Jack and Cole try to save Kayla from Tarin and his terrorist buddies. Meanwhile, Dana’s hillbilly plot thread continues to disappoint.

The BBC adaptation of the classic thriller The 39 Steps is, by my calculations, the fifth version of John Buchan’s 1915 book. The incredible landscape of Scotland, vivid colors, and gentle acting performances give credence to director James Hawes’s decision to follow the book more closely than any other film adaptation.

Even without Renee or President Taylor this hour, there was plenty of suspense. What made this ep interesting was, of course, Jack Bauer.

This production of Alice in Wonderland, directed by Jonathan Miller, is dark, surreal, and frequently haunting. Alice doesn’t smile and doesn’t seem curious about anything — just critical, and even bored. But the DVD is well worth the cost just for the extras and the backstory of Lewis Carroll and Alice Liddell.

Colleges and universities all over the world are suffering with the enforced demise of the Jack Bauer Dammit Drinking Game. Students are just sitting around, beer bottles in hand, waiting, waiting, waiting. What’s up with Jack this season? Have TPTB sanitized him too much?

It’s not enough to know that Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves — Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov plan to tell us that Lincoln also killed vampires. What a guy!

Springtime with HBO is sounding better and better. HBO has given the greenlight to a first season debut (pilot plus nine eps) of Game of Thrones, the George R.R. Martin fantasy series that has generated huge online interest already.

Dustin Hoffman has agreed to star in the new Michael Mann/David Milch HBO series Luck, joining previously-cast Dennis Farina and John Ortiz.

Time itself is important to the merits of any Best Picture winner. I contend that the Academy should vote not every year, but every 10 years. By that time, Best Pictures will have truly earned an Oscar. Here are 5 examples of movies that won Best Picture but shouldn’t have, along with the classics that should have won instead.

Alice in Wonderland’s Hollywood Reporter advance screening review gives the Tim Burton film a bottom line of “Truly, madly, wonderful.” That’s enough to get me to the theater for the public opening on Friday, March 5th.