Gone Baby Gone ***1/2 (out of four): Impressive directing debut from media punching-bag Ben Affleck - featuring another fine performance from brother Casey - aims to be a "Chinatown" for the Boston set and nearly succeeds.

After the success – and Oscar win – of “Good Will Hunting”, Ben Affleck’s career went into what can only be called freefall. While pal - and Will Hunting himself - Matt Damon rose to moderate acclaim before being re-Bourne, a string of poor choices (“Forces of Nature”, “Pearl Harbor”, “Daredevil”) and poorer performances (see previous list, and note I haven’t even mentioned “Gigli”) made Mr. Affleck a media whipping boy. Like so many others (Paris, Britney, Lindsey etc), the press seemed eager to see him to fail. Eventually though, the success of the over-praised George Reeves biopic “Hollywoodland” became labeled a career “comeback”. Wisely, Mr. Affleck appears to have learned from his past. With “Gone Baby Gone”, he tries his hand, for the first time, at directing. And it seems his real talents may lie behind the camera.

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"Rendition" *** (out of four): Well-crafted political pot-boiler almost succeeds at being neither manipulative nor sensationalistic. Almost.

If you watch the TV series "24" (and I do) then you know how easy it is to force a confession out of someone. Step 1, call Jack Bauer. Step 2, leave the room. Step 3, ignore the screaming and come back just before the commercial break. The rest writes itself. Somewhere between FOX's preposterous but endlessly addictive Kiefer Sutherland series and reality lies "Rendition", a well-crafted political pot-boiler that almost succeeds at being neither manipulative nor sensationalistic – no small feat when dealing with hot-button topics like terrorism, torture and civil liberties.

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I love these images by Thomas Allen. Allen slices and folds the covers of lurid pulp fiction novels creating amazing little dioramas, which he photographs.

You can pick up his book, Uncovered, and see a large sampling of his work at the Foley Gallery website.

Hey kids, it's Harry the dancing pubic hair. Ah, don't ya love the internet. Today our curiosity brought us to this interesting site. Harry the Dancing Hair.

Maurício Ricardo, the Brazilian artist who impressed us with Ao mestre, com carinho, has a new animation, a sequel he calls Use Condom! If you can navigate in Portuguese, check out his site Charges.

(Thanks, Marcelo!)

The reason I've been blogging a little less over the last two weeks is that - with a friend - I've set up my own company. It's a Social Media Marketing Company, to which most people are going, what the huh? Well, we're currently trying to write an elevator pitch that describes exactly what it is we do (and even we're not completely sure yet). But then, I saw this video, and realized, hey, it's all here. No need to describe it ourselves, just show this - the amazingly brilliant Gabe and Max on this internet thing.

It's kind of embarrassing how much I'm turned on by the thought of Vanna using Helvetica. There's just something about girls and typography....

I had considered doing a post about blood-sucking leeches today, but I'm tired of politics. Instead, it's vampire day on the veg.

- A college chick with a sword
- Blogs come to comics
- Podcasts come to comics
- The terrifyingly good art of Eduardo Risso
- Plus: magic, mystery and underage drinking

Each week we run down the 5 most interesting comics that come out on Wednesday. Here's what to look for today.

In the US many of you may have seen the new Sprint commercials - very cool short pieces that are effectively stop-motion with light. I'm not sure who inspired who (although my experience here is always that ad agencies copy rather than create) but reader Michael sent us a link of images and video of a group of German artists who are doing a similar thing. (Anyone know if it's the same team behind both?)

UPDATE

The light animation used in the Sprint commercials was most likely (i'd go so far as to say definitely) inspired by the Pika Pika Lightning Doodle project, which has been doing it's thing in LA and Japan since the early days of '06.

http://tochka.jp/pikapika/ is the official homepage, and I've got a compilation clip of all the work so far here: http://www.transbuddha.com/mediaHolder.php?id=2592

- We start with an entire set dedicated to bacon, courtesy of Jim Gaffigan.
- You can't not like Tony Snow, but how did he get so damn brainwashed?
- Join the Facebook TicketMaster group...get 5 songs. Thanks, Neatorama.
- Is that a Python in your pipes, or are you just...this one's pretty disgusting.
- And from last week's Real Time, Bill gives his takes on Republican jewelry.

If you're like me, your house is cluttered with unused specialty appliances that rarely - if ever - get used. Breadmakers, pizza ovens, fondue sets. But just occasionally I see something that I know I'd want to use every day.

Meet the Dough-Nu_Matic, a hot donut machine. Put the dough in one end, see the hot donuts wheel off the conveyor at the other end. This is no mamby-pamby Ronco chicken rotisserie. This is a MAN's appliance. All I need now is to figure out how to make that Krispy Kreme sugar glaze and I'm all set

I’ll bet the dialogue in this prank added to it, but it’s pretty funny watching the body language even if you don’t understand what is being said. It’s tres weird when you don’t see yourself in the mirror, but it’s much more creepy to see things that aren’t there.