With these box office numbers, is there any way for the public to know how many people have seen the film in 3-D and/or IMAX 3-D and how many have seen it in standard projection? Strictly curiosity on my part here.

Ditto for the Plinkett test and other similar tests. Characters failing the Plinkett test, by itself, is not necessarily a flaw. But it's often consistent with certain kinds of flaws. Often enough that it becomes a handy little indicator. (IOW, what Trey said. The thermometer analogy also fits well because doctors typically don't only take the temperature—it's just one of several checks they might run en route to a diagnosis.)

I'm guessing he chose Star Wars more because it's well-known and not so much because it's the best illustration of his argument. The depiction of Leia really ain't that bad, so far as these things go. Especially when you cut some extra slack for the fact that they were specifically going for an old-school hero's journey/save-the-princess storyline.

On Letterboxd, Adam from Filmspotting has written a little piece about the accusations of paternalism vis-a-vis Kowalski's treatment of Stone and Stone's status as an inexperienced woman astronaut (as opposed to an inexperienced astronaut who happens also to be a woman):

It's always fair to call out films that fall back on paternalistic tropes, but I think he's right that the argument might be a stretch with this film. To my mind, the closest thing to clear sexism in the film is the fleeting mock-flirtation Kowalski creates with Stone during a tense, dangerous moment. In that moment, one could argue that he's treating her in a particular way because she's a woman. But that's kinda it. Her inexperience as an astronaut has to do with the fact that she's not a career astronaut. It's made clear she's a doc who works in a hospital and is only in space because [whatever the reason is].

Seems like Cuaron makes her inexperienced for dramatic, not necessarily paternalistic, reasons. It makes Stone the underdog. When she's trying to operate the escape craft later, the fact that she's a physician who's never operated a real, non-simulation spacecraft adds to the suspense. It also makes us empathize — those buttons and controls appear as inscrutable to her as they do to us. Her moments of panic are consistent with the panic I would expect any male non-career astronaut to show in the same situation. Her moments of parental emotion, likewise, come at moments when death is a distinct possibility and after she's already been through a lot of scary shit. It'd be surprising if she didn't cry. Man or woman, that's when you cry, that moment. That's slightly different from portraying a woman character who cries at the drop of a hat.

In recent years people scrunch their faces up when I mention this, but I rather liked Mel Gibson's 1990 portrayal of Hamlet (with Glenn Close as Gertrude, Helena Bonham Carter as Ophelia). I dig Mel's take on the famous "To be or not to be" scene (he seems to emphasize the confusion of the moment more than the other actors I've seen do it, playing it in mostly hushed tones, like someone who truly is thinking out loud and doesn't want people in the next room to hear).

Rope also has Farley Granger and features a pretty overt (for 1948) depiction of a gay couple (a murderous gay couple loosely based on Leopold & Loeb).

I think the longest continuous shot was something like 10 minutes, with Hitchcock disguising cuts to make the takes appear longer.

I don't know, man. The baby who's being lifted the "wrong" way is sporting the happier facial expression. I've lifted babies that way for years, and not one has ever spoken a word of complaint.

Dave: your kid is all kinds of adorable.

A Mighty Wind (2003)
It's not the best Christopher Guest film, but in some ways it's the most impressive. This time Guest's stock troupe of actors have written a whole heap of folk songs, which they perform throughout the film. ("A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow" was nominated for Best Song and performed by Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara at that year's Oscars.) Saw it when it came out, but Jane Lynch and John Michael Higgins still have me laughing pretty good at a couple points. Some of the jokes don't land as well as others, which is the norm for any Guest film.

House of Cards
I finally got around to binging on the whole first season this weekend. It's made with ingredients I like — David Fincher, Kevin Spacey, Robin Wright, Rooney Mara's sister Kate (she's good), Kristen Connolly (that cute red-haired actress from The Cabin in the Woods, also good) — and is about the political skullduggery surrounding one Congressman Francis Underwood. Some have called the series "cynical" for its portrayal of D.C. sausage-making, and that might be valid if the show were about something other than Capitol Hill. So far, I've seen nothing that farfetched. Spacey's character is almost a kind of Shakespearean-style Tony Soprano: the congressman regularly breaks the fourth wall, editorializing directly to the viewer. It's an unnecessary device, but it's better than a voice-over, and Spacey performs the fuck out of these delicious little asides, and they're kept short. Also, it's not really a spoiler to mention that if you watch the very first scene of the series, you'll see a pretty cool save-the-cat that takes the form of a kill-the-cat, which is actually a dog. Got all that? Forget it. If you like Kevin Spacey and political intrigue, this is a fun show.

Ah man, I still adore The Office UK. But I can see why you guys don't. When you stop and look at him, David Brent is a really fucked-up human being.

Whenever.

I never got to see much of Sascha Baron Cohen's Ali-G TV show, so I don't know if it was good or not. But I did see a clip that still cracks me up to this day: Gore Vidal is sitting there, and it's already a couple minutes into the interview when Ali-G says something like "So not only are you a writer, but you're also one of the world's finest hairdressers..." Gore Vidal (who can't see he's being fucked with) characteristically uses it as a chance to name-drop "That's Vidal Sassoon. He's a nice man. I know him. But I'm Gore Vial."

Also Rosemary's Baby.

Phil Plait has commented. He commends the movie for several things, but he does criticize the same problem Teague pointed out about the tether:

I believe Cuaron wrote the movie with his son, Jonas. (Alfonso's brother is Carlos.)

The dialogue was quite hamfisted indeed. And the on-the-nose moments seemed to come at exactly the places where some subtlety was in order. The skeleton of the story was fine. It's the crammed-in backstory and as-you-knows that didn't work.

Then there's the sentimentality. I readily admit that I have an abnormally low tolerance for it. But the moments in which Cuaron was tugging on those heart strings felt a bit too emphatic. Dial it back some, is all. A lot of this is that I was probably hoping for a bleaker movie — something more Fincher/Aronovsky in tone. And that's my fault, not Cuaron's.