Holla.

Back in the saddle again, y'all.
Left the snow for the rain. Hey now.
Hope everyone had a merry, drunken holiday(s) and all that blah blah blah. Now some useless, random stuff:

• Hey, celebrate the new year/return to work by not downloading Britney's new single. I'm a big apologist for the Spears, but this one... it sounds like she had a stroke. (But do celebrate by downloading LCD Soundsystem's excellent new one "Daft Punk is Playing At My House.")
  
  
• Josh nails Sully (so to speak). Sully was asking for it.
  
  
• David Thomson in Variety: "I am writing on Dec. 16, 2004. I stress that because I want to say that I know Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby is going to win Best Picture at the Oscars early next year." He's right.
  
  
• A warning: not only is Phantom of the Opera a wretched movie, but Lord Lloyd Weber's musical shrapnel will lodge itself into your brain. I'll wake up in the middle of the night, look at the clock to figure out what time it is, and--BAM--some shit about angels of music and darkness starts chiming in my head. It's horrible.
  
  
• I happened to catch the last 40 or so minutes of Shattered Glass on HBO yesterday. Have you people seen this movie? God, I love it. I'd forgotten just how great it is and how brilliant it is that a film about ethics in journalism can be that compelling. With that in mind, check out this piece that Stephen Glass co-wrote for Slate back in '97.
  It's a consumer piece, testing out just how reliable this new-fangled Amazon.com is, but it's filled with eye-raising details that (in hindsight) are shaaaady. For instance, Glass calls Borders, gets service-person Drew on the line and asks if they have Scott Turow's latest novel and if they'll send it to him. "When asked to send the Turow, Drew groaned at our lowbrow taste, but quickly said he'd send it the next day." He groaned at your lowbrow taste? At a chain bookstore that has its own section devoted to hawking Chicken Soup for the Soul? Right.
  
  
• Slate's annual "Movie Club" (wherein David Edelstein moderates a bunch of cranky film critics as they discuss the year in film) begins tomorrow. Huzzah. Participants include: Chuck and Steph from Salon.com, Wes Morris of The Boston Globe, Scott Foundas from LA Weekly, and Armond White. Yes, Armond White. Prepare for some Million Dollar Baby hatred and Spanglish love.