Short Crcuits

New and noteworthy experiences among DVDs, video games, gadgets and the Web.

February 7, 2011 at 9:42PM
Katherine Heigl and Josh Duhamel star in "Life as We Know It."
Katherine Heigl and Josh Duhamel star in "Life as We Know It." (Warner Bros. Pictures/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

DVD

Not on your 'Life'After watching the silly, cliché-ridden romantic comedy "Life as We Know It," you might feel an urge to disavow membership in the club suggested by its all-embracing title. Whose life are we talking about, exactly? There's really only one tiny group of people on the planet for whom the "life" as depicted in this film will feel the least bit recognizable: Hollywood movie producers. You can almost hear the pitch meeting: There's this married couple with a baby, see? And then the couple dies in a tragic car accident, leaving their orphaned, 1-year-old daughter in the care of her hot, single godparents. The beauty part? They hate each other's guts! Conveniently enough, there are no blood relatives who can take in the kid. That leaves Holly Berenson (Katherine Heigl) and Eric Messer (Josh Duhamel) to move in together and try to make the best of a stupid situation. The DVD and Blu-ray (Warner, $29-$36) include deleted scenes and featurettes.

WASHINGTON POST

Also out Tuesday: "Columbo: Mystery Movie Collection, 1991-93," "Doctor Who: The Movie," "For Colored Girls," "I Spit on Your Grave" (2010), "It's Kind of a Funny Story," "Middle Men," "My Soul to Take," "Ong Bak 3," "Paranormal Activity 2," "The Romantics," "Tamara Drewe," "Wild Target," "You Again," and Blu-rays of "Amarcord," "I Spit on Your Grave" (1978), "Legends of the Fall," "Still Walking," "Thelma & Louise," "Uncle Buck."

GAME

Go with the flowIt's unfortunate that Nintendo has taken the most unique Wii game it has published in nearly a year and effectively hidden it where most Wii owners are bound to never find it -- on the Wii Shop Channel. The concept of "Fluidity" ($12 download; rated Everyone) is simple: You star as a small body of water tasked with purging a magical book of an ink-fueled infection. The control scheme -- tilt the Wii remote to tilt the levels (which resemble pages from a book) and dictate the flow of water -- is similarly straightforward. But "Fluidity's" handling of that water is at once predictable and delightfully frantic. Although things get excessively difficult toward the end, the game mostly toes a perfect line in terms of difficulty: The main challenges are tricky but fair, while a ton of optional challenges are perfectly skippable but mentally and physically gratifying to complete at your own pace.

MCCLATCHY NEWS SERVICE

WEB

Your status: In-flightFor those who just can't wait for your next status update, Facebook will now be accessible even when you're in the air. Perhaps your update will go something like this: "I am about 30,000 feet in the air, passing over Disney World. Please don't rob my house." AirTran, Alaska, American, Delta, United, U.S. Air and Virgin are among the airlines offering Facebook access while in flight, thanks to a deal with Gogo Inflight Internet. The service will be free during February. If you want to access other websites, you'll have to cough up cash. Fees start at $4.95 for short flights and can go up to $12.95 for longer flights. USA Today reports that Facebook is the most-visited site via Gogo, which serves 1,100 commercial aircraft, or about 3,800 flights a day.

SOUTH FLORIDA SUN SENTINEL

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In this photo taken Monday, March 6, 2017, in San Francisco, released confidential files by The University of California of a sexual misconduct case, like this one against UC Santa Cruz Latin Studies professor Hector Perla is shown. Perla was accused of raping a student during a wine-tasting outing in June 2015. Some of the files are so heavily redacted that on many pages no words are visible. Perla is one of 113 UC employees found to have violated the system's sexual misconduct policies in rece

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