"Hot Fuzz" ***1/2 (out of four): Director Edgar Wright cements his reputation as a master parodist with this classic send-up of bombastic Hollywood cop movies.

“Shaun of the Dead” director Edgar Wright is having a moment. Not only is his faux-preview (the wonderfully goofy “Don’t Scream”) featured in the bloody Robert Rodriguez/Quentin Tarantino exploitation extravaganza “Grindhouse”, but he's able to get Cate Blanchett, Steve Coogan and Peter Jackson to turn in uncredited – and in some cases unrecognizable - cameos in his latest film, a pitch-perfect parody of Hollywood cop movie clichés called “Hot Fuzz”. Like “Shaun”, his dead-on send-up of undead movies, “Fuzz” has a palpable love for its source material (particularly “Point Break”, “Bad Boys II” and their ilk) and manages to skewer them while staying true to the genre.

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"In the Land of Women" ** (out of four): Achingly sincere study of a man who leaves Los Angeles to care for his ailing grandmother in suburban Michigan only to - wouldn't you know it? - find himself, features strong performances but never reaches the depths to which is aspires.

If you're going to spend time in a land of women, you can't ask for much better than Olympia Dukakis, JoBeth Williams and Meg Ryan. Throw in young Kristen Stewart and this sounds like a land worth visiting. Unfortunately, “In the Land of Women”, writer-director Jonathan Kasdan’s achingly sincere study of a writer who leaves Los Angeles to care for his ailing grandmother, never gives its talented cast – led by Adam Brody from “The O.C.” - a chance to flex its considerable muscles.

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I'm always saying to my wife "well, that doesn't look very much like the picture" when i order food. Usually it's in Jersey diners, but clearly the same applies to fast food. And now someone has a site dedicated to chronicling the discrepancy. (via BoingBoing)

Now, we need one of these for supermodels.

Today on the Veg - when interviews go bad

Despite what you may think from the title, this is not just scatological humor. Author Eric Spitzhagel’s latest project is to showcase how various authors view their own assholes. He invited writers to make a sketch and submit it.

The idea was cooked up several months ago, over far too many beers in a San Francisco bar. Some writer friends and I were enjoying a post-book reading cocktail, and though I can't recall anymore who brought it up (or why), we began discussing Kurt Vonnegut's asshole. Not his actual asshole, of course. Rather, his infamous asshole doodle, which first appeared in his brilliant novel Breakfast of Champions.

"When the man is putting his penis in another woman's vagina, he isn't respecting the vagina that he made a commitment to."