Thursday fun, of "Walking Dead," Bill Buckner and more

If you're not a Baltimore Orioles fan, I should first say you're rather lucky, but also that you can be excused for thinking the celebration after last night's season-ending game was a bit much for a team that, once again, finished in last place in the American League East.

Except for it wasn't. When all you can enjoy with a team is schadenfreude, you have to take what you can get, and since the O's aren't headed to the World Series anytime soon, there is at least pleasure in knowing the Boston Red Sox won't be this year either. Especially when your team had everything to do with it.

And in honor of that, and since my father reminded me of it this morning via the New York Times, I give you a scene from easily the funniest half-hour of TV to appear this fall, the return of Bill Buckner on "Curb Your Enthusiasm." Coincidental timing? I think not, but either way, seeing him be dressed down by the extremely foul (I warned you) Susie Essman just adds to the pleasure of this glorious day. Enjoy.



If you don't get HBO, you can watch much more of Buckner's stuff on "Curb" at Youtube, and it's all really funny. And moving on, before we get to all kinds of zombie stuff, Twitch, which is very rarely wrong, has the goods on a remake that's quickly shaping up to be potentially worthwhile (and no, I'm not talking about "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," for once.)

The news that Mandate has hired Spike Lee to direct an English-language remake of the rather fantastic Korean revenge saga "Oldboy" is old news by now, but still welcome since it means the return of the often-great and never boring Mr. Lee to feature films. The perhaps even better news now is the cast that might be coming together for this.

Josh Brolin has definitely signed on to play the lead, a man who is mysteriously locked away in a hotel room for 15 years and then methodically takes his revenge after being just as mysteriously released. I could tell you more, but you really need to see this Chan Wook Park gem for yourself, which you can watch on Netflix streaming right away, if you haven't given up on them completely yet.

And in the fairly solid rumor mill, Christian Bale is apparently being sought for the role of Oh Dae-su's (in the Korean version) tormenter, and perhaps even better, Rooney Mara, aka the new "Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" (ack, I just can't get away from it) is being eyed for the female lead, a waitress who helps Dae-su (again, at least in the original version.) This is quickly coming together as one remake I'm definitely in for.

And after that today, it's all about zombies, because, let's face it, they're just o much fun. And though "The Walking Dead" should really today apply to the Boston Red Sox (ha!), it's also the name of AMC's sophomore series formerly led by Frank Darabont and set to return Oct. 16.

If you watched the short but seriously entertaining season one, you saw the closest that mainstream TV has come to real horror in as long as I can remember, plus a show that almost perfectly combines genuine humanity and suspense. The former may suffer a bit with the departure of Darabont, but I'm still betting the second season will be great.

In the meantime, AMC is filling the gap with a series of short webisodes, which will all appear starting Monday. They will tell the story of Hannah, a.k.a "Bicycle Girl," the legless zombie taken down by Rick Grimes in the first episode. It will tell the backstory of her pre-zombie life and how she tried to save her family before becoming one of "The Walking Dead" herself.

Look for them beginning Monday at 2 p.m. at AMCTV.com, and in the meantime, enjoy this new promo for season two, and then stick around for something that really needs no explanation beyond its title, "Zombinladen."



Finally today, and courtesy of Iwatchstuff.com, comes a grindhouse trailer that, well, you really have to watch because no words from me will really do it justice. Enjoy, "Zombinladen," and have a perfectly pleasant Thursday. Peace out.

ZOMBINLADEN The Axis Of Evil Dead

W reveals first look at Lisbeth Salander - take two

Actually, before we get into any of that (and if you haven't seen these, there well worth a short wait), I have a bone or two to pick with people who watch TV (and believe me, I watch much more than I should.)

After running 13 episodes of "Terriers" - easily my favorite new show of last fall - before canceling it to due to very low ratings, FX has now managed to debut a show that, at least in its debut, is fairing even worse.

And the really sad part is that "Lights Out," while far from a perfect TV pilot, shows a heck of a lot of potential. I'm a sucker for boxing-related entertainment anyways ("The Fighter," while not one of the best movies of 2010, is still pretty sensationally entertaining, thanks almost entirely to Christian Bale), and this show has the promise to be a nearly first-rate entry in the genre.

First, the very good. The ensemble is all-around good, led by someone I had never seen before, Holt McCallany, as the retired pugilist Patrick "Lights" Leary. He brings a winning sense of losing to the role of a fighter who's been retired for five years on the wishes of his wife (Catherine McCormack) after feeling he was cheated out of winning his last bout. Add to that Stacy Keach ("Fat City"!) as his father/manager and Pablo Schreiber (aka Nicky Sobotka on season 2 of "The Wire") as his brother and serially inept manager, and you've got the makings of a gritty family dynamic that, given time, could lead to some fantastic television.

In the pilot, Lights finds himself extremely low on money and is forced to become the muscle for a loan shark, which he's not surprisingly very good at. To tell you more beyond that would be criminal, so I'll just say the end of the pilot sets up the story arc of season one, assuming enough people tune in to even make that possible. Please do!

OK, now on to the main event. Though I'm still not and probably never will be sold on the need for David Fincher to make an English-language version of "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," it's hard to argue he didn't make a heck of a splash with this reveal of what Rooney Mara will look like as Lisbeth Salander in W magazine. That really doesn't need any more build up from me, so here goes, the cover shot and then one more.




Though, having read the second and third Lisbeth Salander novels by Stieg Larsson and watched the first two movies in their original Swedish (and if you like smart thrillers, do yourself a favor and watch them back-to-back now), I'm sure Lisbeth would never agree to strike such poses, I don't think there's any denying that Fincher and Mara have nailed the look.

And, though in sheer attitude Noomi Rapace got Lisbeth just about perfect in the Swedish movies, her look was the only thing that gave me any pause. In the books, though clearly a tough woman who doesn't take any shit from anyone, Lisbeth also cuts a pixieish figure, at least in the picture Larsson paints in your mind (well, at least mine). So, Fincher has gotten at least one thing right so far, but after sitting through Matt Reeves' thoroughly unnecessary, almost shot-by-shot remake of "Let the Right One In," he's gonna have to do a whole lot more to hook me on the need for any of this.

OK, I have to get to the job that still somehow pays my bills, so I'll just leave you with this rather surreal video from PBS' "American Masters," which I believe aired last night (while I was catching up with the pilot of "Lights Out" and "Parenthood" - sublime). In it, The Dude himself pays a visit to The Little Lebowski, a store in NYC with an obvious theme. While it's no surprise that such a store exists, it still adds a fun level of oddity to have Bridges pay it a visit. Enjoy the clip, and have a perfectly passable Thursday. Peace out.

Ben Affleck may finally be ready to move onto a new "Town"

Though I wanted to love Ben Affleck's "The Town," I could never really quite get there for several reasons.

First of all, the story is familiar to the point of being tired. And though it's extremely well shot, the body count in those slick action scenes should have been in the 100's (it's just a movie, I know, but with the way Jeremy Renner was spraying bullets around, it just didn't even come close to adding up.)

But what it really left me with was the sense that, even though the best strength of "The Town" is its very strong sense of place in Boston's Charlestown neighborhood, perhaps its time for Affleck to finally branch out from his home turf as a director.

Well, Warner Bros., apparently has the same idea, and has now offered him the chance to direct something called "Tales from the Gangster Squad."

Adapted from a series of LA Times articles, the movie will explore the true story of a secret "off the record" police task force that went after Meyer Harris "Mickey" Cohen, a high-profile gangster who was a member of the "Jewish Mafia" in the 1940's. The screenplay has been drafted by former LA cop and novelist Will Beall.

Still a crime movie, obviously, but that's just fine with me, because Affleck has proven much more with "Gone Baby Gone" than with "The Town" that he has a sure hand in directing crime thrillers, so here's hoping he takes this rather epic-sounding one with a welcome change of scenery.

After that today, there are just a couple more tidbits about directors whose work I almost always enjoy, including one who hasn't managed to make a feature film in about 12 years or so.

Before that comes word that David Fincher has now seemingly filled all the major roles in his still thoroughly unnecessary but could be quite good remake of "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo." The latest addition is Christopher Plummer as Henrik Vanger, the patriarch of the mysterious Vanger clan who hires Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) to investigate the Vanger family's secrets and track down his missing great-niece.

The biggest shoes to fill of all will be Rooney Mara, pictured here, stepping in to the titular role of Lisbeth Salander, already played to perfection by Noomi Rapace in the Swedish original by director Neils Arden Opley, but I think she'll do just fine. Round out the cast with Stellan Skarsgard as Martin Vanger and Robin Wright as Blomkvist's editor, Erika Berger, and you've got something that shapes up just about the same as Matt Reeves's "Let Me In," which has been receiving almost uniformly good reviews so far: A well-made movie with a sensational cast that, in a perfect world, probably shouldn't exist at all, because there's really very little room to improve on the original work it's based on.

Even so, I'll certainly turn out due to curiosity if nothing else to see what Fincher makes of all this, which is filming now in Sweden. (And if you want to see a first-rate, cerebral but truly brutal thriller, the original "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" is now both out on DVD and also streaming at Netflix, so watch it!)

And finally, does anyone remember Whit Stillman? Probably not, but with his very witty debut "Metropolitan" and then two lesser but still good followups, "Barcelona" and "The Last Days of Disco," he seemed to have a fairly flourishing indie movie career before pretty much disappearing after the latter's release in 1998.

He's tried to make several comebacks since that have fallen apart, but it looks like he finally really will return this time, with his "Damsels in Distress" having already started filming. Here, according the always reliable The Playlist, is what it's all about:

[Damsels in Distress] centers on a group of college girls who take in a new student and teach her their own misguided ways of helping people. Lily, a new student at Seven Oaks University, winds up filling in with a dynamic and highly individualistic group of girls, addicted to the elegance of the past: Heather, Violet and Rose all volunteer at the campus Suicide Prevention Center, convinced that musical dance, sharp clothes and good hygiene — the Dior perfume “Diorissimo” is their trademark — can all contribute to staving off the inevitable self-destructive impulses that follow hard on the heels of failed college romances. Despite their sophisticated talk and savvy use of perfume, the girls are plagued by Cupid’s arrows and must adjust their psyches to the onset of amour. [The Playlist]

As silly as all that sounds, it also sounds like just about the perfect milieu for the kind of sharp comedy of manners Stillman used to specialize in when he was able to work regularly. Greta Gerwig of "Greenberg," which I haven't seen, is apparently playing the role of Violet, and she will apparently be the closest thing to a star in this, assuming it really does come together.

And with that, I have to go now to the job that still somehow manages to pay me enough to keep the lights on. Peace out.