I Enjoy Entertainment

Welcome to the Phile, a Phriday edition as I worked late yesterday. So, how are you? Star Wars Weekends started today at Disney's Hollywood Studios, but like I said before I am not working it, which sucks, as this year they are offering Han Jobs. Sex and the City — the No. 1 movie in the country. Here’s the breakdown of the people who went to see it: 5 million women and one male flight attendant named Gary. President Bush’s former press secretary wrote a book. In his new book, President Bush’s former press secretary said that Bush has a “lack of inquisitiveness.” When he heard this, Bush said, “I don’t know what he’s saying, and I don’t care.” During a speech, President Bush said that his economic stimulus package is working because when people use extra money to buy a machine, that creates jobs at “the machine-making place.” Then Bush introduced his new speechwriter, a 6 year-old boy named Timmy. A group called The Fathers Day Council is naming “American Idol” judge Randy Jackson Father of the Year. Apparently Jackson got the award for keeping his children away from Paula Abdul. The other day, Charlie Sheen got remarried. Sheen said, “She’s the perfect woman for me — she hasn’t read a newspaper in 15 years.” A new article in Vanity Fair magazine hints that former President Bill Clinton may have had an affair with actress Gina Gershon. The Vanity Fair article also hints that John McCain may have had an affair with Estelle Getty.
The astronauts onboard the International Space Station may have to return to Earth early, because the toilet is malfunctioning. Because there are two things that should never ever go together — an overflowing toilet and a zero-gravity environment.
In Colorado, a man who robbed a Starbucks was arrested when he came back two days later to buy coffee. The man said he came back to buy coffee because it was Starbuck’s turn to rob him. John McCain is actively campaigning across the country. He’s looking for donors — mostly organ donors. There’s a new report out today that says scientists have discovered the perfect health food. It’s bugs. They’re great sources of protein, they’re high in nutrients, they’re low in cholesterol . . . they’re always coming out with some crazy information. Remember when scientists said one drink a day is goodfor you? They never said what size the drink should be. It looks like we finally have a Democratic nominee for president. It looks like Barack Obama has enough delegates to be the nominee. And Hillary Clinton has indicated, privately to friends, who then blab it to news channels, that she is open to the vice presidency. This is great news for Bill Clinton who desperately wants the apartment in New York to himself. This would mean Obama for president, Hillary for vice president, and Oprah on top of them. Now that Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee, Americans are going to have to choose between the 46-year-old Obama and the 71-year-old John McCain. In other words, it's a choice between the Hillary defeater or the Wal-Mart greeter. There's been a lot of speculation about John McCain's possible running mate. Experts say he wants somebody who's not afraid to attack Barack Obama — which explains why McCain has decided to pick Hillary Clinton. In California, a high school student who's an illegal immigrant is about to be deported, but since he's the school's valedictorian, he's asking President Bush to help. Bush told the valedictorian, "Don't worry, I'll never let them send you back to Valedictoria." Congratulations to the Detroit Red Wings. They won the Stanley Cup. So that’s it; the hockey season’s over . . . I didn’t even know it had started. And finally, a fire broke out a few days ago at Universal Studios in California. People were heard yelling, "Save the clocktower! SAVE the clocktower!"

THE PEVERETT PHILE TOP TEN LIST

From the home office in Groveland, Florida, here is this week's top ten list...
Top Ten Least Popular Summer Movies
10. An Inconvenient Rash
9.  Dial N for Nachos
8. Super Size Me II: The Roger Clemens Story
7. Desperately Seeking Spitzer
6. The Bourne Colonoscopy
5. Harold and Kumar Escape from a JetBlue Bathroom
4. What Happens In Poughkeepsie
3. Bill and Hillary's Desperate Adventure
2. Honey, I Sold the Kids for Gas Money
And the least popular summer movie...
1. Sects in the City

JUNE 6TH IN HISTORY

1752
A devastating fire destroys a third of Moscow, including 18,000 homes. Two other large-scale fires already struck the city in the previous 13 days.
1882
A cyclone in the Arabian Sea pushes huge waves into Bombay harbor, drowning 100,000 inhabitants.
1968
Senator Robert F. Kennedy dies at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles. The Democratic lawmaker had been campaigning for his party's Presidential nomination when he was shot three times by Sirhan Bishara Sirhan.
1976
American expatriate J. Paul Getty, named the richest man in the world in 1957, dies in London at age 83. According to the oil baron, "If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars."
1981
An Indian passenger train traveling between Mansi and Saharsa jumps the tracks at a bridge crossing, submerging 11 compartments beneath the Bagmati river. Although the government places the official death toll at 268 plus another 300 missing, the actual figure is more like 1,000 killed.
1984
Indira Gandhi dispatches the Indian Armed Forces to attack the Golden Temple in Amritsar, in an effort to flush out terrorists hiding inside Sikhism's most holy shrine. The government asserts that 576 combatants were killed and 335 wounded in the operation, although independent observers claim that this figure omits thousands of unarmed Sikh civilians who were killed in the crossfire.
1985
Authorities in Embu, Brazil exhume the grave of one Wolfgang Gerhard in order to determine its true identity. The remains are later proven to be those of Dr. Josef Mengele, Auschwitz's notorious "Angel of Death." Mengele is thought to have drowned while swimming in the ocean in February 1979.
1989
During the Tehran funeral of the Ayatollah Khomeini, frenzied mourners accidentally tip his corpse out of its coffin and onto the ground. Three million horrified followers bear witness to the desecration.
1990
US district court judge Jose Gonzalez rules that the rap album "As Nasty As They Wanna Be" by 2 Live Crew violates Florida's obscenity law. Gonzalez declares that the predominant subject matter of the record is "directed to the 'dirty' thoughts and the loins, not to the intellect and the mind."
1991
For robbing a Las Vegas video store five weeks earlier, a judge gives former "Diff'rent Strokes" child star Dana Plato a six-year suspended sentence. Plato's haul from the caper was $164, which she obtained by brandishing apellet gun at the clerk.
1997
During her senior prom, New Jersey teenager Melissa Drexler gives birth to a healthy baby in a bathroom stall. She then strangles the child with a plastic bag and severs the umbilicus with the sharp edge on the tampon dispenser. After stashing the corpse in the trash, Drexler returns to prom and proceeds to eat a salad, request a Metallica song, and dance.
1999
In the largest jailbreak in Brazilian history, 345 prisoners run out of the main gate of Putim maximum security prison, without even the slightest response from the warden or guards. This makes the 10th escape for the 3-year-old detention center. Authorities will kill two of the fugitives and accidentally jail five innocent bystanders in the ensuing manhunt.
2008
My son Logan graduated from second grade with a broken arm.

R.I.P.

Yves St. Laurent: Fashionably late.
Bo Diddley: He walked 47 miles of barbed wire, for fuck's sake, no wonder he died.
Mel Ferrer: Who?

FLORIDA: AMERICA'S WANG

A nude maid is accused of really cleaning up at a Florida man's home. The Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office said a 50-year-old man hired the maid from the Internet on Friday to clean his Tampa home. Authorities said the woman arrived at the home in a one-piece, light colored dress. She took off the dress and cleaned the house for $100-per-hour. Sheriff's office spokeswoman Debbie Carter said the man told deputies he left the maid alone in the bedroom to clean. When the man's wife came home from vacation, she discovered $40,000 in jewelry missing from their bedroom.

DOCTOR WHO

When we last left our intrepid Time Lord, the Sontarans had released poison gas from every car fitted with their ATMOS device. Donna Noble's grandfather, Wilfred Mott, was trapped in one of those cars and suffocating on the gas while the Doctor and Donna looked on in horror as every car on the street released deadly clouds of smoke. And now, part two... This was a good, if predictable, episode. Helen Raynor's script was definitely a step up from her Dalek story from last year. Obviously the Sontarans were going to be all blown up at the end (it's not their name on the marquee) and it seemed pretty likely Luke Rattigan would have a hand in it. It wasn't so much the familiar story with the familiar villains as the modern take on a standard "Doctor Who" plot, particularly their treatment of U.N.I.T. When they mentioned that the Brigadier was "stranded in Peru," it was a little disappointing . It would have been nice to see Nicholas Courtney again. They even gave him a knighthood. Still, isn't the character a little old now to even be involved in the military (the actor is now 78)? Unless something happened that we weren't informed about and he suddenly became young again. I was actually hoping the Brigadier was the "very strange man" that Captain Jack said ran the Torchwood Two office in the premiere of "Torchwood".
It was good that the Rutans were mentioned in the show, which distinguishes the Sontarans from other alien nemeses. It's the two races' pathological hatred of each other that is the center of their motivation. Races such as the Daleks and Cyberman only want to destroy anything not like them. It would be nice to see the Rutans in the new series (They've appeared in the classic series. They're single-celled Sontarans reproduce asexually and so far have shown no female versions of their species. If you're wondering what an all-male society would be like, the Sontarans could be a good representation: organisms that also reproduce asexually with great speed and in large quantity, hence the Sontaran need for cloning). It would even be better if they are shown at the same time as the Sontarans (which was never done in the original series) so we could see their hatred at work. It would make for an interesting dynamic.
There were quite a few callbacks in this episode. The Doctor's line, "Are you my mummy?," after he put on the gas mask was also amusing. It was a nice callback to the brilliant first season two-parter "The Empty Child" and "The Doctor Dances." We also got to see the Valiant again, which was the predominate setting for last year's three-part Master story. The ship was also fitted with a small version of the Torchwood weapon from "The Christmas Invasion." At the end of the episode, we got to see the Doctor's severed hand which got lopped off in the same episode.
We also saw a glimpse of Rose on the monitor mouthing the word "Doctor." Foreshadowing if ever there was. Like a myriad of episodes from the classic run, this episode was a slaughterfest. U.N.I.T. better have an excellent life insurance policy.
Now that it's been established that the sonic screwdriver can't work against deadlock seals, everyone has a deadlock seal. News of an exploitative weakness travels fast.
If the Doctor got rid of the poison gas by burning it in the atmosphere, why didn't anything flammable catch on fire? If the Doctor is so smart, why didn't he think of taking an axe to the window to get Wilfred out of the car? I guess he was thinking too much of the big picture and forgot the details. On a final note, if you're reading this, than I'm fairly certain you're as excited about Steven Moffat taking over the showrunner role as I am. Of the current writers, he's the best person for the job, being the closest modern equivalent to the classic "Doctor Who" writer Robert Holmes. The future of Who looks bright.

POINTLESS LAES ALL COMIC BOOK MOVIES FOLLOW

The Bad Guys Must Invade the Hero's Secret Hideout
The aforementioned invasion and burning of Wayne Manor touches on another rule, which says that at some point, usually in a sequel, the bad guys must break into the hero's secret hideout. This one isn't just confined to superhero movies, it's a Hollywood rule that if the hero starts the film with some kind of impenetrable fortress, it will later play host to a bunch of bad guys (see I Am Legend for a non-comic example). Like the "power loss" rule it makes for easy drama and a sense of danger for the audience. Unfortunately this also calls attention to just how easily found these hidden lairs actually are. Superman's Fortress of Solitude gets invaded twice in five films (both by Lex Luthor). Batman's Batcave also gets invaded twice in five films, bombed by the Riddler and Two-Face in Batman Forever and then burned down by Ras Al Ghoul as I mentioned. Spider-Man's apartment gets hit twice in three films, once by Norman Osborn, once by the alien symbiote. X-Men's Xavier School for the Gifted also getshit twice, once by the US Army under General Stryker's orders in X-Men 2, and once by Dark Pheonix in X-Men 3. Also ... This rule has the Cock Block Corollary: If the superhero is having trouble getting laid, letting the girl "invade" his secret headquarters will always do the trick (see Superman 2, Batman and both Fantastic Four movies.)

WHO WATCHES THE WATCHMEN?

"It's the 6th again. We've spent the last few blogs examining the details of making Watchmen. So, this month I thought it might be fun to take a break from all that and just set someone on fire." And with that introduction from Zack Snyder comes the third video journal for Watchmen. This month, it is exclusive to CHUD. This journal is indeed a smaller affair -- if you consider a man on fire to be quiet stuff. We aren't given the chance to see much of the prison riot, just an in-depth look at the process of setting a man aflame. This guy reminds me of a friend of mine, who is an aspiring stuntman. He spends his off-time gaining certification to be assaulted in various ways. One of his certifications is to light himself on fire, because you need proof in order to buy the anti-flame gel. They are definitely a special breed of man -- one that is just a little crazy. You can tell it by that glint in their eyes. I'm happy to just watch from as far away as my keyboard. Watchmen comes to theatres March 6th, 2009.

GEEK TALK

Iron Man 2: I'm not sure how Coming Soon and IESB managed to ask the same exact questions to Iron Man director Jon Favreau (perhaps they're dating and, like, read each others' minds), but that's what it looks like from here. Both sites visited the set of I Love You Man, starring Paul Rudd and Jason Segel, where Favreau was starring in a supporting role. But who cares about that when we've got Iron Man 2 to talk about!?
According to Favreau, he still isn't signed on yet and negotiations with all the actors are ongoing. Of course, he's interested in directing both Iron Man 2 and The Avengers, but because Marvel scheduled the films a year apart, he feels it's literally impossible for him to do both. Favreau also discusses the many potential storylines that could exist in such a sequel, but notes that it's hard to talk about any of this because Marvel is extremely busy prepping the debut of The Incredible Hulk (which we'll talk about in another post). Check either site for much more from Favreau.
Transformers 2: For the first time in a couple hundred years, Pennsylvania has become the cool place to be. Oh yes, that's because Transformers 2 is causing all sorts of mayhem -- with their blowing up of a steel factory, sending hundreds of Asian extras running through the streets of make-believe China. (Is it me, or should Michael Bay receive an Oscar nod simply for making Pennsylvania pass off as China?) Tons of photos from around the set have popped up online over at TFW2005. Star Trek 2: In speaking with TrekMovie, screenwriter (and Trek co-writer) Roberto Orci said the studio is itching to tie them up to a sequel wayyy before the first flick hits theaters. He says, "Alright, since I saw the queen I can give you a spoiler about the Studio's state of mind (not about the movie itself). The spoiler is that they already want to lock us down to write the sequel. Take that as you will." Following that up, Orci says the studio hasn't even seen a cut of the film yet, so wanting to lock them into a sequel is just normal operating procedure. That's because J.J. Abrams' latest masterpiece needs to make quite a bit of money before folks start to take a sequel seriously. Star Trek is due out in theaters on May 8, 2009.

MOVIE BUZZ

Dark Shadows
Some people are speculating that Tim Burton will direct Johnny Depp as a vampire in this big-screen update of the old, campy horror soap opera. Oh, good. We finally get to see Johnny put on some weird makeup and stretch a bit, after all those dull rom-coms.
Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins
If you don't want the end of the movie spoiled for you, then don't read any further: Lots of people are saying that John Conner (Christian Bale) will die and that his skin will be peeled off and stuck on a cyborg body. Of course, now that I wrote that, a Terminator will have to kill me in the past so I don't reveal the ending to anyone again.
Repo! The Genetic Opera
 On his new blog, director Darren Lynn Bousman has released a disgusting picture of a guy who has a new face stapled onto his old one. Man, I swear I saw a bunch of women who looked just like that while walking around Epcot last weekend.
Jonny Quest
One Bomb to Another Let's see, here's another '60s cartoon about a globe-hopping kid that's remembered fondly by a small group of die-hard fans but has largely been forgotten by the general public that's being primed into a new live-action movie. Yeah, like that worked so well for Speed Racer.

That's it, pholks, for another entry. The Phile will be back next Phriday, which is the 13th, so that so end up good. Until then, spread the word, not the turd, and I will leave you with great words from that sick bastard Shel Silverstein... Said the little boy, "Sometimes I drop my spoon." Said the old man, "I do that too." The little boy whispered, "I wet my pants.""I do that too," laughed the little old man. ...