Forest Whitaker: still--I think--underrated as an actor. Is it possible to say that even now? Somehow, yes. I thought Waitin to Exhale and Hope Floats sucked sucks, but the first half of The Crying Game is the most underrated half a movie in history! (Who cares about the wang.)

I saw Ocean's Thirteen yesterday, on the run from the vagaries of the Walgreen's presciption counter, is what made me think of this; they showed the preview for Vantage Point--

--PLEASE stop naming movies after easily-forgettable idioms, please. Harder to remember, not easier. HARDER. And 10,000 more meaningless. Stupid. Not worthy of the $150 million attached to it. Throw a proper noun in there. You can do it. Come up with a memorable title. As it was it made the preview look like a parody, a fake, something from The Player and that's an out-of-date ref but it's still true. God, I should be running a studio--

--and even in the preview he jumped off the screen. FW's a good actor.

Ocean's Thirteen? Meh. It's filled with a lot of kind of casual sexism I didn't really appreciate. And without a very real sense of place...I dunno. I've never seen a movie with such a barrage of mise-en-scene, thing after thing after room after locale, but the fake hotel in the center...made it in the end slide meaninglessly toward a Die Hard/Spiderman kind of feel. All the pretty boys, who were looking a little squidgy to be honest, didn't compensate.