Calling Bob Hoskins...

All right, ladies and gents, here are my picks for today's games: 

- By all accounts, the 49ers should beat the Falcons.  Mobile QB who can throw, physical run game, tough secondary, excellent road team... Which is exactly why I'm going to go ahead and pick Matt Ryan & co.  Atlanta 34, San Francisco 27  

- Round two of the Ravens-Patriots conference championship in Foxboro.  Joe Flacco has gone from a good QB to a magnificent (and occasionally lucky) one, so I like Baltimore's chances - what a consistent, inspired organization - a lot.... Next year.   New England 31, Baltimore 24  

- Magnificent day of college basketball on Saturday.  Great finishes between Syracuse-Louisville, Gonzaga-Butler, OSU-Michigan State.
Best 5 Teams in the Country (IMO):
1. Michigan 
2. Louisville
3. Duke
4. Syracuse 
5. Kansas

- Watching Unfaithful for the first time in years last night with Julia, I wondered what ever happened to director Adrian Lyne, that purveyor of gauzy, sexy, erotic melodramatic quandaries: Unfaithful, 9 & 1/2 Weeks, Fatal Attraction, Lolita, Indecent Proposal.  Turns out he's all set to make his first film in over a decade, a long-gestating adaptation of the Oprah Book fave Back Roads (by Tawni O'Dell).

 
- Sequels and remakes this year or next (begin your groaning now): obviously, Die Hard (no), Evil Dead (why, oh, why?), Oz (no), Iron Man 3 (enough), and more...
- Fast and the Furious 6
- Star Trek 2
- Monsters University (sequel to Monsters Inc.)
- Man of Steel (Superman)
- Despicable Me 2   
- 28 Months Later 
- Grown-Ups 2  
- The Hangover 3 
- 300  (Rise of an Empire)
- Bridget Jones' Baby 
- Austin Powers 4  (though this seems to be more of a rumor)
- Robocop 
- Thor 2  
- G.I. Joe 2
- National Treasure 3 
- Kill Bill, Vol. 3 
- Child's Play   (uh, what? )
- Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters
- Wolverine 2 
- Anchorman 2
- Sin City 2  
- Who Framed Roger Rabbit, 2
- Bad Santa 2
(the last two are in the very early stages of pre-production, so they might not arrive - if ever - until late 2014)

*  

Before I go and continue to plow through Ira Levin's Rosemary's Baby, I'll leave you with another entry in my list of the 500 Greatest Performances of All Time: 

Uma Thurman 
as The Bride in Kill Bill Vol. 1& 2  

The baggage Uma is asked to carry in the Kill Bill movies is tremendous: she gets beaten to a pulp, bloodied, shot at, betrayed, psychologically tortured, stalked... and that's just in one film alone.  She proves to be an action star for the ages, and she carries the movie from an emotional standpoint too; she's good in every single scene.