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On her wedding day, Rachel (Piper Perabo) locks eyes with Luce, the woman who did the flowers (Lena Headey), and it is love at first sight. This is a great disappointment for Rachel’s husband (Matthew Goode), and to save the marriage Luce does everything she can to deny the reality of her romance with Rachel, as the requirements of romantic sitcom generate double meanings, close calls, surprise revelations, and everything except passion and insight. There is a certain irony involved in the fact that the R classification was generated not by the sex but by the language.

Sanaa Lathan stars as a successful African-American accountant whose workaholism has eliminated a social life. She meets a landscape architect (Simon Baker), and they’re attracted – but he’s white, and she prefers to date within her race. The movie deals with romance, race and careers not in a sitcom way, like “Guess Who,” but with frankness and realism. It’s surprisingly involving, and although it delivers in laughs (and maybe a few tears), it’s a film of unexpected substance. With this film and the completely different but also observant Queen Latifah comedy “Last Holiday,” black women are paid a kind of attention they deserve but rarely get in the movies.

When his friend Melquiades is killed in a stupid act by a border patrolman, a cowman named Perkins (Tommy Lee Jones) enforces a simple but brutal form of justice: He forces the border agent (Barry Pepper) to dig up the body, so the two of them can return it to the man’s home in Mexico. The kind of story that John Huston or Sam Peckinpah might have wanted to film. Begins with a bedrock of loyalty, and mixes it with a little madness. Jones’ direction and the screening by Guillermo Arriaga won prizes at Cannes 2005.

Anthony Hopkins plays Burt Munro, a codger from New Zealand who takes nitro pills for his heart condition, and has spent years tinkering with a 1920 Indian motorcycle. In 1967 he thinks the bike is ready for a trip to Speed Week at the Bonneville Salt Flats. The millionaire racing teams have never seen anything like Burt and his Indian. Is that a cork in the gas tank? Directed by Roger Donaldson, and based on a true story. Did Burt set a new record in his category? Spoiler warning: The movie is not titled “The World’s Second Fastest Indian.”

In 1982 the legendary folk-singing group The Weavers gave a farewell concert at Carnegie Hall, documented in the great “The Weavers: Wasn’t That a Time!” But in 2003 they gathered once again, for a Carnegie concert in honor of the 50th anniversary of the impresario Harold Leventhal, who supported them in good times and bad. This film by Jim Brown records that night in 2003, with Pete Seeger, Ronnie Gilbert and Fred Hellerman of the original Weavers joined by Erik Darling, Eric Weissberg, Arlo Guthrie, Leon Bibb and Peter, Paul and Mary. Stirring memories and timeless music.

A second criminal defense lawyer has filed a motion challenging the NSA warrantless wiretaps. Talkleft wrote here about Albany lawyer Terry Kindlon who filed the first such motion. David Smith of Alexandria, VA, another excellent defender is now representing Iyman Faris, the trucker from Ohio who pleaded guilty to planning to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge.

A motion filed by Faris’ attorney David Smith in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., argues that investigators improperly obtained evidence against Faris and that his trial lawyer was ineffective.

Given the likelihood that Faris’ phone conversations or e-mails had been electronically monitored, Faris’ trial lawyer, Frederick Sinclair, should have asked for evidence of such surveillance, Smith said in the motion. “Had he done so, the government would have been in a real bind and this would have enabled Faris to, at a minimum, negotiate a much more favorable plea bargain,” the motion said.

….At his sentencing, prosecutors acknowledged that federal agents were led to Faris by a telephone call intercepted in another investigation.

The challenges are going to be multiplying rapidly. Here’s who reportedly is next on deck:

President Bush spoke Thursday in Maplewood, Minn., to promote his newly unveiled American Competitiveness Initiative. The president wants Congress to authorize tax credits for business research, increased money for federal science programs and improved math and science education in American high schools. [NPR]

The media must have censored President’ Bush’s State of the Union Address. Here’s what we missed, from The Onion.

“Tonight, by executive order, I am creating a permanent department with a vital mission: to ensure that the political scandals, underhanded dealings, and outright criminal activities of this administration are handled in a professional and orderly fashion,” Bush said.

The centerpiece of Bush’s plan is the Department Of Corruption, Bribery, And Incompetence, which will centralize duties now dispersed throughout the entire D.C.-area political establishment.

Tomorrow, the Associated Press will release 200 pages of government documents it has received concerning debates in the Ford Adminstration over conducting warrantless surveillance for national security purposes.

The roughly 200 pages of historic records obtained by The Associated Press reflect a remarkably similar dispute between the White House and Congress fully three decades before President Bush’s acknowledgment he authorized wiretaps without warrants of some Americans in terrorism investigations.

Among those named in the documents: George H.W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. As one analyst says, “It’s deja-vu all over again.”

FISA was passed in 1978, during the Ford Administration. Papa Bush and other Republicans were afraid the law would diminish presidential powers.

Two new patent applications have shown up on the United States Patent and Trademark Office website. According to Kotakuite Psyclone, Both were filed by Nintendo of America in July 2004 but didn’t show up on the website until today.
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CBS has confirmed that it is in talks with Apple to bring its programming to the iTunes Music Store. CBS Digital Media president Larry Kramer confirmed the news in an interview with financial site MarketWatch.
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Check out this winning entry from the The International Obfuscated C Code Contest (IOCCC). If you think your just looking at a crap program with bad coding style look again. Just focus and “you will find illumination!” It is a complete C program that runs and compiles that generates ASCII 3D “Magic Eye” images.
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