Over the weekend, Sony freaked out when they heard David Denby's review of "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" was coming out in the New Yorker today, sending out a dramatic "please respect our embaaaaaargo" email to all and sundry. (The "embargo" date is December 13. Forced to define the rationale for embargoes, their reasoning is tepid, at best: "[E]mbargo dates level the playing field and enable reviews to run within the films’ primary release window, when audiences are most interested." But, you know, trailers should come out four months before the film. Mmm hmm.) Then producer Scott Rudin wrote an email to Denby, which was so clearly for public consumption, as it was immediately "leaked," because you have never, ever seen such a calm and polite communication from Rudin. What Scott Rudin is this and where is the real one? Denby's points in debate with Rudin are decent, if not particularly relevant: he's definitely right that critics (and even movie-goers) are pretty hosed that Oscar movie season is like a few weeks long and also over the holidays. (And then, the February – April movie season assaults our intelligence.) People break embargoes all the time; but because this is an Oscar movie, the studio is treating it like the publication of the Pentagon Papers. READ MORE

So late last week, I learned that I failed the bar exam. I don't remember a ton from those two days in July. Which isn't too surprising, because apparently (we now know) I wasn't remembering much during those days either. I do remember, however, that at lunchtime thousands of future lawyers poured out of the Buffalo Convention Center and onto Niagara Square. There were more people outside in downtown Buffalo those two days than I could ever before remember. And they were from downstate too, and they were eating outside in the summertime just like they do in New York City. Even though I was failing a bar exam at the time, I do remember thinking that it was kind of neat that we were all gathered this way. READ MORE

I was page-downing really fast, hitting the space bar as soon as I read maybe 1/3 of a sentence, because I didn't even really care what David Denby unfortunately happened to scrawl in the New Yorker about the new Quentin Tarantino, and then I came across part of two consecutive phrases: "appallingly insensitive-a Louisville Slugger" and then I closed the window, because, what is this, 1998? YOU MEAN THERE IS VIOLENCE IN THIS TARANTINO FILM? Perhaps my criticism is incorrect, however, I shall never know.