Stuff is Happening

Death Becomes Her
Anna Nicole Smith's diaries from 1992 and 1994 have been sold on eBay for $500,000 total. To rephrase that, someone spent half a million dollars to read the private thoughts of a person who, according to all visible evidence, had no brain. This is where the fall of the empire begins, this moment. If barbarians aren't sacking the capital by next Tuesday, I am going to be very disappointed.

Fantasia
In other news involving the printed word: The son of J.R.R. Tolkien (he doesn't actually have a name, he's just "that 'Lord of the Rings' guy's son") has finished the last book by his father, "The Children of Hurin," using his father's notes. I'm sure it will be just fantastic. Though I do find it a little interesting that he only decided to publish this after the film adaptations of "Lord of the Rings" trilogy made billions of dollars. And that nobody is actually talking about the book itself, just the possible film adaptation. And that J.R.R. Tolkien was not that great of a writer and that his son has been basically publishing any old crap that was left on his dad's desk for going on thirty years now.

Top at the Box Office This Week
1. "TMNT," i.e. a new computer animated version of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Will they completely miss the irony of the subject? Will the 1980s actually happen again? We'll just have to see.

2. "300," a film which has caused a bit of a dust up, apparently because it kind of sucks, but is popular regardless. Oh yeah, and Iran think it's anti-Iranian propaganda, which would be completely absurd except for the fact that it kind of is. It's hard to miss since the film makes the Persians (of which the Iranians are the remnants) come off as preening pansies that are taunted by the Spartan heroes as being "boy-lovers." Which when you think about it is kind of an absurd thing for a Spartan to taunt someone about since Spartan society was about as gay as a San Francisco gay pride parade on international "Fuck a Man in the Ass" day. I mean, these guys were REALLY gay. When your ideal measure of beauty is "the pert round butt cheeks of a fair-haired male youth," you are dealing with some hardcore rainbow-flag-waving motherfuckers. Oh yeah, and the Spartans eliminated all family ties in preference of ties to the State, were stone morons when it came to battlefield tactics and were defeated by the Persians whenever the Persians had a general with half a brain. They were war-worshipping uberjock fascists whose idea of a romantic wedding night was to shave their wife's head so she would look more manish and then bang her prison style. It was like an entire society made up of Texas high school football teams, only without the repression. And it was actually the Athenians who defeated the Persians in the end. Funny how none of that made it into the film.

3. "Shooter" which stars Mark Wahlberg as a bad ass, the role he was born to never, ever play.

4. "Wild Hogs." It's like someone took everything that is not funny in this world and put it in a movie. Honestly, this looks about as laugh inducing as a late-term abortion.

5. "The Last Mimzy." We can only hope.

6. "The Hills Have Eyes 2." The sequel to the remake of the film that already had a sequel, but not a remake of the sequel to the original film. Got that? Who gives a fuck, they hired a music video director to shoot it and it came out about a shitty as expected.

7. "Premonition." I'm looking into the future and seeing another piece of semi-supernatural crap with Sandra Bullock in it.

8. "Reign Over Me," in which Adam Sandler continues his attempt to be taken seriously, in between his attempts to make bank by producing/starring in comedies so tediously unfunny that they actually suck the joy out of other films showing in the same theater.

9. "Pride" combines the "coach turns ragtag team into champions" plot with the "teacher turns tough inner city kids into talented winners" plot, along with a dash of the "inspirational true story" plot to make some sort of ultra-boring Super Plot.

10. "Dead Silence." AKA "Ventriloquist Dolls Are Creepy When They Move by Themselves, Here is a Movie About It."