So I'm a juror. I was called in for jury duty this week-- I had actually been called in originally back in the summer, and I postponed because of a variety of work bullshit. So I showed up at 8:30 Wednesday morning at one of the Queens County courthouses, along with 500 or so of my fellow dullards. Seriously, there are some epic stupid people in my county. They have to tell these people everything 37 times, and they still don't get it. Morons.

Anyway, I sat in the huge holding room and read my Klosterman book for about three hours, before my name was finally called and I wandered across the street to the real courthouse with a group of 50 or so. We were supposed to stick together, so I started remembering faces along with names to help me remember them-- Yankess cap, Jew-fro, other Yankees camp, Problem-Solving Gangster (this guy who looked like John Gotti, but saw that all fifty of us were trying to squeeze through one door, so he was the one guy smart enough to open up the adjoining door), and Fat Deaf Lady (this irritating woman who let the officer get through his entire speech and ask for questions before saying, "Yes, I only heard about half of what you said," making him repeat the whole thing in a louder and more exasperated voice).

Once we filed into the courtroom, they told us about the case, and since (according to them) it would be a relatively straight-forward and short trial (couple of days max) I immediately hoped I'd get on the jury. You see, Rebekah did this whole rigamarole a while back, and she had to spend like the first three days bouncing back and forth between the holding room and the waiting panel before finally getting on a jury. The first half of my day had been so irritating, I decided I'd much rather just get on an easy one and get it over with.

So yeah, I'm on the jury, so there's that. I finally get to fulfill a life-long dream: playing the Henry Fonda part in "12 Angry Men". I'm already learning my lines!

The End.

I haven't kept up the movie journal like I meant to, mainly because the reviewing gig for DVD Talk has pretty much taken over my at-home viewing habits. But if you'd like to check some of those out, here's some helpful, handy links:

Inside Bob Dylan's Jesus Years: Busy Being Born... Again!
Run Fatboy Run
The Robert Drew Kennedy Films Collection
Muhammad Ali: Made In Miami
Body of War - The True Story of an Anti-Hero
Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis: Live from Jazz at Lincoln Center New York City 
The F Word
James Brown: Double Dynamite!
The Good Life
Scrubs: The Complete Seventh Season
The Cosby Show: 25th Anniversary Commemorative Edition
These are mostly ones that I got from the screener pool; I'm basically trying to rack up a lot of reviews right out of the chute so that I can have the chance to review some higher-profile releases and Blu-ray discs. But, luckily, these were all discs that I had at least a passing interest in, and the last two are ones I probably would have bought anyway, so yeah, I guess I'm starting to at least save money doing this, if not make money.

How I Met Your Mother: Season 1
How I Met Your Mother: Season 2
How I Met Your Mother: Season 3
I had picked up seasons 1 and 2 for cheap a few months back, but we had not gotten around to watching them; it's full of people we like, and some folks we trust had recommended it. So the new release of season 3 had come up in the screener pool, and I grabbed it--realizing that I'd have no idea what was going on unless we watched the two previous seasons first. Luckily for me, my wife remains a) understanding of me being a dork, and b) always up for a television challenge, so we watched the entirety of season 1 over one weekend, season 2 the next, and season 3 the third. Then last weekend we watched this season's episodes on iTunes. We're all caught up! Oh, and if you haven't picked up from the enthusiasm with which we devoured 25 or so hours of this show, it's one of our new favorites.

Synecdoche, New York
Changeling
JCVD
There's a couple of guys at DVD Talk who handle most of the theatrical reviews, and they're both very good; they're also apparently plugged into the advance screening circuit. So about the only time I can get a jump on them is when flicks do a limited release, opening in NYC first. That was the case with these three movies, which are among the best I've seen this fall. And yes, that includes the Jean Claude Van Damme movie.

Zack and Miri Make A Porno
Kevin Smith's latest is laugh-out-loud funny, and raunchy without being tasteless in a way that few other filmmakers can pull off (Apatow is about the only other guy who comes to mind). He's also got a winning cast here; it's news to no one that Seth Rogen is funny and engaging, and I've been a fan of sexy, funny Elizabeth Banks for years.The funniest performance in the film, however, is Craig Robinson (of The Office, Knocked Up, and Pineapple Express), who steals every damn scene he's in. Smith only gets into trouble when he starts to take his love story too seriously; the nimbleness with which he went dramedy in the third act of Chasing Amy eludes him here, and he barely saves the film from its own clunky ending. Worth seeing, but a bit of a disappointment.

How To Lose Friends and Alienate People
Frequently funny (and sometimes repulsive) comedy from regualr Curb Your Enthusiasm director Robert B. Weide, who brings that show's sense of social awkwardness to the tale of social-climbing magazine writer Sidney Young (based on the memoir of Vanity Fair profiler Toby Young). Simon Pegg is killer funny in the leading role, while Kirsten Dunst does some fine work as hs co-worker who loathes him--at first. It's forumla stuff, but done with enough style and subversion to keep your interest.

The End.

A few weeks back, when polling was favoring McCain (remember that?), I put up a post about how I had to back away from my obsessive-compulsive election-race media consumption, so I stopped thinking and talking and writing and worrying about the election ALL THE TIME. And I did just that, for a few days at least, until the economy went into the shitter and suddenly people realized that maybe we might like to have  a President with one of those, what do they call them, plans for the economy, and my guy got ahead in the polls and has stayed there.

Well, the election is five days away, and I'm going out of my mind again. So I've made the decision to engage in a few strong, swift actions in order to maintain my sanity for the next week:

1.       Until the election, I will only visit Daily Kos, Politico, Talking Points Memo, or Real Clear Politicsonce a day. I will only visit Huffington Post twice a day. I make no promises about Wonkette. (I will also only visit electoral-vote.com once a day, but it's only updated once a day, and the fact that I have gone to it more than once a day is a statement in and of itself).

2.       Until the election, I will continue to watch Countdown and the Rachel Maddow Show, but I'll only watch the first airing. When they hit the reruns at 10, I'll change the channel. (This isn't as insane as it sounds. I'm at work while they're on. Sometimes I'll put my earbud back in and watch something that I particularly enjoyed again during the reruns. No more!)

3.       Until the election, I will no longer share political links on Facebook. Nobody actually cares, right?

4.       Until the election, I will delete my far-right Evangelical Republican high school friend from Facebook, because as each day passes, he's posting more and more insane shit from the right-wing blogosphere, which I'm then compelled to reply to, usually after some online research. I'm tired of getting angry every time I go to Facebook, and I'm spending too much time crafting my comments. It's not that I can't be friends with Republicans; I just can't be friends with this Republican, this week. I'll re-add him after the election.

And as the final step in this cleansing process, I'm dumping all of my current political thoughts into this blog. Hopefully, if I get them out on the page, they'll stop rattling around in my head, and I can enjoy the next week like a normal, not-crazy person.

It all starts with Joe the Plumber.  Seriously, fuck Joe the Plumber.  And not because he managed to wander down the street and into the collective consciousness, and not because he's milking his 15 minutes worse than any American Idol also-ran. And also not because he's a symbol of the American working-man, like McCain wants to say. He is a symbol, yes, but not of that. What he is a symbol of is the most befuddling creature of the electorate: the lower-to-middle-class American who will fight to the death for the Republican tax philosophy that benefits him/her the least.

See, both Obama and McCain's tax plans benefit the middle class—not that you'd be able to tell from the Republican talking points this week, where they're still yammering about Democrats raising taxes even though most of the people they're talking to would see bigger tax cuts under Obama's plan than McCain's. But Obama's plan would roll back the Bush tax cuts that benefitted the wealthiest 5% of Americans, so their taxes would, in fact, increase—to the 1990s levels of 36% and 39.6% for the top two tax brackets (the 1990s, remember them? When we got the budget balanced?).

Now, back to Joe the Plumber. He worked his way into McCain's heart by approaching Obama during an Ohio neighborhood visit and telling him that he was about to buy the plumbing business where he works and was afraid that he'd pay more taxes as a result.  Here's what we've learned since(ignoring the less-than-savory details about Joe himself): in fact, Joe misunderstood Obama's tax plan, which would raise taxes 3% to those making over $250K a year. Joe thought that he would somehow qualify for the tax hike because it would cost him $250K to buy the business. He wouldn't. Oh, and it turns out he's actually nowhere near buying that business. But, you know, details, details.

What he would qualify for, as someone making (by his own admission) about $40K a year, is Obama's middle-class tax cut (about $500). And if/when he puts the coin together to buy that company, he would qualify for Obama's small business healthcare tax credit, his tax credit for new hires, and the elimination of capital gains taxes for small business. But if, somehow, someway, someday, Joe's little plumbing company managed to gross something over that quarter-mill mark, then yes, his taxes would go up 3%. You know, so other up-and-coming would-be plumbers can take advantage of those small-biz breaks, AND SO THERE'S STILL A MIDDLE CLASS THAT CAN AFFORD TO HAVE PLUMBERS COME FIX THEIR TOILETS.

But that's something like a triple-hypothetical anyway, which begs the question: why is the McCain campaign pinning its final week hopes on selling an increasingly poor nation on the notion of making sure the rich get richer? Because, simply, it's worked before. Miraculously, over the last several election cycles, the Republican Party has cultivated an immense amount of support among the poorest of Americans, in spite of the fact that the GOP is positioned consistently in opposition to their best interests, economically speaking.

Now, I realize that a number of lower-and-middle income voters are Republicans not out of economic but social interests, and I totally respect that. I don't get where they're coming from on issues like a woman's right to choose and the rights of all Americans to marry, but hey, different strokes for different folks, and that's why we've got more than one party. But what about the folks I'm talking about, the poor people that want to make sure we don't tax the rich? What's behind that illogical thinking?

Answer: the fallacy of the American Dream. The trouble is that we all want to believe that, no matter what low-paying piece of shit job we're dragging ourselves to every goddamn day, we could still, one day in the not-too-distant future, be crazy, cash-burning, MTV Cribs, spinning rims rich. And a very, very, very few of us might. But the rest of us won't, because there are only going to be so many CEOs or basketball players or NASCAR drivers or filmmakers that make it, and the rest of us will probably stay in the middle class, maybe upper-middle if we're lucky, and live very happy lives there.

But nobody really likes admitting that much, and some folks take that to the point where they're willing to ignore tax cuts now if it means keeping hold of the hypothetical riches they could maybe perhaps have one day. We're a hopeful nation, you gotta give us that.

So what do you do when you're polling behind in an election that is clearly all about the economy, and your opponent is polling far more trustworthy on the economy, and behaved exponentially more presidentially during a huge economic crisis? You rebrand his tax-cuts, first using the clever race-baiting code language of "welfare" (the black guy's gonna give all your money to the other black people!), and then, when that doesn't take, giving his tax plan the uproarious label of "socialism."

Let's be absolutely clear here: When you hear our old friend Joe the Plumber ranting about paying more when you make more, or when you hear McCain calling Obama the "redistibutor in chief," they're talking about the progressive tax structure. It's been around since, oh, about 1913 (and one of its champions was McCain's self-professed hero, Teddy Roosevelt). Changing the notion that rich people pay a larger percentage of their income in taxes is not on the table in the McCain tax plan; he's not arguing for a flat tax, and has in fact articulated on more than one occasion (sometimes on the TV box!) why progressive tax is fair and American.

So that's not the argument. The argument is how much more rich people should have to pay, and here is where the deception comes, because only the people pulling in more than that quarter-mill a year are paying more tax under Obama's plan, while people making less than that getting a much bigger tax cut. So they're both "redistributing"—but Obama's giving more to the broke people, and McCain's giving more to the rich people. And to that I say: fuck them. They've had eight years of huge tax breaks, let 'em pay up for a while.

But there I go, applying logic to a campaign of pure nonsense. I'm not counting my chickens here. I'm scared and worried about voter suppression and roll-purging and dirty tricks and all that stuff, and I'm worried about the Bradley Effect, and I'm worried about youth voters not showing up, and all of that stuff (though I'm not worried about ACORN and voter registration fraud, since that doesn't actually effect the vote). So I take nothing for granted. But I'll say this—if McCain doesn't lose, well, it sure isn't for lack of trying to.

Arright. So there's all that. Now I'm gonna go think happy thoughts about rainbows and ice cream for the next five days.

The End.  

Last Tuesday, my wife spent the afternoon with Oliver Stone; she was producing an interview segment with him for the Maddow show. Right around the same time, Meridith was in a two-hour class being taught by David Mamet.

Meanwhile, I was at home in my underpants, making fried chicken. How the hell did this work out? These two are hanging out with the people I'm supposed to be hanging out with.

I'm well aware that my last several blog posts have either been movie journals or political rants; this one is a conscious effort to buck that trend, though I'm not sure how much success I'll have. Movies and politics are pretty much taking up all my time and intellectual energy these days.

I've posted my first seven reviews for DVD Talk; there's more discs on the way. One of them is Season 3 of How I Met Your Mother, which is a little bit tricky, since we hadn't yet gotten around to watching the Season 1 and 2 discs I picked up a while back. I informed the wife that I had a mission for us; after her debriefing, she informed me that she was up for it. I'm a nerd, and I'm lucky I found a lady who doesn't mind. At any rate, we smoked through season 1 last weekend, and it's a pretty good show (so far). More to come!

Monday we finally started shooting the final "Karl & Bernie" (of the initial run, anyway); we're having to break this one up a little more than usual, with two more shooting days over the next couple of weeks. But after a summer of false starts, it's nice to finally get some momentum happening on this one.

And that's pretty much the haps around here; Amber and MJ are settled in, and though we haven't gotten to see them as much as we'd like, we're all going to the Upright Citizens Brigade theatre on Sunday night for their weekly improv show; Rebekah and I went once back in the spring and it's a blast. Mike is getting his business back up to speed with our buddy Shiloh (who shoots the K&B shorts), and Mac is signing up soon for a class at the aforementioned UCB theatre. My theory is that he wows them all with his zany hijinks, and then Amy Poehler comes to their showcase and tells him he needs to go audition for Lorne at "SNL". Sounds like a plan to ME, anyway.

Arright. Off to watch more "Cosby Show" on my iPod at work. I just watched the one where they do the Ray Charles song for the grandparents. Perfection.

The End.

So here's the terrifying Congresswoman Michelle Bachman, with her horrifyingly wide eyes and painted-on new-and-improved-Joker-products smile, spewing up the same tired-ass McCain/Palin talking points about Obama and all of his dangerous "associations" and why "we need answers about his relationship with Bill Ayers" (um, didn't he explain all the for the upteenth time at the last debate) before moving on to this horrifying bullshit Palin was spouting today about being in places that are "pro-America" (with a sidebar conflating the "leftists" and "liberals" with "anti-Americans"). And then, in the last minute or so, when Chris Matthews asks her if she's calling a United States Senator an "anti-American," and how many people in our Congress she is accusing of that, she responds that "I would say is that the news media should do a penetrating expose, and take a look, I wish they would. I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-America or anti-America? I think people would be, would love to see an expose like that."

Enjoy. "Anti-American" is the new "communist". Are you now or have you ever been a member?

The End.

I was walking down 57th on my way to work this afternoon when I saw what I thought was a funeral procession-- cop cars followed by towncars followed by other vehicles. As I was reflecting on the fact that this was the first time I'd seen a funeral procession in NYC in the two-plus years I've lived here, I realized that the "other vehicles" were matching white vans and they said "MCCAIN PRESS" in the windows. It was McCain's motorcade! Or, you know, as I first thought, a funeral procession.

But I kid. God I'll feel stupid if he wins.

ANYWAY, all of your Republican friends and angry conservative relatives are probabably going batshit insane over ACORN and "voter fraud", since every other tactic they've tried to make my guy look bad has been an epic FAIL. FOX is becoming, like, all ACORN, all the time (I looked up at the monitors last Friday afternoon, while CNN and MSNBC were live, covering Paulson talking about the new plan to save our fucking economy, and FOX was running an ACORN story instead).

But what the hell is ACORN? And what have they done, and what does it matter? Well, I could just post a link, but I'm gonna go to the trouble of cut-and-pasting Gawker's excellent Q&A on the subject (I had a couple of other links from more serious news sources, but tihs one is more fun). Look this over and memorize it, so you can fire back when the Republicans at work start screaming about how Barack already stole the election. (You know, since the GOP is so very concerned about election fraud, now that they might lose an election).

From Gawker:

 Nationally, Barack Obama is between 5 and 10 points ahead in the polls. In the states defined by Rasmussen as battlegrounds, Obama ranges from a tie in North Carolina (North Carolina!) to slight leads in all the rest of them. Also Bush announced the nationalization of the banks or something today, prompting the Dow to jump in early trading. So Matt Drudge, who controls your news with an iron opera glove, is leading today with the news that ACORN registered Mickey Mouse to vote. Ha ha ha. Honestly, what the hell's the deal with the ACORN story and why are right-wingers already clinging to it like guns and religion? Sigh. We'll try to explain.

What is ACORN??

An evil group that exists to organize poor people into a violent militia and overthrow the government via "voting." Or basically a lobbying group for low- and middle-income families, either one.

Oh no, lobbyists!

Right? ACORN is in some respects a lobbying group like, say, the oil or pharmaceutical lobbies. Except they represent poor people instead of profitable corporations so they're a much less successful lobbying group.

What do they do?

They started as a radical group dedicated to getting welfare recipients and underemployed non-welfare recipients together to demand socialist things like free lunches for kids and emergency room care. Now they lobby Democrats for terrorist things like raising the minimum wage and forcing the government to subsidize affordable housing. Also they organize voter registration drives.

But what about all these crimes they're committing??

ACORN pays local losers in Florida $8 an hour to gather 20 voter registrations a day. So some of these losers are lazy, like all employees, and just make up the registrations. ACORN does try to find these made-up registrations and fire the employees who submit them, but, you know, sometimes they miss a couple. Also the law seems to say that ACORN has to submit all the registrations they gather no matter what, and even though the law is a little bit vague, they're still trying to follow it.

Why do Republicans need to attack and delegitimize a damn voter registration drive??

Because a certain amount of passive voter suppression is built in to the Republican campaign strategy. If all the disenfranchised and disenchanted voters were organized and registered and informed, we'd probably be a crazy socialist 10-party country like Italy or something. The GOP engages in active voter suppression—voter ID laws and legal challenges—and the more passive kind built into the democratic process, like engendering cynicism about the democratic process.

Obviously convincing the guys who disagree with you to not vote is part of any party's campaign strategy, but the GOP's by necessity targets poor people and minorities, and the vast history of suppressing the votes of poor people and minorities is way grosser than any history of disenfranchising white protestants. To us! Maybe you have some totally oppressed landed gentry in your family tree so you may feel differently.

Quite honestly the very heart of the utter bullshitness of this anti-ACORN campaign can be found in one incredibly telling quote from a spokesman for the RNC: "Cairncross accused ACORN of engaging in a 'systematic effort to undermine the election process' through its voter-registration drives." Do you see the problem with that statement?

And basically there is a CERTAIN CLASS of Republican voter that does not think that the poors, the Blacks, the homelesses, and so on honestly really deserve the same power to choose our rulers as a guy who's worked his whole life to get where he is. The politics of resentment are the last, most powerful weapon the McCain campaign has left this cycle. The details of the charges don't matter, actual proof of fraud doesn't matter, any evidence whatsoever of voter fraud being a real problem with a measurable effect on elections certainly doesn't matter, because the "fraud" is just that, you know, no-good hoodlum welfare recipients are being handed voter registration forms, and one type of person sees that as the point of democracy and the other type sees it as an utter perversion of democracy.

Didn't McCain used to totally be in the tank for ACORN?

Well Republicans have been bitching about ACORN and voter fraud for years now, but McCain definitely didn't used to be one of those Republicans. In 2006 McCain did give a keynote address, about immigration rights, at a rally co-sponsored by ACORN.

Can you maybe use a little more false equivalence to explain this in a way I understand?

Sure. ACORN's voter registration drives are to conservatives what Diebold voting machines are the liberals. The possibility of abuse is present and clear, but no one's yet convincingly proved that any abuse has occurred.

OK so what's up with everyone suddenly talking about ACORN?

As we said, nuttier conservatives have been on the ACORN-bashing bandwagon for years now. That it's finally trickled up to Drudge and Fox means they're scared they're losing the election and they need to preemptively delegitimize Obama.

What are my talking points for when crazy relatives argue that ACORN stole the election?

What we're dealing with so far is minor voter registration fraud. The questionable registrations number in the double digits in most states, and most of them have been flagged and caught by either ACORN themselves or election officials. Furthermore in many places the false registrations are required by law to be submitted anyway, so that ACORN isn't guilty of, say, tossing out the forms of Republicans they sign up. They do try to flag the fake ones as fake, but regardless, the fake ones are still being caught. Also: voter registration fraud does not coherently lead to voter fraud, because if you register one man 75 times, how will he vote 75 times, exactly?

More importantly, the election can't be stolen if it hasn't happened yet, and voter registration fraud does not explain in any way a double digit lead for a candidate in national tracking polls. Like, wtf, how are you making this argument, are you slow? ACORN registering Mickey Mouse is why Barack Obama is up 12 in Pennsylvania? Ok, sure, whatever you say.

BALLAST (screening)

LEWIS BLACK'S THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL (DVD)
THE BEATLES: MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR MEMORIES (DVD)

Well, I reviewed all three of these for DVD Talk over the last week, so follow the links to read 'em.

NICK AND NORAH'S INFINITE PLAYLIST (screening)
Here's a film of many flaws but infinite charm, thanks primarily to the chemistry and likability of two of the most interesting young actors working. Michael Cera (Juno, Arrested Development, Superbad) may only have one character, but who cares—it hasn't worn out its welcome yet. Kat Dennings (Charlie Bartlett, The 40 Year Old Virgin) blasts onto the screen like a breath of fresh air. Few of the supporting performances are terribly memorable, but this is a duet, and it's a plenty enjoyable one.

BLINDNESS (screening)

Ferndando Meirelles' latest doesn't approach the heights of his City of God or The Constant Gardener, but it's well worth seeing anyway, nearly as interesting when it doesn't work as when it does. There are long stretches—particularly in its second act—where it drags unpleasantly, lingering in the dirt and muck, and some of the storytelling is a little on the muddy side. But there is some great stuff here, both in style and substance, and the subtlety of its feminist message is well-matched by Julianne Moore's understated (and remarkable) lead performance.

COOL HAND LUKE (Blu-ray)

When Paul Newman passed a couple of weeks back, I took the opportunity to move the newly issued Blu-ray of his iconic 1967 drama to the top of my viewing stack. I'm glad I did; it's a terrific goddamn movie, pulsing with piss and vinegar, and is especially enjoyable if you know very little about it, plot-wise (as I did) and can enjoy the spontaneity of the fierce screenplay by Donn Pearce and Frank Pierson. Stuart Rosenberg's direction is rock-solid, as is Warner Home Video's knockout transfer.

RELIGULOUS (screening)

Let me be 100% clear here: This is a terrific comedy, thought-provoking and uproariously funny, and I enjoyed it (and pretty much agreed with it) from end to end. But I gotta say this: it's not the most honest documentary you'll lay eyes on. Producer/star Bill Maher says out the outset that he just wants to "ask some questions," but he spends most of the movie finding closed-minded conservatives and, through both is questions and (even more so) through the editing of the film, making them look incredibly stupid. And that's all good and well, and it's very easy to say, "Well, fuck 'em, they're idiots anyway," but then you're not making a documentary, you're making a polemic.  As polemics go, though, it's mighty funny.

RACHEL GETTING MARRIED (screening)

Jonathan Demme's handheld, intimate family comedy/drama is his best film in years, vibrant and personal and heartbreaking (thanks, in great part, to the wonderfully adult screenplay by Jenny Lumet). Anne Hathaway delivers another impressive performance as the damaged sister of the bride, fresh out of rehab and entirely capable of making her sibling's nuptials a total train wreck. Rosemary Dewitt (from "Mad Men") more than holds her own (this is a star-making performance), and how wonderful it is to see Debra Winger in a major role. Lumet's script is a marvel of efficiency and naturalism (it should be required viewing for screenwriters who want to learn how to deliver—and not deliver—exposition), and Demme's direction is unlike anything he's ever done (certainly miles from the by-the-numbers remakes that have peppered his filmography lately) and a reminder of what a fresh and exciting filmmaker he can be.

PUSHING DAISIES: SEASON 1 (Blu-ray)

We've been terrified to get attached to new TV shows lately (still smarting from the cancellations of Veronica Mars, Arrested Development, Studio 60, Raines, and others), preferring to catch up on DVD when it sounds like a show might be around for a while. But I'm glad we waited on Pushing Daisies, so that we were able to view this vibrant, colorful, inventive show in Blu-ray, taking in the wonderful world concocted by creator Bryan Fuller (with the help of producer Barry Sonnenfeld, who helmed the first two episodes and clearly influenced the kicky style of the enterprise). It's ratings are down this season, which is discouraging; hopefully enough eyeballs will stay on this delightful series to keep it on for at least a little while.

BODY OF LIES (screening)

There's not one thing wrong with Ridley Scott's spy tale—his direction is workmanlike and solid, the performances by Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe are strong, the screenplay (by Departed scribe William Monahan) is thoughtful and intelligent. But like Crowe and Scott's last collaboration, American Gangster, it's also entirely (and strangely) unmemorable; it does its job efficiently but doesn't make much of an impression overall.

ROCK-N-ROLLA (screening)

On the other hand, I can tell you exactly what's wrong with Guy Ritchie's latest: It's too impressed with its own cleverness, it's distractingly convoluted (even by Ritchie's standards), and it's a solid half hour too long. But I'd recommend it anyway, for the pieces if not for the whole—it's full of small pleasures (Gerald Butler's fantastic swagger, a Thandie Newton performance that's actually enjoyable, the chance to see Idris "Stringer Bell" Elba work, and one of the all time great—and short—sex scenes) and large ones (inventive camerawork, a distinctive and gritty look, and some really terrific set pieces).

The End.

Letterman RULES. The End.