“All that the restless viewer [of ‘Flightplan’] can do is marvel at the snazzy production design and the strange elocution of Ms. Foster’s co-star, Peter Sarsgaard (as a sky marshal), who serves up his lines as if he had studied at the John Malkovich school of cinematic expediency.” – Manohla Dargis

And, in a very roundabout way speaking of Flightplan — or at least its co-screenwriter Billy Ray — or, okay, Billy Ray’s short-lived 1994 television series Earth 2 (hey, I told you this was roundabout) — I’ve been watching the series for the first time on DVD lately. It has its good points and bad. But I was amused to find, in the episode I watched this morning, that the DVD proudly proclaims that “Virginia Madsen (Sideways) guest stars.” Which I guess I understand. With Sideways and her deserved Oscar nomination for it, Madsen’s star has risen considerably, and hopefully gone are the days when she starred mainly in bad horror movies like The Prophecy. Except she doesn’t “guest star” in the Earth 2 episode. She appears, yes, but only for about half a minute, essentially as an extra. I don’t think she’s even listed in the credits. She was there, it would seem, only because she was sleeping with one of the cast members (Antonio Sabato, Jr.) at the time. She has no lines; you probably wouldn’t know she was there unless you were looking for her; blink, and you’d have missed her.

This sort of retroactive cross-promotion isn’t all that unusual. Films are often promoted using the subsequent successes of their casts and crews. (The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, anyone?) But it’s a little disingenous to pretend that Earth 2 “discovered” Virginia Madsen before she was a big star or anything like that.