Infinite Improbability Driver

I went and saw Bad Santa last night, I wouldn’t call it a disappointment, but it wasn’t an overly deep movie either. The characters were intentionally flat, with strongly typed flaws. The swearing, especially in front of young children, begins to wear on the viewer, almost to the point of, “was it really necessary?”

I’m not a prude, by any sense of the imagination, but this movie lacked tact, felt forced through many scenes, had about 5mins worth of plot, and some primary characters still are unnamed at the end of the film. This movie has the last silver-screen appearance of John Ritter, (playing a sheltered shopping-mall manager.)

My recommendation is to wait until it hits video (won’t be long) if you really must watch this immature act-of-rebellion of Miramax against Disney. (First Kill-Bill, now this?)

A new film by Miramax, a subsidiary of Disney Inc., portrays Santa Claus as a depraved glutton, drinking and robbing his way through the holidays. “Bad Santa,” scheduled to be released Nov. 26, is a post-modern revision of the family classic “Miracle on 34th Street.”

In “Bad Santa,” actor Billy Bob Thornton’s Santa gets drunk and has sex in his Santa suit. Mr. Thornton’s character dresses up as Santa by day only as a ruse so he can rob the department store he works for at night. Besides getting drunk and having sex, Mr. Thornton’s Santa also uses vulgar language in front of children.

Disney executives have expressed their displeasure with the movie and Miramax’s repudiation of Disney’s wholesome family image. Michael Eisner, Disney’s chief executive, was shocked after viewing some scenes. “Nothing appears sacred anymore; this is just not in the spirit of Walt Disney,” he said.

Read the rest of the story at: The Washington Times.

      It was 39 years ago today
      Roddenberry taught the band to play
      They’ve been going in and out of style
      But they’re guaranteed to raise a smile…

It was 39 years ago today that cameras began to roll for the first time on Star Trek. It was the first pilot, on December 12, 1964, that began at the Desilu Studios. The pilot, “The Cage” starring Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Pike was seen 2 years later inside a later, 2-part episode called “Menagerie”. The pilot also featured a female “Number One” and an excitable pointed-ear “Martian” named Mr. Spock, played by Leonard Nimoy.

The NBC executives asked for some changes and called for a second pilot. This second pilot, “Where No Man Has Gone Before”, starred William Shatner as Captain Kirk. The network said, “Get rid of the woman and the guy with the pointed ears”. So he married the woman, Majel Barret, and kept the guy with the pointed ears. Leonard Nimoy would not have had it the other way around. The woman dyed her hair blond and waited in her husband’s reception office so that when he walked in even he didn’t recognize her. She became Nurse Chappel. The guy with the pointed ears, this “Martian”, became less emotional, more logical, and Vulcan green rather than Martian red (which wouldn’t photograph correctly).

The series lasted for 3 of the “5 year mission” of the Starship Enterprise, a victim of poor ratings. Ironically, the following year, demographics were used and it was discovered that Star Trek was appealing to exactly the kind of audience that advertisers wanted!

The show remained incredibly popular in syndication, spawning 19 years later another TV series, “Star Trek: The Next Generation”, and again in “ST: Deep Space Nine”, “ST: Voyager”, and now “Enterprise” (which is in it’s 3rd season.)
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Movable Type Ownz j00.

and popdog sux.