I always suspected Ronald McDonald was pretty much pure evil

An advisory word for anyone reading today: If you make it to the end, you'll find the most recent Oscar winner for Best Animated Short Film, the Froggie flick "Logorama," embedded at the bottom, and it's extremely worth watching (and it inspired the title of this post.) But before that ...

This may be rather amazing news to no one other than me and Bob Connally, but it seems that not only has Bruce Robinson apparently finished his movie of the Hunter S. Thompson novel "The Rum Diary," but it may even be headed for Cannes.

For anyone unfamiliar with the flick, it stars one Johnny Depp as an American journalist working for a newspaper in Puerto Rico who gets involved in a love triangle and surely all other kinds of trouble too. The movie also stars Aaron Eckhart, Amber Heard, Giovanni Ribisi and Reel Fanatic fave Richard Jenkins.

So who in the world is Bruce Robinson? Well, before pretty much disappearing for more than 20 years now, he managed to direct the ultimate buddy comedy of sorts, "Withnail & I," and the almost-as-good "How to Get Ahead in Advertising." He's been sorely missed around here, so any word of "The Rum Diary" finally moving towards one day maybe seeing a movie screen anywhere near my little corner of the world is certainly welcome news.

And in really good TV news, if you haven't been watching NBC's "Parenthood," you've really been missing out. Sure, it can be awfully schmaltzy, but it's also pretty epicly good storytelling, and Lauren Graham, Peter Krause and yes, even Dax Shepard are all great in it.

Well, now it seems the show, created by "Friday Night Lights" guider Jason Katims, is finally starting to pick up some mojo, winning its time slot Tuesday night for perhaps the first time, even managing to beat out a new episode of ABC's "The Good Wife."

Seriously, this is what good TV looks like, so catch it while you can, which looks more and more like it will be for at least two seasons.

And in much bigger news about TV people I really like, it seems that Aziz Ansari has just signed on to be one-half of what, at least around here, will make a comedy dream team with Danny McBride.

"Zombieland" director Ruben Fleischer has signed on to direct an action-comedy called "30 Minutes Or Less" as his next project, and now those two - my favorite two comedians working today, in case you missed the hint - have signed on as the leads.

Written by Michael Diliberti and Matthew Sullivan, the script revolves around a junior high history teacher (Ansari) and a pizza-delivery man (McBride) who are forced to rob a bank when one of them is strapped to a bomb vest.

And in a final bit of news before we get to the promised movie, now that I'm reupping with HBO this week in time to watch the premiere of David Simon's post-Katrina series "Treme" this Sunday, it seems they're determined to never let me go again.

Along with series coming from all kinds of top-shelf directors (Martin Scorsese, Kathyrn Bigelow and Lee Daniels, among them), HBO has now signed "School of Rock" and "Freaks and Geeks" scribe Mike White for a new series that sounds just about perfect to me.

Laura Dern (remember her?) will star in "Enlightened" as "a self-destructive woman who has a revelatory experience at a treatment center and becomes determined to live an enlightened life." That already sounds funny to me, and the show has received a 10-episode pickup and will begin filming this summer.

And you may remember that Laura Dern did her best work in years in the HBO movie "Recount" (which was somehow written by "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Gilmore Girls" veteran Danny Strong) as dragon woman Katherine Harris.

OK, as promised, anyone who bothered to stick around (or perhaps skipped) until the end today deserves a reward, so here goes. Like most of the world, I just assumed that Nick Park's latest Wallace & Gromit flick, "Wallace & Gromit in a Matter of Loaf and Death," was gonna win the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film, but it lost to something called "Logorama," made by Frenchies François Alaux and Hervé de Crécy. Subtle? Nah. But this glimpse of the secret lives of the advertising mascots who truly run our lives is wickedly funny, especially the inhabitants of the zoo. Having now watched this and the latest Wallace & Gromit offering, I deem this a worthy winner by a nose. Enjoy the flick embedded below, and have a perfectly pleasant Thursday. Peace out.

Logorama from Marc Altshuler - Human Music on Vimeo.