Brilliance, blockbusters, bombs, oh my.

284 movies were released to theaters in the US this year. I saw 34 (23 in the theater, and 11 subsequently on planes/DVD). 12% - not very impressive, but it'll do, especially since over the next week I hope to see: Milk, Frost/Nixon, The Wrestler, Revolutionary Road and Benjamin Button. That will bring me to a hefty 17%. Nice. Some commentary on those I saw, those I missed and everything in between:

Movies I am shocked that I haven’t seen:

• 'Mad Money' – Let’s be honest. A movie about girl bonding starring Diane Keaton and Queen Latifah. I have no idea how I didn’t see this.
• 'American Teen' – A real world 'Breakfast Club'? Hello.
• 'Young@Heart' – If the film is anything like its heartwarming preview, I think I’ll be in love:
  

Movies I forgot even came out this year:

• 'Rambo' – Not to be confused with ‘Son of Rambow,’ which I clearly saw. This is how I learned that Chuck Bass is actually British. Fantastic.
• 'Deception' – Remember this one, starring Ewan McGregor, Michelle Williams and Hugh Jackman? Yeah, me either.
• 'How to Lose Friends and Alienate People' – This came out?

Please go away:

• The Scary Movie franchise that brought us 'Meet the Spartans,' 'Extreme Movie,' 'Disaster Movie,' and 'Superhero Movie' all this year. I can’t decide which undying franchise is worse – this, or 'Saw' (which, for those of you keeping track at home hit Installment #5 this year).
• Paris Hilton: Somehow starred in 2 movies this year (And, I owe an apology to Christine Lahti, because for a moment, I was supremely aghast thinking she had co-starred with our resident ridiculous heiress in ‘The Hottie and the Nottie’, but thank heavens it was someone named Christine Lakin instead.), and I also kind of blame her for 'Beverly Hills Chihuahua.' Remember how, post-jail, she was going to be a better person, and like contribute to the world and stuff? Yeah, I wonder how that’s going.
• Jason Statham-if-all-you’re-going-to-do-is-the-same-movie-over-and-over-again: 'The Bank Job', 'Death Race' and 'Transporter 3', all in the same year? Look, I get it. You’re strapping and British. You had me at hello. Do something else please.
• Clint Eastwood (And I mean this with the utmost respect for your long and storied career): Besides the fact that I am completely over you and the only film of yours I’ve liked in the last 5 years is 'Letters from Iwo Jima,' you are 78 years old. You do not need to release 2 movies within 2 months of one another.

Hey, what haaappened?

• Jonathan Schaech: You had such a promising mid-90s career. Then somehow Christina Applegate became relevant again, you two divorced and now you’re starring in 'Prom Night'? (Starring might be a little generous of a term, given I saw the preview a couple million times and had no idea you were in it until 2 minutes ago.).
• The Day the Earth Stood Still is not the same as Journey to the Center of the Earth. Right. One stars a former heartthrob famous for action movies. The other…oh wait. At least TDTESS (Try to keep up) featured both Jon Hamm ('Mad Men') and Kyle Chandler ('Friday Night Lights'!).
  
• Did anyone else get ‘Wanted’ confused with ‘Eagle Eye’? This is especially funny since one stars Angelina Jolie, and the other, Billy Bob Thornton.

• The I-Guess-I-Actually-Like-You award goes to Mila Kunis, mostly for her role in ‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall,’ but she was also in ‘Max Payne,’ which I actually would have seen.

Comebacks

In addition to Leelee Sobieski, Helen Hunt, Elisabeth Shue and Bill Pullman, none of whom I’d seen in a movie since the early 2000s, these former stars made their own attempt at comebacks in 2008:

• Martin Lawrence: I hadn’t realized until just now that I had combined Martin Lawrence Comeback Film #1, Welcome Home, Roscoe Jennings with Martin Lawrence Comeback Film #2, College Road Trip. Which, judging by their IMDB summaries, isn’t really that much of a stretch:
  
  In one: A successful talk show host leaves Los Angeles to reunite with his family in the Deep South. In the other: An overachieving high school student decides to travel around the country to choose the perfect college, and her overprotective cop father also decides to accompany her in order to keep her on the straight and narrow.
  
  Hm, I wonder if hijinks ensue in either of these cases?

• Joseph Gordon-Levitt: My favorite hyphenated star, especially because I remember this interview you did with Jay Leno back in '3rd Rock from the Sun' days about your parents being reformed hippies who drive BMWs now. (Wow, I had really forgotten about him. Again. He really should have been on my Teen Idol Wish List. I loved him so much more than Heath Ledger in Ten Things I Hate About You.). Anyway. This year you starred in 2 films, 'Stop-Loss' and 'Miracle at St. Anna' – nice work. Maybe next year, you should try to make them not be about war, because in case you haven’t heard, the public tends to stay away from those these days.
  
  
• Shocking Find: Johnny Whitworth starred in a movie this year! Oh, AJ, ye of gluing-quarters-to-the-floor-and-being-in-love-with-Liv-Tyler.
  

It pains me to remember that I saw:

• 'Fools Gold'. In my defense, I was on a plane. As bad as the preview was, the actual movie was worse. The fact this movie was #1 at the box office makes me fear for the sanity of our country.

• I also really could have lived without ‘House Bunny’ (it says something when not even snuck-in booze can help), 'Indiana Jones' (SPOILER ALERT. Really? Aliens? Has Stephen Spielberg turned into M. Night Shymalan?), '21' and 'Speed Racer' (Thankfully, those were home/plane viewings, which are somehow less painful).

And finally, just like Dwyane Wade, here are my fave five for the year 2008:

1. Rachel Getting Married
2. The Visitor
3. Be Kind, Rewind (Why can I not find a positive enough review of this movie?)
   
4. WALL-E
5. Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist/Pineapple Express (These are throw-ins of movies I genuinely enjoyed, which won't top any Top 10 list anywhere. But they definitely had the best trailers of the year.)

More on this year in review in the new one. Have a safe one y’all.

It's viral.

The Daily Beast recently released its list of 2008's best viral videos. I'm sure there are a million lists out there just like this, but as one of my most trusted news aggregators, I'll defer to theirs (Bonus points for including my own personal favorite - 'You Can Vote However You Like.'). Have you seen this one? It's a heartwarmer.

Lessons Learned from Christmas 2008

Trevor & I spent six days in California for Christmas. With 140 miles between our parents, another 100 between my parents and camp, and a final 130 miles back to the airport, we really covered some ground -

and learned some important lessons along the way:

• Things that matter: Friendly AAA drivers who show up on Christmas day to fill your car with gas when you’ve run out in the middle of nowhere. Things that really don’t: Lakers vs. Celtics.
• Banana Bread Beer tastes just as bad as you think it would.
  
• Chihuahuas are kind of like cats.

• 26-year old bodies don’t recover from air mattress / floor / airplane sleeping quite as quickly as younger ones.
• The Stone Brewery - despite its kind of weird warehouse-like location in the outskirts of Escondido - is an amazingly awesome demonstration of the slow food movement, not only featuring over 20 of their own beers on draft and in the bottle, but offering beers from other craft breweries and tons of local and organic goods and produce, including onion rings so thick and delicious they look like donuts.
  

• When a kitchen-full of Californians tells you the hot sauce is too hot – it’s too hot.
• Just like video cameras, airport scales add about 5 pounds.
• A pie can be cut into 8 pieces with just 3 straight lines. This makes little to no sense to the Tecate and Irish Car Bomb swilling masses. So, we'll just have to believe you, Cranium.
  

• A full year of eating Mexican food twice a day couldn't get you to all the amazing-looking places between LA and San Diego.
• When your Grandma and Mom drink (and enjoy) a Lambic, it's official: It really is the right type of beer for non-beer drinkers.
  

A Public Service Announcement: It doesn't have to be this way.

I’ve generally given up on celebrity gossip blogs – though once obsessed with Pink is the New Blog, I could never quite get on the Pop Sugar or Perez Hilton bandwagon, and, frankly, once Trent moved to LA and became a full-time blogger/partygoer, his commentary just didn’t feel original anymore.

Now, my blog reading is mostly limited to ones by my friends, about cooking, or GoFygYourself (not technically a gossip blog, though it does feature celebrities - this one I read for the brilliant commentary and constant 90210 references) and PopWatch, from Entertainment Weekly (Yes, Hollywood-focused, but moreso on things like casting news and industry trends, which clearly makes it more high brow.).

But no matter how hard I try, at least once a week I find myself reading an inane “article” about Katie Holmes’s brainwashed home life or Jessica Simpson’s feeingls about the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders. I catch myself, and wonder, “Where am I? How did I get here? Where did I go so wrong?”

Well friends, the problem stems from corporate America.

You see: Entertainment Weekly is owned by Time Warner, which also owns People, and therefore People.com. So, at the bottom right of every PopWatch page, there is a small text ad box featuring headlines from People.com. Now, as a marketing professional, I’ve done this and tracked results and I know that this is a tactic that works – using your website’s network/parent company/partnerships to promote relevant content (Makes sense: You have a captive audience and content you’re pretty sure they’ll be interested in.). In my case, it’s also proof positive that text ads are more efficient display ads than banners. And let me tell you – it’s like a gateway drug.

I always find myself reading these headlines, and, inevitably, I click on a headline like “Jeremy Piven Abruptly Abandons Broadway Play.” It’s innocent enough, but People.com has its own network of sites, including Fox News and Huffington Post and other terribly sensationalist ones, and while I think that I’m just going to quickly read about how Will Smith donated $1.3 million to charity this year (Because I need another reason to love him?) before you know it, I’m learning about how “Even the Trump Family Re-Gifts Christmas Presents.”

Kids, listen to me. Don’t make the same mistakes as I have: JUST SAY NO.

The Secret Life of an American No-Longer Teenager

The geniuses at VH1 are bringing us an all-new “celebrity” reality show, 'Confessions of a Teen Idol.' Shocking that this hasn't yet been done (that show about the two Coreys really opened some doors). By featuring Jeremy Jackson (David Hasselhoff's son on 'Baywatch'), Jaime Walters (Donna-shovin' Ray Pruitt) and David Chokachi (Also from 'Baywatch,' he of the abs...no, the blonde one.), I’m surprised to say that they’re getting a whole lot closer to featuring people I did actually care about in my younger years (as opposed to, say, any incarnation of ‘The Surreal Life’ or ‘Celebrity Fit Club.’). But they’re still missing the mark. Who did I really care about between the ages 10-16?

• Brad Renfro & Jonathan Brandis – Let’s just get this out of the way. It is really beyond awful that both of these actors, my absolute 2 biggest junior high crushes died, young, in tragic ways: These boys completely dominated my 7th and 8th grade lockers. Everyone’s seen ‘The Client,’ but you’ve never really seen Brad Renfro until you’ve seen tearjerker ‘The Cure’ and, of course, ‘Tom and Huck.’
  

For Jonathan Brandis, skip right over ‘Neverending Story’ and head for ‘Ladybugs’ (Maybe with a detour into ‘Sidekicks’) – it’s an unequivocal classic, if only for how angry it made soccer-playing girls that their uniforms never had polka dots. Parenthetically, the female lead, who I used to always confuse with Katherine Heigl during her ‘My Father the Hero’ days and then Hilary Swank during her BH90210 days, has been making a fairly legit comeback. Please reference ‘3:10 to Yuma.’ Though I completely disapprove of how you spell your name, way to go Vinessa Shaw.

• Jonathan Jackson – The double threat! I used to record ‘General Hospital’ everyday and then fast forward through most parts to watch the teen romance story between JonJack’s Lucky (the spawn of Luke & Laura – oh, the angst!) and Liz. He also stars, with amazing hair, in the amazing film ‘Camp Nowhere’ (by co-starring Christopher Lloyd, this is completely legitimate). Along with his brother, Richard, who was supposed to be the Zach Morris character on ‘Saved by the Bell: The New Class,’ he is apparently a super devout evangelical Christian these days. If that doesn’t make for awesome reality TV, what does?

• Gabriel Damon – There’s an unwritten law amongst 13 year old girls: In any movie that stars a bunch of cute boys, which you are therefore bound to obsess over with your closest friends, crushes must be divided equally. In the case of ‘Newsies’ – the prime example of a movie about boys really designed for teenage girls because they sing (second maybe to ‘White Squall,’ because, well, they’re shirtless) – I claimed Spot. He was tough, had the best lines, and Christian Bale’s Jack had already been claimed. Listen, you don’t mess with the rules.

• Devon Sawa – That Christina Ricci, getting Devon Sawa in not one, but two movies (YouTube is amazing.). He was a late addition to my crush roster, and our romance flamed out pretty quickly, but he holds a special place in my heart, if only for the fact that he was supposed to be the star of ‘Idle Hands,’ but out of it came instead Seth Green and Jessica Alba. Killed off, I assume, in the first 'Final Destination' (Did you know there have been 4?), he's actually a pretty good candidate for a reality TV show.
  

• Vincent Larusso – My love for Joshua Jackson is well-documented, but, to be fair, throughout the 'Mighty Ducks' franchise, I was always more of a Banksy girl. That talent! Those polo shirts!

Just some friendly casting advice, VH1, for the inevitable second season. I'd also be fairly interested to know where Taran Noah Smith (the youngest brother from 'Home Improvement') is, and I bet Rider Strong would love to participate. You can thank me later.

Going cuckoo, part 2

As I sat awake at 3AM this morning (1 part crazy cat, 2 parts hacking cough), I found myself thinking about 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest' again and realized that I hadn’t mentioned the Chief at all in my oh-so-thorough analysis. Considering what a major role he takes on by the end of the film, it’s interesting he was so easy to forget, and I’ll posit that this is because he’s the part of the movie that does feel dated.

SPOILER ALERT. Highlight to continue reading.

The Chief would rather kill his friend, than watch him live a life dictated by “the man” – Then, he literally breaks out of the mental institution, which, in 1963, with its manipulation of Billy and RP’s lobotomy, represents the 50s mentality and rigidity that the later 60s rebelled against.

I get it and it’s done well, with the sweeping cinematography and score – it’s all just a bit too literal for me. This part, and a general underwhelmed feeling about the actor plaeing Nurse Ratchet would represent the minus 1.5 Twix bars I mentioned before.

And, no, I had not recognized Billy from 'Lord of the Rings', but now that I just Google imaged it, I have a feeling when I'm up at 3AM tomorrow morning, it will be because of nightmares.

I'm ready for trivia night.

As I write the reviews that have sort of taken over the blog as of late, I stumble upon all sorts of random trivia, some of which just can’t be woven into actual entries.

Here’s just a taste of some miscellaneous factoids I’ve picked up over the last few months:

• ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ was the first movie produced by Michael Douglas, when he was just 31. His father – Kirk Douglas – had owned the rights to the movie for years, and had originally planned to star in it himself.
• Rhea Perlman and Danny DeVito have been married since 1982. Consider them totally on my list of Couples that Just Can’t Break Up.
• Jack Nicholson has four children, from three different women, and hasn’t been on a talk show since 1971.
• Robert Duvall, Jimmy Stewart, Katherine Hepburn and Robert De Niro are the most represented actors on the AFI Top 100 Movie List.
• Buddies for life Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn became friends when working on ‘Rudy’. Did you even remember that they were in that? Me either.
• Will Ferrell is from Irvine, California! (That's the OC, yo)
• Jay Mohr was on Saturday Night Live in the early 90s. I had no idea he ever did something legitimate.
• Viggo Mortensen is 50 years old. Isn’t that older than you’d think?
• Though she was raised in Australia, Naomi Watts was actually born in England. Her dad was a sound engineer for Pink Floyd.

More will follow, of this I’m sure.

Movie Review: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

I don’t feel like I’ve seen many Jack Nicholson movies, especially from before he was “Jack Nicholson”. Before this weekend’s viewing of ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,’ inspired by Trevor’s and my initiative to watch each of AFI’s Top 100 Films, the oldest film of his I’d seen was ‘The Shining’. By the time ‘Terms of Endearment’ came out, I feel like he was already playing a “Jack Nicholson” role, and I’ve never seen ‘Easy Rider,’ ‘Reds,’ ‘Chinatown,’ the original ‘Batman’ or even ‘As Good as It Gets’. So it’s good for me to watch him work, and think of him as more than a Lakers fan and the butt of good-natured jokes at the Oscars.

There is little new to be said about a film that was released 33 years ago, but what I will say is that it doesn’t feel dated, which I suspect is because it was already set in the past at the time of its release. Even moreso than Jack Nicholson, the success of the film is 100% reliant on the very engrossing ensemble cast. I found myself most riveted by Christopher Lloyd, as a mental institution patient who seems pretty with it except for one major outburst. Just like with Nicholson’s character, that’s where the power of the script lies, to make the audience think – if these guys, with their very human emotions and reactions and often reasoned arguments, are crazy, what does that make the rest of us? Engrossing and faster-paced than its 2 plus hour run time, I give it eight and a half Twix bars!

Parenthetically, seriously – how much does Danny Devito look like David Archuleta in this movie?

Movie Review: Four Christmases

Once Thanksgiving rolls around, I can pretty easily be convinced to see anything with the words Holiday or Christmas in the title. But even beyond that, I’d really been looking forward to this one – the preview, where Vince Vaughn starts gagging after seeing a baby spit up, had me laughing embarrassingly loudly each time I saw it. And, it must be said that I love Reese Witherspoon. Here’s where the “buts” start – I love her, but she did nothing in this movie except look pointy.

'Four Christmases' starts with a couple (Vince Vaughn & Reese Witherspoon) roleplaying in a bar, followed by a quickie in the bathroom. This scene, and the ensuing 15 minutes are designed to be evidence of what a happy, well-adjusted, well-matched pair they are: They take dance lessons, and not for their wedding! In fact, they don’t even want to get married! Or have children! They’re just so independent and on the same page. This part of the movie was entertaining enough. Witherspoon and Vaughn are charismatic, funny actors, with good chemistry.

But once they jump into their SUV and start shuttling around California from one dysfunctional family to another, the movie just got boring. Mary Steenburgen, Robert Duvall, Kristen Chenoweth and even Jon Favreau were completely wasted in their roles – and Jon Voight didn’t show up until the final 20 minutes. It's clear there was more story to all of these characters, but no attempt was made to expose it. This made the couple pretty hard to relate to, since we just had to accept that they hate each member of their family. Even the scene in the evangelical church - typically a T-Ball pitch for hilarity - fell flat.

I think there were a lot of good ideas in this movie – but very few of them lived up to their promise. This one will pretty easily go the way of ‘Movies I Forget I’ve Seen’. 5.5 Twix bars!

Watch this for me.

Popwatch's description of the below embedded clip made me cry, so I'm going to opt out of actually watching. You do it instead:

Queue me.

I always wished that Netflix would tell you what movies you had rented through them – you get recommendations based on movies you rate, but those can be movies you saw in the theater, outside of your Netflix subscription, etc. What if I need to remember what season of 'Gilmore Girls' we left off on?

Well, I did some more digging this morning – and you can do this. Really easily! It’s just right there in your account under Rental Activity (I think that I will just insist that this option has NOT always been there). Did you know that I have been a Netflix member since May 2004? And that the first movies that [Jessica and] I rented were: ‘Chasing Liberty’ (which I rated 4/5 stars), ‘Honey’ and ‘Pieces of April’, followed immediately by the miniseries version of ‘Pride and Prejudice’? We’re awesome.

Next up: Figuring out how to get this list easily readable in Excel, so I can report on such exciting factoids as: highest & lowest rated films, films held onto for the longest and longest gap between sequential TV series discs.

Movie Review: Slumdog Millionaire

Over Thanksgiving weekend, we went with Aaron to see ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ the new film from Danny Boyle (of ‘Trainspotting’) and the up-and-coming Indie That Could for Oscar season (Think: 'Juno,' 'Sideways,' 'Little Miss Sunshine.').

The story is a fairy tale about a poor kid - in love his whole life with one girl - who magically wins a million dollars, finds her and lives happily ever after. The problem with the movie is that the Fairy Tale is padded with unnecessary, and jarringly unsubstantial scenes, that drag it down. Switching between the filming of a game show, watching the game show, a police station, and flashbacks, there’s way too much standing in the way. But the bigger problem is that the movie can’t decide if it wants to be gritty, or not, so it just winds feeling uneven.

The movie starts out with an Indian kid being tortured in an abandoned building. A man walks menacingly in, and looks at this kid, hanging from the ceiling, and begins connecting electrical wires to his toes. Intense, right?

Well – as it turns out, not so much. As it happens, the kid, Jamal, is a contestant on the Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire, one question away from winning it all, and because he’s the poorest of the poor, must be cheating. But, he has a reason for knowing all the answers he’s given – and that’s because they all relate to his life, his relationship with his brother, and his love for a girl.

The menacing guy with the wires and penchant for torture – he’s actually a cop, and a good guy at that, who believes Jamal pretty easily. So they start going through the tape. This is where it starts feeling forced: You watch the game show on tape, hear the question, go into a flashback, watch the reason unfold on screen, see Jamal answer. The audience should have been trusted to connect the dots on their own.

There’s a good story underneath it all, it just gets overwhelmed by extra stuff. And it’s a pretty movie – with the kind of vibrant colors and sharp contrasts that you’d expect from a film about India. The actor who played Jamal, and the child actors were really very good. And, best of all, the credits run over a classic Bollywood-style cast dance number. Enjoyable enough, it just didn’t get quite there. 7 Twix bars!

The Office Drinking Game

After a full day out and about on Saturday eating and drinking our way through Cambridge, Trevor & I settled in for a game that’s sure to become a tradition (Though, perhaps not always with homebrew and leftover pumpkin beer – we watch The Office so often, that could get us into dangerous territory. Sometimes it will just have to be played with water.) – The Office Drinking Game.

Take 1 sip of your drink every time:

• Michael messes up a cliché
• Stanley is doing a crossword puzzle
• Jim and Pam have a silent connection
• Someone’s on the phone
• Michael hates Toby
• You spot Froggy 101
• Kelly tells a lie
• There’s action in the “annex”
• There’s tell of Michael’s crush on Ryan
• You spot someone from non-Dunder Mifflin offices in Scranton Business Park (EX: Bob Vance)
• There’s a scene in the parking lot
• Other Scranton businesses are mentioned (EX: Poor Richard’s)
• Corporate is on the phone
• There’s mention of other Dunder Mifflin branches (Do this one at your own risk during Season 3)
• The word “paper” is mentioned.
• Someone is spotted doing their job well
• Angela mentions that she’s a vegetarian
• You spot Darryl
• A pop song is mentioned/sung
• There’s an argument within the accounting department
• You see Pam’s artwork

What’s missing? Chime in here.

Man of the Month: December

I was always a little creeped out by the quasi-incestuous romantic conclusion to ‘Clueless.’ In this day and age, where blood relations don’t define family, I have a hard time getting behind the idea that just because you are no longer “related” to your brother, that it’s okay to date him. It also says a lot about Me As A 13 Year Old that I was much more into Travis Birkenstock than Josh.

But that is neither here nor there. December’s Man of the Month is Paul Rudd.

I appreciate the arc of Paul Rudd’s career – he became a household face by starring in one of the bigger movies of the mid-90s, took a kind of failed detour into leading man territory, rebounded through indies and has really hit his stride with scene-stealing straight man roles in the Judd Apatow factory. And let's not forget his role as Phoebe's True Love, Mike on 'Friends.' Considering how much I’ve seen him in, I realized how just little attention I’ve paid to him in November. I was pleasantly surprised and entertained by him over the last month. In fact, seeing him host Saturday Night Live prompted Trevor & I to spend money to see Role Models – and I don’t even regret it.



In real life, he’s self-effacing, relatable, and he can really pull off that half-bearded look. So, ladies and gentleman, please welcome to our illustrious club – Mr. Paul Rudd!

Identify yourself.

As a child, I had a really hard time keeping Charlie Sheen and Tom Cruise straight. This was likely because I couldn't tell the difference between 'Top Gun' and 'Hot Shots'. I also could not tell the difference between Kurt Russell and Patrick Swayze. This is because ‘Dirty Dancing’ and ‘Overboard’ are two of the most important films ever made. And by "important," I mean, "constantly airing on television."

Anyway. I’ve got those ones down now, but as became apparent this weekend, there are some new inheritors of this confusion.

First:


'Harry Potter,' 'The English Patient' and 'The Constant Gardner' – beyond these, I honestly cannot name a movie that Ralph Fiennes is in. The thought process goes something like this: “'Schindler's List!' Wait, no… 'Michael Collins?' I’m really not sure. Wait, 'Love Actually,' right? 'Kinsey!' UGH!”

Secondly: I officially owe Liev Scrieber an apology. While trying to describe him this weekend, I called him ‘The guy from ‘Brothers and Sisters’ who is cheating on his wife with Sienna Miller.’ Nope, that would be this guy, Balthazar Getty:

I had no idea I had this mental block – or that I even knew Balthazar Getty’s name.

Liev Schrieber is, of course, the maybe-killer, eventual-victim from the Scream trilogy, as well as Naomi Watts’ baby daddy. Also, apparently, his name is pronounced “Lau,” like rhymes with “bow.” So there you go.