Box office totals (Warning: A Rant)

If you want to measure a societies acceptance of an idea, just put it on the silver screen and see how much money it makes - at least that is one theory. Some people go to see a movie just to find out what all the talk is about, or their girlfriends or boyfriends drag them into it. Some even go see a movie cause they love the actor/actress involved (ever see those movies posters that simply have the title of the movie and a picture of the star? Blatant exploitation of name recognition)

I'd like to compare two movies in this particular post.

The first is called "Haunted Mansion" which has a dual appeal:

1. Stars Eddie Murphy, a funny guy who has made many fun movies
2. It is a Disney movie

Let me start out by saying that movies with Eddie Murphy have been on a downward spiral. I liked films like 48 Hours, Beverly Hills Cop, The Golden Child, Coming to America and others of '80's vintage. I think somewhere in the '90's he lost his appeal in my opinion, at least in the starring position. Quite a few blockbusters find him playing second fiddle as a voice actor. He did way too many sequels of way too many of his movies, again in my opinion. One item I find mildly amusing is the fact that while Eddie was working on "Mulan" , (The story of a cross-dressing chinese girl *sorta*), he was caught by LAPD with a transvestite prostitute named Shalimar in his car with him.

I find Disney's ploy of making movies out of its old attractions to be incredibly lame. "Pirates of the Caribbean" is one they lucked out on, but not "Haunted Mansion." I didn't enjoy it at all.

The other movie is "Brokeback Mountain"

Now, I remember a South Park episode where they had the Indie Film Festival in town, and the character Eric Cartman dismissed it as "just a bunch of movies about gay cowboys eating pudding." That's about how I feel about most so-called Avant Garde productions, (Avant Garde being a euphemism for "shoving left wing ideology down our throats") How many unnatural acts will the left and Hollywood attempt to legitimatize I wonder? Will the next cowboy movie made by a chinese man be about a love affair between a shepherd and his flock?

This movie also managed to get tons of free promotion and advertising from the "mainstream" (leftist) media. I wonder how well it would have done without it?

Ang Lee's work? "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" was ridiclous, and "The Hulk" was ok. Heath Ledger is a bit of a rising star too, and now with his role in this sodomy promoting movie - I'm sure all kinds of "doors" will open for him.

Now what do these two movies have in common?

1. They have both made about the same amount of money. As all the free publicity begins to wind down and Iraq manages to smuggle a nuclear device into the USA with the help of their friends in the United Arab Emirates who will be taking over our main East Coast port facilities, the mainstream media may have to shift it's attention to things that are more important - then the theater run this movie has managed to pull off will die it's long overdue death.

2. Both come from an industry pushing a leftist agenda.

3. People hiding who they truly are: In Mulan we have a girl pretending to be a man so she can go to war. In "Brokeback" we have gay men hiding the fact from their wives.

4. I will never watch either movie in the future, although I have seen "Haunted Mansion" in the past.

It's a shame that a gay cowboy movie made it as far as it did. I imagine that most of the 68 million dollars of "gross" earnings were collected in blue states.

You would think that homosexuals would eliminate themselves via natural selection. That would be fine with me, leaving more women available for the rest of us. Unfortunately they want to have their cake and only eat it a little bit, passing on AIDS to women and marrying for the sake of appearances.

Now, they like to throw out that line, "Well, if you don't like homosexuals it's because you fear them, and if you fear them it is because you are afraid you might be one."

Lets talk about this for a moment. There are only two things I'm afraid of, and neither one of them is a male human. I think disgust is a more fitting word, or perhaps even revulsion. To follow the above quoted line of leftist spawned illogic, if I come across a pool of vomit and react negatively to it - that would mean that secretly I am attracted to it.

Rant ends here.

Tit for tat

How often do you see entire countries act like five year olds? Too often actually, but here is a prime example:

Iranian Paper Plans Holocaust Cartoons

By NASSER KARIMI, Associated Press Writer

TEHRAN, Iran - A prominent Iranian newspaper said Tuesday it would hold a competition for cartoons on the Holocaust to test whether the West extends the principle of freedom of expression to the Nazi genocide as it did to the caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.


Ok now, I've looked at those comics that caused all the rioting. They have mostly been taken down. It is a shame, because if they juxtaposed the cartoons with video footage of rioting, more people would realize just how insane these people are. Now, instead of rising above all this and acting like adults, they will have cartoons in their newspapers that will be FAR WORSE than that which they are complaining about.

Now about this "test" of our reaction. I image the ADL will issue generic statements of condemnation for such printings, and there will be numerous negative articles, but I doubt any embassies or flags will be burnt.

Israel may react to another action Iran is taking, in the form of airstrikes on their uranium enrichment facilities, and I'm sure the "holocaust cartoons" will make their actions seem somewhat more acceptable.

Media doesn't want to offend Islamic people

US media shy away from reproducing Mohammed cartoons

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060203/ts_alt_afp/europeislammediaus

Ok, lets not offend people of one religion - but it's okay to trample all over another. Everyone seems to think Christians are such a dangerous lot, with people going so far as to say religion is the root of all evil. Has anyone ever heard of Christian suicide bombers or Christian Hijackers? If you ran a google search for images mocking Christianity you would find many - but in my quest to find these Danish cartoons that has the "religion of murder" in such an uproar, I have found only one.

http://www.faithfreedom.org/index.htm

My conclusion? If you want respect from the manistream media be a terrorist, or supportive of them.

Apple Sued Over Potential Hearing Loss

Now here we go again. It's no wonder that most people in America seem to think the top 2 ways of getting rich are to either win the lottery or sue (aka legal lotto) These people blast music in their ears and wonder why their hearing degrades - and it's Apple's fault? Now Ipods will go up in price, and they will not be loud enough. It's another hot coffee/burn - eat lots of fast food/got fat legal scam that screws everybody but the awardee and the lawyers.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060202/ap_on_re_us/apple_ipod_lawsuit

We calculate "tax freedom day" as the day in the year in which we actually begin to keep our money (sometime in June). I believe someone who knows more about macroeconomics than me calculate a "lawsuit cost increase freedom day." New 4 seat airplanes cost about $150,000 - but are cheaper to manufacture than cars. Whenever a plane crashes - pilots fault usually - the lawyers sue the makers of EVERY PART of that plane - go figure.

We need liabilty reform - this is madness. Doctors are leaving Pennsylvania in droves. People in New Jersey only have a couple of auto insurance companies to chose from.