Wanda Sykes has had "enough" of NC Rep Virginia Foxx

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4th circuit nominees worry U.S. attorney

George Holding, the Republican-appointed U.S. attorney for North Carolina's eastern district, expressed angst about changes in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, which includes North Carolina.

Holding was attending the conservative Federalist Society's annual convention in Washington last week when he stepped to the microphone to ask a question of U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions, a Republican from Alabama, the National Law Journal reports.

"I'm concerned about the changing makeup of the 4th Circuit," said Holding, who was appointed by then-President George W. Bush. Holding asked Sessions to comment.

A grim, brutal godsend

i'm just crazy enough to declare "Miami Vice" the movie of the summer. Sure, I could wait until the summer's over and all the votes are counted. Hey, "Snakes on a Plane" could blow me away. Don't laugh -- it could happen.

But Michael Mann's hyper-hip, refreshingly adult, camp-free movie adaptation of the famed, groundbreaking '80s TV cop drama is a sensational gift from the heavens. In a movie season that has given us one disappointment after another (be honest, the creeping feeling that "Pirates of the Caribbean 2" wasn't all that is just starting to sink in, isn't it?), it's downright miraculous when a summer film lives up to its promise.

What makes "Vice" such a godsend is that it's something I thought I wouldn't see this summer: a popcorn film for grown-ups. Violent, sensual, dark, "Vice" unapologetically gets to the nitty-gritty right from the first frame and stays there throughout the movie's lengthy run.

The joke's on them

In the movie "Gigi," the debonair Maurice Chevalier sang so exquisitely,

Thank heaven for little girls

for little girls get bigger every day!

Kathy Griffin fills in the blanks

You never know exactly what you're gonna get with Kathy Griffin, but one thing is for sure -- don't bring the kids to her show Thursday night at the Durham Performing Arts Center.

That seems like a no-brainer, but according to Griffin, people do it. "If I see one [blankety-blank] kid I'm gonna kick 'em out of the audience," Griffin said in an interview last week. "Every time, someone will say, 'Oh, there's a child here!' What the [blank] are they doing here?"

The necessity to insert the blanks in Griffin's quotes above should be explanation enough as to why this isn't going to be Elmo on Ice.

Try to forget this one before you see it

It's been two weeks since I've seen "Law Abiding Citizen." And yet, I keep forgetting that it exists.

Strangely enough, it's not because it's forgettable. I feel it keeps disappearing from my mind because, like most horrible experiences, I subconsciously choose to repress it. Much like traumatic childhood memories, bad breakups or gospel plays, I would rather just forget that "Citizen" ever happened. And there's plenty to forget.

Set in Philadelphia (we know this because we get an aerial shot of the William Penn statue every five minutes), it begins with a mild-mannered engineer (Gerard Butler) looking to get justice after two men come into his home one night and brutally kill his wife and daughter in front of him. Unfortunately, a ladder-climbing lawyer (Jamie Foxx) wants to settle this case, giving one man the death penalty and the other (who did all the murdering) a few years on a third-degree murder rap.