ALL IT'S MISSING IS A CHARLIE SHEEN CAMEO:  We may have to take our annual AdMeter question out of the pool, because here's that Ferris Bueller/Honda ad you've been waiting for.

I'M THE EYE-MAN OF TV, WITH MY OCULAR TB: Inspired by last week's spasm of coverage regarding Pres. John Tyler's living grandchildren (which, ahem, some of us could have told you over three years ago), the folks at Mental Floss couldn't help but wonder: what's your favorite all-time amazing fact?

INCREDIBLY CLOSE TO WHAT? As part of my feeling an obligation to see at least the majority of films that are Best Picture nominees (now at 6 of 9 for the year--haven't seen The Artist, The Tree of Life, or War Horse, and will probably only get to 7 or 8 total), I saw Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close in a fairly full theatre on the Upper East Side of Manhattan last night. I certainly wouldn't have ranked it #1 on my ballot, but nor did I react with the shock and disgust that some critics have leveled at the film. A couple of relatively spoiler-free thoughts:

• Despite the fact that Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock are top billed, they have maybe 10-15 minutes of screen time each--indeed, I think Max von Sydow and Viola Davis both have more screen time than does Hanks. (Reports are that Bullock had a significant subplot excised which involved James Gandolfini, who was highly billed on early posters, and whose part is entirely left on the cutting room floor.) That means that the movie rises and falls on Thomas Horn, whose sole credit before this was appearing on Kids Week on Jeopardy! The problem is that the character is a bit of a blank slate, though this is less Horn's fault than the source material and screenplay. Particularly given a reveal near the end of the film, I wonder if there wasn't a better movie to be made in which all the narrative weight didn't lie on his shoulders, but was shared in parallel with another character (as I understand the book is, mixing Oskar's story with flashbacks that are entirely absent from the film).
  
• Much of the reaction to the film (particularly the negative reaction) seems to be centered on how 9/11 plays a prominent role in the film. I'm wondering if a better movie could have been made by excising 9/11 entirely from it--have Hanks' character die in a random act of violence rather than one fraught with such emotion. Admittedly, this requires some rejiggering of plot elements, but less than you might think, and might have allowed both the filmmakers and the audience to focus on a small portrait of grief rather than trying to create a large and universal one.

There are some moments in the film that really work (particularly a couple of scenes between Bullock and Horn and von Sydow's wordless, but world-weary, performance), but on the whole, I found it an interesting example of a film that tries too hard to say everything, and, as a result, winds up saying pretty much nothing.

ONE FINAL THING I HAVE TO DO ... AND THEN I'LL BE FREE OF THE PAST:  The judges have spoken, and we have our winners in Matt Zoller Seitz's Vertigoed contest, selecting among 98 entries consisting of other film clips (such as the downfall of @DukeandDukePHL) set to Bernard Herrmann's memorable "Scene D'Amour" from the Vertigo score.  The winner?  One word: KHAAAAAN!

"LAST WEEK, WE DID A SHOW ... THAT LAID ... WITHOUT A DOUBT ... THE BIGGEST BOMB IN HISTORY": It's one of my favorite Hollywood stories, and I'm glad to see it told well by Splitsider -- You're In The Picture, the Jackie Gleason celebrity game show which aired once on January 20, 1961 (um ... kind of a busy night?) and only once, a show so bad that Gleason spent the next week's half-hour slot apologizing for the show having aired.

WHAT'S THE HAPS ON THE CRAPS?  In the tradition of Which Cubs Game Did Ferris Bueller Attend? and my What St. John's Game Did Prince Akeem Enjoy?, someone has cross-referenced the Lakers' box scores, Los Angeles weather reports, MTV's programming schedule and the history of beeper technology to determine that January 20, 1992, was Ice Cube's Good Day.

SINISTER PHASE THREE:  Longtime ALOTT5MA fave Evan O'Dorney, the 2007 National Spelling Bee champion from the East Bay (who Shonda once called an "adorable pint-size spelling genius and I know in my heart that one day he’ll create some kind of amazing box-type object that will change the world somehow"), is now a freshman at Harvard, where The Crimson profiles him today.  Two highlights:

"He is one of the few freshmen ever to place out of Math 55—the most advanced undergraduate math course offered—directly into graduate mathematics classes in his first semester."

"O’Dorney even offered to spell-check this article before it went to print."

UP YOUR NOSE WITH A RUBBER HOSE:  Piggybacking for a second straight day off something in the prior day's comments, I wanted to focus on something Eric J said in our discussion of the death of Welcome Back Kotter's Robert Hegyes:

Possibly the biggest gap between how much I loved it as a kid, and how unwatchable I'd find it now of any show.

A few years ago, I watched a few WBK reruns on Nick at Nite and found myself appreciating Gabe Kaplan more and the Sweathogs a little less. Bigger gaps for me are certainly for some of the animated stuff I devoured as a kid -- Super Friends and Scooby-Doo in particular, and among live-action stuff, I do not think Laverne & Shirley has aged well. It just seems so loud and clunky, and I don't quite get the appeal anymore.

AS LONG AS THERE IS INJUSTICE, WHENEVER A TARGATHIAN BABY CRIES OUT, WHEREVER A DISTRESS SIGNAL SOUNDS AMONG THE STARS, WE'LL BE THERE: Splitsider points out that Harold Ramis was originally signed to direct Galaxy Quest, and the fascinating part is why he backed out:

Originally titled Captain Starshine when it was first written but then wisely changed to Galaxy Quest, this sci-fi comedy was a directing project that Harold Ramis signed onto in 1998. Ramis reportedly left the movie, though, when Disney insisted on casting Tim Allen in the lead role, and Dean Parisot took over. According to movie site Ain’t it Cool News, Kevin Kline was Ramis’s first choice but Kline turned the part down. Ramis then wanted Alec Baldwin to play the lead role but the studio nixed that idea and selected Tim Allen.

By Grabthar's hammer, Baldwin would have been awesome in the role. Damn.

DEAR MR. KOTTER, PLEASE EXCUSE JUAN EPSTEIN FROM CLASS TODAY BECAUSE HE'S DEAD.  SIGNED, EPSTEIN'S MOTHER:  R.I.P. Robert Hegyes, Isro role model (even though he wasn't Jewish -- just the character), passed away at the age 60.

OH, YOU ONLY FIGHT THE FIGHTS YOU CAN WIN? YOU FIGHT THE FIGHTS THAT NEED FIGHTING!  Following up on yesterday's discussion, which has links to various lists in the comments, let's try to figure out who is the best living actor or actress to have never been nominated for an Academy Award.

For all of our Alan Rickman sympathy, yesterday's discussion suggested four other names perhaps higher on that list: Jennifer Jason Leigh, Mr. Steve Martin, Martin Sheen, and Jim Carrey -- and while I don't think of Carrey as being a great actor, between his performances in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Man on the Moon, and The Truman Show ... how has he not been nominated yet?

BECAUSE PETER GARRETT ISN'T THE ONLY AUSTRALIAN CABINET MINISTER WE EVER DISCUSS:  Congratulations to Aussie transport minister Anthony Albanese for his totally original remarks today:

In Australia, we have serious challenges to solve and we need serious people to solve them. Unfortunately, Tony Abbott is not the least bit interested in fixing anything. He is only interested in two things: making Australians afraid of it and telling them who's to blame for it.

It is unclear whether he then proceeded to have sex with Annette Bening.

BECAUSE JOEY WORKED OUT SO WELL FOR EVERYONE: A few years ago, there were rumblings of an Office spinoff, and fortunately for all concerned, it morphed into Parks & Recreation instead. Now, preparations are hard at work for Schrute Farms, a spinoff focusing on Dwight and his life at Schrute Farms. As cartoonish as Dwight has become, this sounds like a pretty awful idea, even though there's been some great material revolving around the farm over the years. Of course, complicating matters is that basically no one is under contract to the mothership show for next season, which may force this on us. In addition to the awfulness of this idea, feel free to discuss spinoffs you wish you could have seen (I still wish there was a "Paris and Doyle Move To NYC" spinoff of Gilmore Girls) or backdoor pilots that didn't go (like the 80s set Gossip Girl spinoff/prequel with Brittany Snow as Lily Rhodes (later van der Woodsen Bass Humphrey) and Krysten Ritter as her sister).

(MUST BE) THE MONEY: Terrell Owens is the subject of this GQ profile of a football player with a usual set of problems: despite a relatively unflashy life, he's out of work and out of money. Now it's his fault -- bad personal decisions, bad family decisions. But I'm sympathetic to these guys -- even TO. They never learned to handle a dollar because they never had one in the first place. But this is, for many of them, all of the money they will ever make and given they'd never seen how fast a family can use up $60K or $100K, $3 or $4M a year must seem inexhaustible. $80M in lifetime earnings. And it's gone.

ACCIO TRIBUTE!  For being the world's highest-grossing film franchise in history (non-adjusted for inflation, in which case it would be the James Bond films, albeit with 3x the films), the Harry Potter series sure hasn't gotten any respect from the Academy.  In sum, the eight films have received twelve nominations in total, none for acting/writing/directing, and zero wins. Alan Rickman, still, has never received an Oscar nomination in his life.

(By way of comparison, the Lord of the Rings trilogy received thirty nominations overall and won seventeen Oscars -- 4/13 for Fellowship, 2/6 on Two Towers, 11/11 for Return of the King.)

The series deserves better. Steve Kloves, J.K. Rowling, the actors, and the producing team deserve credit for an overall faithful, entertaining, family-friendly adaptation of a deservedly legendary series of books. They picked great kids a decade ago who matured into the actors they needed; the UK's finest thespians were well-used in filling out this world. When you consider how many adaptations fail to capture their source material accurately, the Harry Potter films cleared a high bar indeed.

So, with only three nominations this year, all in technical categories, what is to be done?  I think an Honorary Oscar to commemorate the overall achievement would be appropriate, except those were already given out this year. (Make an exception!) Otherwise, at a minimum, they should at least do a three-minute tribute reel, then bring out the cast and behind-the-scene team for the long standing ovation they richly deserve. This is only common sense—not magic.

THIRTEEN YEARS AND FOUR MONTHS:  This week's Wire Wednesday episode, "Old Cases," is all about being Real Police. Unlike the first three episodes, it doesn't feel like there's an even split between police-side and street-side plots; there's much more focus on the police, and we finally get to see competence (even intelligence) all around.

The crescendo is what apparently's just referred to as the "fuck" scene (NSFW, but you know that by now, because it's used about 38 times), a symphony of language and Bunk & McNulty's intelligence perfectly set up by D'Angelo's prior narration of what happened—like an inner-city version of that opening computer graphics scene in Titanic which shows us exactly how the ship will sink. And we've also got Lester's figuring of D'Angelo's pager number, setting up the next stage of the investigation.

Sure, there's dumb law enforcement too -- Bodie's escape from Boys Village and all the insurance/pension scam stuff does not reflect well on Baltimore's Finest, nor does the titular shunting of real police like Lester into more than a decade of index card work. But for once, I feel like the police may actually have a chance to crack the Barksdale operation.

About that operation: they've got a problem other than the police, and his name is Omar. I have no idea how shocking his being gay came off at the time—this is one of those facts I absorbed from the culture about the show, so I expected it—but it's certainly unique, and unlike Vito Spatafore on The Sopranos not at all played for laughs. I would not want to be Avon Barksdale's top priority, and am intrigued to see what happens next.

ENJOY EVERY SANDWICH:  Warren Zevon would have turned 65 today; he's now been gone from us for over eight years. Here's "Roland, the Headless Thompson Gunner," and, oh, his appearance on a particularly cursed episode of The Larry Sanders Show.

COOPER, YOU'RE AN AMAZING DANCER, AND YOU'RE A GREAT CHOREOGRAPHER, BUT AS A BOYFRIEND ... YOU KINDA SUCK: A certain segment of our readership will care that Ethan Stiefel has announced his impending retirement as a principal dancer for the American Ballet Theater, and will give his final performance as Ali, the Slave, in ABT’s production of Le Corsaire on Saturday evening, July 7, 2012. [HT: Linda Holmes.]

WHAT PART OF "LIFETIME APPOINTMENT" DON'T YOU GET, SIR? ... NEVERMIND, HE GOT IT: The Hon. Wesley Brown joined the federal bench in 1958, appointed as a bankruptcy judge by President Dwight Eisenhower, and was promoted to the United States District Court for the District of Kansas by President John F. Kennedy in 1962. He had grown up next door to freed slaves; when he attended college, Calvin Coolidge was President.

"You know, he could have retired years ago at full salary," explained one of his colleagues on the bench when Brown turned 93. "But I think one of the reasons he stays is because he doesn't believe in doing something for nothing. He couldn't take the taxpayers' money for not working."

Judge Brown continued to hear a full docket of cases well past the age of 100, and did not reduce his caseload until last year. Judge Brown passed away last night at the age of 104.

AM I BUGGIN' YA? In response to our recent discussion, a helpful reader notes that in today's NYT crossword puzzle, the clue for 42-Down is "U2 Guitarist," and there are seven letters, not four.  (No, "Clayton" doesn't work.)

ATTACK OF THE SHORT GOLD MEN: Looks like we've got a few surprises in the Oscar nods:

• No nomination for Tilda Swinton for best actress despite a slew of critics prizes for her in We Need To Talk About Kevin, though Rooney Mara and Glenn Close got in.
  
• A couple of surprises in Best Actor--Gary Oldman gets into the mix for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (which is also in the running for adapted screenplay), and Demian Bichir gets in for the little-seen A Better Life.
  
• Despite the "tighter" Best Pic eligibility rules, 9 nominees, including a couple of surprises--Tree of Life and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, both of which likely benefited from the ranked voting system in which a #1 vote counts for a lot in nominations, as they are highly, highly polarizing, with their fans being insistent on their high value.
  
• In the category of "People who are going to lose to Christopher Plummer," Nick Nolte's performance in Warrior (which I found extremely hammy) is on the short list, as are Jonah Hill's work in Moneyball and Max Von Sydow's wordless work in Extremely Loud. Interestingly, 3 of the 20 acting nominations are for non-speaking roles.
• They bent over backwards to snub Pixar, Tintin, and Rio in Animated Feature, with two obscure films to fill out the category but not slow the inevitable win of Rango.
• Apparently only two original song competitors, with an easy call for "Man or Muppet" to win.
• Other movies that can add "Academy Award Nominee" to their ads? Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Real Steel, Anonymous, and Madonna's film W.E.