Sexiest Woman Alive

Halle Berry was honored by Esquire magazine as the sexiest woman alive for 2008.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Halle Berry may be a mommy of a certain age, but the men's magazine Esquire says the Oscar-winning actress is still the Sexiest Woman Alive.

In an article posted on Tuesday on the magazine's website (www.esquire.com), Berry poses in a parody of a 2000 cover photograph of former U.S. President Bill Clinton, and writes about what she thinks of winning Esquire's annual honor for the first time.

"Well, I don't know exactly what it means but being 42 and having just had a baby, I think I'll take it," Berry wrote.

Not to make Skippy feel left out:

He gets dirty, does filthy jobs and gets all hot and sweaty doing it. You want him. You know you do. You would cheat on your hubby or beau for 15 minutes with Mike Rowe on top of you (or power bottoming) and you know it! Hell, I'd invite him for a 3-way. Why be selfish?

Yes, Mike Rowe is The Man, kids that are making gay hearts go pitter patter. And--here is what Mike Rowe had to say about it. Do I detect a not of hope?

"What can I say? I'm honored. I would, however, like to take a moment to clear something up. Even though I got my start in theater, sang for years in The Baltimore Opera, moved to San Francisco and never married, I must tell you all again, for the hundredth time ...

"I am NOT a celebrity.

"Not that there's anything wrong with that... "

Fantastic

Sadly, This Did Happen to Quatto in Rolemaster

Why I Love Prison Break by Stephen King

By Stephen King

Stephen King

Here's a truth that should be self-evident: There can be a big difference between what you think is great and what you actually like. When it comes to TV, the finest series currently on offer is — in your Uncle Stevie's humble opinion — Breaking Bad (not AMC's other series, Mad Men, which is just soap opera with a great retro feel). But when it comes to what I'd walk over my grandmother not to miss, the answer is Prison Break. Simple as that. I love Prison Break madly, deeply, truly.

Before you rush to catch up on everything you've missed, let me warn you: If you picked up the first three seasons on DVD and watched them all at once, your frakkin' head would explode. I've scoped the entire run, and even I have only the dimmest idea of what's going on. And that doesn't detract from my pleasure even a little bit. Here's a rough summary of Our Story So Far, concocted not with help from the usual Internet sources but from my own little Break-obsessed head. EW fact-checkers will try to fix this. I won't let them.

So okay, there are these two brothers, Lincoln Burrows and Michael Scofield (I don't remember why they don't have the same last name). Linc gets convicted of murdering the Evil President's brother, and is sentenced to death at Fox Mulder Memorial Prison (or maybe it's Fox River; I know there's a Fox in there somewhere because the show's on Fox). Michael commits a robbery so he can also go to prison and bust his brother out. The escape plan is tattooed on Michael's body. (It gets lasered off in season 4: the whole thing, all at once. Ouch!) Michael befriends the warden, who's making a Taj Mahal out of Popsicle sticks, and falls in love with the prison nurse, Sara. In season 3, Sara gets her head chopped off, but it's mistaken identity and she comes back in season 4.

With me so far?

Anyway, Michael and Linc escape with a bunch of assorted fruits and nuts. The most over-the-top is T-Bag, a degenerate Night of the Hunter-type psycho brilliantly played by Robert Knepper. There's also this one guy who's a few fries short of a Happy Meal and wants to live in a painting. Of Holland, I think. (He jumps off a water tower.)

The second season is the best, a Sam Peckinpah shoot-out with the escapees looking for some money buried by — I think — mythic skyjacker D.B. Cooper. They are chased by a badass prison guard named Bellick and a pill-popping FBI lunatic named Alex Mahone. Mahone killed and buried a guy in his backyard, but that's another story. (Oh, and T-Bag lost a hand and had a vet do a transplant, but it didn't work; the hand now looks like something swiped from a department-store dummy.)

Here's the part that kills me: All the survivors except Linc wind up in a Panamanian prison! Yes! It's called Sona (Spanish for ''Fox Mulder''). This is the strike-shortened third season, and it's gotta be the sweatiest 13 episodes of TV ever filmed. As an added taste treat, the swag-bellied Bellick (Wade Williams) stumbles through the first two in a pair of filthy undershorts. Not a yummy picture.

Needless to say, there's another escape. T-Bag gets lost in the desert and is forced to chow down on his running buddy. When The Bag finally catches a ride, the driver sizes up his nausea and inquires, ''What's wrong, man? Eat some bad Mexican?'' Classy! Well, you know what they say: If you can't eat the one you love, eat the one you're with.

Turns out the president's brother was murdered by a shadowy outfit called The Company, and now Linc, Michael, the resurrected Sara, and their cohorts must take the bad guys down, including dragon lady Susan B. Anthony (sometimes known as Gretchen — don't ask).

What makes this so much damned fun are bright exteriors, crisp cutting, outrageous action sequences, and, most of all, the acting ensemble. I especially enjoy William Fichtner as Alex Mahone — Fichtner's probably the best character actor on TV. These guys play it straight, so the audience does the same. There's also a crazy existential subtext: No matter what these hapless escapees do or how fast they run, they always end up...booya!...back in prison.

For season 5, I hope it's a gulag in Siberia.

Movie News~! from 411Mania

Latest on new Daredevil flick...

20th Century Fox head Tom Rothman, in an interview with IESB, says that the success of The Incredible Hulk has convinced him that "if you really do it right the audience will give you a second chance. That it is possible. And I think that you see that when they did Batman Begins, the first [Christopher] Nolan movie, that you can have made some mistakes along the way or movies that the audience wasn't that crazy about and then given the proper amount of time and the right creative vision behind it, you can, to use your word, reboot."

Rothman added that the new Daredevil needs "a visionary at the level that Chris Nolan was. It needs someone, it needs a director, honestly, who has a genuine vision."

Yeah, another one.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Harrison Ford says George Lucas is currently thinking up Indiana Jones V.

"It's crazy but great. ... George is in think mode right now [about Indiana Jones V]. It's automatic, really, we did well with the last one and with that having done well and been a positive experience, it's not surprising that some people want to do it again."

And Kevin Spacey will be back...

The Independent reports that Warner Bros. is paying Kevin Spacey big bucks to have him reprise his role as Lex Luthor in yet another new Superman movie that could start filming in 2009 for a 2011 release.

As reported earlier, Warner Bros. plans to push the next Superman movie in the direction of The Dark Knight by making it darker and more gritty.

Latest on sequel....

300 director Zach Snyder recently told IESB that he is waiting for Frank Miller to write a graphic novel sequel to 300 and that once that is done, he will begin working on the script for the 300 sequel and will then direct the project.

Snyder added that the sequel will take place between the Battle of Thermopylae (the main focus of the original movie) and the Battle of Plataea right at the end of the film and will explore the year-long period between these battles, with the valour of the 300 Spartans inspiring the Greek kingdoms to unite in the face of the might Persian army.

Director talks villains...

Iron Man director Jon Favreau participated in a web chat today at the LA Times website.

On villains: "We're playing with who the villain should be and what we should incorporate from the comic book. And how it will lead into The Avengers. I think we need some version of 'classic villains' in these movies. Many don't hold up well to time and to the big screen, but their essence should inspire the characters."

He continued about Mandarin, saying the villain "is still an important figure in the Iron Man universe. We have an interesting take on him that allows us to incorporate the whole pantheon of villains. The whole 10 Rings thing in (Iron Man 1) was a good tease for it."

On a female villain such as Madame Masque being used in the sequel: "Female villain... Now there's an interesting notion."

On the sequel: "The sequel is shaping up to incorporate Tony's vision for the future. What happens after he says 'I am Iron Man?' Iron Man is indeed a celebrity. He announced who he was and we have now officially departed from the standard secret ID superhero. Tony was already famous before the announcement. What would really happen if this went down? Fun to explore."

On synergy between these comic films: "Now that Marvel is making its own movies, every movie has to fit into the Marvel universe. The Avengers incorporates not just Iron Man, but Thor, possibly the Hulk and traditionally Captain America as well. As it is, it's scheduled Thor will come out the same summer as Iron Man 2 and Captain America will come out a few months before Avengers. All the films have to come together to create a consistent universe. That's very important to everyone involved."

Favreau also said that the film would hopefully be released in 2010, that Nick Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. would remain important parts of the franchise, and that Iron Man 2 needs War Machine.

The Pundits Weigh In

Rachael Ray...You Dirty Little Minx

The Swift Boating of John McCain

Make-Believe Maverick

A closer look at the life and career of John McCain reveals a disturbing record of recklessness and dishonesty

McCAIN FIRST

This is the story of the real John McCain, the one who has been hiding in plain sight. It is the story of a man who has consistently put his own advancement above all else, a man willing to say and do anything to achieve his ultimate ambition: to become commander in chief, ascending to the one position that would finally enable him to outrank his four-star father and grandfather.

In its broad strokes, McCain's life story is oddly similar to that of the current occupant of the White House. John Sidney McCain III and George Walker Bush both represent the third generation of American dynasties. Both were born into positions of privilege against which they rebelled into mediocrity. Both developed an uncanny social intelligence that allowed them to skate by with a minimum of mental exertion. Both struggled with booze and loutish behavior. At each step, with the aid of their fathers' powerful friends, both failed upward. And both shed their skins as Episcopalian members of the Washington elite to build political careers as self-styled, ranch-inhabiting Westerners who pray to Jesus in their wives' evangelical churches.

In one vital respect, however, the comparison is deeply unfair to the current president: George W. Bush was a much better pilot.

Read the rest of the article at ROLLING STONE

25 Minutes of The Watchmen

Some guy posted his reaction to seeing 25 minutes of The Watchmen. Click HERE if you want some spoilers.

Farker Photoshop Goodness from the Palin-Biden Debate Tonight

Uh Oh

Voting for bailout bill has some on the right pissed...

We won't know the full impact of this until the rightwing talk shows hit the air tomorrow, but a quick browsing of Republican sites and forums across the internet seems to reveal a lot of anger towards John McCain over his decision to vote for the bailout bill Wednesday night. For example, several posters on the hannity.com forums, which is as rightwing as it gets, said that they will no longer vote for McCain because of his vote, saying that Republicans sat back and did nothing while Bush threw out conservative values and now they won't do the same this time with McCain. Some are coming out and calling McCain a fake conservative, adding that at least Obama admits what he is. Even those who say they will still vote for McCain now say they will do so because he is the "lesser of two evils." Republican backlash against McCain is obviously the last thing he needs right now, but it's somewhat unavoidable as he has spoke out against the government interfering with the market for over a decade, and now has turned around and voted for what is probably the biggest market intervention bill ever.

That. Is. Cool.

Inpex to Use Bacteria at Old Oil Wells to Produce Gas (Update2)

By Shigeru Sato and Yuji Okada

Sept. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Japanese researchers have developed a method of using bacteria found in depleted oil wells to turn leftover crude into natural gas, a technique that could help meet 10 percent of the country's demand for the fuel.

Inpex Holdings Inc., Japan's largest energy explorer, has produced methane using microbes and crude residue from the 139- year-old Yabase field in northern Japan, said Haruo Maeda, director of a laboratory operated by Teikoku Oil Co., an Inpex unit. A 2 billion yen ($19 million) trial will start in 2015 to decide if gas can be produced commercially at Yabase, he said.

Oil prices have more than tripled since 2002, making it attractive to invest in fields and technologies previously thought unviable. Inpex's trial at Yabase, Japan's biggest field in the 1950s, may help the world's fourth-largest energy consuming nation cut its $30 billion annual liquefied natural gas import bill.

``If oil stays above $100 a barrel in years ahead, it may be worth trying this unique technique,'' Hirofumi Kawachi, senior energy analyst at Mizuho Investors Securities Co., said in Tokyo. ``Development costs are the key for Inpex to determine whether or not to push ahead with this project.''