Popcritic

The more family oriented comedies I watch, the more I see an overarching theme.   The lead man works too much, and because he doesn't have work-life balance, he's missing out in the important things in life -- his family.    Either he's a dad, in which case he's neglecting his kids (e.g. "Liar Liar" and "Elf"), or he's a middle-aged bachelor, in which case he's missed out on building a family (e.g. "The Kid") or there's some mystical convergence where he gets to see both options (e.g.

Here's how my actionable rating system works for books: 5 stars means: I recommend owning this book as part of your permanent library.

Here's how my actionable rating system works for music: 5 stars means: I recommend going to the live concert. (Note that going to a live concert is more hard core than going to a movie.) 4 stars means: I recommend buying the CD.

In my quest for a rating system which is less arbitrary than the usual 4- or 5-star system, my friends and I first came up with the Speed rating system.   But that proved even more problematic.   So, back to the drawing board, I thought that a system based on the actions that I actually recommend would be more grounded.   Even if there is a skew in this system, I can at least justify it. Here's how it works with movies: 5 stars mea

I've always had problems with the usual methods of rating movies, either out of five stars, or thumbs-up/thumbs-down.  There seems to be no real rhyme or reason to these systems.   And I've noticed that, when I use them, there's very little consistency to my own ratings.   I tend to rate an enormous number of things 4 stars, and almost nothing at 1 or 5 stars. In college, a group of friends and I tried to make a system where we started with the smallest possible unit of a good movie.  In other words, a movie which was in fact a good movie, but only barely so.   Any less good, would be no go