If you missed it on BoingBoing earlier this week, here’s the link to a brilliant discussion of the physiological impossibility of Godzilla. It’s the expected pronouncement: He’d be too big to support his own weight, the reactor burning inside him would kill him, yadda yadda yadda. Sigh.

But read the comments for some intriguing explanations as to how a giant radioactive dinosaur- lizard-thingie might be able to exist in our world. (A nuclear process that suffuses his blood with helium would allow him to stand on city streets without collapsing into the subway below, for example.)

And here’s a fascinating Writer’s Guild magazine interview with the “Borat” writers, including Sacha Baron Cohen (via car phone, as he looks for a parking space in Los Angeles). Turns out there’s more screenwriting to it than one might initially believe.

And yes, this post is a subtle push for the ultimate crossover sequel: “Borat Meets Godzilla”. Who wouldn’t want to see that?

Metro hasn’t put my review of “Music and Lyrics” online — the web guys are probably stuck in snow traffic on their way to work — but you can find it in the PDF version of the paper, if you’re willing to endure the 6MB download.

UPDATE: Here’s the review.

Bottom line? Grant and Barrymore have exceptional chemistry, and the songs — courtesy Fountains of Wayne power-pop savant Adam Schlesinger — are catchy and clever. But the script and direction are sub-par at best; characters speak exclusively in exposition, the plot assembles itself in front of us like a bad sitcom, and every single beat of the action is so clumsily telegraphed that there’s no pleasure to be had in the experience of watching it unfold.

And yet, somehow, it’s okay. Grant and Barrymore make it work by just powering through whatever’s in front of them, tossing off silly little moments in the corners of the action and generally refusing to acknowledge they’re trapped in a real-life version of “Love is Fun”, the banal Richard Gere-Julia Roberts romcom from that “Simpsons” episode where Homer gets the crayon removed from his brain and realizes he can no longer tolerate the banality of his favorite crowd-pleasing entertainments.

Marc Lawrence — the Sandra Bullock crony who gave us “Forces of Nature”, “Miss Congeniality” and “Two Weeks Notice” — has to be stopped. But Grant and Barrymore should be given their own franchise.

Come to think of it, they’d be perfect for a period revival of the “Thin Man” movies. Can we get somebody on that?

In this weekend’s battle of the big-screen fiends, Eddie Murphy’s “Norbit” is the clear winner, having outgrossed “Hannibal Rising” by a cool twenty million.

I use “outgrossed” in the financial sense, although it’s also true that “Norbit” is far more sickening, disturbing and just plain evil than the movie about the guy who kills people and eats their faces.

You can’t fault “Hannibal Rising” for being what it is. It’s just a dumb animal — a brand extension, an attempt to milk a franchise that’s long since lost its relevance and its urgency. In an age of constant media-hyped terror, how can a courtly, erudite European compete with suitcase nukes and Mooninites? Even Sylar on “Heroes” is a creepier brain-eater than the good doctor Lecter, though his cannibalism is still strictly theoretical.

Nah, people were bound to be drawn to “Norbit“, which arrives in a perfect storm of buzz. Eddie Murphy’s the front-runner for an Oscar, Martin Lawrence and Tyler Perry have made it okay to laugh at morbidly obese black women, and the trailer — in which Murphy can clearly be seen playing multiple grotesqueries, rather than a cheerful suburban patriarch — assures his fans that, at the very least, that this won’t be another “Daddy Day Care”.

Well, it isn’t. After the longish prologue, there’s not an adorable tyke to be found, and there are no bed-wetting jokes. But it’s just as torturous, and you leave the theater feeling dirty.

I know, I know. It’s just a comedy. People just want to laugh when they go to the movies.

But why are they laughing at this?

Check out my debut movie column for Sympatico/MSN, in which I consider “Hannibal Rising” in the context of shameless brand extensions.

And try not to think of the way I appear to be positioned as something of a brand, myself.

It’s the little things that get you, isn’t it?

Oh, Friday. How I love you, with your relaxing lack of deadlines, because I spent all of Thursday working to meet them …

“Factory Girl“: Sienna Miller is Edie Sedgwick, and Guy Pearce her pale little artist friend, and George Hickenlooper is out of his depth as a filmmaker. The sets and costumes are great, but nothing happens inside that perfectly re-created frame; it’s less a movie than a series of mod dresses strung out on a clothesline.

“Hannibal Rising“: Just weeks after “Perfume”, here’s another movie built about an intense, thin European fellow who has the unfortunate habit of killing people. At least this one is well-groomed. It’s entirely unnecessary from start to finish, but you know it’ll open at number one. How critic-proof is it? Read this.

“The Lives of Others“: After months of raves on the festival circuit, and that much-deserved Oscar nomination Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s excellent, excellent movie finally gets the chance to make a little money. And the first person who says he doesn’t like subtitles gets a smack in the mouth.

“Norbit“: Monstrous fat women, simpering weak men and elderly, obnoxious Chinese caricatures: This is what Eddie Murphy thinks is funny. It’ll probably make a fortune, but in a just and decent world, it would be chased out of theaters by angry mobs.

“Sk8 Life“: Local director S. Wyeth Clarkson (“Deadend.com”) makes another run at quasi-verite digital introspection, this time among some skate punks in Vancouver. The camerawork is pretty good. The acting? Not so much.

And I thought the root canal left a bad taste in my mouth.

What are the procedural rules on the Academy rescinding an Oscar nomination? Have the final ballots come back yet?

Maybe this is the thing that tips the vote to Wahlberg in “The Departed” … which, curiously, would have been a perfect role for Eddie Murphy about 15 years ago.

My new gig at Sympatico/MSN requires me to write two longish pieces every week — one about whatever’s arriving on DVD, and another about whatever’s arriving in theaters.

In the industry, this kind of article is called a “thumbsucker”, referring to the art of mulling over of something trivial. And I have no illusions about what I do — everything I write about is ultimately trivial. We’re not curing cancer here. We’re not even curing scabies.

Coming up with 104 interesting pieces a year is a little intimidating. But I get a little shot of hope when I stumble across something like Shinan Govani’s piece in today’s Post about Hugh Grant’s hair. Or, more specifically, Hugh Grant’s hair in “Music and Lyrics”.

Now, this is a thumbsucker. It’s not a review of the movie (though Shinan does come up with a pull-quote — “It’s positively pee-in-your-pants!” — that’s as alluring as it is unusable), it’s a review of an actor’s head.

Shinan spends hundreds of words on the evolution of Grant’s coiffure through the past decade, invoking such icons as Cary Grant, John Wayne and Gertrude Stein — sorta — and even takes a languid detour to evaluate the current state of the actor’s chest.

(Grant’s character is a survivor of an ’80s pop duo whose solo career flamed out while his partner’s soared — basically, Andrew Ridgeley –which accounts for his deflopped hairstyle and dissolute physique.)

I’m not bringing this up to make fun of Shinan, by the way. He’s very, very good at what he does, and I know as well as anyone how difficult it is to fill a fixed space every day.

I mean, does anybody remember my “Big Picture” column in GTA Today / Metro Today / Metro, where I had to spotlight a different movie every day? That turned into a real challenge after about six months, and it ran for nearly three years.

But articles like this one give me hope: If Shinan can get 500 words out of Hugh Grant’s hair, then surely I can pull 800 words out of the movie in which the hair is featured.

So: How many words are in this post?

… and the message is, if you build an effective ad campaign around a cheesy horror movie, people will go to see it even if it’s absolutely awful.

“The Messengers” took the number one spot at the North American box-office this weekend, despite being so laughably bad at the horror-movie stuff that the guy from “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” is the scariest thing in it. Word of mouth didn’t kill it on Friday night; the reviews, which didn’t start to appear until Saturday because Sony didn’t screen the film for the press, barely dented its insidious momentum.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised; the same combination of critical avoidance and aggressive TV spottery dragged “Epic Movie” to the top only last week.

Honestly, though, I thought horror fans were more discerning. Didn’t they just shun “The Hitcher”? And wasn’t that supposed to be a good sign?

People, people. I can’t help you if you don’t let me in.

Formalized grieving is a strange thing. Thus, I will avoid it entirely and just talk about this week’s movies, specifically:

“Because I Said So“: I like Diane Keaton a lot, I really do. But she has to stop making terrible movies in which she plays neurotic harridans who interfere in their daughters’ romantic lives, and in the process discover their own sensuality. I know, I know … as bad as it was, “Something’s Gotta Give” got her an Oscar nomination. This one won’t. On the other hand, former pop tart Mandy Moore turns out to be a surprisingly natural screen presence. But she’ll be just as good in her next picture.

“The Italian“: A Russian movie about a cute little orphan boy who goes in search of the mother he’s never known, just as he’s about to be shipped out to a life of cappucinos, Vespas and post-Berlusconi corruption investigations? The combination would usually send me screaming out of the theater, but somehow director Andrei Kravchuk and screenwriter Andrei Romanov make it work, even if the second half isn’t quite as strong as the first. I have the sinking feeling Roberto Benigni is going to try to remake this with himself as the five-year-old orphan, so see the original before his mark is upon it.

“The Messengers”: Screened really, really late — like, 9:30 pm on Thursday — so Metro won’t have my review until Monday, but that’s okay … it’ll probably take me a couple of days to come up with something, anything, to say about the Pang Brothers’ inane venture into American cinema, in which Dylan McDermott, Penelope Ann Miller and Kristin Stewart buy a creepy old farmhouse and get stalked by a sound mix for 98 minutes. Plus, John Corbett gives the performance of his career as a shotgun-toting farmhand, even if he doesn’t know he’s doing it. Or possibly because of that.

“Partition“: Vic Sarin’s clumsy attempt to turn the political and religious upheaval of 1947 India into a crowd-pleasing romantic melodrama along the lines of “The English Patient” or “Titanic” forgets one important thing: Neither of those films was shot on a shoestring in Vancouver. Also, both of those movies had directors capable of, you know, directing. Of course, neither of those films tried to sell Kristin Kreuk as a Pakistani Muslim, either.

“Sur la Trace d’Igor Rizzi“: I gave Noel Mitrani’s oddball comedy-drama — which stars Laurent Lucas as a washed-up soccer star moping around Montreal who takes a job as a contract killer despite having not the first idea as to how one goes about whacking people — a pat on the head when it played TIFF last fall; if you were intrigued, but couldn’t make it to the screening, it’s at the Royal all week.

Regular posting will resume shortly, I promise.