ALOTT5MA TIVO REMINDER: Two notes on your Sunday viewing pleasure -- first, that Who Wants To Be Systematic, Automatic and Hydromatic? debuts on NBC at 8pm, and if the Greaser competition is even halfway decent I imagine this blog will be covering it weekly; and secondly that HBO begins re-airing three episodes of Rome nightly starting tomorrow to catch you up before season two begins next week. Rome won three 2005 ALOTT5MA Awards and is a real favorite of mine, even though, sure, I still haven't gotten into Deadwood or The Wire. Largely historically accurate, mega-budgeted, compelling drama set in a time "when men were men, women were frequently naked and numbers were letters." Do give it a shot, else the Thirteenth Legion may kick your ass.

NOTES ON NOTES ON A SCANDAL: Yes, you should see this movie, but you should know as little about it as possible coming. The marketing really spoils things, but I'm not quite sure how you make the movie a compelling sell without giving away the twist -- it'd be like trying to promote Titanic without mentioning that the boat sinks. Still, I can say this much:

1. Judi Dench is stunningly good, in a glamour-free, fierce performance. And Bill Nighy does enough to get the Oscar nomination he's deserved for a few years.
2. It is very, very weird to see one's own (obscure, old, text-message friendly) cell phone have a prominent role in a movie in which its particular functionality is an issue.
3. STFU, Obtrusive Philip Glass Score.
4. Watch how Judi Dench's lighting suddenly becomes so much warmer, and less chilly and natural, once she figures out her big move mid-film.
   
5. This is a book that is, I think, impossible to adapt completely to the screen, because the language of cinema may not accommodate the existence of an unreliable narrator. In a movie, we know to believe that which we see, so I don't know how one pulls off the trick of the novel in not making us realize until later what's been going on the whole time. So instead of a narrator lying to herself, what we feel instead are her lies to the others around her. With that limitation, it's well worth your time.
   

DO YOU THINK YOU'RE WHAT THEY SAY YOU ARE? Finally getting to watch this year's Kennedy Center Honors helped me answer two questions: (1) what was the last Broadway song to have mainstream pop success? -- how about "Memory" from Cats?; and (2) what does one do after fronting the most important (slash, "only") black rock band of the 1990s? Apparently, you play Judas.

ANOTHER EXCUSE FOR SCREWING MARTY SCORSESE: After seeing Dreamgirls this evening (and, yeah, wow, though I have concerns about the longevity of Hudson's career after this), a thought came to mind--as of now it's widely presumed that our five Best Picture nominees at the upcoming Oscars will come from the following group (with the first four being viewed as almost certain locks to appear on the list):

• The Departed
• Little Miss Sunshine
• Dreamgirls
• The Queen
• Letters From Iwo Jima
• Babel

(There's an outside chance a wild card like United 93, Pan's Labyrinth, or Little Children could sneak in, but that seems fairly unlikely.)

Isn't this an unusual year in that three of the presumed contenders aren't really "about" anything from a "larger issue" perspective? Sure, you can argue that Departed and LMS are both about "the seedy underbelly of the American Dream" (albeit in very different ways), and Dreamgirls can be construed as being about race in the music/entertainment industry and the manipulation of entertainers, but that seems a stretch. It's a fascinating contrast to last year, when four of the five nominees were clearly "about an issue." (Crash=racism in America, Brokeback Mountain=homosexuality in America, Good Night and Good Luck=the media in America and the free press, Munich=the relationship between vengeance and justice in the terrorism context.)

ALL THE BALLS ARE BACK IN THE TANK: The writing staff on Family Guy has returned to work after a 2.5 month lockout by the fine folks at Fox.

MANY A PROMISING CAREER HAS BEEN RUINED BY THE PRACTICE OF ANTITRUST LAW: Sorry to say that I, like everybody else on Leslie Skolnick Hauser's U of C listserv, just heard the sad news about Bernie Meltzer's passing. For those that don't know the details of a career that included stints as a New Deal insider, a Nuremburg prosecutor (his annual reminiscences of this were a highlight of the law school calendar), a labor lawyer, and, by all accounts, that rarity among legal scholars, a dedicated teacher, here's an account.

By the time I got to Chicago, Meltzer was long past the prime of his legal career, but he remained warm and generous with his time and advice -- the title of this post is what he said to me when I told him I really enjoyed my antitrust class. At the law school auction, a friend and I won lunch with him, where he told stories with misleading and unwarranted modesty about how he lucked into many of the highlights of his career. We tried to talk him into teaching a class, which his wife vetoed for health reasons, so we were left to regret not showing up soon enough to learn more from him.

IT'S HOT IN HERE: Spacewoman and I loved last night's Office. Quoth Spacewoman: "You know what TV needs more of? TV needs more Ed Helms." Wonderful episode with equal doses of mathos and pathos, sometimes in the same spoonful. And I take it Jan hasn't heard about the photograph yet?