Yuck. A new survey by Allstate Insurance ranks metro areas of 100,000 people or more by auto accident frequency. Washington, D.C. ranks dead last, followed by Newark. N.J., and the Northern Virginia regions of Alexandria city and Arlington county. Cautions: Allstate did not include data for Massachusetts, because it doesn't sell auto insurance there. And large unincorporated counties like Fairfax are not accounted for on the list.

posted: 6:34:01 PM  

Paul Haggis's Crash is an ensemble drama of race relations in today's Los Angeles. Haggis works efficiently at bringing several interlocking stories together in under two hours—efficiently to a fault. Every detail is a plot point that will be tidily accounted for later. Every story is resolved, and if most of the resolutions are predictable, they are heartfelt. The movie's message: everyone's a little bit racist (perhaps more than a little), but sometimes a vital connection is made.

Haggis gets some excellent work from his actors by casting against type, including Ludacris as a car thief with scruples and Sandra Bullock as a bitchy trophy wife for Brendan Fraser's district attorney. This is the most interesting, most risk-taking work I've seen Bullock do in many a year.

posted: 6:22:44 PM  

I'm a little late to the party, but here's my list of languages represented by CDs in my house. I didn't check the tape, vinyl, or bits.

• The major Europeans: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Latin
• Polish
• Ukrainian
• Yiddish
• Gaelic (mostly Irish)
• Cajun French
• a smidgen of gibberish Greek (Sondheim's The Frogs)
• Icelandic
• Hebrew
• Franco-Provençal
• Old Saxon
• Catalan

posted: 6:04:23 PM