love actually

There are different lines of thinking when it comes to putting up your Christmas tree — some families wait until the day after Thanksgiving, some until the first day of December. In recent years, I’ve taken to waiting until the first Love Actually hot take inevitably hits the internet. 14 years later, the critical debate over Richard Curtis’ festive rom-com has become a holiday tradition in its own right, and now we’re getting even more Love Actually to love…or hate.

This morning’s big Oscar nominations announcement had to contend with an even more major and affecting piece of breaking news. A few days after David Bowie passed into the next dimension, cancer has taken another sixty-nine-year-old Brit from us: esteemed actor Alan Rickman. Flip to the word “arch” in the newest editions of the Oxford Goes To Hollywood dictionary, and there you’ll find a photo of Rickman, single eyebrow raised, his tone of dour bemusement audible even from the printed page. The man gained the most international recognition from a choice role in a certain franchise about a boy wizard, but he was an actor of boundless versatility who gifted audiences plenty of fond moviegoing memories.

David Letterman has announced his retirement from the Late Show. The last original episode will be May 20, 2015. And Friday begins the end of the show.