Pun Salad

Roger Simon's series detective Moses Wine takes a trip to Northern California, trying to save his radical environmentalist son from getting arrested for a tree-spiking that killed a logger.

Moses is, as always, self-pitying and tedious. I remember Richard Dreyfuss played him in the movies years ago; good choice. His son takes after his father, so I'd nominate, oh, say, Sean Penn to play that role.

No, Sean Penn's too old. How about Zach Braff?

One of the interesting side effects of doing the Blockbuster online DVD rental is, they give you two coupons per month for a "free" rental at their bricks-and-mortar stores. So on Friday evening, I find myself at the store without the slightest idea about what to rent. Hence, this movie.

IMDB gave it a piddling 3.9/10 stars. It's not that bad; it's funny in spots, a stupid but intriguing premise about mind control, and has colorful villains, all of whom get their comeuppance, thanks to Mr. Steven Seagal.

OK, so Steven Seagal has gotten old and fat. So have I, and I'm actually 20 days younger than he. He's doing better than I at keeping his hair, so I give him some respect for that.

This movie should not be called Submerged because only about 15 minutes is spent on a sub. The sub is not particularly important to the plot.

But when did you last see a movie set in Uruguay? How did they pick that? (According to the IMDB, however, it was actually filmed in Bulgaria. So how many movies have you seen that were filmed in Bulgaria?)

If you're permitted to read language that you would not hear in a PG movie, Stephen Green has an apt analogy to Cindy Sheehan's desires to meet with the President again.

John Podhoretz and Jim Geraghty distribute some healthy skepticism over the charge that the 9/11 Commission ignored the evidence obtained by Able Danger that (allegedly) found Mohammed Atta and a Brooklyn-based Al-Qaeda terrorist cell in 2000.