That's what I thought, too, Suzi. So sad. But he battled it for a long time.

Also, what Jessica said.

My sister IM'ed me about it and I thought she must have misread one of the articles about his cancer/leave of absence. Wow.

Yeah, I saw the first RIP post on Facebook and was like what are you talking about, and then I saw the articles from yesterday, and then she quoted me the Tweet, and dammit.

Wow, that was fast! Except for how he's been fighting cancer for a long time. But I saw a post from him on my RSS feed just a couple of days ago...

It's sad, but I'm glad it was fast and he didn't have time to dwell on being unable to write.

Like P-C said, I didn't always agree with him, and sometimes on things he didn't like I thought he was belligerently NOT GETTING IT to make a point. But I always liked reading him. And watching him and Gene on Sneak Previews (and other incarnations) was always fun. I will miss him. When he loved something, he really loved it and was very expressive of why he did.

Although he was still dead wrong on The Phantom Menace being a great movie. Ce la vi. RIP Roger.

All the buzz about End of Watch was true. Damn, that was a good movie.

All the buzz about End of Watch was true. Damn, that was a good movie.

I saw that preview a gazillion times (due mostly to how many times I saw The Avengers), so I got burned out on it just from the trailer. It looked extremely tense.

I don't think I ever saw a trailer for it. I just kept reading about it. It's actually not an extremely tense movie, except for some scenes. But it's so engrossing that I would have watched those two cops do anything. Like, literally, if there had been a scene of them reading the phone book, I wouldn't have cared because I liked them so much.

Dang, seriously, the trailer made it look like everyone was about to be shot by a drug kingpin at any moment. Wedding? Drug kingpin. Birth of your kid? Drug kingpin. Buying some socks? YOU BETTER BELIEVE IT.

(Okay, the socks thing was not in the trailer.)

Ha ha ha, it is totally not like that, but I can believe that the trailers would sell it that way. Here's a sneak peek at my review.

End of Watch got a lot of buzz last year, and I had been intrigued, but once I found out Anna Kendrick was in it, I made actual plans to watch it. And, Jesus, I'm glad I did. At first, it seems like Just Another Cop Drama, so who needs it? Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña are street cops in South Central. It's not a glamorous position; they're not solving murders or anything. They drive around and respond to calls and help people and get shot at. It's a shit job, but they believe in it. From Gyllenhaal's opening monologue, you know these are good cops, not the usual corrupt ones you always see. The movie is presented as a combination of found footage (Gyllenhaal is shooting a project for film class, and we also see footage from others) and traditional film, which allows writer/director David Ayer to get the intimacy of the found-footage format without being completely restricted by its POV. The heart of the movie is the relationship between the two partners (and their relationships with their significant others). There is a plot that slowly builds throughout the movie as they look into gang wars and drug trafficking, but, surprisingly, the plot was not what kept me going. I became so engrossed in their lives that about halfway through the movie, I just didn't want it to end. I wanted to watch them do anything. Go to the store, attend a quinceañara, joke about sex. It wasn't narrative momentum; it was character momentum. At a certain point, I realized that if either one of them—or both, for fuck's sake—died, I would be in tears, that's how attached I had become to them after such a short time. I applaud any film that can draw me into its world so strongly, even when that world is our own. A-