I'm on The Canon Debating His Girl Friday v The Philadelphia Story with my pal Amy Nicholson!

"Your assignment will be Spy magazine's greatest achievement: Tracy Lord. Big game hunting in Africa, fox hunting in Pennsylvania. Married on impulse. Divorced in a rage. And always unapproachable by the press. The unapproachable Miss Lord... The Philadelphia Story!"

I was so certain that recording an episode of The Canon with my friend Amy Nicholson, pitting one Problematic 1940 Divorced Cary Grant movie against another, would require me to perform an impression of Henry Daniell as Spy publisher Sidney Kidd that I might've ripped the audio of the scene into my iPhone and rehearsed it during my drive to Earwolf HQ in Hollywood a few weeks ago. In the end, I forgot to break out the imitation I'd practiced to carefully, because Amy is just as brilliant in conversation as she is in prose. So the fact that she spared you all my, um, acting is not the best reason to be grateful for her insight and eloquence, but it's a reason.

You can listen to our debate right here!

The Career of Tom Cruise, X-Men, Han Solo, and the Wrath of Cannes. I'm on the Voice Film Club podcast this week.

I had a great time sitting in on this week's Voice Film Club podcast with my Village Voice editor Alan Scherstuhl and L.A. Weekly film critic Amy Nicholson. Alan invited me on to talk about my essay demanding the death of Han Solo, but before we get to that we have a long chat about the perplexing career of Tom Cruise (working off of Amy's marvelous cover story about him) and Amy's review of X-Men: Days of Future Past, which I won't get to see until tonight. You can hear the podcast above or here.

Podcast: Young RoboCop, Old RoboCop

RoboCop '14 & RoboCop '87. The original has more gestural flair, and so does the movie he's in.

Thanks to Village Voice film editor Alan Scherstuhl and L.A. Weekly film critic Amy Nicholson for having me on the Voice Film Club podcast this week to talk RoboCop, and to listen in rapt mostly-silence while they discuss Vampire Academy. I've not seen the latter but I certainly will, based on the impression HAHAHAHAHAHAjokes it made on Amy and Alan.

You can hear the episode here. I can't believe I forgot to plug the good RoboCop remake.