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.