Just got done watching the newest “South Park,” titled “Dances With Smurfs.” Let it be said for the record that not only do Parker and Stone now officially hold the Heavyweight Championship in the category of Glenn Beck mockery; but that the long, drawn-out “are they really going there” reveal of what they’re really looking to slap-around is one of the best “South Park Misdirections” ever, easily.

As usual, you can watch the whole thing at southparkstudios.com right now:
http://www.southparkstudios.com/episodes/251890

Below, the trailer for the Louis Leterrier directed remake of “Clash of The Titans.”

I just want to point something out here: The very first thing we see in this trailer is a giant scorpion. Not the stars. Not the locations. Not an important object or even an inkling of the plot. GIANT. FUCKING. SCORPION. I’m sold. This looks awesome.

And why am I apparently the only guy on the web who doesn’t find something inappropriate about the heavy metal in the trailer? It’s 67 seconds of angry bloody dudes in swordfights with giant scorpions, Medusa and The Gods – this is EXACTLY where Metal is supposed to go!

Here’s a bit of a flip-side “rhyme” entry to the Natalie-Portman-becomes-veganism-evangelist piece from last Thursday: Actor Adam Baldwin – impressively still riding on the geek-godhood train evidently granted everyone who was on “Firefly” – believes that he has detected a sinister, subversive message hiding deep within the popular culture… specifically, hiding deep within the 1970s “Sesame Street” tune “We All Sing The Same Song.”

No, really. Here’s some money-quotes:

“Yet, embedded in its visually intoxicating muppetry and otherwise innocently entertaining educational content there lurks highly controversial political messages designed to promote multiculturalism and global citizenship”

“A main tenet of the multiculturalism and Enviro-Statism inculcated by Modern Liberal educators and as practiced on “Sesame Street” — exemplified in “We All Sing the Same Song,” is the diminishment of the unique greatness of American culture.”

But to get the full effect, you really need to check out the whole thing. Here’s his initial article:
http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/abaldwin/2009/11/03/sesame-street-all-monsters-are-equal/

And here’s the follow-up piece:
http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/abaldwin/2009/11/09/sesame-street-habitat-for-political-correctness/

And, of course, to complete the picture, here’s the vile work of propaganda that’s got him so worked-up in the first place:

Part of the lead-up to having review-screened “Boondock Saints” last week was the opportunity to sit down for a roundtable interview with Troy Duffy, Sean Patrick Flanery, Norman Reedus and Billy Connolly. Coverage of the event, and some more specific ruminations about the film and it’s following, can now be found in this weeks “Intermission” article:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/moviebob/6742-Oh-I-Want-to-Be-in-That-Number

http://static.themis-media.com/media/global/movies/player/flowplayer.commercial-3.1.1.swf

Points for cojones, at least. Barrie Osbourne is producing a biopic of Muhammad:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/nov/02/matrix-producer-plans-muhammad-biopic

They’ll be using the same format as Moustaphha Akkad’s “The Messenger” back in the 70s: i.e. avoiding the taboo depiction of The Prophet via camera placement and POV shots.

Y’know what’ll be nice about this? A near-total lack of controversy. Since there’s no chance that nutters in America will protest, calling it “terrorist propaganda;” that anyone in the actual Middle East will stage ultraviolent mass demonstrations against it, or that members of other world religions will piss and moan about Hollywood being “nice” to Muslims and “mean” to them. Nope, should be a pretty uneventful production… 😉

So say The USA Today, Shawn Levy – the Michael Bay of safe, empty family-comedy – will direct a live-action (huh?) adaptation of “The Berenstein Bears” for Walden Media:
http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2009-11-03-Berenstainbears03_ST_N.htm

A series of children’s books spanning a few decades or so by now, the main setup is basically your average nuclear-family sitcom cast with talking bears: Doltish but well-meaning father, emminently wise mother, troublemaking son, bratty daughter. I always thought Mama Bear came off as kind of a bitch, honestly…

This, I guess, is the price we’ll have to pay for “Where the Wild Things Are.”

The books are basically self-contained life-lessons without much in the way of antagonists or continuity, so apparently Levy’s film will make use of “kiddie franchise adaptation plot #6:” Transporting the characters to “the real world” to interact with incredulous humans. Because that was such a good idea in “Fat Albert.” I eagerly await seeing which popular youth sport Brother Bear will show hitherto unheard of proficiency at, what sort of “wacky” modern clothes Sister Bear will wind up in during the innevitable makeover-with-new-friends scene, and finding out which big chain store will plunk down the product-placement dollars for the honor of having Mama and Papa get lost in – amazed at all the crazy technology and gadgets. I think I remember that Papa was supposed to be a lumberjack, so hopefull there’s a scene where he gets his hand on a chainsaw. (You can have that one for free, Shawn.)

http://static.themis-media.com/media/global/movies/player/flowplayer.commercial-3.1.1.swf
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/escape-to-the-movies/1051-Boondock-Saints-II

And here’s my “Halloween Movies You Might’ve Missed” list from this week’s “Intermission:”
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/moviebob/6708-Halloween-Treats

So, apparently, I must now add “Veganism” to the ever-growing list of “things I have to pretend to like if I ever meet Natalie Portman”:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/natalie-portman/jonathan-safran-foers-iea_b_334407.html

For the record: I don’t really have any “problem” with Vegans, though I DO have a problem with Natalie Portman becoming one. Namely… well, remember “Closer?” “Hotel Chevalier?” Yeah… that figure is just NOT going to exist under a veggies-only diet. Ah, well…

One of the things that has always perplexed me about vegetarianism (and hardline animal-liberation ideology in general) is how often it’s framed as a kind of mutual-morality issue: That it’s wrong to eat or experiment on animals because some believe they are just as capable of emotion, emotional-reaction and even moral reasoning as human beings are. To me, that seems backwards… I’M against cruelty to animals largely because I’m inclined to conclude that they AREN’T capable of moral-reasoning – at least not to the degree we are.

See, I’ve met TONS of human beings who deserve to be treated unkindly, to say nothing of outright CRUELLY – mostly because that’s how they’ve treated myself and others. Hitler deserved to be treated with cruelty. Osama bin Laden deserves cruelty. Have you ever heard of an animal that did anything to deserve the same? I certainly haven’t.

For all anyone has been able to prove scientifically, animals are TOTAL innocents: moral/ethical “blanks;” which means they aren’t capable of EVIL. If, on the other hand, we were to prove that they were capable of good, logic would dictate that they are ALSO capable of evil – one cannot exist without the other. Wouldn’t this, then, mean that a simple solution to the problem of how to consume meat protein without harming something “good” be to eat only the “bad” animals? Surely, it couldn’t be hard to find and execute the Hitler of Cows or the Manson of Turkeys, yes?

Science could probably make this whole thing irrelevant if they wanted to: If we can clone whole animals effectively, it can’t be too far of a step to only clone PARTS of them. Imagine being able to GROW edible cuts of meat without having to worry about the pain inflicted on a whole steer…

As President Obama continues the Democrat’s sisyphean quest for Health Care reform, perhaps he can take some measure of comfort from the fact that – in the same weekend wherein he learned that Joe Lieberman plans to vote with the Republicans against the Public Option; we now learn that he at least has the support of one John Kramer, aka “Jigsaw,” the serial-killer protagonist of the “Saw” movies.

“Saw 6,” the most recent episode, opens with the Jigsaw-mandated self-imolation of two corrupt mortage loan officers, then for the main course serves up some “git th’ bastard!!!!” torment of a heartless insurance company boss and, for good measure, the group of eeeeeevil overly-slick MBA brats who serve as his main team. Yes, the slowly-petering-out gorefest franchise has officially taken one of genre-film’s classic first-steps toward oblivion: The socially-relevant “message” installment. Presumably, Jigsaw (or, rather, Jigsaw’s posthumous minions) will battle Climate Change by stapling a polluting CEO’s mouth to an exhaust pipe in Part 7; or feeding Wall Street derivatives-traders’ intestines through a stock-ticker in Part 8.

Okay, for what it’s worth marrying the standard outline of the post-Part-3 “Saw” movies to this particular cause of the month makes a certain amount of sense: Jigsaw is/was a terminal cancer patient who forces victims who don’t “appreciate” their lives to endure gruesome endurance tests to teach them a lesson. Still, the risk of merging a franchise like this to a topical issue is always a matter of elevation versus deflation: If you’re going to insert a serious socio-political argument – in this case the need for healthcare reform – into something as inherently silly as “Saw,” the franchise must rise to meet the import of the issue OR the issue must become silly to mee the franchise. Those wondering which version has happened more often are advised to go watch “Superman 4: The Quest For Peace” again.

See, the “Saw” movies have always had a certain “preachy” quality as part of their hook: People struggle their way through torture traps while Jigsaw grumbles a narration largely made up on his own warped philosophy on life and death. THAT basically works, since Jigsaw’s ramblings (and Tobin Bell’s by-now iconic performance) matches up with the high-grade-schlock asthetic of the films-proper. Simply swapping that dialogue out with bumper-sticker bullet-points about insurance reform (Bell’s vocals work overtime to make sure we never get tired of hearing him growl the word “policy”) but keeping the actual movie around it as goofy as ever turns the whole thing into unintended comedy… a straight-faced version of those SNL “Weekend Update” bits where an ironically-appropriate fictional character delivers an editorial (“and now here with an opinion on gun control, Mr. Yosemite Sam.”)

At the very least, even though it’s now functional only as a kind of unwittingly-hillarious self-parody, it’s at least more watchable on a technical level than the last two. If nothing else, hopefully this newfound technical acumen can carry through all the way to “Saw 10″… wherein, I imagine, Jigsaw will do battle against offshore drilling.