Now I'm going to work on my deltoids of compassion.

My "Mamma Mia!" review is here.

My "Dark Knight" review is linked in a post below. It's looking more and more like a gigantic hit.

For my DVD column, I watched a movie called "Picture This" with Ashley Tisdale of "High School Musical" fame. It includes Tisdale singing "Shadows of the Night." Let's revisit Pat Benatar, shall we?

A really nutty video, but I always liked her voice.

Coming to DVD in August is a series of movies in special "I Love the '80s" editions, each with a four-song CD (although it appears that each has the SAME four-song CD). Included in the series: "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," "Some Kind of Wonderful," "Footloose," "Top Gun" and "Pretty in Pink." When the DVDs landed on my desk today, I of course had to pause and open "Pretty in Pink" for one of The Greatest Scenes in Cinema History.

I am, of course, talking about Duckie (Jon Cryer) lip-synching to Otis Redding's "Try a Little Tenderness." And, if I am going to relive that moment, I have to share, so here's the clip via YouTube:

Here's Mr. Otis Redding himself, with "Try." (My personal favorite Otis: "Cigarettes and Coffee.")

My review of "The Dark Knight" is now available online here.

Some notes about the mark I gave it, after the jump. One possible spoiler.

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Better even than the first …

If the video above stalls, you can also access it here.

The prime-time nominations can be found here. After the jump, I have posted the number of noms for indivdual shows, and the "supplemental" information — details about nominees' Emmy history.

Based on a glance, I am very pleased with the attention paid to "Mad Men" and "Pushing Daisies." I thought "John Adams," the top nom-getter was a snore, but it's able to run up its total by being in miniseries categories, where the competition is usually light. Stunned at the disrespect for "The Wire."

More notes: "The Wire" had the same number of nominations as "According to Jim." "Boston Legal" had seven to "The Wire's" one, including the inevitable nods to Spader and Shatner as well as a best-drama nom.

The "Extra" finale pulled in six nominations, and was probably helped by entering the movies categories.

"The Closer" has one nomination — for star Kyra Sedgwick — even with a very good supporting cast and some lovely guest-star turns. That may be a function of who enters, but it again raises the question of whether Emmy nominaters should be spoon-fed entries or should be required to watch television and make some picks on their own. I mean, I watch a lot of television but have gotten squeamish about voting in the Television Critics Association awards (nominees here) because I don't feel as if I follow things closely enough.

"How I Met Your Mother": two nominations. "Two and a Half Men": seven. I like "Men," but "Mother" deserved better treatment.

Best category: original music and lyrics, with both Flight of the Conchords' "Most Beautiful Girl in the Room" and Sarah Silverman's Matt Damon song nominated. (I know, unintended irony now that Silverman and Kimmel have broken up.) Silverman may have the edge, since this is the category where "SNL's" "box" song won last year.

On to the jump. May add more later.

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Full list after the jump. …

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Over the course of the day, I have tried unsuccessfully to access the first act of "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog," which went online today. I even did so in between watching the Fox All-Star Tribute To Yankee Stadium, Yankee Legends, Yankee Starters, Yankee Fans, Yankee Franks and, time permitting, "The Clang of the Yankee Reaper" — which in other hands might have been the MLB all-star game. But it wasn't until I saw Sepinwall had found other avenues that I was finally able to watch it. And embed it, above.

[UPDATE: For those of you just tuning in, here's an L.A. Times story about "Dr. Horrible" and the way it burned the 'net yesterday.]
And yes, it is the best musical of the summer. I can say that. I have seen "Mamma Mia!" All right, the ABBA movie has Meryl Streep. And she's mostly good. But "Dr. Horrible" has Neil Patrick Harris, who is tuneful, vulnerable and funny. Nathan Fillion, tuneful and funny. (Maybe he's vulnerable in Act 2 or 3.) Good story, good jokes and amusing songs. And an alternative to The Fox All-Universe Tribute to Yankee Peddler, "A Connecticut Yankee," Yanqui Go Home and "My Baby Does the Yankee Panky."

Even the "Rescue Me" minisode was about baseball and New York.

[ANOTHER UPDATE: I packed it in at the end of the 11th inning, so I missed the last few. Did Joe Buck do readings from Oliver Wendell Holmes? Did Tim McCarver sing "Whatever Lola Wants"?]

William Petersen will stop being a regular after the 10th episode, says Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello. Also, Gary Dourdan will be seen at least one more time, and Jorja Fox will make several return appearances. Details after the jump.

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Hallelujah …

And thank you to David Mills of Undercover Black Man for pointing this out — as part of a series of YouTubes with women playing ukeleles.

And, since I was looking at "It's Raining Men," here's a nice compilation on the men of "Heroes" set to the Weather Girls' version. (I especially like the juxtapositions with "temperatures rising" and "out of control.")

But I can't go without acknowedging the Weather Girls themselves:

End of the road …

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Sarah Silverman and Jimmy Kimmel have broken up. I don't usually get into celeb romances in this space (although I do address them in my print HeldenFiles) but this one had its moments, notably those hilarious "…Matt Damon" and "…Ben Affleck" videos. (If you haven't seen them, you can find them on YouTube and on ABC.com.) I like Silverman. I wasn't a big fan of Kimmel, but I kept thinking I might be missing something if Silverman was with him.

I saw "The Dark Knight" this morning — review to come later — and Heath Ledger is indeed as remarkable as the trailers and the buzz have indicated. Having seen a lot of his previous work, I kept wondering where within himself he found this performance. It's a radical departure, and suggests that he might have done other great things had he lived. But given the trickiness of the acting life, he might never have found a part this good again, either. So if he had to go, this is the kind of performance you want to go with.

I have seen four of the seven parts of "Generation Kill," HBO's Iraq-war miniseries based on Evan Wright's book of the same name. (It premieres Sunday.) I expect to watch the rest, because I greatly admire what I have seen. While it hews closely to Wright's book, the miniseries has some of qualities writer-producer David Simon ("The Wire") has brought to other projects, from a love of the detail of life to the refusal to make things too easy for the audience. Like with "The Wire," "Generation Kill" drops you into the middle of life in progress; like real life, it declines to pause to explain everything — recognize and understand the people as you go along. I won't deny that I occasionally referred to HBO-provided crib sheets (and to Wright's book) for some details, but most of the time I just kept following along the screen action until things got clear. And well before that fourht part, I was loving it.

So what on earth do I mean by the "Deadwood" reference in this post's title? Follow along …

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L.A. Times photo of Evelyn Keyes in 1984

The actress with an impressive love life has died. Filmography here. I read her memoir, "Scarlett O'Hara's Younger Sister," many years ago and was impressed both by her offscreen adventures — husbands included John Huston and Artie Shaw — and her clear sense of both her career and her self.