Bad Guys

What to make of Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theaters? Impossible to say; this feature-length version of the absurdist Cartoon Network cartoon revels in its free-form stupidity - which is one of this avant-garde comic melange's chief delights. Aqua Teen Hunger Force (First Look Pictures) Voiced by Dana Snyder, Carey Means, Dave Willis. Written and directed by Matt Maiellaro and Dave Willis. Rated R. Time 86 minutes.

ROME -- The tall Steven Seagal double standing just beyond the security check at Beauvais Airport outside Paris earlier this year spoke to me as I picked up my purse from the conveyor belt and motioned to me to open it. I lifted the flap on the front pocket and removed the first thing my fingers touched. It was a glossy, gold-colored tube of lipstick I had paid extortionist rates for a couple of months before. No, he shook his head. I pulled out the next thing. It was a glass vial of throat spray for my allergies.

The prison cells, stacked four stories high, were empty. Stripped down to bed frames, toilets, sinks and lockers, all that remained was that unmistakable prison scent of disinfectant and sweat. The narrow catwalks, which put guards at arms', and thus danger's, reach of the cells, were finally safe. Emptied out in secret and under high security, the 128-year-old House of Correction in Jessup was finally history, and Gov. Martin O'Malley, his new prisons chief, Gary D. Maynard, and other state officials took a victory lap yesterday through the ghostly vacant facility.

What's that phrase National Football League officials use after they've checked out a play that's been challenged? Oh, yeah: "after further review." Well, after further review, I've found I still have some Colts-fan DNA lingering in my body. No disrespect to my beloved Ravens, but I find myself ready to whoop it up for the Indy Colts (or the Baltimore Colts Playing in Indianapolis, as I fondly call them) when they face the Chicago Bears in the Super Bowl tomorrow. I just can't watch the guys in that Colt blue and those horseshoe helmets and root against them and for -- the Bears?

The usual suspects. That's the focus of the Baltimore Police Department's explanation of the city's unconscionably high number of murders. The majority of the city's 275 murders in 2006 - more than 80 percent - involved people with criminal records, both the suspected killers and their victims. Bad guys were killing bad guys, that's the bottom line - as though that analysis should make anyone feel safer in a city that remains among the most deadly in the United States. The usual suspects - most with a violent, drug-involved past - are responsible for committing more murders last year than in 2005, an increase of six. But who's doing the killing shouldn't keep Baltimore residents from demanding that the killing stop.

The late Jack Palance changed the face, the posture, the attitude of the Oscars 14 years ago, when he celebrated winning the best supporting actor Academy Award with a couple of off-color jokes and two-handed and then one-armed push-ups. Every year from then on, the show's director, producer and host have prayed for the gift that Palance handed Billy Crystal, who kept bouncing onstage with updates like "Jack Palance just bungee-jumped off the Hollywood sign" or "The shuttle just rendezvoused with Jack Palance, who somehow launched himself into orbit."

Jack Palance, the leather-faced, gravelly voiced actor who earned Academy Award nominations for Sudden Fear and Shane before capturing an Oscar for his role as the crusty trail boss in the 1991 comedy western, City Slickers, has died. He was 87. Mr. Palance, who had been in failing health, died yesterday of natural causes in Montecito, Calif., at the home of his daughter Holly, family members said. He was one of the best-loved bad guys in motion picture and television history - the murderous husband in Sudden Fear (1952)

Daniel Powter really loves his life right now. And I can see why. Homeboy is living his lifelong dream: circling the globe and singing for packed venues filled mostly with screaming young women. He blew in from Canada a few months back with a warm hug of single, "Bad Day," which rocketed to No. 1 on the pop charts, thanks to its ubiquitous use on the last season of American Idol. Chatty, friendly, as buoyant as his music, Powter is calling from Los Angeles during a brief break on his national tour.

James G. Robinson is probably best known as the producer of such films as Young Guns, Pacific Heights and Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. But the Maryland native who got his start on the docks and still owns a small waterfront firm in Baltimore, said his latest drama has been nothing like what he's made up in Hollywood. Robinson's company, Premiere Automotive Services Inc., has been embroiled in a four-year-old dispute with the port involving its lease of 6 acres owned by the state. This week, the legal back and forth started to look a little like On the Waterfront as nine armed state transportation police officers and port officials cut locks and climbed through a window at Robinson's warehouse, arrested a worker for trespassing and seized control of 170 farm tractors being repaired in the lot. "I don't believe what happened," said Robinson, from his Baltimore home.

For those honoring the revered Preakness tradition of wearing a hat, there was an unwelcome guest at the Corporate Village yesterday: the wind. Strong gusts forced many women to hang onto their hats with one hand, while holding down their flippy skirts with the other. Often, there were races to watch other than those happening on the track, as women chased their flying hats across the Village turf. Carrying a chic handbag only added to the challenge. Consider Maryland first lady Kendel Ehrlich.