Paulo Seabra

Like most people who know their stuff I too love The Wire. But like another big chunk of people who also know their stuff I love The Sopranos even more. In many ways my heart should be torn betwixt two lovers but it kinda isn't. So though I do love both shows, and though I even compare them all the time and consider them to be cousins, my heart rests firmly on the belief that The Sopranos is and always be the king of kings. There are a few reasons for that, some of which are bound to be personal and therefore subjective, but since I often come across casual debates about this topic in a variety of comment sections, I figured I'd write down something about it. For that reason, this isn't really meant as a take-down or anything of the sort, not even close. It's really more of a nitpicky thing, basically pulling apart five reasons why The Wire is just a bit lesser than the titan that is its rival HBO show. I picked five reasons because it's a round number, but eve...

I can't say I've ever been a fan of biographies, and biographies of comedians even less so. But being a huge fan of Norm Macdonald compelled me to read this one. Maybe I should have read it way before, certainly before the man died, but what's done is done, I suppose. Regardless, I knew I had to read it, and the final impulse for that was reading a random comment somewhere that consisted of a specific paragraph from the book. I say comment, but it was more of a quote, really... I'll get to that shortly, but for now, what is the book like? Well, first of all it's funny, you can't expect anything less from Norm, but it's also kinda sad, what with him channeling his inner Rodney Dangerfield and pouring on and on about all the losses in his life. Then again, you never know what's true and what ain't, because after all, Based on a True Story ends up being more like a title than a description. What you do get instead is an image, true or false, of a wande...

This is a classic movie to me. Not just because it's a classic movie for everyone else, but also because it's a movie that I first hated, then I didn't like but I saw its merits, and then that I loved and it easily became one of my all-time favorites. But that's just my style, initially hating something that I then come to love. What's funny about it is that there seems to be a similar thing happening with the movie itself, as in the initial perception of it isn't quite what the movie really is. You need to dig a little bit, and the more you dig the more the movie's inner nature is revealed. Or at least that's how I see things now, because The Exorcist is one of those movies that people sometimes find boring and funny, which is its own weird perception, or else they find it horrifying and brutal, which is the perception I have come to disagree with the most. Not just about the movie but about the book as well, which is a must-read for any fans of the m...