I've been watching Catherine Keener since she played a thirtysomething New Yorker who ends up dating the video store guy (Kevin Corrigan) in Walking and Talking, Nicole Holfcenser's first film, back in the mid-1990's.

If you ever wondered what living in New York is like, it's sort of just like Catherine Keener: cool, smart, not too into itself, prone to little emotional disasters, and ultimately a bit of a closet sweetheart.

It's great to see that she has gone on to have a fantastic acting career, because she always fell a little bit in the cracks between the pretty girl (I think the other one in Walking and Talking was Naomi Watts) and wacky sidekick (think Joan Cusack).

Catherine Keener is the pretty, wacky sidekick, and her presence in anything makes it worth checking out.

She has two new flicks coming out: Genova, and Where the Wild Things Are, a popular kid's yarn that Spike Jonze turned into a movie that has freaked out the studio who made it. (More about that later).

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/mar/26/catherine-keener-genova