Snobs, Movies, & Adorable Thrift, In The Monday Roundup

Culture panic: Worried about applauding at the wrong time? You're hardly alone. iStockphoto.

 

by Linda Holmes

• The London Times is feeling mighty optimistic these days, judging from its creation of a list of the 100 Best Movies of 2008. Now, it doesn't always feel like there are two movies a week that anyone would want to include on such a list, but they've gone and compiled their list nonetheless. (Note that it's based on 2008 releases in the U.K.; some of these were released in the U.S. in 2007.) If nothing else, it does make a nice refresher on recent movies you may have missed, and there are handy links to every review.

TiVo, penny-pinching, and fear of culture snobbery, after the jump...

• Also from the U.K., enjoy this marvelously spirited condemnation of the role of fear in alienating people from good performances. A fine quote: "Where the constant lowing of sacred cows can be almost deafening, and where opinion boldly goes where understanding may not, snobbism flourishes with the vigour of Japanese knotweed."

Interestingly, the column's presumption is that the imposition of fear and the discomforting of uninitiated listeners is an accidental and counterproductive malfunctioning of the culture — not an intrinsic part of what makes audiences with expertise feel good about themselves.

• Hollywood's ongoing Let's Shoot Ourselves In The Foot Project churns along, as the four major broadcast networks try to prepare for an actors' strike, a year after last year's writers' strike.

• Watching Andy Rooney brag last night on 60 Minutes about mixing premium gasoline and regular gasoline to save a few cents a gallon, I complained to friends about some of the obnoxious, horribly tin-eared penny-pinching stories being generated by our collective economic unease.

Jezebel is with me, taking (quite correct) offense at this irritating New York Times piece, which makes shopping at Trader Joe's sound like an adorable and exotic hobby, and which marvels at the idea of entertaining eight people at home for a mere $238 — about half of which, it appears, was spent on cheeseball decor guests don't care about anyway. (Hint: People who are actually on a tight budget do not spend $11 on a scented Christmas candle for a single party.)

• The math isn't pure, to say the least, but the Freakonomics blog post about how much writer Justin Wolfers loves his TiVo brings home an argument I have been making for some time: My favorite entertainment-related technological advancement of my lifetime is the DVR (digital video recorder).

Internet comment threads are not always the best way to restore your faith in humanity, but the thread attached to this story is pretty interesting — and refreshingly not overrun with "everyone who watches television is an idiot" posts, as often happens when television (and the quality of television) is discussed.