WE WILL NOT BACK DOWN ON THE FARTING BRIDGE IN "UNCLE F***A:" Dave Poland has managed to get a hold of Matt Stone's memo to the MPAA about cuts required to South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut, which is well worth a moment of your time.

I'M NOT GONNA SPEND THE REST OF MY LIFE WORKING MY ASS OFF AND GETTING NOWHERE JUST BECAUSE I FOLLOWED RULES THAT I HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH SETTING UP, OKAY? Our traditional AFI postmortem covers familiar turf, so bear with me if this sounds familiar.

But the AFI, yet again, has chosen to reify a film canon that is based on the lives and preferences of middle-aged men, and if you wanted to place high on this Top 100 list, you best not be starring a woman or a teenager.

Lord knows, it's not like I'm doing some kind of early 1990s/PC canon-wrecking exercise by introducing films that no one paid attention to the first time around and are only being introduced now for reasons of race/class/gender. But, seriously, yo? There are not a lot of inspiring heroines on that list, nor are there stories of relevance to young people.

One example to prove both points: Dirty Dancing, despite its grip on our generation, didn't make the list at all. Back to the Future, which had an inspirational-as-hell message about ingenuity and the ability to change one's life, did not make the list. Nor did Legally Blonde, to choose a pure comedy.

There's more, when I have a chance, but this is where I'm going with this one today.

THEY TOLD ME TO THROW SOME MORE COAL IN THE BOILER: Okay, so I think I've got the brand-new SYTYCD system down:

1. The judges/producers pair dancers up.
2. The judges/producers select a style for each pair.
3. The judge/producer-selected pair learn a dance in the judge/producer-selected style and perform it on the air.
4. The judges comment.
5. America votes for their favorite pair, or at least the pair containing their favorite dancer.
6. The bottom three pairs are announced on the results show.
7. The six dancers comprising the bottom three pairs dance solos for the judges.
8. The judges pick one male and one female dancer to go home.
9. If your partner wasn't eliminated, you remain with your judge/producer-selected partner indefinitely, until one or the other of you is eliminated.

And it would seem by deductive reasoning (although no one has expressly said this yet) that:

10. The dancers whose partners were eliminated become a new pair.

Got it? This is, of course, a total 180 from last season, during which partnerships were random and forged anew each week, dance styles were chosen at random, the judges picked the bottom three couples, and America selected the bottom two based on the subsequent solos.

There's a one-word reason why they've made these changes: Blake. Blake, for those of you who aren't quite the SYTYCD historian that I am, was last season's clearly delineated frontrunner until he randomly drew his own preferred style -- lyrical -- week after week and was randomly partnered with the same couple of partners week in and week out. Although Blake doing lyrical was magnificent to behold, it got a little old by the umpteenth consecutive week, especially when other dancers (like eventual winner Nick) had the chance to show their versatility every week with a different partner and a different style.

So the new system theoretically prevents the problems with the old system. But of course, as with all planned economies, the new system comes with its own set of problems. And frankly, the new problem could easily have been averted, so I'm a little surprised at how tonight went down.

Most of the partnerships seem to have been based on the pairing of people with complementary strengths and weaknesses. Benji the Mormon Swinger and Donyelle the Jazz/Hip-Hopper (whose pairing could not possibly have been more actively pimped by the producers), Musa the Untrained Break Dancer and Natalie the Heavily Trained Lyrical Dancer, Ben the Contemporary Specialist and Ashlee the Popping Specialist, and so forth. Here's where the problem comes in. In nearly all cases, the dance style assigned to each pair was at least somewhat familiar to at least one of the dancers. So wholesome Benji had to do a raunchy Shane Sparks hip hop routine, but Donyelle was in her element, and Benji could feed off of her. Erin the jazz dancer had no idea how to do partnered ballroom dancing, but Stanislav the ballroom guy got her through the paso doble. In the few cases where the style was entirely new to both partners, the combined inexperience inevitably showed through, and the judges slammed them for it. Best example: Ben and Ashlee doing 80s disco (that's a genre?) when he'd never done a lift and she's a popper. It just seemed odd to me that you wouldn't either screw every couple with something brand new or throw every couple a bit of a bone by ensuring that at least one person had a clue. I guess that once you get rid of the more marginal dancers, this will be less of an issue, but I did find it rather jarring tonight.

Most enjoyable of the night: a tie between Benji/Donyelle's hip hop routine and Travis/Martha's Broadway Baby version of "Steam Heat."

PEOPLE WANT LEADERSHIP, MR. PRESIDENT, AND IN THE ABSENCE OF GENUINE LEADERSHIP, THEY'LL LISTEN TO ANYONE WHO STEPS UP TO THE MICROPHONE. THEY WANT LEADERSHIP. THEY'RE SO THIRSTY FOR IT THEY'LL CRAWL THROUGH THE DESERT TOWARD A MIRAGE, AND WHEN THEY DISCOVER THERE'S NO WATER, THEY'LL DRINK THE SAND: This thread is open for all talk of the AFI "100 Years, 100 Cheers" as it happens.

We'll try to keep the face of the site spoiler-free tonight, but once you're in the comments, everything is fair game.

edited to add: And here's your final list. Have you seen ninety-seven films more inspiring than The Karate Kid?

THEY'RE SO VERY SPECIAL: Okay, I'll admit it -- I've never really gotten Radiohead, other than "Creep". Anyone care to explain what I'm missing, and whether/how to dive in?

THEY MAY NOT GET YOU JOBS EVEN IF THEY'RE YOURS: Courtesy of Althouse, here's an interesting WaPo article about D-cup discrimination on Broadway. Apparently the Bs are golden and the Cs are safe, but the Ds are SOL in a post-Fosse world.

FERRIS BUELLER, YOU'RE MY HERO: Since this week approaches the third anniversary of Alex's foray into list-blogging, that means that it's time for our fourth annual prediction/dissection of the American Film Institute's "100 Years, 100 [Something]"which will take up three hours of CBS listmaking and programming tomorrow night.

This year, it's "100 Years, 100 Cheers" for the Most Inspirational Movies Ever, and here are the 300 nominated films.

So who's going to be up in the top ten, folks? Here's five I'm comfortable predicting as close-to-locks: Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, Pride of the Yankees, The Shawshank Redemption, Rocky and It's A Wonderful Life. If the world were a just one, Hoosiers would be in the top ten, but since it isn't, I'll wager with anyone that Dead Poet's Society tops it on the list. One of the Jimmy Stewart ones wins the whole thing.

No matter how sucky the ultimate list is, it's always a good night of television (and blogging). For our previous coverage:

• 2003 - Heroes and Villains
• 2004 - Film Songs
• 2005 - Greatest Quotes