So, Mel? Can We Expect An English-Language Picture From You Ever Again?

Not since he took on a murderous gang of thugs in the post-apocalyptic Australian desert, or perhaps when he began to understand what women are actually talking about, (or maybe when did a picture about you-know-who getting the you-know-what beat out of him) has Mel Gibson courted such a variety of reactions to a movie project. As reported by our no. 16 top link today, the Outrageous Aussie has got a flick going that the whole family can enjoy: Set 600 years ago in Central America, it features unknown Mexican actors speaking in the obscure Mayan dialect of Yucateco, and will be an epic action-adventure story. It occured to us that this might be worthy of a quip, or perhaps even one of our trademark japes, but then we realized its brilliance: how easy must it be to write a script in a language nobody understands? You just write the subtitles and we foolish English-speakers take for granted the characters aren't saying in each line, "Isn't Mel Gibson a genius?" "Yes, this is the greatest movie ever made." Bloggers are wary, however. "Yeah, that sounds much more fun than Jesus getting the Holy crap beaten out of Him," this one wrote. And as for Gibson's new Al Gore\Saddam Hussein-style beard, this blogger makes some photographic comparisons. We think you'll agree it's devastating. No wonder he doesn't want to be in it.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:36 AM | Permalink

Category: Moving Pictures

The Competition Was Unexpectedly Sawed In Half

Pencil a big goose egg next to our name after our prediction of this past weekend's box office reusults — "Saw II," with its $30.5 million take, sliced and bled its way over "The Legend of Zorro," which brought in $16.5 million. (Full report, as always, is here.) We aren't members of the "Saw" franchise community — nor is the msm, it would appear — but many bloggers are now raving about it. Movie afficianados might be reminded of the movie " Cube" and its sequels " Cube 2: Hypercube," and " Cube Zero," about strangers who find themselves in a strange, murderous environment and must use their wits to survive. The main difference may be that there's a main serial killer in the "Saw" pictures, and the bad guy is a big cube in the "Cube" movies, but it just goes to show you that recycling premises can pay out big in Tinseltown. Though that fact is decidedly less surprising than "Saw II's" performance this weekend.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:03 AM | Permalink

Category: Moving Pictures

The Masked Rider Returns

We're reminded this weekend of last weekend, when the motion picture industry had released several different pictures and it was up to us to use dangerously low levels of blog buzz to predict which would outperform the others. This time it's "The Legend of Zorro," up against "The Weather Man" and "Prime," all of which are recieving acceptable msm reviews, but none of which is a standout barn-burner. Still, what was useful last time applies again — a big, loud action flick set up against quieter, pathos-filled films almost always will see more box office receipts. "Zorro" is also a sequel, and after the success of the original, seems a safe bet to be the most lucrative movie. Still, all the Hollywood executives who check BlogPulse every day must remember that we haven't had one of their movie's websites in our Top Links for weeks, and searches for this week's releases don't come up with much. The summer may be over, but the long-term Tinseltown slide seems to be contnuing.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:08 AM | Permalink

Category: Moving Pictures

Kids Bored With History? Try History With A FOX Attitude!

For an eerie but fascinating venture into American history, click on our no. 28 link today — it's a hilarious imagining of how FOX News would've reported various salient events — and scroll down about three-quarters of the page. There you will see America's favorite bully, a Mr. William O'Reilly, doing one of his top-of-the-program "talking points memos." As you read it, see if you can't hear the man delivering that exact line, superciliously moralizing to a politician. Odds are you will hear his voice and precise inflection in your head. Other familiar faces pop up in the parody too, like the time Geraldo Rivera kneeled down in the sand and drew a diagram of Troy, showing where the Greeks would push their enormous horse and how they'd wait till nightfall before jumping out to sack the town. We predict this site will proliferate widely on the Web, because many bloggers tend to agree that FOX keeps its "lips to the buttocks of power."

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:18 AM | Permalink

Category: The vast electric lunchroom

As If Video Games Themselves Weren't Expensive Enough

We cracked wise the last time a similar story came within view of our blogstruments, but here it is again: tomorrow's world will be lived inside of computers, and we will all be powerful elves or something. The latest evidence? Some dude paid 100,000 real dollars for a virtual space station in the game Project Entropia, one of those online multiplayer dealies for people whose real lives are pathetic but who virtually are princesses and wizards and isn't that what matters and yadda yadda yadda. (It's our no. 40 news story today.) Forgive us for not buying into the utopian geekoid groupthink about these online multiplayer games... we'll take a nice first-person shooter anytime and thanks so much. Others are skeptical, too: "There's a whole world out there... that I don't understand... $100,000... why?" asks this blogger. Others, however, understand the decision: "Why spend so much on a piece of virtual property? Because it's just like owning the Mall of America -- it's a place to conduct business and make real-world cash," writes Collision Detection. Oh, you can make money in these games? Well that ain't so bad after all.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:45 AM | Permalink

Category: The vast electric lunchroom

The Prevalence of Literature Now Seems Surprisingly Far-Reaching

Our no. 26 link today continues a welcome new tradition of books-related posts about things other than That One Fictional Wizard, and indicates there is a vibrant, robust community of opinionated readers out there. It's a Lone Star Statement blog post with snippets of actual reviews of Time's 100 Best Novels culled from Amazon.com, and includes nuggets like this one, about William Golding's classic "The Lord of the Flies:" "I am obsessed with Survivor, so I thought it would be fun. WRONG!!! It is incredibly boring and disgusting. I was very much disturbed when I found young children killing each other. I think that anyone with a conscience would agree with me.” Hard-hitting. This blogger thinks the reviews are funny. This one is just mad. Hey — we're just glad people are reading.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:38 AM | Permalink

Category: The Dead-Tree Scene

Everything Just Stinks When You Pick On The Onion. It's A Play On Words.

This Honorable Court has historically taken an absolutist stand on the question of free speech and the doctrine of fair use, poking fun at a certain Minnesota humorist for not getting a joke, marveling at the prescience of a certain satirical newspaper, and now standing by said newspaper as it takes on the Bush Administration. (This was our no. 5 link today.) When The Onion uses the Presidential Seal of the United States it does so inappropriately, claims the White House, because of all the people who view The Onion as a legitimate news source and who might be confused, y'know, by seeing the Seal on a story about President Bush telling 8.2 million Americans to go out and get a job. Bloggers aren't happy about this. That Libertarian Sandmonkey wrote: "You don't mess with the Onion and stay on my good side. Just ain't happening." UneasySilence sarcastically asks: " I can’t decide what’s money well spent… Tax dollars on the war, or tax dollars to foot the lawyer fees regarding The Onion’s use of the Seal." This court renders a verdict of: neither.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:01 AM | Permalink

Category: The vast electric lunchroom

So Anne, You've Got A New Book Coming Out — WHAA?

Goth writer Anne Rice used to pen the type of books you'd buy in an airport when you wanted just a little dose of titillation on your flight — you know what we mean; i.e. not a book you'd buy for this reason (today's no. 38 top link) — but as Newsweek reports in our top link, the people who'll be most titillated by her newest book aren't her old fans, America's vampire community. Rather, it'll be America's Jesus-related community. Rice has gone through a rough couple of years since her last book, 2003's "Blood Chronicle:" her husband died, she was gravely sick, and she moved away from her longtime home in New Orleans, but had friends and property there damaged by Hurricane Katrina. During that time she has rediscovered a religious faith she abandoned at age 18, reflected in her new book " Out of Egypt," about a 7 year-old Jesus Christ who only "intermittently" realizes he's the, ah, y'know, Messiah. As reflected by the story's prominence in BlogPulse today, many bloggers can't believe what they're reading. (These are the people who made Harry Potter our perpetually most-talked-about dude.) ParisRoses is matter-of-fact about it: "The world is officially coming to an end." A Metafilter wag is in the running for quip-of-the-week: "Anne Rice has gone from writing about the undead to writing about the undead." The Catholic Ragemonkey, meanwhile, says it's glad to have Rice back among the believers. Truly an unexpected development, and perhaps even moreso that this Jesus book is just the first in a three-part series. (Maybe in the next one, he turns out to be a vampire).

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:09 AM | Permalink

Category: The Dead-Tree Scene

The Aryan Sisters

Man, you know who really has it rough in America today? White people. Turn on the TV these days and you see J-Lo representing America's urban Latino community, or Kanye West representing its urban black community — wouldn't it be nice if white people could have someone to call their own? (Other than the president, 87 percent of Congress, 89 percent of the Supreme Court, the majority of the nation's governors, and the overwhelming majority of civic and business leaders?) Well now they can. If you saw BlogPulse's top news story today you already know about the thirteen year-old twins Lamb and Lynx Gaede, who've got one album out already and will be releasing another soon, with songs just for whites! From their press materials, the song topics look like they include not being able to dance or keep up with hip trends, and being the overlord of a vast, impoverished racial underclass. Surprisingly, bloggers aren't taking to the Gaede sisters' message: "What I will do is wish them well and hope the universe dumps a BIG packet of smelly stuff on the mixed-up head of their mother," writes this even-headed blogger. This commentator took the news less well, it seems, and after looking at the piece asks, "Anybody else feel like throwing up?" Yes.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:09 AM | Permalink

Category: The Soundscape

Rocking And Rolling On Mars With Zombie Demons

Who knew, after all the intervening years since the peak of it popularity as a computer game, that " Doom" could still pack 'em in? There are probably no more than a handful of "Doom"-equipped iPods out there, and dozens and dozens of newer, better, violence-based games, but still it rose, to the top spot at the weekend box office. (Full report here.) And what's this? The second most popular movie in America was "Dreamer," about a girl and a horse that nobody thought could win. Could it? Well, of course. "Stay," which was in our Friday prognostication report, doesn't even appear on this list of movies. What became of it? It couldn't stay. (Oh, yeah.)

Posted by Philip Ewing at 09:35 AM | Permalink

Category: Moving Pictures

Hollywood Just Keeps On Crankin' 'Em Out

On Fridays here at BlogPulse, we roll up our sleeves and start really tweaking our blog machine to see which movies are going to make money in the upcoming weekend. But after no end of tinkering today, the future looks kind of uncertain. What we know for sure is that the three biggest pictures are "Doom," "North Country" and "Stay," and, when the tickets sold are tallied, they probably will end up ranked in some varation on that order by Monday. "Doom" looks like the sort of big, dumb, shoot-'em-up that packs 'em in, especially since this is the era when underemployed Linux wranglers play the game on their iPods. "North Country" is all-star Oscar bait in which beautiful stars smear coal dust on their faces and talk in campy rural accents — and the last time lead actress Charlize Theron did that, she won an Academy Award. "Stay" is more difficult to gauge, because its reviews are poor but it's the kind of scary psycho-drama many moviegoers like. (Think "Saw"). So our official prediction is that "Doom" will have the biggest draw this weekend, because it's generally a safe bet that sci-fi video-game based violence is more lucrative than the bleak lives of mine workers. Also, check out this chart indicating which movie has been on the mind of most bloggers:

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:20 AM | Permalink

Category: Moving Pictures

You Can Judge Somebody By Her Book's Cover

A little-seen item in BlogPulse's blog report today may cause a great shift in the literature on a hot point of controversy: take a look at our no. 35 top blog post, an item from gossipmonger Gawker. Seems some heartless, blood-sucking paparazzi were taking some photographs of Polly Purebred — er — Jessica Simpson, rather, and they spotted an interesting volume left open in her car. Everybody knows the supermarket gossip magazines have been blaring for weeks that Nick & Jessica are as over as snap bracelets, and the presence of How To Deal With People You Can't Stand would seem to provide even more evidence the former Newlyweds are newlysplit. (Or, if you believe some reports, they've been apart for months.) Then again, maybe she just has the book to help her get along with nosey photographers shooting pictures of her getting into her car.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:27 AM | Permalink

Category: Celebs

Philly's Changed, Rocky... Everybody Loves Will Smith Now, Not You

If you were combing through our Top News Stories you surely saw no. 19, about a little-known actor by the name of Sylvester Stallone getting ready to revive a little-known movie franchise we like to call Rocky. This time it's Rocky VI, in which the old champ is living out his retirement in Philadelphia and decides to go for one... last... bout! It's a million-to-one shot? Will he make it? Will there be a training montage? Will he punch huge slabs of beef in a meat locker? Well, probably. This blogger is not enthused: "The bigger question is how will Rocky be received at the box office? My guess is that he'll be TKO'd" Zing! Or is that ding! (Y'know, like in a boxing match. Never mind.) Check out Mad Dog for some even more incisive commentary on the new Rocky movie, along with plenty more rhetorical questions. And when you're through, consider the possibilities of this Stallone project, which we stumbled on while researching this post. Aawwwwl right!

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:59 AM | Permalink

Category: Moving Pictures

Bloggers Pleased, Nervous With New Colbert Program

Comedy Central broadened its "news" programming to include a new show Monday night, the intensely over-promoted " Colbert Report," starring the former "Daily Show" correspondent Stephen Colbert as the hyper-serious Everyanchor, with a good measure of Bill O'Reilly mixed in. (It's our no. 19 link today.) After two episodes nobody's quite sure what to make of the show, and Colbert and his production team seem like they too are struggling to find just the right mix. Colbert so far has interviewed two TV journalists, Stone Phillips and Leslie Stahl, and seemed uncertain whether to poke fun at them or ask serious questions. Bloggers have responded to the show with warm but reserved praise, as in this Wonkette post, in which she's generally complimentary but starts out by saying the show "tests the boundaries of just how long one can stand arch irony." TV Squad is nervous about the show, worrying "it might be too similar to 'The Daily Show,' that it'll be too much of character-Colbert, that the set might come crashing down... I'm worried about a lot of things, really." If you're interested in a blow-by-blow account/review of the premiere, you'd be hard-pressed to beat this blog post, which has time-indexed responses to the first episode. We're holding off until the first week or so has aired before saying more, but we did think the gravitas-off with Stone Phillips was pretty funny, especially when Phillips intoned, in his anchor voice, "In the interest of full disclosure, I should state that this reporter has a similar body piercing."

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:26 AM | Permalink

Category: On The Telly

Courting Controversy, But In A Cowardly Way

As the magazine America trusts to report on tips for longer life! when there's no actual news to put on its cover, Time has a unique station enabling it to bring culture and thought into the waiting rooms of America's dentist offices. So it has attempted to do with the story in BlogPulse's no. 15 link today, a list of the top 100 "all time" novels in English published since the magazine's first issue appeared in 1923. (Ulysses, James Joyce's modernist epic and the greatest 20th century novel, was published the year before, and is not included on the list. If Time had not included this proviso on what books they cited and which books they excluded, we woulda been layin' the smack down up in this humpy bumpy.) But the magazine's editors have made some puzzling choices on including some famous authors' books, but not others, and not ranking them, per se, but rather listing them all in alphabetical order. Regular BlogPulse readers — and thanks to our new partnership with AOL there are millions more of you out there now — know that we have little patience with annotated lists. But it's almost not even worth getting mad about an unranked annotated list. What's the point of doing them? The Elegant Variation at least describes it as serving a basic purpose: "There's plenty to talk about in the list, and a nice added feature - some of the books feature links to the original reviews." Just another way that Time is proud to improve our national character.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:03 AM | Permalink

Category: The Dead-Tree Scene

She's A Barbie Woman

Last year toymaker Mattel was widely and rightly criticized when it broke up the one celebrity couple everyone could count on staying together: Barbie and Ken. Seems America's favorite impossibly-proportioned doll had a new boyfriend, a metrosexual Australian boogieboarder named Blaine, with his blond locks and hemp necklace and expensive Hollister cologne. Now Mattel has inflamed outrage again by introducing a new line of Barbie-themed clothes for adult women, on the thinking that bright-pink plastic dresses will be just the thing this fall. (It's our no. 10 news story today, and the feminist indignation is here.) This blogger, who blames the patriarchy, describes Barbie as "vile," while on this blog, sarcasm is the order of the day: "Well, what a refreshing thought; feminists have purchased Mattel and are marketing clothing actually made for women who don't have eating disorders or frequent flyer miles at the liposuction clinic. Oh, wait. That's not what they're doing." Meanwhile, this blogger cynically asks "Do the accessories include inflexible plastic, pink shoes as well? With impossibly high arches?" No word on that, nor is there any indication if there'll a giant pink Corvette, a Dream House (with elevator!), or the opportunity to marry a prince or be a corporate CEO.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:59 AM | Permalink

Category: The vast electric lunchroom

Welcome To Elizabethtown. Population: 0

If, as some critics have suggested, Elizabethtown represents the opening salvo in Hollywood's autumnal barrage of Oscar-bait pictures, the studios may want to redraw their battle plans: It was this weekend's no. 3 picture and made $11 million, opening after last week's top-grosser Wallace & Gromit and the water vapor-as-murderer-Tom Welling-career-maker The Fog. (Full report here.) It's a case for the textbooks: An advertising lead-up that went on for months before the actual movie premiered, reducing the film's novelty and desirability with each bus ad and commercial; a schlocky tv spot that made it look like the now-famous re-edit of The Shining trailer; and, may we humbly submit, little to no blog pulse. But to be fair, this isn't the first time a director has had to learn this lesson the hard way.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:46 AM | Permalink

Category: Moving Pictures

Can The Director Break His Own Record For Classic Rock Montages?

Director Cameron Crowe has a penchant for making movies so saccharine that viewers' teeth can hurt as the images flicker across the screen. When all the characters in Almost Famous started spontaneously singing "Tiny Dancer" as they rode on a band bus, for example, many viewers had to be rushed to the emergency room in diabetic shock. Now comes Elizabethtown, the director's next far-reaching meditation on people riding in cars while Tom Petty plays, or riding on planes when Nick Drake plays, or spontaneously running into the rain — even though they just came from a funeral! — and yadda yadda yadda. The msm are thusfar disatisfied, and our BlogPulse Popularity Prognostication Tools don't reveal too much hidden excitement out in the vast electric lunchroom. The movie blog Cinematical reveals after Elizabethtown was initially shown at a Chicago film festival, those who viewed it said "it just didn't come together." Blogger Melanie cites the blurbs used in the movie's ad campaign and asks: "Could it possibly be made to sound lamer?" A fair question. But FairyPrincessJenny, at least, is excited by the flick, as her post reveals. We'll see you here Monday — same Bat Time, same Bat Blog — and sort through the Elizabethtown aftermath.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:00 AM | Permalink

Category: Moving Pictures

There Are Those Who Said This Day Would Never Come. What Have They To Say Now?

We concur with the title of this blog post, which expresses just a measure of the incredible explosion of the Web's bottled-up excitement over the once-fabled, mythical Video iPod, today's top BlogPulse link. (Speculation had run rampant over what exactly it would look like and what it would do.) As our eminent senior partner has mentioned, BlogPulse today is packed with links and references to Apple's special event yesterday, at which the new iPod, a new computer and new version of iTunes all were unveiled. And bloggers' reactions thereto tend to be positively electric : "Apple Has Done It AGAIN!" A slightly more thoughtful reaction from The Lord of the Morning, whose "inner geek" is pleased with the new iPod tech specs. Scott-o-Rama is more explicit: "It’s good to be a geek these days." Yes it is, friends. Yes it is.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:04 AM | Permalink

Category: The Gadget Scene

More New iPods? Good Luck Reading About 'Em

Not since Apple debuted its nano model have there been such egregious traffic consequences for the Web's foremost iPod site. As of about noon EST, if you checked out iLounge you would've seen an interstitial screen that explained the site had been destroyed by all the attention. Last time it took four days before you could check out their new iPod coverage... hopefully this time they'll recover quicker.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 12:16 PM | Permalink

Category: The Gadget Scene

A Man With Very Big Shoes To Fill

We were skeptical the last time James Bond had business before this honorable court and, after examining today's Top Links, we remain so: Actor Daniel Craig will be playing Agent 007, as reported by our no. 38 link. His resume is here. Not too many high-powered blockbusters under his belt, nor any indication as to his ability to ski down the side of a mountain, off a precipice, and then parachute down for action. A poster here shares our concern for having a blond Bond. This blogger is even more indignant about it: "What is the world coming to?" This blogger thinks Craig looks more like one of Bond's old nemeses. Puzzled reaction by this blogger and posters. What's all this add up to? General unhappiness with the choice at this point. Naturally everyone will leave final judgment till when Casino Royale comes out, but until then, it's just difficult not to pre-judge these things, you know?

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:12 AM | Permalink

Category: Moving Pictures

Starting Over

An unpleasant update for a grand story that's been in the blogosphere and msm for the past couple of days —Aardman Animations, the company behind Nick Park's universally loved Wallace & Gromit cartoons, had almost all of its sets, props and other equipment destroyed in a fire. (The story is our no. 18 link today.) Park has been surprisingly sanguine about it, though, because the fire came right on the heels of the devastating Pakistan earthquake and, compared to that disaster, "isn't a big deal," he said. Bloggers are picking up on that tone, it seems. This one simultaneously admires Aardman's films and laments its recent calamity, with an approving eye towards Park's mature reaction to the fire. This Blog For All tries to inject its own levity into the situation after commenting on the fire: "Gromit's facial expressions in each of the movies convey more emotion than most actors in all of Hollywood. Of course, Gromit doesn't have to go for Botox, which would explain the stiff upper lip on most of Hollywood. Oh, and did I mention that Gromit is a dog that doesn't talk." A good point. For more on this theme look here.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:12 AM | Permalink

Category: Moving Pictures

Definite Bounce in Their Bungee

That cheese-loving Wallace and his lovable dog Gromit won the weekend box-office wars with the Curse of the Were-Rabbit, which took in a respectable $16.1 million dollars despite very little blog "buzz". In fact, Ashlee Simpson (who finally showed she can sing, if that's what it's called, without lip-synching) and actor John Heder (Napoleon Dynamite) captured quite a bit of attention for their respective appearances on Saturday Night Live. Honest? I saw both, and I'll go with the claymation dog any time.

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 03:28 PM | Permalink

Category:

This Time, It's The Right Trousers. And By Trousers We Mean Movie.

Churlish indeed are those few grumpuses who don't love Wallace & Gromit, the hysterical British inventor and his loyal dog, who this weekend appear in their first feature-length film, "The Curse of the Were-Rabbit." They're clay characters created by Nick Park, the same brilliant animator who gave us 2000's " Chicken Run," only they're his original comedic duo, and Mel Gibson isn't involved. It's rare indeed for msm reviews to be as unanimous as these, but there doesn't seem to be a commensurate level of buzz among bloggers — especially when compared with another recent stop-motion movie — as you'll see by the graph below. Another comparison is useful, however: "Chicken Run" made more than $17 million on its opening weekend, suggesting American moviegoers love hilarious British stop-motion claymation comedies. (Indeed, more than they love American sci-fi flicks in which characters say things like "I plum reckon.") We're hesitant to put a dollar figure on it, what with the various national crises and all, but we are confident "Wallace & Gromit" will do relatively well for itself this weekend. Here is part of the reason for our hesitance. This graph demonstrates its buzz compared against its recent competitor:

width="500" height="300" alt="Corpse vs. Wallace" border="0" vpace="5">

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:19 AM | Permalink

Category: Moving Pictures

BULLETIN! Nick And Jessica Check Expedia For Direct Airfares To Splitsville!

As if planned to coincide with the low-pressure cold front that swept over the continental United States today, a definite chill has entered the vast electric lunchroom now that the msm and our no. 38 top link are confirming a split between Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson. (Even though, it was widely reported, they had some kind of contract requiring they always stay together. Ah yes, it was called "a marriage.") Look for prodigious mock-surprise and profusions of mock-disappointment, with a heavy lean towards blaming Jessica, whose creepily overbearing puppetmaster father seems generally to blame for the breakup. On the Us Weekly announcement, Gawker writes this: "One of those ubiquitous sources close to the couple says, 'Jessica’s the problem. She’s not the girl America fell in love with anymore.' Oh, young America, were you ever really in love with her? Or were you just lusting? C’mon, be honest." This blogger, however, is mindful that these reports have been issued and debunked before: "Will this story be retracted later, like the last one was? Who knows? In the meantime, let's pretend it's 'Divorce On.'" Done. And, after all those terrible shows they made, let's not pretend this is any great loss.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:42 AM | Permalink

Category: Celebs

FLASH! Holmes To Birth Cruise Zombie Child!

Now it's easy to understand what TomKat has been up to since they disappeared after their initial, stratospheric debut in the world of super-celeb gossip: Kat (aka Katie Holmes) is pregnant! The People exclusive is our no. 9 top link today, and deservedly so, it would seem: Bloggers are blogging their brains out about it. It'll take awhile, but work your way through this dialectic, which culminates with this proposition inre the TomKat pregnancy: "A faux-relationship between two seemingly insane actors as a means to boost one’s career and mask the other’s homosexuality does not qualify, I’m happy to report." Devastating! In the looks department Wizbang predicts: "Poor kid's gonna be all shades and chompers." Naturally they're beside themselves over at Gawker — when was the last time they used *Breaking* in a post title? — and readers should be cautioned about the invective contained in the post. The rest of our links are here and we'd encourage everyone to troll through them, because the snarky gossips who trade in this stuff will all be trying to out-zing each other. This is the sort of thing we're talking about.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:08 AM | Permalink

Category: Celebs

The Return of the Archduke

Franz Ferdinand's new record is out — in fact, there are even commercials on TV for it — and the band appears as our no. 16 burstiest name today. It'll be interesting to see how well the record, "You Could Have It So Much Better," does in popularity, because its predecessor, the group's self-titled debut album, figured prominently in the recent Sony payola scandals. (Who'd have thought the record company monsters would have to pay DJ's to play "Take Me Out?" That song had "hit" written all over it!) Early buzz for the new Franz record is positive, as evidenced by things said in blogs: "YES!" said Wendy, and "I cannot wait. Seriously," writes Patrick. A much more thoughtful rundown is here, and it includes this rhetorical question: "After listening to the new Franz Ferdinand album 'You Could Have it So Much Better', I have to ask 'Could I?' Their second major label album, just out today, is absolutley fantastic." Sound good enough?

Posted by Philip Ewing at 12:23 PM | Permalink

Category: The Soundscape

The Most Recent Son of Krypton

Some people were critical when Gwenneth Paltrow and That British Guy She Married named their child Apple, but we like the name because that's the name of the company that made our computer and our iPod. For some reason, rich and famous people select... ah... "creative" names for their children when they're born, and, like Paltrow and What's-His-Face, find themselves on the recieving end of impolite remarks. This brings us to actor Nicholas Cage's newborn son, Kal-El, who was born Monday. Now, as everybody knows, Kal-El was the name that Superman's parents gave him when he was born on Krypton, before his father Jor-El and his mother Lara sent him to Earth in a rocket ship to escape the explosion that doomed their planet. It's a fine name — everyone knows when Kal-El grew up he became Earth's greatest champion. Still, though, some people can't handle it. "Why not gave your son a name of the strongest man ever? Nicholas cage did," sneers Dark Night Cafe. A post at WizBang makes broad concessions to being a nerd, but: "I'm not so much of a nerd that I am jealous that Cage beat me to it..." Gluetree: "The child is set for life in beatings." Man, these guys are some haters! We'll look for one of their kids to be named Lex.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:14 AM | Permalink

Category: Celebs

Not The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, But They'll Do

Buried near the bottom of today's Harriet Miers-heavy blog discussions is PCWorld's 100 Best Products of 2005, (today's No. 36 top news story) which assumes, of course, that October, November and December are pretty much out when it comes to inventing top products for the year. Among the year's winners nonetheless: Mozilla Firefox (No. 1), Google email, Skype, the Sony PlayStation Portable, Epson's PictureMate photo printer and Dell's UltraSharp 24-inch wide-screen LCD screen. "We still have three months to go!" protests a LiveJournaler. Download Squad pointed out the announcement and also noticed that 2005 still has 25% left to go. Schestowitz.com notices the prevalence of open-source products, while Kompato performs an ownership inventory. Impressive...

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 01:27 PM | Permalink

Category: The Gadget Scene

Thirty Dark And Stormy Nights

Right off the bat, you can see what challenges await bloggers who're considering taking part in National Novel Writing Month: They (and its organizers) are calling it NaNoWriMo. (It's our no. 8 top link today.) Now, when you're turning out highly perishable, hyperlink-flecked paragraphs several times a day, as is the case for the 16.8 million bloggers we monitor, coming up with a shorter name for the November writing event may seem natural, but it's the wrong way to think when you have to produce 50,000 words in 30 days. In the site FAQs, though, the organizers concede they ain't lookin' for The Sound and the Fury, and returning writers have been mentioning that a lot of what they turn out is pretty much claptrap. (Bloggers turning out claptrap? Heavens!) (Speaking of which, read this post.) Don't believe us? This Metachat poster says the contest draws out some "supremely bad writing." Still, some people are looking forward to the experience, like this blogger, who's nonetheless concerned about " trailing off into blathering." Bloggers and blather? Heavens!

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:23 AM | Permalink

Category: The Dead-Tree Scene

Serenity Then?

Many moons ago this blog sarcastically assessed the ferocious buzz among the self-congratulatory geekoids who'd revived (they thought) the dead TV show Firefly because so many of them bought the show's DVDs. It was being broadcast on the Sci-Fi Channel and it was being adapted into a movie (link no. 12), which lent credence to the thinking, popularized in web chatrooms, that corporations care what consumers think. If they did, they won't now, because despite good msm reviews and lots of blogttention, Serenity came in second this weekend — after Flightplan, last weekend's top movie — and made only about $10 million. See the full report here. It could be a self-fulfilling prophecy that a movie with no big stars, based on a short-lived, mis-marketed TV show, can't even sell more tickets than The Dukes of Hazzard. But, again, to hear bloggers tell it, Joss Whedon's space-western is a monumental triumph: "We need more movies like this," raves WBTG. (With these kinds of receipts, studio execs almost certainly disagree.) This h4ck3r — not to be confused with sk8er — also liked the movie, and, as a fan, expected some props for supporting it. Detailed breakdown of the flick here, though this postmortem just makes it even more difficult not to just say, "look, guys, it doesn't matter how well good you think the script is — you're still a bunch of geekoids."

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:22 AM | Permalink

Category: Moving Pictures