Moses, Moses.

A.O. Scott gets his snark on:

To their credit, the director and his screenwriter, Akiva Goldsman (who collaborated with Mr. Howard on "Cinderella Man" and "A Beautiful Mind"), have streamlined Mr. Brown's story and refrained from trying to capture his, um, prose style. "Almost inconceivably, the gun into which she was now staring was clutched in the pale hand of an enormous albino with long white hair." Such language — note the exquisite "almost" and the fastidious tucking of the "which" after the preposition — can only live on the page.

And his plot summary:

Briefly stated: an old man (Jean-Pierre Marielle) is killed after hours in the Louvre, shot in the stomach, almost inconceivably, by a hooded assailant. Meanwhile, Robert Langdon (Mr. Hanks), a professor of religious symbology at Harvard, is delivering a lecture and signing books for fans. He is summoned to the crime scene by Bezu Fache (Jean Reno), a French policemen who seems very grouchy, perhaps because his department has cut back on its shaving cream budget.

[eta: And:]

Ms. Tautou, determined to ensure that her name will never again come up in an Internet search for the word "gamine," affects a look of worried fatigue.

I think Ms. Tautou is going to have to resort to Freddy Kreugeresque measures to break the link between that term and her image on the internet.

Bronte, the movie.

Michelle Williams! JRM!

Michelle Williams! JRM!

!!! & !!!

So, instead of seeing The DaVinci Code tonight (there was another last-minute press screening), E and I saw a fabulous little documentary called Wordplay about crossword puzzles, and more specifically, about Will Shortz, the NYTimes crossword puzzle, and the annual Crossword Puzzle Championship convention.

Crossword puzzle geeks? Soooooo much like Buffistas. This competition's been an annual thing for 25 years, and the way the people there talked about it made me so glad the F2F is this weekend, because otherwise I'd just be aching for one.

Bill Clinton and Jon Stewart make guest appearances (as famous people who do the crossword every day), as does Ken Burns, who is every bit as ridiculously pretentious as you'd imagine. But in a charming way, mostly because he's totally earned it. (Doesn't make his extended metaphor soliloquy about boxes any less silly, but it makes it an affectionate eyeroll rather than a scornful one.)

Adorable movie. Comes out in June sometime.

I've been anxious to see Wordplay...love the crosswords and all who do them. I'm wondering if this doc is anything like Word Wars (Scrabble players gone mad) which was a lot like Spellbound for grown-ups...with OCD.

Quirky people docs...I love 'em!

That Ten Commandments was fantastic.

Jessica, did they talk about who uses what case of letters and if in print or script to save time? Like, some people use a small "e" because it's only one stroke, as opposed to a big "E", which is four? And some people (me) use a capital script "e" because it's only one stroke and I'm a freak who does them in mostly caps??

t big dork

Ten Things I Hate About Commandments

Oh, we're all going to hell for that...

Hilarious.