LOS ANGELES: The nine scattered fires that have caused seven confirmed deaths in Southern California continued to burn Saturday, with more than 20,000 homes still in danger, officials said.

Lighter winds and higher humidity enabled firefighters to go on the attack, but many fingers of the fire remain unpredictable. It will take more than a week to put the fires out and probably longer to stamp out flare-ups, officials said.

Fire crews at the Santiago Canyon fire in Orange County made a stand on an old ridge-top truck trail to prevent the fire from burning several homes and heading into Riverside County.

Captain Phil Rawlings of the Orange County Fire Authority said the Santiago Canyon fire, which had consumed more than 27,000 acres, or 11,000 hectares, was in an area that had not burned in decades, making its path difficult to predict and its intensity particularly acute.

“We don’t know how the fire will burn,” he said. At least 200 homes could be threatened, depending on how the fire proceeded, he said.

The Orange County Fire Authority increased its reward offer, to $285,000 from $100,000, for tips leading to the arrest for what authorities say was an arsonist or a group of arsonists responsible for the devastating fire.

In San Diego County, there was concern about a fire burning near the century-old Palomar Observatory. The most ferocious in terms of damage, the Witch fire, which had consumed more than 1,000 houses, continued to burn strongly, with winds remaining unpredictable. The Harris fire, raging near the Mexican border, was also far from containment.

But there were signs of progress. A fire that erupted at Camp Pendleton, burning 20,000 acres, was close to containment.

Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego closed operations for evacuees, but the San Diego Chargers said they would play their game on Sunday against the Houston Texans in San Diego, as scheduled.

In San Bernardino County, the Slide fire had burned more than 13,000 acres and was 15 percent contained by late Friday afternoon, with 10,000 houses still threatened and many mandatory evacuations still in place.

At one point, the fires forced half a million residents to evacuate. Californians continued to make their way back to charred neighborhoods, salvaging what they could and coming to terms in hundreds of cases with vast swaths of nothingness. Others returned to learn that they had been spared, even when neighbors’ houses had burned to the ground.

Air quality remained poor, and health officials advised people with heart disease and respiratory diseases, including asthma, as well as the elderly and children to avoid outdoor activities. Many schools curtailed or canceled recess during the week, and sports leagues also considered cancellations.

If nothing else, MySpace’s “exclusive” Owen Wilson-Wes Anderson interview shed a little light on what it might be like to be a fly on the wall in the quirky duo’s writing room.

The longtime pals and frequent collaborators’ five-minute chat, posted Friday on the social networking site as part of its ongoing Artist on Artist feature, turned out to be nothing more than a tongue-in-cheek promo for their latest film, The Darjeeling Limited, which opened in wide release today.

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By Tom Charity
Special to CNN

(CNN) — So far as I can see, Steve Carell is a rather unremarkable fellow — which makes him quite an unusual movie star.

He’s short and slight and a square. Save for the Old Testament look he tried on in “Evan Almighty,” he’s maintained the same boring businessman haircut for as long as he’s been in the public eye (and well before that, I’ll bet).

He’s not a prankster like Jim Carrey or a crack-up like Robin Williams; he’s more the Jack Lemmon type (it’s easy to imagine him in a remake of “The Apartment”). His awkward, inadequate ordinariness is his selling point. He’s the fool who suffers frustration, humiliation and rejection on our behalf, and the joke is always on him.

If Carell looked swamped in “Evan Almighty,” he’s firmly back in his comfort zone in “Dan in Real Life.” This is his most assured and rounded performance to date.

In the opening few minutes we watch Dan dispensing sage parenting tips in print — the movie’s title is also the name of his advice column — and keeping a too-tight rein on his three growing daughters. A widower, he’s working his socks off to keep it all together.

It sounds like the setup for a sitcom, but never mind. No sooner has Dan driven the kids to Poppy and Nana’s house for the annual family get-together in off-season Rhode Island than he’s meeting cute with Juliette Binoche in a secondhand bookstore.

Binoche in a secondhand bookstore: that nails the audience for Peter Hedges’ movie right there. This is not Judd Apatow raunch we’re talking about. Hedges had a minor Sundance hit with “Pieces of April” some years ago, and is best remembered for his screenplay “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?” Like those films, “Dan in Real Life” coats melancholy observation in gentle character comedy and a soupcon of farce.

Binoche — Marie, naturellement — is “the One.” Or in Dan’s case, I guess, the “second One.” He feels it, and even though she’s barely gotten a word in edgewise, we’re given to understand she feels it too.

Unfortunately, she has a boyfriend. And wouldn’t you know — he turns out to be Dan’s younger brother Mitch (Dane Cook), a reformed skirt-chaser who announces himself besotted. Too decent do the dirty on his own kin, Dan tries to keep his infatuation to himself. The results are every bit as rueful as you would hope.

Indeed, Dan scarcely makes a good decision in the entire movie. He’s rude and ridiculous and miserable. But you have to feel for the guy. He’s in love.

Anyway, what’s the alternative? Root for Dane Cook? I don’t think so, not even when he’s underplaying as sweetly as he does here. Cook and Binoche — that’s like a Camembert and peanut butter sandwich. Some things just aren’t meant to be.

A braver movie might have scrapped the meet-cute (easily the silliest and least convincing scene in the picture) and allowed Marie and Dan to fall in love with full knowledge of their impossible situation. Binoche did something equally untoward in Louis Malle’s “Damage” — not a laugh riot, admittedly.

But if Hedges is pulling his punches just a little, he’s only prepared to flirt with the farcical aspects of Dan’s predicament without sacrificing the character’s credibility. It’s Dan’s — that is, Carell’s — forlorn attempt to keep some modicum of self-respect that’s so endearing.

There’s enough going on between Carell and Binoche — she’s a deliciously expressive actress — that the film works as a mature romance and not just as another formulaic comedy. This time, the last laugh goes to Mr. Carell. And well deserved, too.

“Dan in Real Life” is rated PG-13 and runs 98 minutes. For Entertainment Weekly’s take,

You got to hand it to Microsoft: This week, the Redmond, Calif., giant seemed to pull Facebook

 right out from under Google’s feet.

But Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ) may have passed on the deal for a very good reason: The company may already have all the pieces it needs to patch together a homegrown social networking site–one that could even trump Facebook.

“They don’t need Facebook, otherwise they would have bought it.” Georges Yared, head of Yared Investment Research said. “Google can sit there, smile and say, ‘Look at what we did, we made Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) pay $240 million for a tiny stake.’” Meanwhile, Google has a lot “sitting in its back pocket,” Yared said.

Google’s first homespun networking site, Orkut, which debuted in 2004, has gained traction in Brazil and India. Although it has stirred up some controversy–because people have used the network to form racial and religious hate groups–it is becoming increasingly popular in emerging markets, such as Asia.

According to the TechCrunch blog, Google is planning to revamp the website in November by opening the programming code to developers, who can then design a host of new applications for the network. It’s a play straight from Facebook, which now offers users hundreds of different applications–but Google could go a bit further.

On Facebook, developers are required to work within the site to participate. Google may open the doors wider, by allowing developers to not only operate applications in the site, but also push data outside, into non-Google applications.

Don’t stop with Orkut, though. There’s Google’s video networking site YouTube, of course, and Google’s cozy relationship with red-hot Apple (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people ). Google also offers email and a chat service.

And there’s iGoogle, launched in 2005: a customizable “homepage” that lets users add applications such as a weather update service, news feeds, stock updates and more light-hearted applications like “funny cat photos.”

By adding new applications, and stitching together iGoogle and its communication programs, Google could have an unusual–and powerful–social networking presence. “The biggest dark horse is iGoogle,” Nollenberger analyst Todd Greenwald said.

On Facebook, a user can get updates on friends’ profiles and actions; iGoogle could be manipulated to do the same. “All the things that have made Facebook so popular can be done on iGoogle as well,” Greenwald contends.

Now toss in YouTube into the mix. “There are so many possibilities with YouTube,” Yared of Yared Investment Research says of the video-sharing site, which Google acquired for $1.7 billion in 2006. Like Facebook, YouTube is an online community that aggregates data from users. Although Google has been laissez-faire with YouTube thus far, letting it maintain its status quo feel and design, the site may be due for a shake-up.

Finally, if Google does pull together a social networking system, analysts expect to see the company showcase its close relationship with Apple. Linked by a mutual distrust of Microsoft and by the fact that Google CEO Eric Schmidt sits on Apple’s board, the two companies have been getting closer recently. The new Apple Leopard operating system, making its debut Friday, features built-in Google applications that will work seamlessly with the system.

Analysts aren’t expecting to see a social network emerge this year. Luckily for Google, just about every company is still scrambling to make sense of social networking. As the thousand-pound gorilla in the Internet kingdom, Google has the luxury of time. “Google will walk before they run,” Yared said.