To loosen up a little before getting down to business with my thoughts on The Apprentice, let me offer a brief review of the movie I've just seen with a few favored readers, Team America: World Police. Overall, my views are suprisingly close to those expressed in the Times review of the movie (when searching for that review just now I found out that Team America opened in third place this weekend, behind Shark Tale and Friday Night Lights, both of which have been out for a few weeks, so that does not bode so well for Team America). I really laughed hard at a lot of it, and the puppetry was awesome, as puppetry usually is (awesome in that it's absurd and jerky, of course). Two of my favorite bits: the cats and Matt Damon (who only says "Matt Damon", and if you watch the credits that joke gets even better when you see that both Matt Stone and Trey Parker are credited with that voice), plus the team's theme song, reminiscent of G.I. Joe's theme song, is extremely catchy, I'm singing it in my head right this very moment. In the end I was somewhat disappointed though, it's not completely overloaded with non-stop jokes and shocking zaniness, kind of drags a little at times, and while funny is funny to me (like beautiful cinematography is b.c., were I talking about Olympia or Triumph of The Will), my disagreement with some of the director's obvious polical viewpoints necessarily tempers my love for it slightly, too. That's not actually much of my problem, though, it's more that much of the humor was easy and not nearly sharp enough. But in a way my initial reaction feels much like my reaction to The Royal Tenenbaums, which I also liked a lot but not quite as much as I thought I would, and when I got that I got that film on DVD and watched it a few more times my appreciation for it has increased and increased again, so I definitely look forward to renting the DVD when it comes out. Bottom line, you should go see it, it's really funny and looks really cool, but I'd recommend seeing Shaun of The Dead first, that is still by far my pick hit of the year. Gotta call 'em like I see 'em, so now let us see what I saw on The Apprentice this week.