Cross My Heart

I am in full NBA playoff mode (two games EVERY night!) but after the games on TNT I have had the pleasure of catching reruns of some of TNTs welcome characters (the night before I saw my first ever episode of Franklin and Bash and I gotta know, is there some new trend where every television law firm is run by an Afro-American MILF - Garcelle Beauvais on Bash and Gina Torres on Suits?).

Late last night I saw the best episode of Leverage I have ever seen.  I am up and down with this series.  Some episodes wow me while others leave me indifferent but last night's "Cross My Heart" episode from season four was great.  Everything from the cold start during a layover at the Cincinnati Airport to the two lives hanging in the balance drama - with several Sting-like twists in between - left me unable to go to bed (although it was already one am and I had to go to work in the morning)and showed Leverage's tight ensemble group at their best.

~rave!

Crowne Me

Has anybody seen Larry Crowne with Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts?  Like most of the movie going public I avoided it like the plague when it was in the theaters.  Caught it on DirecTV and I found it quite engaging (and not just for the awesomely fetching Gugu Mbatha-Raw).  The movie prominently features Pam Grier (still fetching), Cedric the Entertainer, Taraji P. Henson and a slyly wicked turn by George Takei as Dr. Matsutani. In addition to Mr. Takei, there is a nice bit where one of Hank's speech classmates gives a two-minute dissertation on why Deep Space Nine is the best of the Star Trek series while dressed in full star fleet uniform.  This movie even makes me like Wilmer Valderrama and I HATE Wilmer Valderrama.

~rave!

Hulk Like Me

It turns out the problem with the two Hulk movies wasn't the CGI Hulks - because the one in the new Avengers movie is not significantly better than the one in the second Hulk movie - but the actors playing Dr. Bruce Banner. Mark Ruffalo wears the tortured soul of the good doctor as he brings a vulnerability, a fragile, bruised humanity to the character that has been missing since Bill Bixby played David Bruce Banner. He so inhabits the character that when Banner and Stark are going I.Q. to I.Q. on the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier, you believe in his prodigious intellect and his overweening humanity, in way you wouldn't if the character had been played by one Eric Bana or one Edward Norton.

Wild Things

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Where the Wild Things Are author Maurice Sendak dead at 83. I used to read Where the Wild Things Are to my daughter (who is now 20) every night. She'd giggle every time I told her in my monster voice, "I could eat you up I love you so!" and every night we would conclude the book with me asking softly, "and who loved him most of all?" "His mommy," she would say before kissing me on my forehead and falling off to sleep. ~rave!