quickies: ER, FICTION, ROYALTY

CHARGE! WE HAVE A PULSE!

The roaring return of TV's best show was all but written off before the season began, though some howlers linger: Will Sam ever deal with her murder of HER SON'S FATHER? Will Luka ever deal with the guy he MURDERED on the waterfront "protecting" Abby during their first go-round? Will Forest Whitaker join the Great But Overexposed (Michael Caine, J.T. Walsh, William H. Macy)? Will we continue to forgive lame soundtrack choices as long as Abby makes Luka promise to play Joe all of Stevie Wonder's classic 1970s material?

STRANGER THAN FICTION

But not strange enough... the typically redoubtable SKL gave this a pass, saying the novelist's conclusion, that a "man who would die willingly was a character worth keeping alive" was enough of an idea to save the conceit. Her one caveat the morning after was Ferrell's rather dry, monochromatic performance, and the romance being stricly male-observed rather than from a woman's pen. Me, I would prefer the rewrite, since it's a tragedy half revived without the comic flourish. And does Gyllenhall steal absolutely every movie she's in?

THE QUEEN
Directed by Stephen Frears
Written by Peter Morgan

Mirren's Sisyphean hat-trick: making QEII sympathetic while bullying her son and over-identifying with a stag's corpse. But don't let this powerhouse performance undermine Michael Sheen's Blair, even harder to empathize with from this vantage (with the great Helen McCrory (Anna Karenina) as his superego, Cherie).