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I'm Dana Stevens, and this is the Slate Culture GabFest, phoning it in edition.

It's Wednesday, December 29th, 2010, and on today's program, we are going to talk about

the new Sophia Coppola

movie Somewhere, a wrap-up of the year in television featuring GabFest Darling, June Thomas, and New Year's resolutions. Do we make them? Do we keep them? Do we care about them? Joining me is Slate for an editor, June Thomas. Hey, June. Hey, Dana. And our host, Stephen Metcalfe, will be joining us for the next segment, but for our first segment on the Sophia Coppulam movie Somewhere, we are joined

from his basement in Washington, D.C. by Dan Koyce. Hey, Dan. Hi, everyone. And Dan, as all of you who listen to spoilers know, is a critic for The Washington Post, also for occasionally for Slate. And where else, Dan? For the village voice.

And we're very happy to have you here to talk about somewhere because Dan, you and I wanted to spoil somewhere when it opened last week and when I reviewed it. And we weren't able to schedule it because of the holidays. And we sort of were sad to let that one go. And now you get to come in and speak your peace on somewhere. I'm so happy about that. Finally, I will have a captive audience to listen to me, yell about somewhere.

Okay, so let's get started with our yelling.

So the three of us, June, Dan and I, we've all

seen somewhere, and I gather that you guys did not like the movie. I kind of hated it,

and then I went home. I read A.O. Scott's review in the Times. I saw the comments that were so, I mean, A.O. Scott gave it an absolute – what would we call it, like a love song. He wrote a love song to the movie in his review. He called it a poem, right? He said this movie feels like a poem. The movie that he described in his review sounded so great. I wished I had seen that movie. I loved his review. Yeah, I wanted to see that movie, but the movie that I saw, I hated. Then I read the comments on the New York Times website and I thought, okay, I don't want to be that kind of person. I don't want to be the kind of person who thinks that movie critics love obscure movies and that real people need to say that, oh, this is the emperor's new clothes.

You know, you guys just are sending up a smokescreen or something.

So now I'm quite conflicted.

So I need...

But isn't there a way to not love somewhere without doing an emperor's new clothes on it?

Okay, wait, let's get Dan's reaction first.

Dan.

...