#109 The Rundown

I don't mind admitting that I like The Rock. He's a charismatic guy and, thanks to his latest film, a great action star. The Rundown, directed by Peter Berg, is an ultra-violent (yet bloodless) romp rife with homages to Romancing the Stone and, yes, Raiders of the Lost Ark. It's the most fun I've had since with a balls-out action flick since Schwarzenegger's heyday. The fight scene that opens the film sets the tone. The Rock, reluctantly acting as a collection agent/enforcer, is forced to take on the several players from his favorite football team. The ensuing brawl is well choreographed, but still rough. No light-weight wire work, just angry men throwing bone-shattering blows. Later, when the fight coordinator finally breaks out the wire-fu, it's for a good reason - to give a miffed gang of capoeira-trained rebels the skills to kick The Rock's ass.

#108 The Kills

I just caught VV and Hotel Kill play live at Amoeba. Their album Keep On Your Mean Side is a stripped-down, blues-influenced rocker. Hearing it for the first time reminded me of my first exposure to The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion (for its punk via the Delta sound) and PJ Harvey (for the rough-hewn, female vocals). Onstage The Kills are likely to conjure, in some, comparisons to The White Stripes. Hotel plays his guitar over a drum machine, while VV sings. That's it. Though both acts play roots-inspired material and rock very, very hard, their music exists in two very different places.

#107 The Joe Schmo Show

This Spike TV reality show is one part cruel social experiment and one part sly parody. The series follows the hapless Matt Gould, a regular guy from Pittsburgh who doesn't know that he's on a fake TV show. Matt thinks he's one of the contestants on Lap of Luxury. The fake premise is that he is living in a mansion with other real people who share the goal of "surviving" the show and winning a $100,000 prize. The actors who play Matt's competitors live up to the challenge of staying in character 24 hours a day. The best, like Lance Krall (as Kip, the gay guy), use their roles to provide subtle humor that smartly lampoons reality show behavior without letting Matt in on the secret. Part of the fun is watching the actors screw up, then try to undo their mistakes. The best part of the show, though, is its insight into human behavior. At first it's easy to hate Matt's seemingly vapid, frat boy personality, but the show slowly reveals it's subject as a nuanced, feeling and all-around decent human being.

#106 Ripple: A Prediliction For Tina

This collection represents the most true-to-life and most personal work of cartoonist Dave Cooper. The story, originally serialized in his comic Weasel, desribes the fate of an artist, not unlike Mr. Cooper, who becomes entangled in a messy, odd and (by all stretches of the imagination) unhealthy sexual relationship with one of his artist's models. A friend of mine dismissed this book as no less than smut because of its extremely adult content, but I'd have to disagree. While this very graphic novel lives up to the name, its too full of truths about lust and obsession to ignore.

Most of Dave Cooper's published comics work can be found on at Fantagraphics.com.

#105 The Ladykillers

This is the darkest of the Ealing Comedies -- a group of excellent films made during the studio's successful run in the late '40s and early '50s. The plot follows a gang of robbers who lodge in a nice, old lady's Victorian home while planning and executing a heist. Alec Guinness stars as the team's oddly dentured mastermind and a young Peter Sellers plays one of the crooks. Things become complicated when the aged Mrs. Wilberforce finally catches on to their plot. The gangsters, though thoroughly sick of the elderly woman's constant offerings of tea, have a tough time getting up the gumption to knock her off.

The Coen Brothers are currently shooting a remake of the film with Tom Hanks.