Good grief. Philip Norman strikes again. His career as a Beatle biographer for non-Beatles fans, summarized:

Shout!: "John Lennon was two thirds of the Beatles" is the most infamous claim and the one he had to walk back on most, but while the book is fluently written (that was never Norman's problem), it's the kind of biography where we're told ( Read more... )

List the five scariest characters ever.

As the question was about characters, not monsters, I shall try to avoid the obvious (i.e. an old reply of mine). (The Gentlemen from Hush or the Alien from Alien would fall under this category, as would Shelob from Lord of the Rings. That's the difference between monster and villain, too.)

1.) Caligula as ( Read more... )

A couple of days ago, apropos the newest version of The Phantom of the Opera, ide_cyan quoted a rather interesting essay on the beauty and the beast myth. The gist of which - or at least of the excerpt - was that one of the beast's chief attractions lay in the fact that he's such a devoted, faithful lover, yet without the disadvantage of actually making ( Read more... )