Brando's 1950s/60s interviews are really interesting--he was a quixotic mixture of sensitivity, ego, and hothothot sex appeal. IIRC, he loved Siamese cats: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/37/36/1...

And this is from a Truman Capote interview from 1957, although there's some icky Japanese stereotyping involved:

“Because,” he resumed, wiping his hands on a small steamed towel, the usual preface to any meal served in Japan, “I’ve seriously considered—I’ve very seriously thought about—throwing the whole thing up. This business of being a successful actor. What’s the point, if it doesn’t evolve into anything? All right, you’re a success. At last you’re accepted, you’re welcome everywhere. But that’s it, that’s all there is to it, it doesn’t lead anywhere. You’re just sitting on a pile of candy gathering thick layers of—of crust.” He rubbed his chin with the towel, as though removing stale makeup. “Too much success can ruin you as surely as too much failure.” Lowering his eyes, he looked without appetite at the food that the maid, to an accompaniment of constant giggles, was distributing on the plates. “Of course,” he said hesitantly, as if he were slowly turning over a coin to study the side that seemed to be shinier, “you can’t always be a failure. Not and survive. Van Gogh! There’s an example of what can happen when a person never receives any recognition. You stop relating; it puts you outside. But I guess success does that, too. You know, it took me a long time before I was aware that that’s what I was—a big success. I was so absorbed in myself, my own problems, I never looked around, took account."

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1957/11/09/the-...

When the show first started, she was much more tough-looking and realistically dressed for a cop. Somewhere around the second season, I read that Katic wanted to be more feminine and lobbied for longer hair, makeup, sexier clothes, etc. Whether that's true or if it was in response to focus group feedback, I don't know. Someone wrote an article on livejournal about how female cops are often "de-butchified" in later seasons: http://ohnotheydidnt.livejournal.com/53291773.htm...

Original Beckett:
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/56/31/4...

I'd never thought about Castle this way, but this is incredibly spot-on. Basically, Nathan Fillion is playing a richer, better-looking iteration of Noel from Frasier and I didn't realize it for...eight years? What is wrong with me?

Robert Downey Jr.'s facial hair as Tony Stark is so smarmy and frattish. If that goatee thing he had in one of the Iron Mans I saw could type, it would just say, "U up?" and send dick pics, I swear to God.

Do the British not have trusts for privacy in purchasing? Or is she just purchasing property on a really large scale? I ask because I grew up in the town where they filmed Dawson's Creek and in the early years of the show, one of the cast lived/owned a townhouse in my neighborhood (before everybody got really rich and moved to the beach). But it wasn't in her name in the homeowner's association's documents--the listed owner was a trust. So, why would you not do that instead of having a shell company? Trusts protect property and individuals from lawsuits, give more privacy, etc. What's the benefit of a shell company, Toast lawyers?

Thank you so much for this. I hate this commercial with the passion of a thousand fiery suns. It is the most anti-intellectual/anti-information commercial for education in the world.

Yes! My mother and my aunt are both nurses and the weird accident (Or gangrene! Always the gangrene!) anecdotes at dinner are terrifyingly real.

Jodhaa Akbar! Hrithik Roshan may be the prettiest man alive.

The orange creamsicle sunscreen is Bain du Soleil, right? I love that stuff.

I miss this perfume called Jala by Calypso St. Barth that would have made an excellent candle; it smelled like a bunch of tropical flowers.

I love when Toby Stephens plays these kinds of parts. He was in the David Suchet/Poirot adaptation of Christie's "5 Little Pigs" as Amyas and Caroline Crale's angry, bitter best friend. So great at horrible, yet weirdly compelling men. Like a posh British James Spader.