I took advantage of an early AMC start time and saw "The Lincoln Lawyer" this morning. Four were in attendance. Bottom line? This is actually worth seeing.

Matthew McConaughey is the Lincoln Lawyer, because he had a DUI and works out of the back of a Lincoln, driven by his own chauffeur. He had his shirt off for the briefest of moments here and no trampoline in sight. Marisa Tomei is around as his ex-wife, who works for the DA. Marisa is just starting to have old age creep in around her eyes, but still looks great. Ryan Phillippe is a wealthy guy accused of beating up a hooker and hires McConaughey to get him off.

Now that should put everyone on alert. Phillippe has the guy who ran Shawshank as his "family lawyer", but John Leguizamo is a bail bondsman who tells McConaughey he should take the case. And when we find out there was a similar case that McConaughey had worked on in the past, well, now we have ourselves a movie.

William H. Macy, in full "Shameless" mode, is McConaughey's investigator. Frances Farmer plays Phillippe's mother. Bryan Cranston takes time off from "Breaking Bad" and has a bit role as a cop, as does old hand Michael Pare. My God, Michael Pare was in this movie!

I liked this movie. This was actually written for adults and when you have a rogue attorney like McConaughey, you know that means interesting characters are gonna pop up. You have a good cast and when you combine it with a cool title sequence and a gem of a soundtrack, it's a keeper. I'm afraid it's going to get lost in a web of "Wimpy Kid", "Limitless", "Sucker Punch" and "Rango".

Seriously, a terrific soundtrack here. Bracketed by Bobby "Blue" Bland's "Ain't No Love In The Heart Of The City" with a new take on Ashford & Simpson's "California Soul". Plus, Eric B. and Rakim bring us "Don't Sweat The Technique". You gotta love this stuff.

Meal of Links

There's smart. Then there's Shaka Smart.

Passports make you liberal. It's a fact.

Happy Birthday, Leonard Nimoy



Have you seen the 2011 update for Faces of Meth? What a surprise.

Exercise Yard

Well, the Final Four has been decided. Yesterday's half of the bracket was where I was having the most trouble and I obviously did not have Butler or UConn. Going into today's action, I did have Kansas and Kentucky.

In the large pool that I play, I ended up Top 30 of 479, so I was not too disappointed with my performance. Especially how most of the brackets were getting blown up every day since Thursday.

In this part of the country, you had to go contrarian with Ohio State and Kentucky was my play there. There was lots of talk about how Kentucky was a good home team, but terrible road team. But they had five SEC losses from mid-January by a total of only 11 points and they did win the SEC tournament. Not an obvious pick, but one I felt confident with.

My Final Four was:

Wisconsin
Duke
Kansas
Kentucky

I thought a Pitt loss would open up the bracket. It did. Unfortunately, Wisconsin played a truly awful game against Butler. Duke just got steamrolled by Arizona and Kansas was probably the biggest disappointment, not beating VCU today. I had them winning a final against Duke.

So, we'll see how it goes. Everyone loves the Cinderella, but let's see who actually watches VCU-Butler besides me.

In what may be his finest hour, let's see if Kentucky coach John Calipari can make this one stick.

Visitor

None, on a cold sunny Sunday.