More links.

* New trailers for Fantastic Mr. Fox and The Road.

* The EPA has announced new guidelines to regulate greenhouse gases.

* The oldest living things in the world. (via)

* Richard Kahlenberg argues at Washington Monthly towards class-based affirmative action.

* Common Roman Polanski Defenses, Refuted.

The depravity of some crimes challenges your hope for humanity. I'm sorry for posting this, but I feel punched in the gut for having read it.

Dollhouse, on the other hand, really was pretty decent. Definitely the best episode of the series so far. If I have complaints—which I do—it's with:

1) The Echo reprogramming / mole bit, which drew a little too bright a line around the silliness of the show's premise. How did the mole accomplish the insertion of such a detailed, uh, parameter, in the fifteen seconds Topher happened to be away from his desk? It reminded me of a classic bit from Family Guy:

Brian: Hola! Um...me, me llamo es Brian. Ahh, uh, um lets see, uh, nosotros queremos ir con ustedes.
Mexican: Hey that was pretty good. But actually when you said, "Me llamo es Brian," you don't need the "es." Just, "Me llamo Brian."
Brian: Oh, you speak English.
Mexican: No, just that first speech and this one explaining it.
Brian: You...you're kidding right?
Mexican: Que?

2) The attempted rape and murder of Mellie is an illustrative example of how hard it can be to separate commentary on misogyny from misogyny itself. (See Joss's interview at NPR for more on Joss's self-awareness about this problem.) The violence in the scene is exceptionally brutal, and the way it is shot is a deliberate quotation of the Jenny Calendar scene from Buffy Season 2. The audience is primed first to think of the usualness of this sort of filmic violence, in other words, so that the subversion of the woman-in-refrigerator trope has more salience.

On the other hand, the scene can only be described as pornographic in its composition, from the way the characters are dressed and blocked to the camera's fixation on Mellie's body. It's the same sort of problem that arises when Dollhouse (which is at its essence as show about misogyny and rape culture) uses Eliza Dushku in short skirts speaking in a breathy voice to promote itself. Joss has a lot of feminist cred and you certainly want to give him the benefit of the doubt, and I'm sure we're all cognizant of the realities of the television marketplace and corporate interference—but this remains a needle that Joss will have to be very careful in trying to thread.

On the more global level of mythology, Dollhouse 1.6 works very hard to expand the show past the tight hermeticism of the first few episodes. Through the Wolfram-and-Hartization of the Dollhouse and the urban legend trope this world has suddenly grown a lot larger and a lot more interesting. Now this is a show that's as much about global capitalism as it is about sexual violence, and really about the intersection of the two—which seems very promising. I'm excited to see where Joss takes these ideas now that he has a freer hand.

Where to begin with this bizarre plea from Watchmen's screenwriter to see the movie again whether you liked it or not? The exuberant egotism? The naked commodification of nerd identity? The notion that huge corporate conglomerates deserve your charity and even, perhaps, your love?

Actually not a hard question. You've got to begin with this:

And yet... You'll be thinking about this film, down the road. It'll nag at you. How it was rough and beautiful. How it went where it wanted to go, and you just hung on. How it was thoughtful and hateful and bleak and hilarious. And for Jackie Earle Haley.

Trust me. You'll come back, eventually. Just like Sally.

Might as well make it count for something.

Ho-lee shit.