"The Other Paper" Lapses Briefly into Respectability

So, after months of telling my readers how The Other Paper is not fit even for the wrapping of fish, I would be as surprised as any one to find myself writing something that could be construed in any way as a defense of TOP, but that is precisely what you're about to read.

This week's paper included a letter from one Terry Holub. Holub decries the hubbub over the recent staff walkouts at Clintonville movie theater Studio 35, questioning "why is so much time being spent and page space wasted" on the issue.

Well, needless to say, I disagree completely with that point of view, or else I wouldn't bother writing this.

I think that the Studio 35 situation is precisely the type of story that TOP should be covering. They bill themselves as "Columbus' News and Entertainment Newspaper", and, as local entertainment news stories go, this one is fairly significant. The departure of a good chunk of Studio 35's workforce in a dispute with the new management has implications for the future of one of Columbus' oldest and most beloved entertainment venues. This is a story worth reporting and following up on and one that I haven't seen any other local media outlet covering.

In this case, I actually have to commend The Other Paper for doing a good job.

I promise not to make a habit of it.

Weren't the Oscars Last Night??

I fully intended to watch the damned Academy Awards. I really did.

But after Ellen Degeneres' awkward and unfunny monologue, a couple of awards in categories that no one gives half a crap about right up front, and Will Ferrell singing (this must never be allowed to happen again), I knew that I was going to fall asleep in front of my TV long before Hollywood's annual orgy of self-congratulation finally wound to a halt in the wee hours of the morning, so I decided to pack it in early, turn off the idiot box and go to bed.

Nothing that happened last night was much of a surprise to anyone, anyway, at least not to me--not even Degeneres' weak showing. Why this woman is allowed to host awards shows is a mystery to me. They should have gotten John Stewart again if you ask me. Even David Letterman would have been better.

While Forrest Whittaker likely deserved his win for Best Actor, it is a pity that Peter O'Toole couldn't have won. After all, he's been nominated eight times without winning and, as he's somewhere around 120 years old, this was probably his last shot. There just aren't a lot of Oscar worthy roles being written for walking cadavers these days.

That is all that I care to say about the Oscars for this year, except to continue to wonder why the Academy snubbed Kevin Smith and his epic Clerks II. (I'm not joking. Jason Mewes deserves an Oscar!! He is our greatest living actor!!---Ok, I'm joking a little bit.)

The WORD's Oscar Picks '07

Oscar picks?

Look, I spend all my time when I'm sitting around not here in front of a computer screen typing up my useless, uniformed opinions sitting around my apartment watching TV, reading comics and wallowing in pointless self-pity, so it goes without saying that I have failed to see any of the films nominated for any Oscar this year. Hell, the only movie I dragged my sorry ass out off my couch to actually see in a theater last was Clerks II, which, sadly, was completed passed over by the Academy. This, however, will not stop me, in my capacity as semi-professional Pop pundit, from spouting off about who should or shouldn't win in a couple of categories.

For Best Director, it probably is about time, after a three decade career and several previous nominations without a win, that Scoresese takes the statue home. In the Best Actor category, while I haven't seen The Last King of Scotland, I hear Forrest Whittaker really tears up the screen in it and I've always liked him in any other film he's been in, so he's my pick as well as that of people who've actually bothered to watch this film.

And I see that in the Best Foreign Language film, the Academy, unlike the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which dispenses the Golden Globes, has actually adhered to the spirit of the category by nominating only actual foreign films, rather than American films made in a foreign language by actors turned director trying to be "arty," such as Mel Gibson's Apocalypto or Clint Eastwood's Letters From Iwo Jima, which took the Globe in the category. Of course, as to which film actually wins, I don't give a crap because I didn't see any of them and most of them never even played in Columbus, Ohio anyway.

If I can actually stay up to the end of this snoozefest, I'll report on my impressions later in the week.

Ethics, Alternate Endings and Clerks

It is time to address yet another thorny ethical dilemma posed by the proliferation of modern technology. What could be more fun than that, eh?

In college, I learned the hard way--which is how all things truly worth knowing are learned--that the cardinal rule, the Prime Directive, if I may be so geeky, of film reviewing is that you do not give away the ending of the film. To do so is to risk death, dismemberment, or, at the very least, loss of your column. What, then, about the alternate and unused endings that are often included as extras on DVDs? How much can we say about them when reviewing or discussing the disc? After much thought, I have decided that the answer, as is often the case in most thorny ethical dilemmas is: it depends. What it depends on is, mostly, how closely the alternate or deleted scene resembles the actual ending of the film as it was released. In the case of Clerks, the DVD from which this metaphysical musing sprang, the alternate ending is not a different take but a couple of minutes of film that was cut off the end, and, truthfully, has very little to do with the rest of the movie, yet if it had been left in it would have radically changed what film maker Kevin Smith and his fans refer to as the View Askew-niverse, so I feel there's no problem with discussing and describing the scene in depth.

The scene takes place after the film's final scene, and finds Dante alone in the Quik Stop reading a magazine when someone enters. "Did you forget something?" Dante asks, thinking Randall has returned. Seeing that its not Randall, he tells the stranger that the store is closed. All of this has been shot from the mysterious visitor's point of view. Now, the scene cuts to a shot of the intruder, who pulls a gun, shoots and kills Dante, and grabs all the cash from the register. Roll credits.

Yes, Dante Hicks was originally supposed to die at the end of Clerks. I am so glad Smith let himself be talked into cutting this scene, as it really doesn't fit in with the tone of the rest of the film and is just gratuitous. Killing off the main character is just a little too heavy for this film, and would have just destroyed the good feeling that the rest of the movie left me with.

Besides, if this scene had been left in, the funniest film I've seen in years, Clerks II, would not have been possible. Of course, until he actually began writing it around 2004, Smith never intended to make a sequel to Clerks. He even states in the commentary on this disc that a music video included among the extras in which he recreated the rooftop hockey game was the closest thing he'd ever do to a Clerks sequel. Dante and Randall's appearance in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back came even closer, and then, of course, he finally gave in and made Clerks II.

One thing I hadn't noticed the first time I saw Clerks, and I only noticed it because Smith pointed it out in the commentary, which was recorded as he shot Mallrats, is that it says at the end of the credits "Jay and Silent Bob will return in Dogma." Apparently, Smith intended Dogma to be his second, instead of fourth, film. A film called Dogma, at any rate, as it would have been a vastly different movie if made immediately after Clerks. Not only was Smith less experienced as a writer and director, but he probably wouldn't have been able to get the same budget or cast that he had access to when he finally made the film. I think it's a good thing that he waited to attempt a film as ambitious as Dogma.

Oscar Nominations Announced

Easy day today for the Pop Culture blogger. Today, as you know unless you've got a life or something, was the day the Oscar nominations were announced. (At 8:38 a.m., by the way. Who came up with an odd time like that, and why? I really want to know...so if anyone out there has the answer, leave a comment.) It would be pretty easy for the tired and sick and somewhat lazy blogger to head over to the Oscar homepage, find the list of nominees, and simply copy and paste onto his blog.

So, here you go, folks--the pinnacle of Internet age journalism:

The Oscar may or may not go to:

Performance by an actor in a leading role

Leonardo DiCaprio - BLOOD DIAMOND;Ryan Gosling - HALF NELSON;Peter O'Toole - VENUS;Will Smith - THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS;Forest Whitaker - THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND
Performance by an actor in a supporting role

Alan Arkin - LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE;Jackie Earle Haley - LITTLE CHILDREN; Djimon Hounsou - BLOOD DIAMOND; Eddie Murphy - DREAMGIRLS; Mark Wahlberg - THE DEPARTED
Performance by an actress in a leading role

Penélope Cruz - VOLVER; Judi Dench - NOTES ON A SCANDAL; Helen Mirren - THE QUEEN; Meryl Streep - THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA; Kate Winslet - LITTLE CHILDREN
Performance by an actress in a supporting role

Adriana Barraza - BABEL; Cate Blanchett - NOTES ON A SCANDAL; Abigail Breslin - LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE; Jennifer Hudson - DREAMGIRLS; Rinko Kikuchi - BABEL
Best animated feature film of the year

CARS; HAPPY FEET; MONSTER HOUSE
Achievement in art direction

DREAMGIRLS; THE GOOD SHEPHERD; PAN'S LABYRINTH; PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN'S CHEST; THE PRESTIGE
Achievement in cinematography

THE BLACK DAHLIA; CHILDREN OF MEN; THE ILLUSIONIST; PAN'S LABYRINTH; THE PRESTIGE
Achievement in costume design

CURSE OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER; THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA; DREAMGIRLS; MARIE ANTOINETTE; THE QUEEN
Achievement in directing

BABEL; THE DEPARTED; LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA; THE QUEEN; UNITED 93
Best documentary feature

DELIVER US FROM EVIL; AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH; IRAQ IN FRAGMENTS; JESUS CAMP; MY COUNTRY, MY COUNTRY
Best documentary short subject

THE BLOOD OF YINGZHOU DISTRICT;RECYCLED LIFE; REHEARSING A DREAM; TWO HANDS
Achievement in film editing

BABEL; BLOOD DIAMOND; CHILDREN OF MEN; THE DEPARTED; UNITED 93
Best foreign language film of the year

AFTER THE WEDDING; DAYS OF GLORY (INDIGÈNES); THE LIVES OF OTHERS; PAN'S LABYRINTH; WATER
Achievement in makeup

APOCALYPTO; CLICK; PAN'S LABYRINTH
Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original score)

BABEL; THE GOOD GERMAN; NOTES ON A SCANDAL; PAN'S LABYRINTH; THE QUEEN
Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original song)"

I Need to Wake Up" - AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH; "Listen" - DREAMGIRLS; "Love You I Do" - DREAMGIRLS; "Our Town" - CARS; "Patience" - DREAMGIRLS
Best motion picture of the year

BABEL; THE DEPARTED; LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA; LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE; THE QUEEN
Best animated short film

THE DANISH POET; LIFTED; THE LITTLE MATCHGIRL; MAESTRO; NO TIME FOR NUTS
Best live action short film

BINTA AND THE GREAT IDEA (BINTA Y LA GRAN IDEA); ÉRAMOS POCOS (ONE TOO MANY); HELMER & SON; THE SAVIOUR; WEST BANK STORY
Achievement in visual effects

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN'S CHEST; POSEIDON; SUPERMAN RETURNS
Adapted screenplay

BORAT CULTURAL LEARNINGS OF AMERICA FOR MAKE BENEFIT GLORIOUS NATION OF KAZAKHSTAN; CHILDREN OF MEN; THE DEPARTED; LITTLE CHILDREN; NOTES ON A SCANDAL
Original screenplay

BABEL; LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA; LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE; PAN'S LABYRINTH; THE QUEEN

As soon as I get around to actually reading what I've just posted on my blog, I may have some comments or predictions. I've got time. The stupid awards show isn't for another month yet, right?

Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai Engagement Confirmed (What the Heck?)

This comes to us direct from the Columbus Dispatch, whose editors apparently think their readers give a crap about this.

Bollywood Stars to Marry Later This Year

The article states that: "Bollywood movie stars Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai are engaged and will marry later this year, the former Miss World's manager confirmed Monday, ending months of speculation about their relationship."

I am glad that has been cleared up, because the "months of speculation" were driving me crazy. Why, everywhere I turned throughout Columbus people were talking about Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai and the status of their relationship. Not to mention all the buzz on the Internet. Hell, thinking about it was keeping me up at night.

Seriously, though, does anybody in the Western hemisphere, much less the capital of Ohio, give a crap about this. I certainly don't. So why is the Dispatch wasting space in its paper and on its web-site with this crap when there are really important issues they could be covering, like the fact that the new season of American Idol starts tomorrow.

Obits: Veteran Animator; Munsters Actress

The commentaries on the Hong Kong Phooey DVD, which came out back in August, may be the last work that veteran Hanna-Barbera and Disney animator Iwao Takamoto did before he died on Monday at age 81.

To be honest, his list of credits on the Internet Movie Data Base reads like a list of H-B's cheesiest shows of the 70's, from Inch High, Private High to Kwicky Koala, but there are some gems in there, as well, such as Hong Kong Phooey. He also directed what I consider the best thing Hanna-Barbera ever did and one of the great animated films of all time, the original film version of Charlotte's Web.

In other passages, Yvonne De Carlo also died on Monday. There are 122 items on Yvonne De Carlo's IMDB page stretching all the way back to 1941, but the only one anyone remembers, and ever will remember, is her two years as Lily on The Munsters.

Personally, in the horror/comedy TV show category, I've always preferred The Addams Family (the animated version of which Iwao Takamoto worked on) to The Munsters, but you've got to admit that De Carlo looked pretty hot all gothed out as Lily. (There's a touching tribute: Her show sucked, but she was sexy. I should write sympathy cards for Hallmark.)

Rabbit Season! Duck Season! Awards Season!

Yes, the entertainment industry's annual cavalcade of congratulation kicks off tonight with the People's Choice Awards and carries on through the Oscars at the end of next month. If you can't find some sort of awards show on TV between now and then, your set's broken.

Oscar nominations won't be revealed until the 23rd, but let me tell you who I think deserves to be nominated for best actor: Hugo Weaving of V For Vendetta. Not only did he manage to make a sympathetic character of a terrorist vigilante killer, but he did it while wearing a mask for the entire film. His ability to convey a full range of subtle emotion without the benefit of facial expressions was amazing. That's not easy to do, after all. You'll remember that Willem Dafoe wasn't quite able to pull it off as Spider-Man's Green Goblin.

Of course, if the Golden Globe nominations are any indication of the Oscar picks, then chances don't look good.

The Globes have also failed to recognize, as most likely the Academy will as well, director Kevin Smith's raunchy return to top form in the funniest movie I saw last year, Clerks II. Jason "Jay" Mewes and Smith (Silent Bob) deserve some love from the awards folks as well in the supporting actor category. Seriously though, Clerks II may not exactly be an Oscar contender, but it was Smith's best effort since Chasing Amy.

New Indiana Jones Film Coming

I was planning on hanging up the blogging hat for the year following my last post, but then I noticed that I had 59 posts for the month of December, so I decided to go for 60, setting a personal record that will most likely stand for months, even years, to come.

Speaking of 60, does anyone really want to see a 65 year old Indiana Jones being chased by aging Nazis? Well, Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford think that you do, as they're prepared to begin filming the long anticipated, and therefore most likely destined to totally suck, fourth Indiana Jones flick sometime during the coming year, for a release in 2008. No title for the new film has been announced yet, but here's some suggestions: Indiana Jones and the All you Can Eat Buffet; Indiana Jones and the Tuesday Night Bingo Game; Indiana Jones Deposits His Social Security Check; or Indiana Jones and the Retirement Community of Doom.

New Book on Hero Ghost Rider is Complete Waste of Paper

We have Nicholas Cage to blame for, among countless other transgressions, the utterly useless new book Ghost Rider: The Visual Guide, for without his upcoming Ghost Rider movie this hastily produced pile of public relations pablum would never have even been conceived, much less actually published. This type of slickly produced, expensive, hardcover volume has become common in recent, though usually reserved for heavyweight heroes of the Superman/Spider-man class rather than third-rate, third-tier, twice-cancelled losers like Ghost Rider.

None of these "ultimate guide" style books are worth the twenty or more dollars that the money grubbing publishers expect gullible fanboys to shell out for them, but Ghost Rider: The Visual Guide is especially worthless. To one, such as myself, who has wisely avoided reading the Ghost Rider comics, this book is an incoherent mess, and I suspect that even those die-hard fans who've followed the character through his various incarnations over the past thirty-plus years would be hard pressed to make heads or tails of this morass.

The book is heavily illustrated with panels from the Ghost Rider comics, but taken out of the context of the stories of which they were but a small fraction, they make no sense whatsoever. The jumbled clumps of text interspersed amid the pictures provide none of the needed context, failing to gel into any sort of coherent timeline of the character's muddled history.

One can only hope that the movie that Ghost Rider: The Visual Guide is meant to promote ends up making more sense than this piece of crap.

The New Heroes: Bad News for DC and Marvel?

It occurred to me a while back that the recent surge in popularity of the super-hero genre in other media outside it traditional comic book environs, such as movies and TV, may not turn out to be such a good thing for the main purveyors of the genre, DC and Marvel Comics, as it would seem to be.

Up to now, the big hit super hero films have been based on existing Marvel and DC properties like Batman, Superman, Spider-Man and The X-Men. The comics companies, however, have repeatedly failed to convert this mainstream exposure into new readers or increased sales.

Meanwhile, this year, two of the highest profile super-hero related Hollywood projects, the wanted-to-be summer blockbuster Zoom and NBC's serialized drama Heroes, have not been based on pre-existing properties. While the Tim Allen vehicle, Zoom, didn't exactly zoom to the top of the box office charts, Heroes has recieved good ratings and much acclaim as the best new show of the 2006 fall TV season.

This would seem to indicate that film makers are no longer dependent on the comics publishers for their source material. If more and more super-hero films or TV series prove successful, leading to the development of even more, it seems clear to me that Hollywood will turn increasing to its own writers, rather than the comic books, for new ideas. And that will leave the comics publishers, especially Marvel, which seems to regard their charactes and comics as simply fodder for outside licensing deals, in second place; lagging behind Hollywood in the genre they pioneered.

Peter Boyle Dead

Best known in recent years as Frank, the cantankerous father of New York sportswriter Ray Barone, on the CBS sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond, Peter Boyle, who still can be seen on movie screens in The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause, died yesterday at the age of 71.

His Internet Movie Data Base page lists over 90 film and TV roles, some of the most memorable, to me at least, being the monster in Young Frankenstein, a performance highlighted by his singing, with co-star Gene Wilder, of "Puttin' On The Ritz" (which puts the 80's hit version by the man who called himself Taco to shame), and attorney Carl Lazlo, a character loosely based on real life attorney Oscar Acosta, in Where The Buffalo Roam, which also starred Bill Murray as gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson.

The Amazing Prescient Powers Of "Weird" Al Yankovic

So, Sylvester Stallone has a new Rocky film coming out.

This past Saturday, I heard an interview with Stallone on NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday, and Sly let slip that as Rocky Balboa opens, the former champ is now running an Italian restaurant. As I heard that, it struck me that the idea of a retired Rocky as restaurateur is not a new or original one. The concept was, in fact, first posited by none other than "Weird" Al Yankovic in the song "Theme From Rocky XIII (The Rye or The Kaiser)," a parody of Survivor's "The Eye of The Tiger," the theme from whichever Rocky movie was the most recent at the time Yankovic released his second album "Weird" Al Yankovic in 3-D (1984).

In that song, Al tells the tale of a champ grown "fat and weak," who has "...Sold his gloves, threw his eggs down the drain." Yet, Yankovic goes on to assure the listener that:

"...he's no bum, he works down the street

He bought the neighborhood deli

Back on his feet, now he's choppin' up meat

Come inside, maybe you'll hear him say

Try the rye or the kaiser

They're on special tonight

If you want, you can have an appetizer

You might like our salami and the liver's all right

And they'd really go well with the rye

Or the kaiser"

(By the way, as further proof, if any were needed, that you can find just about anything, no matter how stupid, on the wacked out, wild and wooly World Wide Web, the lyrics to "Theme From Rocky XIII (The Rye or The Kaiser)," as well those to what looks like every song that "Weird" Al Yankovic has ever written, can be found here. Just for fun, if such things are your idea of fun, compare and contrast Yankovic's parody to the lyrics of Survivor's original.)

Anyway, I'm wondering: since Stallone is sort of using Yankovic's idea, doesn't he owe the Weird One some sort of royalty, or at least a credit line in the new flick?

Movie Line No.6

Here's a line that would have made my list of the top 5 movie lines had I actually seen the film in question prior to posting it:

4 1/2.) Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.

--The Princess Bride

Stayin' Home

Probably not going out to the movies this weekend. None of the films opening this week appeal to me at all. The least appealing is Snakes On A Plane. As much as I like Samuel L. Jackson, who was just about the only thing worth watching in the lameass Star Wars prequels, I hate snakes even more...always have, always will.

Then there's Accepted. It's about a kid who gets rejected by every college he applies to, so to convince his dad that he's not a total loser, he invents an imaginary college which then becomes a real school. The name the kid comes up with for the school is South Harmon Institute of Technology. Yes, that's South Harmon Institute of Technology...and if that's an indication of the level of alleged humor in this film, I think I'll skip it. From what I can see, the only thing this so-called comedy has to recommend it is that Lewis Black is in it.

Yep. looks like another weekend of watching my DVDs of the first season of Gilmore Girls....

V For Vendetta: Who Was V, Really?

I just finished reading Alan Moore and David Lloyd's graphic novel V For Vendetta, upon which the movie of this past spring was based, and I have a question....

Since this concerns the ending of the book, if you have not read V For Vendetta or seen the film (though, not having seen the film myself, I have no idea how closely it follows the book), you might want to skip this entry and go to the Big Brother update.

Throughout the book, we never see V's true face, and then at the end Evey Hammond assumes the mantle of V following V's death. As I was thinking about the ending this morning, the following thought hit me: Is it possible that V was, in fact, Evey Hammond all along and the conversations between her and V took place entirely within her mind? Therefore, the new "apprentice" that Evey/V takes in at the end of the book would be yet another manifestation of Evey/V's psyche. After all, Finch says that V is not a normal human mentally and actually goes so far as to take LSD in order to think the way that V does. Plus, this is written by Alan Moore, so it makes sense to assume that there's more going on in the story than meets the eye.

If you've read the book, I'd appreciate any thoughts you have on this subject.

V Update

I just checked, and I have moved up to number 617 on the waiting list to check out V For Vendetta. It's practically in my DVD player as I write this.

Waiting For V

You may remember that I wrote quite a bit about the film V For Vendetta prior to its theatrical release in March, especially about how it might cmpare to other filmed adaptations of Alan Moore's work, which have been utterly bloody awful--especially From Hell. (I am so glad I had a free pass to that film and didn't actually have to waste any money on the piece of crap.)

Well, I never did get to see V during its somewhat brief theatrical run, but now it is out on DVD and, sooner or later--well, later, I will be watching it and giving my review here. I have reserved it from the Columbus Metropolitan Library and when I checked just minutes ago, I was number 629 in line to check it out. Considering that I was #730 a week ago when I made the reservation, it looks like about six and a half weeks until I can tell you how it stacks up against the comic, which is good because it gives me time to actually read the comic. Yes, I will admit now that I had not read the book at the time the movie was released, but I checked it out about the same time I signed up for the DVD, and I'm about two thirds of the way through it. I could be done already, but I'm also reading I Don't Mean To Be Rude, But... by Simon Cowell, in which he talks at length about his own greatness.

In the meantime, I guess you'll just have to suffer through my analysis of Big Brother All Stars, and my continued and growing admiration for Chicken George.

Entertainment News Round-Up (YEEE--HAAAH!!!)

I had no idea what I was gonna write today, so I cast about the 'Net for some random entertainment news...let's see what I came up with.

Hey! This is exciting. At least, it is to me. Hong Kong Phooey: The Complete Series comes out on DVD next week. The set contains all thirty-one episodes of one of TV's greatest super-hero spoofs, not to mention one of the few shows that Hanna-Barbera produced during the 70's that was even watchable (Remember The Hair Bear Bunch and Inch High, Private Eye? Yech! I still cannot believe that I ever liked either of those shows. Sure, I was a kid, but that's no excuse.), on two discs that also contains commentary on three episodes, a documentary entitled "The Phoo-Nomenon", and complete storyboards for the episode "The Batty Bank Gang".

In movie news, Talladaga Nights: The Ballad of of Ricky Bobby topped the box office over the weekend, and was probably hugely popular with NASCAR fans too stupid to know that they were being made fun of.

In second place was Barnyard: The Original Party Animals (subtitles are very in this week), despite reviews that could charitably be described as lukewarm. To me, the film appears, based on the promos I've seen, to be a cheaply produced quickie whose sole puropse for existing is to cash in on the popularity of computer animated films.

Meanwhile, CNN.com reports that Heath Ledger will be following in the footsteps of Cesar Romero, Jack Nicholson, and Mark Hamill. He has been cast as the Joker in The Dark Knight, the sequel to last summer's Batman Begins. Hopefully, unlike Romero, Ledger will actually shave off his moustache before putting on the makeup.

Finally, your chance to be insulted by a snotty Brit has come around again, as auditions for season 6 of American Idol began today, as reported in the Columbus Dispatch. The audition nearest me appears to be Monday's at Continental Airlines Arena in East Rutherford, N.J. This blogging thing hasn't made me rich, so maybe I'll take my shot at a singing career.

(POKER MOVIES) I Really Hated This One...

As I don't really have anything to new or interesting to say, here's another one of the series of posts on poker related movies that I wrote some months ago. When I first wrote this review of A Big Hand For The Little Lady, I was a little concerned about breaking the film critics' "rule" about not revealing the ending of a film in the review. How, I wondered, could I hold to that and still write an honest review when, after all, my problem with the film is the ending. Well, I reasoned, if I'm writing this to discourage people from seeing this film, then I don't have to worry about "ruining" the ending for them. Besides, as my friend Mustafa said to me a few weeks later regarding a completely different matter, "Rules are like bones, they are meant to be broken."--R"!!"T (Aug 5, 2006)

Over the course of last summer, as I strove to learn all I could about the game of poker prior to hosting my first game at my 40th birthday party, I watched quite a few poker themed movies. Some were very good and some, well, weren't, but there's one that I simply hate with an intensely burning passion. That exercise in wasted celluloid is called A Big Hand For The Little Lady.

In director Fielder Cook's 1966 film, a frontier family on their way to establish a homestead out west stop, when their wagon breaks down, in a small Texas town that is playing host to an annual high stakes poker game. While the wife, Mary, sees to the repairs, the husband, Meredith, a reformed gambler, gets into the game, playing with the money designated to buy their land, and is losing until he gets an apparent monster hand and promptly has a heart attack. While the town doctor sees to her husband, Mary takes his seat at the table. After securing a loan from the town banker to cover all bets, she wins back all Meredith lost and then some, along the way teaching the jaded old gamblers a few lessons about life, love, family devotion, and other such B.S.

Then, BOOM! the scene shifts to New Orleans and it is revealed that the "family" are con artists employed by the banker to exact revenge on the poker players for swindling him in a crooked land deal twenty years earlier. Up until that point the viewer is given no clue that the characters and the story are anything other than what they appear to be. I had invested emotionally in the characters and story as they seemed at first and when they were revealed at the last moment to be something totally different, I felt cheated, tricked and used. Twist endings are fine, but the person you should never trick is the viewer. I came away resenting this film and everyone involved with it. Except for Burgess Meredith, who played the doctor. After all, man, he was the Penguin and that makes him cool no matter what.