Where are they now? Normally it’s up to TV Week to do where are they now specials. But The Guardian has taken the time to track down actors from some of the more cerebral shows (and Cheers) of the past few years like The West Wing and The Wire. Many TV favourites have had trouble converting success into more of the same. Then again, with characters as good as CJ Cregg, finding a better role is an unenviable task:
You might have expected to see a lot more of impossibly brilliant Allison Janney. Oddly, though, Janney’s most notable appearances since have been as oppressive mother Prudy Pingleton in Hairspray, oppressive stepmother Brenda MacGuff in Juno, and Peaches the voyeuristic starfish in Finding Nemo. Bring back CJ!
The little white lie that grew. Clive James explains the Marcus Einfeld tragedy to a British audience:
All he had to do was say that someone else was driving the silver Lexus that day. So he said he had lent the car to an American friend, Professor Theresa Brennan. Satisfied, the magistrate dismissed the case, and the judge walked free. In just such a way, King Oedipus believed himself to be in the clear when he left Corinth.
Turning Winona into Osama. Airport face scanners seem like a pretty good way to check that the person going through customs matches the passport photo. But it seems the technology is having a few calibration issues, letting people through when they’re only a 30% match. According to face recognition expert Rob Jenkins who assessed machines at Sydney Airport, when only a 30% match is required, the technology “could not tell the difference between Osama bin Laden and the actors Kevin Spacey or even the actress Winona Ryder while Gordon Brown was indistinguishable from Mel Gibson.” The Telegraph has the story.
The can-crushing frog. Seen at Plastic Bamboo.
