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One heartening thing about H!ITG!dom is that, when one actor graduates, another quickly rises to take his or her place. After all, without gruff cops and seedy killers and vaguely menacing drifters, the movies would simply grind to a halt -- or, at least, movies not made by Merchant Ivory would.

So now that Chris Cooper has officially been shepherded to the Promised Land of Oscar wins and starring roles, the time has come for James Remar to shine. You can catch some of that shining, in fact, in Blade: Trinity, in which Remar does what Remar does best: plays a craggy-faced cop who's fast and loose with the rules, and who's good at catching psychos because he practically is one himself.

In fact, he's literally played psychos -- or, at least, deranged killers -- in The Warriors, 48 Hours, and the spoof cop film Fatal Instinct. He's also an accomplished stage actor who once starred opposite Richard Gere in Bent. Strangely, though, he's probably best known as Richard Wright, the cheatin'-heart boyfriend to Kim Cattrall on Sex & the City.

This casting choice may suggest that we hold some national, subconscious belief that jet-setting philanderers are, in fact, psychotic murderers, or at least their moral equivalents. Or it may just suggest that James Remar cleans up real nice.