Ken Marino

The end of the TV season is always full of big, blockbuster drama, but sometimes I just need a break from all the death, destruction, and cliffhangers. So when I've needed a laugh these past few weeks, I've been turning to the Starz series Party Down. Over its first season — it's already been renewed for a second — this show about a group of misfit caterers with big Hollywood aspirations has only gotten funnier.

Tonight's episode sounds like it could be the best yet, with Kristen Bell (obviously a favorite muse for Party Down co-creator Rob Thomas, the man behind Veronica Mars) swinging by for a guest turn as the snappish Uda Bengt, head of a powerful rival catering firm. Oh, and the event being catered in this episode? A gay wedding with George Takei as one of the partners. Awesome!

Don't have Starz? If you can access Netflix's instant viewing feature, watch all the episodes online. And to watch a preview of tonight's episode, just read more

Starz isn't necessarily the most popular of the premium cable channels, but here's a good reason to rustle up a subscription: Next month, the channel will premiere Veronica Mars creator Rob Thomas's new series, Party Down.

Thomas is one of the co-creators of the half-hour comedy, which revolves around a team of cater-waiters and aspiring writers and actors in Los Angeles. The cast includes Lizzy Caplan, Adam Scott, Ken Marino, and Martin Starr, and there are a few big-name guest stars lined up — including Ms. Mars herself, Kristen Bell, who will appear in the May 22 season finale. Another Mars alum, Jason Dohring, will pop up in the series as well.

The trailer made me laugh out loud a bunch ("Who's your agent?" "State Farm"), and if you've ever known any struggling creative types, you've probably known people like this. I'm excited to check it out when it premieres March 20. To watch the trailer, just read more

• Kenneth Branagh is in talks to direct the live-action Thor movie. — Variety
• Jesse McCartney and Ken Marino will guest-star in upcoming episodes of Greek. — Zap2it
• It's official: Bruce Springsteen is the entertainment for this year's Super Bowl halftime show. — Billboard
• Bravo will air reruns of Swingtown but has no plans to produce new episodes. — Hollywood Reporter
• Um, wait, what? It looks like Russell Crowe will play both the Sheriff of Nottingham and Robin Hood in Ridley Scott's movie Nottingham. — ComingSoon
• HBO is developing a series called Americatown about the exodus of US citizens to another country after a period of financial decline. — TV Guide
• A dispute over the release date of the Kate Winslet WWII-era romance movie The Reader has been settled: The film will open Dec. 12. — Variety
• Pam's ex-boyfriend Roy is booking a return trip to The Office. — E! Online

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I think Paul Rudd is cute and funny. I think the concept of making a movie using ten vaguely intersecting comedic skits is potentially great and funny. So why, then, is The Ten just not that funny?

The movie has Paul Rudd playing Jeff, a kind of surreal host on a sparsely furnished "stage," of sorts, introducing each of the film's stories based on the Ten Commandments. Between each segment we get an update on the travails of Jeff's love life (the end of his rocky marriage, followed by his relationship with the bouncy young Liz (Jessica Alba), etc.). The stories themselves are moderately interesting. For the commandment about stealing we do indeed find Winona Ryder playing a young woman who steals a ventriloquist dummy with whom she's fallen in love. The piece featuring Adam Brody (based on the commandment about worshiping false gods) is a pretty funny commentary on the phenomena of American celebrity. Ten stories starts to feel like an awful lot, however, and when the mildly amusing musical finale comes, it arrives in the form of silly relief. For more on my perplexed "eh" reaction to this movie, read more

Diggers is less like a movie than a moment, a few minutes of poking your head into someone else's life. It's a small, quiet movie where nothing much happens, but its subtle charms make it worth a look — especially because it's already available on DVD.

Diggers focuses on a ragtag group of of clam diggers growing up on Long Island in 1976. It's a hardworking but mostly comfortable life — until a big corporation starts encroaching on their turf. In the midst of the storm is Hunt (played with a quiet sweetness by Paul Rudd), a slacker-digger who oversleeps one morning and later finds his father, whom he was supposed to dig with that day, dead in the water. The death prompts Hunt and his friends — the angry Frankie (Ken Marino, who also wrote the movie), lowbrow pot dealer Cons (Josh Hamilton), and ladies' man Jack (Ron Eldard) — to re-examine their own lives, so read more