Universal decided to promote its movie "Fourth Kind," about real live actual alien abductions in Alaska that actually happened, by publishing a fake archive of fake news stories from real Alaska papers, purporting to report on the fake things that happened in the fake movie. Then the real Alaska papers were like, whoa, hey, pretty sure we didn't write any real obits of fictional characters lately, and Universal was like, ha, you're right, we're giving $20k to the Alaska Press Club to show you how sorry we are. The studio also vowed to pull all the fake stories off the internet, but, of course, you can still find some cached on Google.

The Tribune Co. is very interested in expressing outrage over any Hollywood movies that may choose to use fake LA Times headlines to recount any imaginary tales of murder, scandal, or disaster, whether human or alien. Call them.

Using scores from Metacritic, Miller-McCune weighted the critical scores of actors' movies with the relative size of their roles in those movies. The final list shows that everyone who was in Lord of the Rings is an awesome actor with great taste in projects, with Elijah Wood topping the list and Viggo Mortenson and Ian Holm (the British geezer who played Bilbo Baggins) making the top four, too. Philip Seymour Hoffman is as serious an actor as you think he is, and Jessica Alba is as big a hack. Bottoming out the list was Freddie Prinze, Jr., followed by someone named Eddie Griffin and a tragic Matthew Lillard who had so much potential, once. Here's an abridged sampler:

Equally interesting was scatterplot showing the relative niceness and consistency of America's 25 most prolific movie critics. We discover that the Chicago Tribune's Michael Wilmington drinks the kool-aid more than any other critic, followed by the Chicago Sun-Times' Roger Ebert's perennially upraised thumbs. The meanest critic in America is the Austin Chronicle's Marc Savlov, who gives low scores but deviates regularly. On the other hand, TV Guide's Maitland McDonagh gives low scores and has a relatively low standard deviation from her mean score, meaning she's always stone cold.

[Miller-McCune]

[Tells some story of this girl in a bar who totally loves him, like, so much, but doesn't know about the movie]. I mean, when someone who identifies themselves as a huge fan, who has read the book and passed it to their friends and self-identifies as this type of person, when the movie is IN THEATERS and they don't even know there is a movie at all…that is a complete failure in the publicity and marketing of the movie...
I don't want to go through it, because it'll just be depressing, but the failures in marketing were just…big. Unrecoverable.

I would have guessed "Because it was awful." But I'm no Tucker Max.
[Pic: Flickr]

The Financial Times reports that the rights to the Terminator kingdom — films, TV shows, ringtones, pajamas, you name it — will be put on the block this month, with Sony the front-runner to take home the goods.

While the original films, and T2 in particular, were powerhouse earners in their day, after the franchise lay dormant for a decade, attempts to reboot have been spotty.

2003's Terminator 3 did not turn out to be the artistic or box-office bomb that many feared, but shortly after that film's release producer Mario Kassar sold off the franchise to the all-but-unknown unknown Halcyon Entertainment, which created a forgettable TV series and an abysmal McG directed film, Terminator Salvation.

Halcyon has now been driven to Chapter 11, which led to the court-directed auction of its assets, primarily poor forgotten Terminator.

Fortunately for the sad little franchise, any idea that has any sort of merchandiseable juice behind it is nothing to be sneezed by a teetering Hollywood, grabbing for any thin reed they can. And in fact, despite being battered and bruised, Terminator remains a fairly lucrative cash cow, with the full Salvation take, all told - international, DVD, etc at more than $375 million. A few weeks ago the Mutant Ninja Turtles sold off for $60 million and it certainly seems plausible that
Terminator could fetch a higher price tag than that.

And with Arnold leaving the Governor's office in just over a year... it might be time for the world to say "Hasta la vista baby" all over again.

100% straightperson Tom Cruise "made constant, constant unrelated homophobic comments on the set of Risky Business according to Bronson Pinchot, who played Balki Bartokomous on the 80's sitcom Perfect Strangers. Balki says Cruise "always talked about himself like he was a mega-superstar" and called his co-stars by their characters' names off-camera. Oh, also, Balki has some straight to video DVD or something coming out. [Onion]

Octomom told her paparazzi friends that she thinks Jon Gosselin is way hot. This could lead to the most awesome media freak show train wreck of all time. Jon has been going for 20-something casting call reject types since his divorce, but the potential publicity surrounding an Octomom encounter might convince Jon to go for her. He just lost his show and fame has always seemed to be his first love. They could start dating and pitch some bizarre eighteen headed monstrosity of a reality show. It would be like a very 2009 version of The Brady Bunch. It would sure pay for a whole lot of Ed Hardy gear. [E! Online]

Salman Rushdie is a "cowardly, dysfunctional and immature" man who breaks up with women over e-mail and is still obsessed with his former flame Padma Lakshmi. All of this information comes to us courtesy of Rushdie's latest ex, Broadway actress Pia Glenn, who is clearly over it and in a very healthy place now. [Page Six]

Britney Spears' next video is an "ode to threesomes." If this blatant ploy for attention doesn't work, Britney might have to start shaving her head and going on umbrella rampages again. [Page Six]

Judges want Roman Polanski to stay in jail while the US government works on getting him extradited from Switzerland to face his conviction for raping a 13 year-old girl in 1977. A Swiss court denied Polanski bail and house arrest because they say the 76 year-old director poses a high flight risk. Polanski has lots of famous friends who think he shouldn't serve time because he makes nice art, has lots of money, and hangs out with them at parties. Some of his sympathetic celebrity buddies might have private planes, so keeping Polanski locked up is probably smart. [NYT]

Balloon Boy's dad Richard Heene was reported to child services a few years back. Heene responded by trying to take out a restraining order on the former business associate who made the report. It seems Heene doesn't mind dealing with the reptilian alien shadow government if they can help him harass his enemies. [TMZ]

According to the Hollywood Reporter, the latest round of layoffs brings the company's total payroll down to 70 or 80. Just for perspective, Nikki Finke reported that they had 224 staffers in November 2008. How many more tear-filled dinners can they stand before they go from the Weinstein Co. to just the Weinsteins?

There is probably nothing more enjoyable on the internet today than to contrast the movie I saw with the reviews of said movie by the only other people in America who saw it: the hardcore Tucker Max fans who frequent his message boards. Never let it be said that we don't provide space for differing opinions.

1. "The comedic value isn't what sets the movie apart to me, it's the fact that it actually has a soul. When I walked out of the theater I wasn't really thinking about how funny it was, I was thinking about friendships I've had in the past that I screwed up or have lost - it made me introspective."

2. "Much in the same way 'fratire' became a new genre, Tucker made this movie from a completely different mold. And, he deserves to be evaluated on that basis."

3. "Tucker and Nils could make 10 sequels to IHTSBIH and they'd still be funny so long as the dialogue didn't repeat. Because that's where the humor was derived: the fucking English language. Crazy concept, right?"

4. "I think you infused the right amount of slapstick, physical comedy (the shit scene, Dan pissing on the cops) into the movie. I like it when you can laugh at two very different levels of humor in the same flick."

5. "I've seen Tucker on camera many times, but it was weird to see him in a movie about him...with him not playing...him. And was it me or was he overacting that role like a motherfucker in the background of those scenes? Haha, nah, you were good dude."

6. "Expected more laugh out loud moments in the movie, but that was mostly from my high expectations. I rarely laugh out loud in movies, but I remember I did during the shit scene and the scene with Drew strangling Lara. A few of the one liners like 'You smell like you got buttfucked by a garbage truck.'"

7. "Take Drew. Not a single person who's criticized the Drew/Lara relationship has mentioned a characteristic of his other than that he "hates women," a fact that shows a deep misunderstanding of the character and relationship. Drew is bitter because he's fucking hurting. He is a very deeply moral character. He clearly puts a lot of weight on trust: he won't lie for his friends because Dan's fiancée trusts him and he will not undermine that. To not have that same trust reciprocated in a relationship as involved as the one he just got out of is fucking devastating.
To give someone your all, to buy them his and hers chairs to play video games in, to so let them into your life, only to catch them sucking off a fucking rapper on your couch? The damage that does to his emotional health is so palpable it's ridiculous. Some of the shots of Jesse reacting to Lara and the kid back at their house are priceless. Bradford does such a good job letting that pain and longing simmer. Chills."

8. "I loved the fact that even though I didn't find it funny, I was only bored during one scene."

9. "We've been so conditioned to see people dodging wrenches to practice dodging a ball, Asian gangsters in car trunks, and Jason Biggs sliding to home plate with a pie that when we see flaming Dr. Peppers we probably expected someone or something to catch fire for some cheap laugh. Instead we heard "So who's the slutty one?" said to a bachelorette party. The line – like the entire tone of the movie – is in your face and that artistic choice is so different the combination is unsettling to some people, but funny to nearly everyone."

10. "In a few years, when critics look at the IHTSBIH franchise as a whole, they're going to be eating a lot of crow. Not because they wrote bad reviews (this movie, like every other movie, has its flaws), but because they failed to miss the "experience" aspect all together. In the same way that George Lucas generated long-term success for Star Wars with cutting-edge movie-making technology, IHTSBIH will ultimately succeed as a franchise and a brand because it completely redefined what it means to "experience" a movie. That's why it's unfair to compare this to any other film. It isn't like them."

• Erin Andrews, the ESPN reporter who was filmed in a bathroom, thanked police officers for their "dedicated service"in nabbing the perv and promised to use the scandal for good, not evil: "I will make every effort to strengthen the laws on a State and Federal level to better protect victims of criminal stalking." [ET]
  
  
• Seth Rogen got Kevin Smith to start smoking pot, now Smith smokes three times a day and encourages you to do the same: "Do weed! Don't do the other stuff, but weed is good." [Page Six]
  
  
• Chris Noth and his lady love, Tara Wilson, are engaged. Pathetic women everywhere are finally snapping out of their "Mr. Big" fantasy. [ET]
  
  
• The alcoholic mother of the HIV-positive baby Elton John wants to adopt swears she won't let the pop star have his way. That's fair. [The Sun]
  
  
• Madonna's daughter yucked it up for the paps while walking around New York with her pop. [Daily Mail]
  
  
• Don Imus starts his simulcast on Fox Business today, and he's sure the struggling cable channel's the place for him because, he says, it's not corrupt, like NBC. Oh, snap! [NYDN]
  
  
• Actor Tony Roberts, perhaps best known for his roles in Woody Allen movies, like Hannah and Her Sisters, has been hospitalized, thus holding up the preview of his Broadway revival, The Royal Family. [AP]
  
  
• The whole world knows that Eddie Cibrian and his wife are splitting up because he was screwing LeAnn Rimes, but don't worry: the couple puts on a happy face for the children. They're too young to read tabloids, anyway. [People]
  
  
• Happy 40th birthday, Gwen Stefani! [People]
  
  
• Desperate Housewives of Atlanta star Kandi Burruss has released a more detailed statement following the death of her former fiance, AJ. And, as you can imagine, she's "devastated." "My heart is heavy with grief," she says. [Us]

It wasn't much of a surprise when it was announced that Disney would be "restructuring" Miramax down to three films a year and cutting their staff by 70%.

When Disney studio chief Dick Cook was ousted last week, it was pretty common knowledge that an absent Cook, who was long a proponent of keeping the Miramax brand alive, certainly wasn't going to help things. Miramax hasn't been sufficiently profitable for a while, at least by Disney's standards. Sure, they've turned out some quality films over the last few years (No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood) but most people attribute those victories to New York's Worst Boss '07, producer Scott Rudin, and not Miramax head Daniel Battsek, the Brit who couldn't zero in on American tastes without the help of producers like Rudin: ears for quality and easy ins to studios. Miramax has also had far more than their fair share of failures lately, which the LAT report nicely reduces to their most recent three (Extract, Cheri, and The Boys Are Back). Are we forgetting Adventureland, Eagle vs. Shark, Blindness, etc? Because, well, we shouldn't.

These are mostly expensive films with fairly "bankable" stars being trotted out as "independent" fare, or as the LA Times enjoys calling it: "smaller, offbeat movies," which is a nice euphemism for anything that doesn't have a nailed-down demographic of conspicuous consumers (or, for that matter, teenagers). But big studio dramas used to do really well! Remember the 90s? Braveheart, Schindler's List, American Beauty, Gladiator: these films used to win box offices and Oscars. Not anymore. In their place are smaller affairs: The Reader, Crash, Revolutionary Road. Restrained pieces of moviemaking that aren't as epic as their history would suggest. Times change.

Picturehouse, Warner Independent, and now, Miramax: all of these were so-called "specialty division" studio-within-studios that failed. They were built up to lure stars with the promise of getting their art-house rocks off in exchange for a multi-picture deal involving a blockbuster. Why? Because, for studios, they weren't worth the cost of the money they were losing devoting resources to making or acquiring and marketing these mostly unprofitable movies. So: studio indies are coming to an end. Thank god.

Miramax got their name by making movies like Swingers and Pulp Fiction. They stumbled upon raw talent who could make an incredible movie on the cheap, and the profits were extraordinary. When you have the backing of a studio like Disney, or Warner Bros, that's never going to happen. As much as they probably enjoy the schadenfreude of Disney fucking up their baby, even The Weinstein Brothers, still hopped up on the memories of their last moneyed days with Disney, are now caught between pissing cash into the wind on highbrow stuff, or focusing on making more stuff like Halloween 2. Layoffs are impending for Miramax employees who once thought they had the safety of a studio that cared about "good" movies. Disney's commitment to "quality" extends as far as their bottom line, like so many other multinationals trying to turn a buck.

Independent film used to be a game of digging through the dark to find something incredible, and that might be what it's returning to. Hollywood's new producers are savvy to New Media marketing games; they know how to make good films while keeping the kitchen sink. We can try to avoid the symbolism of Miramax's doom as much as we want to, but in the end, it's simple: conglomerates are out of the art-house game, which means its full-on open season for underdog movies again. Let the new Weinsteins emerge.

What is it with living man's attraction the undead? Countless cultures have myths surrounding the reanimated. Afro-Caribbean societites are given credit for unleashing the mindless masses into the mainstream, but many societies shop in the undead. And, of course, movie lovers are no exception.

Every since Night of the Living Dead, we've been salivating over tales of humans who have to face their lifeless, brain-eating peers. We could tally the dozens of movies with the word "zombie" in their title, but we suspect that you, dear reader, are well aware of the selling points.

Horror flicks peddle in fear of the unknown. That's just how they work. And zombies are reliable precisely because we think they could never be; but could we be wrong? There's no actual proof to, well, prove that zombies could never come into being. On the contrary...

Conspiracy lovers believe that the Russians reanimated a dog back in the 40s, when they were all communist and shit. Scoff all you want, but even capitalist scientists are looking into turning back the death clock.

The University of Pittsburg isn't the most revered institution in the land, but it hosts a place called the "Safar Center for Resuscitation Research," which examines all the ways in which science can trump nature and revive the living. They've been working on dogs, but could humans be far off?

A website called cracked offers some other scary research, like neurogenesis, which looks into ways to reanimate dead brain cells. Meanwhile, scientists are using stem cells to take components from dead embryos and create living tissue. Lots of people are scared of these scientific advancements. And perhaps they should be, but those debates eschew a larger, perhaps uncomfortably metaphysical question.

In the end, aren't our popular or scientific fascinations and pursuits with all things zombie motivated by an equally mythical thing: the soul? Even if you claim to be an atheist or, damnation, agnostic, isn't the real scare in zombie lore that someone — a person with friends and family — could return with no apparent loyalty? And couldn't that "loyalty" be called a soul?

We don't know — what do we look like, God? — but we do know that this long-held obsession points to a collective compulsion to overcoming nature's ultimate obstacle, death. And that's always entertaining.

Box Office Mojo sez: It opened on 120 screens and raked in a total of $369K, for an opening weekend average of $3,075 per screen. That puts Tucker's movie eighth in per-screen revenue out of the nine movies that opened last weekend. Although he came close to matching the $3,100 per screen average of Blind Date (2009).

But sometimes critically acclaimed films don't have boffo box offices. It's just the nature of high art. Let's go to the reviews:

• Reuters: "the film is unfunny from first minute to last, and its half-hearted attempts at emotion merely underscore its general loathsomeness."
• USA Today: "This unfunny, über-misogynistic adaptation of Tucker Max's audacious best-seller of the same name is unlikely to please anyone."
• Chicago Tribune: "The result just might be the most hypocritical feature in the history of film as well as the history of hypocrisy, and along with serving beer, I hope they show 'I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell' in hell."
• San Francisco Chronicle: "That was epic, bro. You should make a movie ...No, you shouldn't! Put down the digital camera, step away from Robert McKee's guide to screenplays, and get back to ramming your head through Sheetrock during spring break."
• New York Times: "a mediocre gross-out movie that barely pushes the envelope."
• Boston Globe: "Ridiculously cheap-looking, smug, scurrilous, but fairly evolved for a project so fundamentally unevolved."

Moore's press train began last week on Good Morning America, when he took some time to rail against the show's use of "permalancers," a group that's basically permanent, but don't get the benefits and, therefore, count as the underdog. It was all very amusing and true, and provided Moore with a great excuse when CBS "canceled" his appearance on tomorrow's Early Show. From a tweet Moore posted Sunday morning:

Backlash Begins: CBS has cancelled [sic] me on its Mon. morning show. After I criticized ABC/Disney on GMA, they didn't want me to do same to CBS.

While that could be true, CBS bookers tell media scallywag Rachel Sklar that they never booked him. Moore's people, though, tell a different story: they were negotiating a firm date with CBS, but then CBS got all diva about getting the sit-down after GMA already landed Moore:

I can accurately say that the bookers who book the show have definitely been in discussion with us to have him on the show. When we attempted to confirm the booking they said they didn't want to follow GMA.

Hmmm. So, Moore, we're assuming, knew CBS had said they didn't want to follow GMA, but tweeted that the network was scared of his inflammatory nature. Why are we not surprised?

Anyway, Moore's assertion, however valid, only brings the spotlight back to him, which is good when you're promoting a movie. And the movie's doing well, by the way: it opened with about $306,000 on four screens. That's the higher per-theater average for the year. Love him or hate him, Moore's a hit machine.

Did CBS Cancel Michael Moore? [Mediaite]

• "We made this movie for the same reason that we create all of our art; because we love it"
• "There is no number or level of success that would make me think, 'Wow, I didn't think that was possible.'"
• "My writing is authentic and whatever happens in my life is what I write about."
• "Now, I'm more like a smart missile."
• "We also wanted to make it feel realistic."
• "everyone just assumes it's going to be a success."

We all remember the Texas-born Swayze from his roles in Dirty Dancing and Ghost, but the actor's real break came from the television adaptation of North and South, a Civil War drama. The actor went on to star in a number of hits, like Point Break.

While we all have fond memories of Swayze's silver screen hits, we are most impressed by his courageous cancer battle. Though he knew his days were numbered, Swayae signed on to star in A&E's The Beast. And, honestly, whatever you'll say about the show, his gumption was commendable. We've previously honored Mr. Swayze with a video tribute, but here;s our absolutely favorite performance from Dirty Dancing, the sleeper hit that helped make him a star.

RIP, Patrick. You touched many lives and, as cynical and mean as we may be, will always be adored

Despite the fact that On The Origin of Species has won a Toronto film festival award and debuts in Britain this week, U.S. distributors have declined to take up the flick, which chronicles scientist Charles Darwin's crusade to bring modern science, common sense and progress into all of our lives. And, yes, diehard Christians are to blame:

Movieguide.org, an influential site which reviews films from a Christian perspective, described Darwin as the father of eugenics and denounced him as "a racist, a bigot and an 1800s naturalist whose legacy is mass murder". His "half-baked theory" directly influenced Adolf Hitler and led to "atrocities, crimes against humanity, cloning and genetic engineering", the site stated.

The film, which stars Paul Bettany and his wife, Jennifer Connelly, has sparked fierce debate on US Christian websites, with a typical comment dismissing evolution as "a silly theory with a serious lack of evidence to support it despite over a century of trying".

The movie, made by filmmaker Jeremy Thomas, concerns Darwin's own personal struggle within his scientific efforts, yet, for some reason, Americans are holding up the flick's release. Because, you know, over a century after evolution's discovery, England's offspring can't wrap their heads around a little thing called progress.

It's sad, really, for we always make hay over the fact that we're highly-evolved politically, yet, in reality, we're a bunch of backward brutes who can't see things from a different angle. Disgraceful, really...

Image via Juan Eduardo Donoso's flickr.

So! Megan Fox was promoting Jennifer's Body, the new Diablo Cody monster whatever movie. Wonderland magazine asks her about Transformers 2, and she goes off the reservation on Michael Bay:

God, I really wish I could go loose on this one. He's like Napoleon and he wants to create this insane, infamous mad-man reputation. He wants to be like Hitler on his sets, and he is. So he's a nightmare to work for but when you get him away from set, and he's not in director mode, I kind of really enjoy his personality because he's so awkward, so hopelessly awkward. He has no social skills at all. And it's endearing to watch him.

Now, while Megan Fox is trying to cement her reputation as a ridiculously inaccessible super rad badass post-femme hottie goddess rockbitch (or whatever Diablo Cody would call it) by basically calling Michael Bay a small-dicked boy with big explosive toys, a bunch of Michael Bay crewmembers—Or fanboys! Or both!—posted a letter on a Michael Bay message board. They write:

Megan has the press fooled...we have never understood why Megan was always such – the grump of the set?

...When facing the press, Megan is the queen of talking trailer trash and posing like a porn star. And yes we've had the unbearable time of watching her try to act on set, and yes, it's very cringe-able. So maybe, being a porn star in the future might be a good career option. But make-up beware, she has a paragraph tattooed to her backside (probably due her rotten childhood) easily another 45 minutes in the chair

Yes! Written like true techies. She's got a tat? Call her trailer trash! And again:

Megan says that Transformers was an unsafe set? Come on Megan, we know it is a bit more strenuous then the playground at the trailer park, but you don't insult one of the very best stunt and physical effects teams in the business! Not one person got hurt!

And who is the real Megan Fox? She is very different than the academy nominee and winning actors we've all worked around. She's as about ungracious a person as you can ever fathom.

Yeah, well, we imagine that's the case with everyone. What say you of franchise star Shia LaDouche? Exactly. Furthermore!

The press certainly doesn't know her most famous line. On our first day in Egypt, the Egyptian government wouldn't let us shoot because of a permit problem as the actors got ready in make up at the Four Seasons Hotel. Michael tried to make the best of it; he wanted to take the cast and crew on a private tour of the famous Giza pyramids. God hold us witness, Megan said, "I can't believe Michael is fucking forcing us to go to the fucking pyramids!" I guess this is the "Hitler guy" she is referring to.

Okay, that's just funny. So! Word of the letter leaks out. Sister Jez gets to it, Michael K at D-Listed gets to it with his own analysis:

The letter is supposed to make you want to run for president of the I HATE MEGAN FOX fan club, but it actually makes me kind of like her stupid ass for a quick minute. I mean, she's dumb, she's a slut and she's a bitch. The dumb slutty bitch is my kind! It's like we were separated at the free clinic!

God, he's a poet. And for a moment, this struggle of two work cultures—the "talent" culture, and the "techie" culture, this ages-long Hollywood battle over the value of diva actors and the work they do and the class struggles that exist between them—it hung in the air, dangling over the edge of becoming an all-out war, like an Autobot teetering on the precipice of a cliff, about to fall into the Grand Canyon, when Michael Bay, the great negotiator, stepped in. The letter was removed from the site! Forget for a moment that D Listed has it up, Just Jared still has it, and Google has it cached, and read into the great peacemaking the Michael Bay doth purport, on his site:

I don't condone the crew letter to Megan. And I don't condone Megan's outlandish quotes. But her crazy quips are part of her crazy charm. The fact of the matter I still love working with her, and I know we still get along. I even expect more crazy quotes from her on Transformers 3.

Michael

Genius. This is the man who brought us Armegeddon; he's a natrual crowdpleaser and one hell of a moneymaker, at heart. You think he'd do anything but leave open the possibility of more cast and crew infighting and insanity?

Winner: Michael Bay.
Losers: Classless Tech Crew Who Can't Write A Letter Very Well, With Exception To The Egypt Anecdote.
Push: Megan Fox. Yes, probably an asshole, but an honest, funny one. Like, sometimes, you're in Egypt, you just don't want to see the fuckin' pyramids, you know? Someone get me a mango lassi while we wait for these robots to get gassed. I've got my wonderful freaky thumbs to look at.

The five newly revealed scenes from Aniston's new filmLove Happens show the famed actress standing erect during shooting, moving her lips and forcing muted sounds to emit from within her body. But other than these basic motions, Aniston shows few signs of actually being alive during the shooting of this film.

On close study of the clips, her emotional range can be seen tilting from "slightly bummed" to "kinda okay" — a range often studied in hibernating creatures in the wild. Slumbering bears, for instance, will often terrify hikers who stumble across them into believing they are actually awake when they raise one corner of their mouth and tilt their heads back and forth in a "yeah, kinda" motion.

Fears that she might actually be dead while making this film rather than merely asleep were put to rest when careful study of at the second clip revealed a moment of "pissed off" emotion — a feeling considered far beyond the capacity of most human corpses.

Patrick Goldstein of the LA Times offers three reasons why remakes are all the rage. First, despite some duds, many remakes do make scads of money, as exhibited by Star Trek. Second, the audience likes them. Finally, after years of rejecting the remake, directors are now keen on the idea.

There was once a time when filmmakers used their craft to elevate their ingenuity, vision and originality. Sadly, those traits are few and far between these days and, rather than stretch their own lazy imagination, filmmakers claim they're "reinventing" previous big screen forays. Bullshit.

While people like Rob Zombie may want to call themselves "auteurs," no self-respecting artist would take someone else's work, shoot it from a different angle — or, heaven forbid, in 3D — and display it as an example of their bottomless creative well. But, like any business, Hollywood's ruled by a little thing called supply-and-demand and can't be held entirely accountable for this developing trend.

The public's only endorsing this sort of behavior: by going to remakes, we are tacitly telling Hollywood, "Hey, it's okay: we crave nothing new. We can't stretch our tiny minds to understand — or even demand — an entirely innovative film going experience." No, we're all telling upcoming filmmakers that we'll happily consume any well-trod, familiar story.

We can blame Hollywood all we like, but it's really the public who's encouraging laziness on the part of our entertainers. It's we who are helping erode the foundations of America's collective imagination, thus giving rise to remakes like Fame, The Taking of Pelham 1,2,3 and, why?!, Footloose. This isn't nostalgia. This is a sad indictment of our insatiable love for all things safe, secure and ultimately conventional. And it's for that reason that we don't deserve entertainment at all. Not until we can prove we need more than flashing lights and shiny objects to get us off.

[Add your own entries in the comments! I'm an ignorant agnostic.]


1. The Beastie Boys' Sabotage video


2/ John Goodman in The Big Lebowski


3. Exodus, Leon Uris


4. Uprising, the movie


5. Munich, the movie


6. Those Inglourious Basterds


7. Adam Sandler as Zohan


8. And then: "A terrorist could put a yarmulke on, say, 'Happy holidays,' and blow the place up." Not if these guys have anything to say about it. Anything involving somersaults, that is.

For decades, young MBA's have stepped off the Greyhound with little more than an attaché case and a dream — a dream of making their fortunes by turning a moribund 1960's comic book character into a gazillion-dollar international film franchise. Today that dream just fell out of reach for many young dreamers.

The news that Disney has shelled out $4 billion to buy Marvel comics means, for all purposes, the ownership of America's beloved cartoon characters is now in the hands of two companies — Disney and Warner Bros.

Of all the issues facing Washington now, superhero rights no doubt fall low on the list, but what will it take for the government to step in with anti-trush legislation and let these animated citizens enjoy the full pleasures of the free market?

Facing off each other across from opposite ends of Burbank now, America's cartoon titans stand amassed in two armies like The Legion of Doom and The Teen Titans.

Serving now on Disney's payroll:

The classic Disney characters; Mickey, Minnie and the Country Bears

The Pixar Universe - from Buzz Lightyear to Up's formidable Carl Fredricksen

The Muppets

And now Marvel's Spiderman, the Moon Knight, Kingpin, Captain America and the Human Torch.

Here's what's in the Warners camp:

The DC Universe from Batman right on down to Mr. Mxyzptlk

The hangdog but never to be counted out Hanna-Barbera world — including Scooby Doo, a Tom and Jerry film in production, and the perpetually unquenchable demand for updated versions of the Jetsons and Flintstones, not to mention a little outlet known as the Smurfs.

And how could we forget Bugs Bunny and the Warner Brothers cartoon empire

Which leaves very very little for the other studios to pick over.

In fact, if one looks at Empire Magazine's list of the Greatest Comic Characters of All Time, Art Seigelman's holocaust allegory Maus stands as the lone member of the Top 20 not now in the Disney or Warners camps. Of the complete Top 50, the ten remaining free agents are a fairly motley collection of satirical characters (The Tick), untranslatable imports (Astro Boy) and edgy "alternative" characters (Harvey Pekar). When Steven Spielberg's work-in-progress Tin Tin finallys hits the screens, it may be a brave last stand for independent comic book characters, free from the iron chains of the Disney/Warners duopoly.

But ultimately, the greatest losers on this historic day are certainly the other studios whose coming summer slates are heavily dependent on help from their Marvel friends. Sony's Spiderman franchise, Paramount's Iron Man films and Fox plans for a thousand year reign of Avengers origins and team up films are now dependent to some degree on the good will of their friends at Disney.

And all that assumes the winds don't pick up and the fires raging in the hills don't consume us all in flames sometime before tea time today.

• Reality show siren Heidi Montag thinks she's ready for children. Thankfully, her husband, the weaselly Spencer Pratt, has enough common sense to hold off on reproduction. [NYDN]
  
  
• Superman: Man of Steel producer Jon Peters has been ordered to stay 100 yards away from colleague Brian Quintana after Peters allegedly threatened to break his legs during a hearing for Quintana's ongoing sexual harassment suit against Peters. And you thought your office had drama. [Page Six]
  
  
• Bethenny Frankel does not approve of her Real Housewives of New York co-star Jill Zarin's new friends: Why would Jill be hanging with Jon Gosselin and Michael Lohan?.... It is utterly embarrassing." [Gatecrasher]
  
  
• Did that 2008 plane crash play a role in DJ AM's untimely death? Addiction expert and reality star Dr. Drew Pinsky thinks the pain killers Mr. AM took after the crash led to his relapse and, ultimately, his overdose. [ET]
  
  
• Holy smokes! Victoria Beckham went to the gym without makeup! What is the world coming to? [Daily Mail]
  
  
• Libyan tyrant Moammar Khadafy will be coming to New York next month and, according to her, wanted to rent Joan Rivers' apartment for $200,000/week. Sadly, it didn't work out. [Page Six]
  
  
• Elizabeth Moss, arguably one of the best actresses around, doesn't have a "grand strategy" when picking her roles, which explains her turn in the Sarah Jessica Parker romantic comedy Did You Hear About The Morgans? [THR]
  
  
• Dancing With The Stars "star" Melissa Rycroft accidentally squirted Orlando Bloom girlfriend Miranda Kerr in the face with a perfume spritzer. We won't even go there.... [Page Six]
  
  
• Oasis brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher got into a huge tiff during a Friday concert and, apparently, the band's now broken up, because Noel thinks Liam's a "fucking moron." Fair enough. [The Sun]
  
  
• Fashion designer Tara Subkoff has bounced back after having a benign tumor removed from her brain. That's good news. [Page Six]
  
  
• Martha's Vineyard can't stop talking about Chelsea Clinton's wedding. Though the former first daughter's parents haven't said anything, everyone's convinced the nuptials could happen at any second. [Page Six]
  
  
• Madonna and boyfriend Jesus visited the Western Wall while in Israel. Hilarity ensued. (Well, not really.) [AP]

There are writers/journalists who've lead lives of reckless abandon and then written about it. Think of Marquis de Sade or even Hunter Thompson (writers whose works I have not read, but whose reputations precede them).

And they, uh, what? Go Gators.

There is really no news.

It was bad. It was really bad. It was not bad in the good way. It was not bad ironically. It was not bad in the "Let's go see it because we like to watch bad movies like Knowing, and laugh at them" way. I do not want to say the wrong thing here, that might convince anyone that this movie is worth paying to see, even for train wreck purposes.

This is the movie that happens when a narcissist—not an interesting one, though—writes an entire movie about how cool he is, and is given full creative control over that movie. Imagine someone you know who is an asshole. Now imagine that person being able to write and produce a movie about themselves, and how awesome they are. There you have it.

The plot of this film: Tucker Max and two of his bros go to a bachelor party, meeting various cum sluts along the way. Whore bitches can't get enough of Tucker Max's bad boy personality, which is probably why so many of these twats want him inside of their vaginas. Tucker fucks a midget stripper and the world loves him for it, the end. Other highlights:

• Close-ups of poop, coming out of someone's butt, a lot.
• There's a wedding scene in the end where the guests are all white and the servers are all black. There's not a joke to go with that.
• The best character in the film is Tucker's friend Drew, because he looks like he was just dropped in from another movie, and can't wait to get back. Drew is a misanthropic video game nerd who goes to strip club and meets a hot stripper who is also a video game nerd and falls for him and they rush home and sleep together and Drew instantly bonds with her son and they become a couple immediately. This is as close to a plausible male-female interaction sequence as this movie gets.

This movie is not, in fact, hilarious.
[Pic: Flickr]

Tucker gives Bitter Lawyer an exclusive sneak peek of his own opinion of his own movie about him:

BL: Do you feel like the hilarity of your written work translated well into a movie?
TM: Fuck yes. The movie is absolutely drop-dead hilarious. Wait until you see it, you will laugh your ass off.

There you fucking have it. Tucker also notes that he cast the actor that plays him based on his "likability and redeemability," for unexplained reasons.

An actual non-Tucker review of Alcohol and Fruit of the Looms Go Together Like Grilled Cheese and Mail Order Brides, TK.

[Previously: The script of this shitty movie, Parts One and Two. Pic: Flickr]

Like it is barely even about how Barack Obama was secretly born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and is the son of Malcolm X! Most of the movie is just clips of cable news people talking about the election and Obama's first few months in office. But the highlight is surely this all-time classic of unintended consequences:

At the height of its sloppiness, the producers use, in its entirety, a video that Media Matters put together to mock Fox News coverage of the president's first 100 days. You can spot the rip-off because the blue bars and white text that Media Matters mark the 100 days with are still on the screen. Where the liberal group meant to mock the hyperbolic rhetoric of Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and the rest of the network's line-up, WND treats this like pages from the Gospels.

Hah. Nice one, Media Matters. Way to expose and contribute to the crazy. It is nice to be reminded that what is self-evidently batshit nonsense to "us" is just speaking truth to power to "them."

The movie cost $65 million, with another $35 mil for marketing. The Weinsteins were god damned determined to market the hell out of this! And that's great and all. But the WSJ explains the problem:

The company co-owns the $65 million film with Universal Pictures, so it will only reap half the profits — a symptom of the studio's financial troubles and the reason that even a hit like "Inglourious Basterds" may not be enough to save them.

Oh Harvey. Next time keep all of the Tarantino flick and sell off half of Miss Potter.

According to Nielsen BookScan, Child's classic recipe book, published nearly five decades ago, is selling around 22,000 copies a week and it will take the number one slot on the New York Times how-to best-seller list. But, alas, the recipes aren't necessarily making the transition.

As anyone who's familiar with Child's cooking knows, the Brit California girl loved butter and other naughty, yet delicious, ingredients. Now that people know the damage fat can cause their bodies - not to mention its apparent appetite for brains - many are altering the recipes with healthy alternatives. As one dilettante who eschewed pork fat remarked, "Julia Child rolled over in her grave when I opened the cream of mushroom soup, I'm pretty sure of that. But you know what? That's our world." And what a sad, tasteless world it is...

Child isn't the only person benefiting from the Nora Ephron-penned script. The film's based on Julie Powell's book of the same title, which has been reprinted 13 times this year.

And that, friends, is what we refer to as "movie magic." It's the secret ingredient to a successful book. Please do take note.

It looks to us like the most simplistic left-wing cant that Moore could muster to explain the bailouts: The banks bought Congress, and Congress gave the banks billions of dollars, and some nice gun-toting people in the midwest got laid off.

We've been excited to see the movie, which opens on October 2, but there's something about it that looks depressing: A Michael Moore movie tends to put a cap on whatever outrage he's addressing. Roger & Me meant that by the time you're seeing this movie, Flint, Mich., is fucked. Bowling for Columbine: A bunch of kids are already dead because we already lost the battle on guns. Fahrenheit 9/11: A look back at how we got screwed into the Iraq war. Sicko is an exception in a way, but only because it came out too soon. His collection of health care nightmares showed how "death panels" already exist in America (they're called "insurance claims adjusters") wcame out during the Bush years and not when, you know, health care reform might be on the top of the political agenda.

Now with Capitalism: A Love Story, we can look back in anger at another horrible thing that has already been done to us, and listen to a real-American-looking type say, "There's gotta be some kind of rebellion between the people who have nothing and the people who've got it all." Good luck with that.

It probably has the benefit of being true. But when is Michael Moore going to drop the fat-guy-in-the-lobby routine? Or the fat-guy-yelling-at-a-corporate-office-through-a-bullhorn routine, for that matter?

Also: How do you finance films without banks? Just wondering.

Brooks Barnes has a piece in today's New York Times pondering this very question. Barnes points out that stars such as Denzel Washington, Julia Roberts, Eddie Murphy, John Travolta, Russell Crowe, Tom Hanks, Adam Sandler and Will Ferrell have all starred in big releases that have flopped in recent weeks, which has left studio executives scratching their heads desperately trying to figure out why the doltish masses aren't consuming what Hollywood is trying to force-feed them, just as they've been doing for years.

"The cratering of films with big stars is astounding," said Peter Guber, the former chairman of Sony Pictures who is now a producer and industry elder statesman. "These supertalented people are failing to aggregate a large audience, and everybody is looking for answers."

Mr. Guber added, "Even Johnny Depp" - starring in the drama "Public Enemies" - "didn't exactly deliver a phenomenal result." (The A-list results may be damped partly because Will Smith, a regular summer powerhouse, had no movie open this season.)

Mr. Ferrell bombed in "Land of the Lost," a $100 million comedy that sold only $49 million in tickets in North America. Ms. Roberts missed with "Duplicity," a $60 million thriller that attracted $40.6 million. "Angels & Demons" (Mr. Hanks) was soft. The same for "The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3" (Mr. Washington and Mr. Travolta).

"Imagine That," starring Mr. Murphy, was such a disaster that Paramount Pictures had to take a write-down. Mr. Sandler? His "Funny People" limped out of the gate and then collapsed.

Ha! Well, here's a clue as to what might be wrong: all of the films mentioned here, with the exception of Duplicity, sucked! But of course, their failure to make truckloads of cash is all the fault of modern technology.

"You look around the theater and can see the glow, not on people's faces from watching the movie, but on their chins - from the BlackBerrys and iPhones," said Mr. Guber. "They are immediately telling their friends whether it's worth their time. And the answer to that, more often than not, seems to be no."

So if the big movie star attached to a sub-par product method isn't working at the box office any longer, what's the secret to success? Make a product that's entertaining! The studio heads can sit around and bitch all they want about the internet is destroying their business because I can now blast a tweet from inside of a theater telling everyone how Funny People sucked ass, but that doesn't get to the root of the problem, which is their shitty product. On the flip side, make a movie that entertains people and then they will employ the same online tools to laud it and encourage all of their friends to go see it. You see how that works? Amazing, isn't it?

So how does Hollywood "entertain" people these days? By making films that are well-written and well-acted OR feature storylines that are too fast-moving and complex for most people to understand with massive explosions mixed in every 7 minutes or so. Either make smart films that stimulate and engage the mind or make extreme sensory stimuli films that reduce the mind to a blob of mush tucked inside of a thick skull. That's it. Like I said, it's really quite simple. Either way, just don't suck.

Pic via

The "Advertising is full of idiots" school. It's a new show called :30 Seconds and it looks funny but alas, it is going to be on in Australia, which is farther than TV can travel. Here is a bit coming to you from the magic of the internet, via Adrants.

In this way we see that advertising is a dynamic and controversial field.

Find more videos like this on AdGabber

Yesterday Variety reported that the financially "struggling" Gen Art has been rescued by merging with event production biz Rock Media, which will help it with its debts. But our tipster says that many of the group's problems are of its own making. We've emailed Gen Art for their response and we'll update when they write us back.

Gen Art is a good example of those huge, shiny organizations with vague "good" purposes that were able to attract a lot of sponsorship money during the boom years—partially because supporting them was fun. So many events! "Gen Art produces over 100 events annually ranging from media generating high profile programs including a week-long film festival to star-studded fashion shows to the Vanguard Art Fair during Miami Art Basel, to more intimate programs such as art receptions and tours, film screenings and live music showcases."

You can showcase your brand and go to Art Basel and star-studded fashion shows and it is all for a "good" cause! The recession is killing lots of groups like this. The shine is no longer a good thing. Here's one angry insider's rant:

Gen Art ran out of money long before the economic crisis. The return of Stefan Gerard, brother of CEO Ian and co-founder, plunged the company into mismanagement in 2007 and vendors stopped being paid in early 2008.

Sponsors started dropping like flies soon after.

SF office was closed and 25% of staff laid off at the beginning of 2009. A month later, Miami and Chicago closed, more layoffs, and the rest of the staff got 10% pay cuts. When paychecks didn't come through on June 1, CEO Ian Gerard emailed staff from his Hamptons house. Actually, they could have paid staff if the two execs (the Brothers Gerard) has foregone their own paychecks, but it turns out they never even took pay cuts themselves.

A few weeks later, about 10 more employees were furloughed (and laid off in August - via email), the remaining staff (we're down to about a dozen now) being the highest paid, inexplicably. The VP of Events was allowed to receive her full time salary while producing a separate event for a former Gen Art sponsor, earning a double paycheck.

Remember the much-promoted Gen Art benefit in June? Pretty much tax fraud, since Gen Art isn't actually a non profit. The Gen Art Foundation, the nonprofit status arm, has only one mission - to support emerging artists. Funny how the filmmakers who won the Gen Art Film Fest way back in April haven't even been paid yet, even though sponsor Acura paid Gen Art in full. No wonder 7 of the celeb hosts didn't even show up. Gen Art's reputation among the filmmakers, artists, musicians, and designers it's supposed to support is abysmal.

Gen Art deserves to die. It doesn't support artists, it supports wannabe socialites who need another party to be seen at. Hopefully people will realize this and give their money to a real charity.

Regardless of the details, this goes to the larger point: Why not give your "Charity" money to, ya know, UNICEF?

Mike Puerto quit a Wall Street trading gig in 2000, started driving a taxi, and now is almost set to put his own TV show pilot into production. He's found success in the most bootleg way possible!

After finishing the script — a Wall Street drama — he taped a sign behind his driver's seat: "If you are a TV producer or executive, I have a pilot ready to go into production."

Okay, so his producer and photography director are volunteers and he's planning to buy airtime himself to run the show. Still! Dreams can come true! This will also work for laid off journalists, who should be much better writers than former Wall Street guys anyhow. For example, Justin Rocket Silverman, who wrote this story for the NYP, could drive a taxi and hawk a pilot script about a guy who quits a reporting job to become a taxi driver and sells a pilot script. And when it's slow the guy fingerbangs his girlfriend, in the cab.
Winner!

District 9's set in Johannesburg. Aliens in the film end up stranded in South Africa after not being able to get their ship off the planet. Years later, and they've been integrated into society there in a ghetto, in what basically amounts to an existence as a science experiment. Sound familiar? Anyway, they try to move the aliens further out, and then the aliens try to start some ruckus.

But this isn't the only film in which aliens and humans interact in a way in which something meaningful may be produced. There're plenty of these films! But these are the five I picked. If you've got any better ones, throw them in the comments, where the Alien-Evil factor, the Human-Evil factor, and the social message of these films shall be subject to intense debate. Aliens of the universe: live long and prosper, or die a shitty death. Just don't mess with humans.

District 9, 2009, directed by Neill Blomkamp.

How Bad Are The Aliens?: 3/10. Without spoiling too much, meh, not so bad. Like any oppressed people, they get worse the more they're encroached upon. They (supposedly, ooh) just want to go home!
How Bad Are The Humans? : 7/10. Total assholes! They put them in the ghetto and life sucks for them. A few people are alien rights advocates.
Social Message: 7/10. Apartheid's bad, most humans are inherently bad, but occasionally, there're a few people who will stand up for the rights of the oppressed.

Cloverfield, 2008, directed by Matt Reeves

How Bad Are The Aliens?: 8/10. Okay, so maybe just a monster, but it could be an alien! We don't know! The point here is that it's just another monster who wants our ass on a plate. Apparently, this one's been sitting off of Coney Island for a few hundred years - maybe - but he wakes up, is pissed, and decides to murder everything in sight. If I lived that close to Coney Island, however, I'd be pissed, too. He basically wrecks Manhattan and as far as we know, avoids Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. I don't know if this makes him tasteful or despicable.
How Bad Are The Humans? : 4/10. I mean, they didn't do anything wrong, but at least one of them is a trust fund baby who lives in the Time Warner Center, and they're total downtown gentrifiers. Also, they're whiny.
Social Message: 8/10. It's incredibly subtle. Basically: if you gentrify/destroy New York of its culture, one day, karma - in the form of a thirty-story, hungry, pissed-off alien - will come and finish the job for you, stomping Manhattan, you, and your Beatrice Inn-missing friends out of existence.

Independence Day, 1996, directed by Roland Emmerich.

How Bad Are The Aliens?: 10/10. They want to kill us all. Somewhere, out there, there might be something that will bring the pain to all of us, and we're gonna have to unite to kill it.
How Bad Are The Humans? : 3/10. For the most part, we're pretty decent when we band together for a united cause. Like killin' some alien. Unfortunately, as it turns out, we were hiding alien tech in Area 51 forever, so, we kinda knew what was happening when the world was getting destroyed.
Social Message: 2/10. Basically: "The Fresh Prince Will Save Us All," which is true, kind of, but if an alien invasion like that actually happened, we'd all be completely fucked.

Alien Nation, 1988, directed by Graham Baker

How Bad Are The Aliens?: 4/10. Again, meh. Not so bad. Just as bad as your average human. How bad can an alien race in which one of them is played by Mandy Patinkin be? Exactly. But there're always a few bad eggs, you know? James Caan has to find this out the hard way.
How Bad Are The Humans? : 6/10. Think True Blood: we're curious, but there're a few human purists who want the aliens to go away. Which is to say: hicks are a time-honored American tradition, and that Americans are inherently bad.
Social Message: 4/10. Cliche, but basically: we should give all members of the universe an equal chance, because odds are they match up spiritually to every other member of the universe. Some are shitty, some are awesome, some are mediocre, and there're always gonna be hicks on every side.

E.T., 1982, directed by Steven Spielberg.

How Bad Are The Aliens?: 0/10. Are you fucking kidding me? They're cuddly wrinkled midgets whose tummies glow that are fascinated by Reese's Pieces. They come from the Planet Cute somewhere around the Solar System of Awesome in the middle of the Snuggle Galaxy.
How Bad Are The Humans? : 8/10. Total dicks! They try to take E.T. and make an experiment out of him. Luckily, some kid gets on his bike and E.T. makes it fly.
Social Message: 5/10. Special friends are special: did you know Spielberg invented E.T. as an imaginary friend during his parents' divorce? Humans are afraid of things they don't understand, like cuddlemonsters. That being said, the power of telecommunications, amongst other things, will save us all.

The Man Who Fell To Earth, 1976, Nicolas Roeg

How Bad Are The Aliens?: 1/10. David Bowie plays an alien who needs to save his home planet. He's pretty nice, but is over-reachingly weird. Think the boring version of Starman. The song, not the movie.
How Bad Are The Humans? : 8/10. David Bowie plays the pervy, less cuddly version of E.T., and humans do everything they can to make his tenure here suck, including but not limited to a bunch of experiments on him causing various levels of discomfort. But, spoiler alert: once he realizes he can't save his home planet, he becomes a nihlist alcoholic dick.
Social Message: 6/10. Meh. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em, while storied advice, is kind of old. So is the great "in times of trouble, resort to drinking" wisdom that's gotten many through rough times.

Quentin Tarantino is inescapable, from The Atlantic to Jimmy Kimmel, and Weinstein seems to be leaking gossip items to engineer the appearance that he's blithely spending money in St. Tropez. But if Inglourious Basterds doesn't perform at the box office in ten days, Weinstein's days lounging around the French Riviera will be numbered.

He has leveraged his entire company on the fortunes of Tarantino's movie: According to Nikki Finke, the Weinstein Company has pushed back the remainder of its 2009 slate of films—save Halloween II, which opens a week later—in order to put all available resources into marketing Basterds. The Weinsteins could barely come up with the $30 million marketing budget for Basterds, and if they lose money on it, they won't be able to afford to market the rest of their pipeline—including All Good Things, Youth In Revolt, and Hurricane Season. And given the fact that they hired a bankruptcy consultant to help renegotiate their considerable debt earlier this year, it's unlikely they'll find new avenues of financing to fill the gap.

Harvey Weinstein was once the unchallenged master of buzz generation, but he most recently fell flat on his face with The Reader, which like Basterds, had a Nazi thing going on. While The Reader notched an Academy Award—a game the Weinsteins still know how to rig—it pulled in just $34 million domestically and $100 million or so worldwide. That's $70 million more than the Weinsteins spent to make it, but Basterds needs to make several times that in order to pull the company out of its hole. And the Weinsteins won't get all the money—if there is any—since they sold part of the movie to Universal in order to get it made.

So here's hoping that Harvey's hype machine, which for Basterds has included rafts of ads on TNT's Dark Blue, the BET Awards, and sponsorship of ESPN's Espy Awards, can turn the movie into a phenomenon of Pulp Fiction proportions. Somehow, though, we don't think offering Quentin Tarantino to The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg is really going to get it there, but we do like this little anecdote:

Goebbels provides one of the most amusing moments in Inglourious Basterds, crying when Hitler praises his latest film. "If Hitler says that this is the greatest movie you've ever done, I can see Goebbels getting choked up," Tarantino said in explaining the scene. "When Harvey Weinstein does that, I get a tear in my eye."