LTHForum.com