I know as a critic I'm required to have a well-armored heart. I must be a cynical wise guy to show my great sophistication. No pushover, me.

Life's missed opportunities, at the end, may seem more poignant to us than those we embraced — because in our imagination they have a perfection that reality can never rival.

If you have to ask what it symbolizes, it didn't.

The right really wants to punish you for having an opinion. And I think both the left and the right should celebrate people who have different opinions, and disagree with them, and argue with them, and differ with them, but don't just try to shut them up.

Jacques Tati is the great philosophical tinkerer of comedy, taking meticulous care to arrange his films so that they unfold in a series of revelations and effortless delights.

Beguiled by George S. Bush's easy smile and casual indifference to the details, we are on the brink of electing him to office. This isn't choosing a president, it's casting the lead in a sitcom about the presidency.

One of the weapons Marvel used in its climb to comic-book dominance was a willingness to invent new characters at a dizzying speed. There are so many Marvel universes, indeed, that some superheroes do not even exist in one another's worlds, preventing gridlock.