Science fiction as pop culture, starring Matt Damon as an astronaut stranded alone on Mars.

For all The Counselor‘s flaws, at least Ridley Scott’s latest isn’t boring.

Crystal Palmer, director of D.C.’s Office of Motion Picture and Television Development, has a new target: video games. Palmer spent much of last week in Los Angeles attending the Electronic Entertainment Exposition, an annual confab of video-game producers.

Like Alien, Ridley Scott’s Prometheus poses questions about the cycle of life, and the anxiety of birth and death. But this autumnal action picture asks an even more basic question: Where did we come from?

Straight women and gay men all across D.C. were presumably disappointed by the news that came out over the Thanksgiving holiday that Brad Pitt had dropped out of the production of State of Play, a big-budget political thriller set to begin filming here in Washington this winter. You may recall that Pitt had stopped by the Washington Post newsroom in September to do some research on the character he was slated to play in the…

>> Little children don’t like President Bush. [YouTube, embedding sadly turned off] >> Director Ridley Scott set off a bomb at Eastern Market yesterday, but Russell Crowe and Leonardo DiCaprio were not there, so stop asking us about it. [Reliable Source] >> A U.S. Park Police officer reportedly shot and wounded a driver on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway near Riverdale this afternoon. [WaPo] >> The FBI has launched a new Web site, BankBandits.com, in an…