Good Lord, I'd almost think you were listening to me

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Friday Night Lights were both up in the ratings last night.

Now that's more like it!

Gee, what do you suppose they're trying to sell this film on?

Honestly, I don't know which I find more offensive. That a film with this poster is rated PG-13...

...or that according to this review, the name of the bitchy cheerleader squad in this rather obvious knockoff of Bring It On is "The Panthers."

Damn it, the Panthers is the name of the best damn high school football team in Texas...

John Mayer is a funny, funny guy

And yes, that's irony.

Oh, yikes

Do you ever get the feeling that Jessica Simpson died a long time ago and now only her boobs are keeping her from falling down?

This joke writes itself, so just, you know, have fun

Senator Chris Buttars from Utah is infamous for his racially-charged, hateful and insensitive remarks, but he's really gone overboard this time.

He's featured in a new documentary about Proposition 8 entitled 8: The Morman Proposition and spews discriminatory slime the entire time.

"They're [gay people] probably the greatest threat to America going down I know of."

!!

Like I say, have fun...

Just as a test: Please tell me in comments which of these videos you watch, if any.

Friday the 13th jigsaw Part III: A New Dimension In Terror...

The missing pieces...

2. We see a detective in a vicious fight with a killer's helper, a woman, who leaves him for dead until he angrily shouts after her and she turns and walks back to him...

...is a scene from Saw III.





For a flick which includes clockwork racks that slowly twist people's limbs off, it's saying something that a woman simply tilting her head may be the most chilling moment.

The detective, BTW, is played by Donnie Wahlberg, the then once and future; now present New Kid on the block.

4. The evil killer is ambushed by the FBI and exploded into many parts...and that's the first thing that happens.

...is the opening scene from Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday. It's the first and last (at least, intentionally) fun thing that happens in the whole picture.

But it is kinda fun. It starts out looking like a scene that could've come from any of the first fistful of Fridays:

Young woman, lights go out, takes shower. Jason attacks, chases her through the woods. Then when they reach a large clearing, suddenly flood lights go on--and Jason is surrounded by FBI sharpshooters who open fire, dropping a bomb on him from above just to be on the safe side.

As I say, it's kinda fun. Unfortunately, the movie is 87 minutes long.

5. A woman who, as a child, played in one of the only later parts of a thriller series worth a damn, plays a girl almost half her age in a remake of the first.

...is a fun fact from Halloween (the 2007 version). The woman is who was in 4 and 5 as a child before returning to play in Rob Zombie's adaptation as an adult.
She'll also be in Zombie's sequel, which unlike his Halloween has a chance of being greater than its source. It being not exactly difficult to be a better movie than Halloween II, which brings me to:

6. A nurse is drowned in a (scalding) hot tub.

...would be a scene from Halloween II (directed by Rick Rosenthal).

Fun facts: Lance Guest, seen a few years ago on an episode of House, but known to fans of silly, enjoyable Sci-Fi as the lead in Last Starfighter plays a hapless would-be savior in this movie. How hapless? Well, he's taken out of the picture when he slips on a pool of blood...

The director of Last Starfighter played The Shape in the first Halloween movie.

Unfortunately for Guest, this would not be the worst horror sequel in which he would appear...

7. An actor who will go on to be a star in a popular television series is about to kill a man. Asked why, he answers, "It's the rules." And then another man, despite having been shot recently, beats him to death.

Is a scene from Saw ; the actor in question is Michael Emerson, now better known for starring on Lost in the role of Benjamin Linus. You gotta love that character name--part mine, part that of my favorite blanket-clinger.

I don't watch Lost, which may be for the best because at this point, I still can't look at Emerson without hearing "It's the rules." See for yourself. Oh, BTW, as ever:

If you haven't seen Saw and think there's a chance you ever might, don't watch this clip.

9. A magic ritual is disrupted when the virgin recruited for it turns out to be, well, not so much of a virgin as she at first said...

...is a scene from Monster Squad.

11. A cherished boyhood icon is raped.

Well I'm not surprised you didn't get that, it was in fact a trick question.

12. A dapper movie star spanks a woman in public, in order to create a distraction so another woman and a baby can hide.

On the director's commentary it says that actress was calling up all her girlfriends and telling them:

"I'm going to be spanked by Clive Owen!"

And:

13. You know all those movies and television shows you've seen where a character is locked into a room with the walls closing together? They always manage to stop the walls or get out before being crushed, don't they? ...Not this time.

Bye...

Boiling down the numbers

Shorter version of a new poll via Talking Points Memo-DC:

Those friendly Canadians

They sure know how to give A President a warm welcome.

I mean, now that we have one.

For once, a post on Kate Winslet that isn't all about her running around buck naked and curvy

Because Time, you see, has an article about her. Excerpts:

If she is fatigued, she never betrays it. An eager, insistent clot of people pushes toward her, and somehow she manages to greet each well-wisher with a fractional recalibration of body language that suggests a wordless surge of elated surprise on her part: Oh, it's you! You're the one I've been most hoping to see, and how wonderful that we share that secret knowledge! To achieve this effect, Winslet must appear, at every minute, to be not only the most interesting person in the room but also the most interested. This is not easy, and she does it very well. People walk away feeling glowy, sated and privileged. She has made them feel that way, and not out of actressy affectation, but because right now, it's her job.

Movie stars have projects built around them; Winslet seeks out movies in which she can serve a director or story by becoming an essential support beam in the film's overall architecture. Movie stars usually want more — more words, more screen time, more veto power; she wants less. When the playwright and screenwriter Doug Wright worked with her on Quills in 2000, he recalls, Winslet told him "with great tact, 'Doug, I'd never say a word against your writing, but this line? This one here? ... I don't have to say it. I can do it with my eyes.' It was the best lesson in screenwriting I've ever been given."

For any actors who may be looking in: This is precisely the right way to start a conversation with any writer...

Shawnee Smith: I've run out of reasons why.

I hate to do this so soon after chiding Eliza Dushku for pandering, but...

Y'know, not only is Friday Night Lights a really good show which you should be watching anyway...but, it does have some of the sexier ladies on television, too.

So, watch. If you do, Minka Kelly will cheer you on.*












*Minka Kelly is not actually guaranteed to cheer you on.

Well I'll be damned

Ok, so sometimes I'm slow. You're all well familiar with the fact I think two of the best TV shows of the past couple years are Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Life, yes? Fine.

(Although actually...the second season of Life has me about ready to throw up my hands and give up on it. It's not a swan dive as bad as Huff's second season, but...however, I digress.)

Anyway, I only just now realized that Garret Dillahunt, the actor who plays the Terminator-turned-supercomputer (if you watched the show, you'd know what that meant) on TSCC...

...also played Roman, a sociopathic, human trafficking and murdering villain who recurred on Life.

Go figure.

What I'm saying is, he's good.

(Though what's weird is, he actually seems more trustworthy as the cyborg...)

These pictures of Eliza Dushku in her underwear for Maxim leave me feeling oddly cold

Lord knows, it's not that I have anything against Eliza's skin, I don't (all together now: More's the pity). I just think these pictures look too "posed" for cheesecake, lacking playful or light-heartedness, a sense of mischief.

Also, I kinda hate to see someone who I actually think is capable of being a good actress when she has good material reduced to this kind of pandering.

But that's just one fella's opinion.

The face of the uninsured.

Dear John McCain...

When you're being booed at sporting events in your home state...maybe it's time to retire.

Do you know how you turn an unremarkable romantic comedy into my new favorite film...ever?

You cast as your male lead, a "Bronx baker with an explosive temper," one Costas Mandylor.

Who was then just a couple of years away from playing Detective Hoffman, Jigsaw's apprentice in the latter half (so far) of the Saw franchise.

You have no idea how twisted a film can become when seen from that point of view.

Or maybe you do.

Further:

Via TPM, CNN seems to think it's news that GOP Senators would say Obama is "Off to a bad start."

The rest of the country, meanwhile, just insists upon continuing to like Obama. And they don't like the GOP.

Just so we're clear.

I like what Obama has to say...

...in this interview with the National Journal Magazine.

He was insistent that a president's responsibility is to resist the daily (if not hourly) scorekeeping of the modern political and media system and keep his eye on the horizon. "My job is to help the country take the long view," he said. Obama portrayed himself as willing to consider a broad range of perspectives for responding to the country's daunting problems -- "We're going to... work with anybody who wants to work with us constructively," he said at one point -- and open to adjusting his own course to bring others along or simply to respond to evidence that his ideas aren't working. But repeatedly he declared that no one should interpret that to mean he lacks any clarity about his goals: "My consistent bottom line is: How do we make sure that the American people can work, have a decent income, look after their kids and we can grow the economy." Any compromises or course corrections, he argued, must serve those overriding priorities.

Let's kill 'em.

Those gay folks sure do sound scary. They must go around making all sorts of wrongheaded claims without a shred of evidence.

Oh no wait...

A song, a scene, and a submission

This is the song. It was a hit single, and so you've probably heard it before, (but) in this case I was reminded by something you're about to see in a minute of the lyrics:

Politician grannie with your high ideals
But you've no idea how the majority feels
So outlawed in the promised land...

This is a scene from The West Wing. It's just fantastic.



And this is an entry from Huffington (by Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake) about the mainstream media and how they seem much more intent on--what they only think is--"bipartisanship" than do, say, the rest of us.

There appears to be a pretty big gap between what DC journalists think Americans think, and what Americans actually think. No better example of this can be found than the "winners" and "losers" that DC media are proclaiming in the wake of the passage of the stimulus bill, and what DailyKos/Research 2000 polling on the subject indicates.

The people who live in DC, who pretend to speak for the rest of the country, have no direct experience with what is happening there -- and their attempts to handicap DC politics have more to do with the inside baseball games that seek to protect their own interests above all else.

That's going to be one beautiful-looking man

Anne Hathaway is turning into a man! Don’t jump off your seats, for the actress is just doing an open-air production of Shakespeare`s play ‘Twelth Night’, in which she cross-dresses as a male.

The ‘Princess Diaries’ actress has taken up the role of Viola, who spends most of the play disguised as a man.

The actress will make her debut on June 9 in the month-long production at Central Park`s Delacorte Theater in New York, reports Contactmusic.

Oh, to be in New York, now that the Theater season is here.

Oh, this looks (potentially) great...

Not to say: Awesome.



Then again, so did the Prequel Trilogy.

Guess I'll just have to wait to see the final product.

There's presidents worse than Bush!

Take heart, Bush Republicans. Turns out, you still have something to be proud of after all.

Quoted in full from Think Progress:

Today, C-SPAN released its second Historians Survey of Presidential Leadership, in which “65 presidential historians ranked the 42 former occupants of the White House on ten attributes of leadership.” Coming in first was Abraham Lincoln, followed by George Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, and Harry Truman. Finishing last was James Buchanan. George W. Bush came in 36th, just beating out Millard Fillmore, who ranked 37th.

Looks like Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) was wrong when, in 2007, he predicted that Bush’s “ratings among the historians will be greater than his ratings in the polls today.”