Just because a movie is freakin' preposterous doesn't mean it can't be diabolical fun. Case in point: Fracture, a twist-a-minute thriller with Anthony Hopkins as an attempted wife murderer getting ready to eat assistant district attorney Willy Beachum (Ryan Gosling) for breakfast, even without fava beans and a nice chianti. Hopkins' Ted Crawford, an aeronautical engineer with a specialty in detecting the tiniest system defects, thinks he sees a fracture in the armor worn by Willy, a prosecutor about to dump the office of the district attorney (a superb David Strathairn) for the greener pastures of corporate law. Does that mean that Ted can outsmart slick Willy and get away with putting a bullet in the head of his cheating wife (Embeth Davidtz) and framing her married cop lover (Billy Burke)? I'll never tell. That grinding noise you hear is the script shifting gears. But director Gregory Hoblit, back in Primal Fear form after a detour at Hart's War, constructs a beautifully intricate cat-and-mouse game. Hopkins and Gosling, the indie prince fresh from a surprise Oscar nomination for Half Nelson, go at each other with relish. They're slumming in this Hollywood hoo-ha, but you can tell they're loving it.

“Everyday People”

"Everyday People" managed to trailblaze in two different ways -- it was one of the first pop hits to deal with the subject of racial harmony, and it utilized Larry Graham's "slap" technique on the bass guitar, which would soon be copied by countless other bassists. Graham once said about his pulsating style, "I'd never done that before … that's where the freedom of creativity came in for the band, that we'd be allowed to do that." In 1978, the song's line "Different strokes for different folks" would be borrowed for the title of the hit television show Diff'rent Strokes.