criclebrity lookeylikey of the day

Here's a timely one with the Ashes series in Australia about to kick off (tonight, in fact) and all England supporters filled with a mixture of trepidation (the last three Australian Ashes series have finished 5-0, 4-0, 4-0 in Australia's favour) and that most crippling and corrosive of all emotions, hope. I suppose a good start would be the series not being effectively over after the very first ball as it was last time. 

Anyway, here's England's unexpected nemesis from last time Scott Boland and actor Wes Bentley, one of the breakout stars of the multi-Oscar-winning American Beauty, a film which seems to have had a sharp (and probably partly Spacey-related) drop-off in critical regard in the last couple of decades but which I recall seeing a couple of times and quite enjoying, while noting that it seemed to think itself slightly cleverer and deeper than it probably actually was. One odd thing about it, though, is that all three of the young actors who were shot to stardom after playing major roles - Bentley, Thora Birch and Mena Suvari - have, while continuing to work in films, receded into relative obscurity since and not become the major stars that everyone predicted they would be. Bentley seems to have navigated the standard actorly route of sudden colossal stardom -> drug addiction, extreme mental derangement -> sobriety, return to regular film work prototyped by Robert Downey jr. among others. The only thing I'm aware of having seen him in since American Beauty is the remake of Pete's Dragon which also starred Robert Redford.

I'm not going to do a separate post for it, but we haven't done an "incidental music spot of the day" for a while so I will just draw your attention to the trailer linked above making use of Baba O'Riley by The Who, a song which has featured here before, back in 2007.