I'd like to broaden my horizons by getting a better understanding of life in different cultures and time periods. Please recommend great books or films (fiction or non-fiction) which paint a broad, immersive, reasonably accurate picture of a place and time. [more inside]
posted on Jul 12, 2008 - 29 answers

After reading this article on Weegee, I started thinking about the concept of Noir and wondered about this question. "Does Noir exist as a current idiom or appear in a culture in America in 2008, and if so where might it be found?" [more inside]
posted on Jun 20, 2008 - 11 answers

In light of the horrendously awful "I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry," are there any GOOD (i.e. both funny and non-homophobic) comedies about straight people either having to pretend they're gay or, more generally, about straight people slowly but surely letting go of their prejudices towards LGBT people? [more inside]
posted on Jul 19, 2007 - 43 answers

Recently I've been fascinated with the way a good actor doing good voice acting can convey a very specific character in movies or video games. (This may seem dumb, but the Demonhunter Illidan in WarCraft III has a particularly memorable voice). What I'm really wondering about, though, is the fact that all the examples of really effective, specific voice acting seem to be English-based. [more inside]
posted on Dec 25, 2006 - 11 answers

Twins of the world! This is a question for you: what media (books, movies, documentaries, poems, photographs, paintings etc), fiction or non, do you feel best expresses your own experience as a twin? All lengthy anecdotes welcome :-) [Here's your opportunity to deny or confirm the suspicion that all twins love the Polish Brothers.]
posted on Nov 29, 2005 - 22 answers

EuropeanFilmFilter: I would love some French/German/Central and East European film recommendations. I'm looking for movies like 'Red' and the 'Double Life of Veronique' by Kieslowski- visually stimulating, beautiful films that aren't necessarily really sweet feel good movies like Amelie. I'm looking for films that you walk away from feeling great because you've seen something beautiful, or they leave you trying to figure out the plot's allegorical meanings, or thinking about the universe, or whatever. (mi)
posted on Feb 4, 2005 - 43 answers