Short Junk News! Huzzah!
Well, the Sundance line up has been released. Look for big films from Carrot Top and Big Gay Al to headline the festivities.
Doom might be headed to the big screen. That’s right, Rosie O’Donnell is returning to film!
Vin Diesel has signed on to star as a bodyguard to a bunch of kids who learns that the toughest part of body guarding them is, you guessed it, keeping Michael Jackson 50 feet away.
Tim Allen will star in a flim based on a John Grisham novel called The Lawyer Who Found Something Out About His Or An Opposing Firm He Wasn’t Supposed To Know And Had To Either Go On The Run Or Defend His Client Against Impossible Odds And Win Either Way. Also, There’s A Cranky Old Lawyer Who Dies. Should be great.
GRUTMAN LOVES NUMBERS! Analyzing the box office report.
Well, the big winner for the Thanksgiving weekend were films for children. The Cat in the Hat came in first for the second week in a row. It was followed VERY closely by The Haunted Mansion, which made $24,278,410 to Cat’s $24,459,685. Elf continued its surprisingly strong run in third with a high per screen average. Children’s films helped Hollywood get the second highest box office for the 3 day Thanksgiving weekend thanks to parents, children and most importantly, child molesters.
On the sad side of kiddie flicks, Brother Bear isn’t going to crack the $100 million mark. Phil Collins, writer and singer of a couple of songs from the movie, responded to this news by shooting himself in his fat f*cking head.
Bad Santa made a respectable debut, picking up $16 million with a per screen average of over $6,000. Billy Bob Thornton is gratified by the success, while co-star John Ritter has yet to comment.
Gothica, Love Actually and Master and Commander are all on the way off the chart. So Master is almost gone but The Cat is doing well. Way to go, movie going public. Way to go.
The two massive disappointments are former Oscar hopeful The Missing and the crappy Michael Crichton adaptation Timeline. So the crappy kiddie movies did well while the crappy adult flicks sucked. I guess we now know exactly what kind of crap the American public can stomach.
Speaking of Billy Bob Thornton
DO THEY SUCK OR NOT?
Billy Bob Thornton ROCKS!
1. Bad Santa
2. Intolerable Cruelty
3. Monster’s Ball
4. Bandits
5. The Man Who Wasn’t There
6. A Simple Plan
7. Pushing Tin
8. Primary Colors
9. The Apostle
10. Sling Blade
Billy Bob Thornton SUCKS!
1. Levity
2. Waking Up in Reno
3. Daddy and Them
4. The Last of the Real Cowboys
5. Armageddon
6. Homegrown
7. U-Turn (I DON’T WANT TO HEAR IT! THIS SUCKED!)
8. Tombstone (Tough call.)
Ladies and Gentlemen, Billy Bob Thornton ROCKS!
Top 10 List
Coolest television deaths. Only 1 per show. Also, you gotta remember I’m 25 and probably missed a whole lot of cool television deaths in the 80’s. Remember, this isn’t the list of the best deaths, just the coolest.
1. Sopranos: Tony beats Ralphie to death. Ralphie’s kid got shot with an arrow and was going to be retarded for the rest of his life. Ralphie began to realize what was important in life. He proposed to Roe. He was going to make a confession to the priest. Things were going to be different. Then the horse he bought that Tony loved died in a fire, paying off a large amount of insurance money. Tony blamed Ralphie and BEAT HIM TO DEATH! It was the most unexpected death I’d ever seen on television. Joey Pants had just announced that he had signed on with The Sopranos for the next season. The brutality came from seemingly nothing out of nowhere. Just the part where Ralphie sprays Tony in the eyes with Raid makes the death one of the best television moments of all time. It’s punctuated later on when Tony’s nephew Christopher cuts off Ralphie’s head and places it in a bowling bag. Just awesome.
2. ER: Romano crushed by a helicopter. This is what inspired me to do this list. Dr. Romano, the most hated one armed man in the ER, went up to face his fear on the helicopter pad for a wealthy patient. He was too afraid and saw in his head when his arm was cut off by the copter blade. He was so upset he went downstairs and right out the front door to hyperventilate. It was then that the helicopter started to lose control. Pieces of the blade hit the roof and hit a nurse. A minor character was supposedly on the copter, and we had been told a character was going to die. Down in the alley, Romano found a no-goodnick lazy doctor smoking pot and ordered him inside. Romano was so angry he began to pace. Debris fell from the sky. Romano looked up and let out a blood curdling “NOOOOOOOOOOOO†as the helicopter fell on him, crushing him to death. Completely unexpected and a fitting death.
3. The Simpsons: Maude Flanders killed via t-shirt gun. Homer wanted a t-shirt at the Nascar race. He took off his and painted a bulls-eye on his chest. The t-shirt girls fired at him, when he noticed a bobby pin and bent down to pick it up. The errant t-shirts hit Maude Flanders and knocked her off the bleachers, killing her. Heh.
4. Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Anointed One is killed by Spike. There were so many cool deaths in Buffy history. None compare to Spike just getting pissed off, putting the kid in a box and raising him into sunlight. Spike took over the show from that point.
5. 24: Jack Bauer cuts off a guy’s head. At the end of the first episode of Season 2, Jack Bauer needed a head. With no warning he shot an informant and cut off his head. Well done, Jack.
6. South Park: Fake Kenny comes out of Crabtree’s Vagina. Yes, Kenny died a lot. Whenever I think of Kenny dying, I think of the fake Kenny coming out of Ms. Crabtree’s vagina, followed closely by another kid who wasn’t expected to be there. It was not pretty.
7. Alias: The Evil Francine Doppelganger. I don’t watch the show regularly but I watched the one after the Superbowl. I had no idea what was going on, all I knew is that I saw a dead body followed by the dead body’s doppelganger on the phone. The only one on the list where you don’t see the death.
8. Ally McBeal: Billy just drops dead in court. Only on the list because it was very unexpected. I never liked Billy or most of Ally McBeal. Meanwhile, look for another moment to appear when I do top 10 lesbian moment. Perhaps it will be towards the top.
9. Seinfeld: Susan dies from licking stamps, nobody cares. On the list because it pissed off my mom.
10. NYPD Blue: Jimmy Smits Long Exit. An episode that should have won Jimmy an Emmy. I think it might have. Not surprising or cool but unbelievably well done.
Nihilism and Cupcakes
Forget movies. No, wait, don’t forget movies. I went and saw Bad Santa this past weekend with my father, brother, and boyfriend. I laughed my fool ass off. That Billy Bob, I don’t know. He’s not sexy and every time I see him I still think “french fried taters,” but yet I’m still oddly attracted to watching him intently. He doesn’t have a third arm or anything, so I don’t think it’s a freakshow-type aspect. Perhaps I’ll wait to figure it out until after I start stalking him. Or at least after I get a souvenir chunk of skin.
See, now that I’m on the topic of movies, I just can’t seem to stop myself. After declaring my hatred for Tom Hanks, I figure I might as well throw out a few of the things I actually like. Even us pessimists and realists of the world can let a little light shine into our hearts once in a while. Just for a second though, mind you. Wouldn’t want any flowers to start growing.
With that: Edward Norton is my personal god. I don’t care if he’s covered in swastikas (sorry, Josh, but damn if that boy shirtless and tattooed doesn’t make this little goyim all hot and bothered) or if he’s a vegan kiddie show star. All is good in the world of Norton, ever since I first saw him on the big screen, delightfully surprised as I was, in Primal Fear. He’s versatile, he has tremendous ability, and he’s non-threatening. You get someone like the cliché Brad Pitt, you know, someone too hot too even think about, and that’s no fun. I mean, say you run into Brad Pitt somewhere. If you’re a loopy girly like myself, you start drooling and ask him for his autograph just as snot starts dripping out your nose and you pass out. Edward Norton, on the other hand, he’s just all regular and shit. You could ask him if he’d bum you a smoke, you could chill and have conversation, maybe play some pool. Then maybe take off to the bathrooms for a bit of the ol’ in-out, and call it a night. Yep, that’s the breakfast of champions.
This is the area where I write about Johnny Depp. I can’t do it, however. I’m too busy drooling all over myself while trying not to pass out at the mere thought of that boy. Ohhh, for it is too criminal for someone to be as sexy as he was in the first half of Blow. Sigh. I think he can act, but I’ve never really paid attention.
Also up there on the list of goodness is Woody Harrelson. There’s no genius to be found there or anything, but damn if I haven’t always thought the guy was pretty neat. He kicks complete and total ass in my very favorite movie of all time, Natural Born Killers. And who doesn’t love Kingpin? Be it completely stupid or seriously insane, I like the guy. I even stooped to watching that awful “Will And Grace” crap back when he was on the show. It was painful, but I figure the drugs are going to get him soon enough so I’ll take what I can get.
Now, what about the ladies? Well, it’s pretty safe to say I never go out of my way to catch a Meg Ryan flick. And Sandra Bullock, Julia Roberts, Jennifer Lopez… you can keep all of those chickies and their stupid chickie movies, too. Actually, it seems every time I find an actress whose work I like in one or two movies, she has to go out and make a bunch of crap that makes me embarrassed to ever say I thought she was neat. See Penélope Cruz. See Jennifer Connelly. See Elizabeth Hurley. See Christina Ricci. See Helena Bonham Carter. Actually, none of those are really all that much to be embarrassed about, but… Bedazzled? Seriously, Liz hon, that’s not cool. Didn’t you know that Brendan Fraser is a talentless human fungus? Talk to me first next time.
At least some good films can still be made, even without my elite force of super-favorite actors. Almost Famous, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and Pulp Fiction don’t contain any of them, but they’re all in my list of favorite flicks. Add to that a dash of A Clockwork Orange, Requiem For A Dream, Fight Club, Go, and perhaps Niagara Niagara, and you’ve got a good spattering idea of what kind of things trip my trigger. Okay, so there’s more than just a smidgen of variation there, but it can all be boiled down to one common denominator: if it’s screwed up in the head, I like it. Bingo!
So, indeed, not all is bad in the world of cinema. Not all is good by a tremendously large stretch, but at least something can be found. I have to admit, though, it was really hard throughout this piece not to insert a snotty remark of hatred against more people than I already have. My fingers are still itching to throw out some kind of scathe towards Cameron Diaz. C’mon, bitch, OD on blow already. Something, anything.
Much better.
Care to discuss this further? Feel free to send me an email. Just remember two things; one, I get 300 pieces of spam a day, so make your subject line stand out; and two, all of the above is my very dearest opinion and you’ll never change my mind. NEVAHHH!
Love.
–Gloomchen
So, not much big news this week. Be on the lookout for Black on Monday and head over to Flea’s site.. There’s ANOTHER THING over there you should read. My plays. What did you think I meant Widro?
