Burying the lede

Via Obscure Store comes this tale of a man hit by the Girls Gone Wild bus in Iowa City. Which begs the question, what the hell is the Girls Gone Wild bus doing in Iowa City?

Genius. Sheer and utter genius.

Not actually love, actually

Rodrigo Santoro is joining the cast of Lost. The only place you may remember him from is Love, Actually, in which he played the object of Laura Linney's workplace crush.

When we saw that movie, we found ourselves sitting in front of some little old ladies and so we held our breath in anticipation of the nigh-inevitable mid-film chatter. Lucky for us, they actually knew how to behave during a movie and were silent throughout..except for one incident which was too funny to get mad at.

You see, there's a fairly intimate scene in the movie between Linney and Santoro. Early in this sequence, as the camera lingered on Santoro, we heard one of the pepperpots say, "Oh, he's gorgeous." And, well, I imagine he is, if you go for that sort of thing, so no harm, no foul.

A few minutes later, Santoro is down to his black designer skivvies. And in response, the same pepperpot announces to the theatre, "Oh, he's really gorgeous!"

We tried, as best we could, to keep our convulsive laughter silent.

The Office: The Webisodes

Precisely two people on the planet will understand why I both laughed and cringed at this bit from a review of NBC's online mini-episodes of The Office:

The Accountants is a particularly good showcase for Brian Baumgartner, who plays the fat and enigmatic Kevin. Baumgartner's body splits the difference between Dilbert's and Sydney Greenstreet's, and he lets all kinds of sweet and creepy smiles play out on his sly lips. He seems like the kind of guy who would procrastinate by watching this show in his polyester work space and then blow off the rest of the afternoon trying to dream up something better.

Our next President

...at least on 24, will be Wayne Palmer, brother of the late former President David Palmer. I can't say this is a development that thrills me; 24 has done far too much with of playing musical Presidents, and it's hard to picture Wayne as being suited for the job after watching him screw up one thing after another during Season Three. Plus, it would have been nice to see some more of Ray Wise, who did a good job with very little to do it with in the relatively thankless role of playing Vice President Gardner last season; the character only existed as a red herring, but Wise gave Gardner some real depth in just a few episodes.

Still, if the creators of 24 felt like they had to go this route, I wish they'd at least have set Day Six on the day of inauguration, and somehow worked the shift in administrations into the plot. We've seen any number of scenarios in which an unplanned change of leadership has wreaked havoc in a crisis situation; why not explore how a shift that everyone on the planet knows is coming can change things this time around?

Law & Order in order

This is nifty: A graphic timeline of who's been on Law & Order over the years. It's suprising to see how long Jessie L. Martin's been on the show; for some reason I still think of him as the new guy. And I'm always sad to be reminded of what a short run Carrie Lowell had as Jack McCoy's assistant...

About bloody damn time

Waking the Dead, a superbly and subtly done BBC forensic drama, is finally coming out on DVD in the US. We've been watching on BBC America, but the episodes are dramatically edited down to fit the time alotted (for some reason, BBCA has no problems putting comedies in 40-minute slots to avoid cutting them, but has no compunctions about trimming dramas down to fit into an hour or two-hour slot). So while we enjoy it a great deal, we often have to do an episode post-mortem on the couch to figure out exactly how the case was resolved.

The show is described at the link above as a "British CSI," but it's much closer in concept to the bland Cold Case. Like CSI, however, the eccentric lead detective inexplicably grows a rather ugly beard between the third and fourth seasons of the show.

The streets will flow with the blood of the nonbelievers; or, The Flash on DVD

We just finished watching the pilot episode of the 1990-1991 Flash TV series that aired on CBS. At the time, I hadn't realized just how violent it was. I think more police officers were killed in the 90 minutes of that pilot than in the entire history of real-life American law enforcement.

And a funny sign of the times: The Flash, in his secret identity, is police scientist Barry Allen, who doesn't get much respect from his fellow police and isn't considered a "real" cop by his father. Poor Barry was ahead of his time; ten years later or so, and he'd be one among dozens of forensic cops on the network...

Insert "Thing" pun of your choice here

I certainly appreciate the dedication and creativity that this guy used to make a costume of The Thing from, uh, actual rock. But, boy, the finished product really gives Ben Grimm some monster cameltoe action, doesn't it?

Very short Batman: Dark Detective review

Well, THAT was depressing.

Slightly longer review: It's very possible for something to be very well-done and yet end on such a downbeat note that you feel like crap after reading it. This is one of those things.

Laws of Attraction

Julianne Moore is one of the best dramatic actresses working today. She is also one of the most beautiful women on the planet. She is not, however, funny. And yet there's something endrearing about just how hard she works when she's in a comedy, which is surprisingly often considering that her strengths lie elsewhere; as a result, her comedies are one of my guilty moviewatching pleasures.

Laws of Attraction, starring Moore and Pierce Brosnan, is a case in point. Moore and Brosnan star as divorce lawyers who, through a series of wacky hijinks that are not particularly wacky nor high nor even jinksish wind up married to one another in the midst of a case in which each is representing half of a divorcing couple. As a high concept, it's not an awful one, and the filmmakers were clearly trying to make something in the spirit of a 1930s screwball comedy, but the movie doesn't make a lick of sense and the actors' considerable charms are nowhere near enough to cover gaping holes in plot and logic.

It does have some scenes that were shot on location in Ireland. I hope everyone involved had a nice time.

For the love of all that's holy...

...would someone PLEASE give Kiera Knightly a cheeseburger? She looks like she could turn in the wrong direction and put some innocent bystander's eye out at any moment.

Snort.

I think this might be my favorite comics message board comment ever.

X-Men: Evolution

Lately we've been catching up with X-Men: Evolution via Netflix. This cartoon's a curious specimen; the high concept -- "It's the X-Men! And they're in high school!" -- sounds like the kind of thing a TV executive trying to appeal to The Young People would come up with after a three-martini lunch. But what could have been goofy instead has a charming earnestness to it, the character designs are stylized in a fun way, and the missteps (such as "Spyke," the lamest character ever) are outweighed by the good bits.

The DVDs, in lieu of commentaries, feature episode introductions by the creators of the series. Amusingly, they all look like they should be members of the Syracuse Chamber of Commerce, not animators. That greatly entertains me, for some reason, and I like the idea of these guys knowing what they're trying to do and working really, really hard to do it well.

The movie.

I liked it.

It wasn't Superman: The Movie, but what could be? Oddly, the very things that gave me pause prior to seeing the movie, and still make me wonder how the hell they could ever make a sequel to Superman Returns, are also the things I like. The temptation with this sort of a movie, I think, often is to do an impersonal, respectful take that hits the right notes but doesn't actually DO anything. But the weirder aspects of the movie -- and I'll steer clear of saying anything too spoilerish for now -- also make it a much more idiosyncratic and personal and affecting story. I'm not sure it works or holds together or makes a great deal of sense, but it's got its own point of view and perspective beneath the set pieces and special effects and that gives it a charge that it might otherwise have lacked. It reminds me more of something like Kurt Busiek's Superman: Secret Identity or one of the weird Elliot S! Maggin Superman annuals from the early 80s than a "normal" Superman story. And that's a good thing.

I say all of this as someone who was deeply, deeply skeptical of this movie all through the production process; most of the dribs and drabs of information we got were as likely to fill me with dread as anticipation. Nevertheless: I liked it, and I recommend it, and I recommend going in with an open mind.

The suit.

Like a lot of comics fans, I was underwhelmed by the first images of the Superman suit for the new movie. The collar was too high, the reds were too dark -- approaching brown in some shots from some angles -- the boots were needlessly fussy, the texture on the blue was weird, the seams were too big and too bold, the embossed, raised "S" wasn't right.

In still photos, all of these things are true.

In motion, on a big movie screen, the damn thing actually works, for the most part. The dark red isn't the stopping point it looks like in photos, the texture on the blue looks line, the seams fade away almost to nothing, and the "S" looks no more or less weird or wonky than, say, Gil Kane's stylised rendition as compared to something like Jerry Ordway's more mainline one.

The one early complaint that still holds is the belt buckle. For some reason, instead of leaving the belt alone, with the simple yellow oval buckle of the comics and previous movie costumes, the designers chose to replace it with a miniature version of the "S" logo.

It doesn't work. It's not awful, but it's distracting and silly and breaks up the look of the costume in a number of key scenes, mainly because the "holes" in the logo are colored red. If it were a solid yellow, it probably wouldn't matter, or even be much noticed, but as is it's a pretty weird costume element.

Still, given my early apprehensions, the suit was a very pleasant surprise.

28 Years Later

I'm pretty sure Superman: The Movie was the first movie I ever saw in a movie theater; if I'm wrong about that, I never want to be corrected. When it came out in 1978, I was three. I don't remember a single thing about seeing the movie that first time, except that when I got home I started running around in my Superman underoos (eventually my grandmother to made me a red cape with an "S" to go with it). Since then, I've seen the movie at least a hundred times on TV or video, which is not so awful when you break that down over thirty years. So you could say I've seen it a lot, and could hum the theme music by John Williams more or less in my sleep.

And, boy, is that theme about as close to perfect as any movie music has ever been.

And last night, sitting in the weird multiplex in the middle of nowhere, hearing that theme used again in the opening sequence of the new movie in a darkened theatre in full surround sound, I felt goosebumps that I didn't even know I had. I felt like that little kid who didn't quite get that Superman: The Movie wasn't a documentary -- hell, I'm STILL not quite convinced of that -- all over again.

As I've said: Best. Wife. Ever.

What makes someone the Best Wife Ever? Stuff like this:

Last night at 9:41 pm I remembered that there were 10pm screenings of Superman Returns. It was far too late to try to make even the closest theatre to our house.

So Best Wife Ever, a.k.a. She Who Must Be Obeyed, decided that going to a late premiere on a weeknight was the kind of thing we don't do enough of anymore since we got older and less irresponsible got online and found an 11 pm screening at a weird multiplex in the middle of nowhere and we hopped in the car and saw the movie.

More about which later.

But for now: Best. Wife. Ever.

I am shocked, yes, SHOCKED!

My faith in HGTV has been shaken to its core by this first-hand account of what it's really like to go on the inaptly named FreeStyle:

The show's premise is that you can redecorate a room and solve all of your design problems absolutely free . By simply rearranging existing furniture, bringing in overlooked treasures from other rooms and getting rid of whatever is deemed unnecessary (and unattractive), anyone can create a photo-worthy habitat. The idea was even cheaper than yet another HGTV hit, "Design on a Dime." In my case, according to the HGTV Web site, designers would pull off "a dramatic new look without spending a dime!"

Well, okay, so maybe a dime. During the audition phase, the producer allowed as how the reality show really does budget $200 or so to spend on each apartment. I promised not to mention this during my fleeting appearances on camera.

One other thing: Prior to giving me the green light, the same producer confirmed with me several times that I would be willing to spend my own money on an additional piece of furniture of the designer's choosing. It seemed that absolutely free would be an abstract notion from the get-go.
[...]

I learned a few design tricks as the day progressed. For instance, books are primarily visual props, not meant for reference or reading. They should be placed in random horizontal, vertical and diagonal patterns in a bookcase for maximum visual stimulation. Forget genre; books should be arranged strictly by size. Every table should have two or three books of bright colors "carelessly" lying on it, along with an empty knickknack box and a mini bouquet of fresh roses.

In the end, I hated it. The room was double-stuffed with furniture, leaving almost no floor space left to walk on. Every other room of the apartment was nearly empty. Apparently, the designer had something against fireplaces and bay windows, the very features that led me to rent the place, because she hid one behind the daybed and the other behind a sofa. But she was pleased with the result: more seating for Washington-style entertaining.

After the cameras stopped rolling at 10:30 p.m., my sense of self and voice returned. I asked the burly guys to move half the furniture out of the living room and back to where I actually needed it. While the decorator pouted, adorable cameraman Andy helped me move everything around and came up with a final design that I liked. Alas, the real interior design will never be on the air.

Targeted advertising

Ever since I read Wired's article about the guys trying to reverse engineer Netflix so they can use it for porn, I've been paying more attention to the packaging our movies arrive in. Netflix has been selling ad space on the inside of the detachable flap on its envelopes for a while, but today I noticed that the ads seemed to be tailored to the movies they came with. X-Men: Evolution got a Superman Returns ad, while Scrubs came with an ad for Adam Sandler's upcoming movie. Not the sharpest targeting, but still interesting to note. Perhaps the porn guys will also notice, and put this principle to use...