Crowds and people lining the streets of the world...the old habit of ushering in a new year...greeting the year in some corners of the globe with war and other places with cheers of joy...
The old habit coming alive tonight...New Years 2004...A new year...a new beginning...same problems. Numbers change but the days stay the same...
END OF A WAR YEAR......AND AN UNCERTAIN NEW YEAR...
We protested and yelled
And statues fell..
We spoke out and spoke often at the world..
Mother Nature and earth collided...
Our fears united...
..in the trash heap of history it's hurled...
2003 is over, and with it goes nothing...
The war still rages and Michael Jackson's still free...
Trails and tribulation and nothing more to see...
Our hope for '04...our calender's changed but nothing else has...
2003. END.
ALREADY: ROTK HAS BROKEN PHANTOM MENACE'S RECORD...MORE: Film earned $34.1 million domestically on 7,205 screens at 3,703 theaters on its opening day...in 1999, The Phantom Menace attracted $28.5 million on 5,500 screens at 2,970 theaters on its first day...Numerous predictions this weekend estimate that Jackson's finale will earn over $120 mil by weekend end...
Toronto-based Lions Gate Entertainment has acquired Artisan Entertainment for $220 million, including the assumption of $60 million in debt, thereby forming the largest independent film studio. In an interview with today's (Tuesday) Los Angeles Times, Lions Gate CEO John Feltheimer remarked: "At the size we're going to be -- a $600 million to $700 million company -- we need to keep our eye on the ball. ... We're running a business. It's what most independents haven't done for the last 20 years, and most of them aren't around." ..
Variety reports that former vampire slayer, Sarah Michelle Gellar, will topline Sam Raimi's, The Grudge, the remake of the Japanese horror thriller Ju-On. "Columbia Pictures has secured domestic distrib rights for the film, which is being produced by Ghost House Pictures, a genre division of Senator Intl. launched with Sam Raimi." ..
"Not terribly interested," Poland told the HORROR-REPORT.."Do the lies being told by Gibson's camp matter at all? Or does it only matter when Bob Weinstein lies about an CARA editing decision?"
...MORE...
Dave Poland responded the Anghus Houvouras' commentary slamming his site, MOVIECITYGEEK.COM on the HORROR-REPORT yesterday..."But have you ever thought... why haven't others seen it? I assume there are film writers that you do respect. Why does Gibson need to hide it from them? Forget about Butt-Numb-a-Thon... you do realize that being one of the people who has seen the movie puts you mostly in the company of people who would love to shut down your website for content. I know... petty details for hacks like me to consider.
Have you ever thought of arguing the issues - which you are welcome to disagree with - instead of throwing out insults?"
MORE>>>Anghus: "Yes, my comments are far from
constructive, and far from mature, but i'm tired, tired of seeing so many
articles posted about this shit, where the story becomes bigger than the
movie"..
Anghus more: "The debates that you and other critics engage in endlessly dont interest me.
You make your living discussing the minute details of the business. I do
not. im not a critic, im a filmmaker stating an opinion on the movie. The
lies from Gibson's Camp? Whatever those are, i could care less.
And thats where all this gets fucked up. Im judging the film, not the
countless points of controversy that surround it. If thats what you want to
see, fantastic." Developing MORE......
Ex-Colonol says Iraqi troops were given chemical weapons...While...Saddam Hussein's government may have executed 61,000 Baghdad residents, a number significantly higher than previously believed, according to a survey obtained Monday by The Associated Press
Oprah Winfrey complains about being the butt of David Letterman's jokes... "Both times I was sort of like the butt of his jokes, " Winfrey tells Time magazine for its Dec. 15 issue. "I felt completely uncomfortable sitting in that chair, and I vowed I would not ever put myself in that position again."
Affleck may snub DAREDEVIL reprisal..While NEWSASKEW reports that the MPAA ratings announcement notes have the upcoming DVD release "DAREDEVIL 1.5" rated R
Weekend films: 1 (*) The Haunted Mansion .......... $25.3 million
2 (1) The Cat in the Hat ........... $24.7 million
3 (3) Elf ........... $22.2 million
4=(2) Gothika ....... $12.7 million
4=(4) Master and Commander ......... $12.7 million
6 (*) Bad Santa ..... $12.5 million
7 (*) The Missing ... $11.7 million
8 (*) Timeline ...... $ 8.5 million
9 (5) Love Actually . $ 7.9 million
10 (6) The Matrix Revolutions ....... $ 4.6 million
TUESDAY NOVEMBER 25 2003
MALVEVOLENCE UPDATE: HORROR-REPORT CAN REPORT TONIGHT that film will be coming to theaters, with release dates coming soon...DEVELOPING...
Thanksgiving films: The Haunted Mansion (Disney) / 3,122
Timeline (Paramount) / 2,787
The Missing (Sony / Revolution) / 2,756
Bad Santa (Dimension) / 2,005
In America (Fox Searchlight) / 11
The Cooler (Lions Gate) / 11...
REUTERS REPORTING: BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Police on Friday removed the corpse of a man believed to have hanged himself at least a year ago after builders and students at Budapest's University of Arts had initially mistaken it for a modern sculpture. The body hung for a whole day in a garden building that had been re-opened for repairs before onlookers realized what it was and called the police, local media said. The building, in campus grounds crowded with different types of sculpture, had been closed five years ago pending reconstruction work
VETERAN'S DAY 2003: BUSH VISIT TO UK MAY BE SHOCK AS COMMANDER IN CHEIF COULD WITNESS EFFIGY OF HIMSELF BEING DRUG THROUGH STREETS BY ANTI-WAR PROTESTERS--THAT, A PROMISE BY ANTI-WAR GROUPS BRACING FOR BUSH VISIT...MORE..."It's going to be a big test for the Met in terms of what we have to do to prevent an attack on the president, any member of the royal family and any member of the cabinet," said a spokeswoman for Scotland Yard police headquarters to Reuters...MORE...
...Police are torn between allowing large and potentially embarrassing protests to go ahead, and clamping down on protestors and risking a backlash....
New terror warning says that Al-Qaida may be plotting to fly cargo planes from another country into such crucial targets in the United States as nuclear plants, bridges or dams...MORE....
TUESDAY OCTOBER 28 2003 MALEVOLENCE WINS 'BEST FEATURE FILM' AT NYC HORROR FILM FESTIVAL: New York, NY. (10/27/03) -- Malevolence has just won "BEST FEATURE"
at the 2003 New York City Horror Film Festival. This is the second BEST FEATURE
award for Stevan Mena and his Debut Feature, Malevolence, which also took
top Honors at the 2003 Long Island International Film Festival, and premiered at Screamfest LA....
SATURDAY OCTOBER 18, 2003 EBERT RIPS TCM REMAKE Critics be damned: Pre-Halloween 2003 horror fine at box office...
MORE: TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE remake already has $11mil under its saw and is surging ahead of KILL BILL in weekend box...developing...
Canadian press: It is doubtful that today's teen moviegoers, most of whom got Freddy and Jason with their mother's milk, would be remotely scared or surprised by the 1974 Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And few filmmakers would think to mess with the original. However, as anyone forced to sit through the heinous excesses of Pearl Harbor or Armageddon might guess, Michael Bay is one of those few. In the role of producer, Bay hired leading-edge video/commercial director Marcus Nispel, got a new screenplay from Scott Kosar and -- voila! -- The Texas Chainsaw Massacre rides again...
Saturday Night Live veteran Will Ferrell has signed on to star as Darrin in the upcoming film based on the 1960s television series Bewitched, according to The Hollywood Reporter...
MASSIVE MANHUNT FOR PENNSYLVANIA PRISONER AFTER MOVIE-LIKE ESCAPE
"How can something like this occur in this day and age, in the year 2003, where it seems that an inmate can simply pop a window out of the prison, climb out and run away?" District Attorney David Lupas said..
SATURDAY OCTOBER 11, 2003
KILL BILL with $8 mill in first night's cash..
Theater counts for 10/10/03: Good Boy! (MGM) / 3,225
Kill Bill Volume 1 (Miramax) / 3,102
Intolerable Cruelty (Universal) / 2,562
House of the Dead (Artisan) / 1,520...X X X 3,102 THEATERS STRONG FOR KILL BILL BLOODBATH
A new book is is studying truth behind Halloween legends and fears of recent years and past times...Book re-examines the history behind why 'witches' got fingered for numerous violations of humanity...trivial fears and baseless beliefs turned into a recognized cult of madness...
MORE: Black cats and creatures were once seen as harbingers of death and disaster, according to Walter Stephens, author of of the new book...
Halloween began with Druids...they believed that the spirits of the dead would walk the earth at the turn of their new year on November 1... Thus the Catholic 'all souls'... day Townsfolk would dress in eeire garbs to better contact the dead on that day...As history rolled along, Christians added to the festival in the 7th century by making 11/1 a celebration of all the known and unknown saints and martyrs...
Truly one of the most pathetic, sad stories of the fall...A 500 pound woman with a small casket...At first glance you chuckle but as you read on you'd rather cry..
AP: The U.S-led team hunting for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has found no stockpiles of biological or chemical weapons, six months after the United States launched a war against Baghdad to remove such a threat, CIA adviser David Kay said on Thursday...
WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 1, 2003
HORROR-REPORT: WORKING TITLE OF 'THE WOODS' IS NOW 'THE VILLAGE'...
DRUDGE REPORTS SHOCKER: REPORTING THAT NYDAILY NEWS WILL ALLEGE DRUG SCANDAL FOR RUSH LIMBAUGH IN PAGE 1 SPLASH...
Malevolence will be shown in 2 Horror film festivals Back to Back, insider reports...
ScreamFestLA on October 13th///
And now...The New York Horror Film Festival at Tribeca October 22nd...Developing...
The WMD hunt in Iraq has come up as bone dry as a Arabian desert...and now, TIME MAGAZINE is reporting this week that Administration officials were plain wrong in their assessments of the WMD threat...
MORE: TIME is reporting: "Iraq's once massive unconventional-weapons program was destroyed or dismantled in the 1990s and never rebuilt; that officials destroyed or never kept the documents that would prove it; that the shell games Saddam played with U.N. inspectors were designed to conceal his progress on conventional weapons systems—missiles, air defenses, radar—not biological or chemical programs"...And MORE, TIME also claims that Saddam may not have even known about this...
TIME is also making a mockery of Bush this week, placing his military-visit photos on the cover with headline: MISSION NOT ACCOMPLISHED
Giving me even less hope now at finding a girlfriend, US NEWS has a cover this week running on how the dating scene in the U.S. has radically changed because of computers..
A new book is now suggesting that the "ally" in the war on terror, Pakistan, may have had a role in Daniel Pearl's death...Recall, it was Pearl that was slaughtered on tape...
THE CIA IS SEEKING AN INVESTIGATION OF THE WHITE HOUSE...MORE: NBC, in an exclusive to the network, is reporting tonight: "The CIA has asked the Justice Department to investigate allegations that the White House broke federal laws by revealing the identity of one of its undercover employees in retaliation against the woman’s husband, a former ambassador who publicly criticized President Bush’s since-discredited claim that Iraq had sought weapons-grade uranium from Africa, NBC News has learned"...
In the pathetic 'look how they've fallen from grace' category: Reuters is reporting tonight that former child star Stanley Fafara--yes, you guessed it, the boy who played Beaver's pal Whitey on LEAVE IT TO BEAVER--has died...the former star descended into a real-life adulthood of drugs, alcohol and petty crime...he was 53..
Possible room in that category, Whitey?? Robert Palmer, British rock singer who was ADDICTED TO LOVE, has died of a heart attackackackack at 54...
FOLLOW UP: According to Reuters, the "New Jersey man who pleaded guilty to illegally copying and posting a digital version of summer action movie "The Hulk" on the Internet received a three-year probation and was fined, movie studio Universal Pictures said on Friday"
While in the fight for his political life in California, Governer Gray Davis is about to sign three bills to help Hollywood--and moreover, most likely, help himself score precious endorsements and votes from the acting crowd...MORE...The Hollywood Reporter reports today that the bills include laws aimed at protecting various aspects of the entertainment industry -- from outlawing the videotaping of movies in theaters, to expanding protections for child actors, to putting new empahsis on protecting the state's film production...Major focus, of late, has been placed on the exodus of film companies from California to more cost friendly lands of Canada, and even, lately, the new television capital of Pennsylvania: Philadelphia...
The Recording Industry, while sloppily bringing lawsuits against moms and grandparents, has taken war to downloaders...The movie industry is following in RIAA's footsteps...The NEW YORK TIMES is reporting that among the actions being taken:
--Campaign in schools to promote "downloading is wrong" message...
--Putting electronic watermarks on movie prints so they can determine who is file sharing...
--Jack Valenti will dance nude on top of a framed painting of Whistler's Mother...ok, that one is not true...
While further stories report that Britney and Madonna will collaborate again, the kiss still burns in my head...Not because of its attraction but, instead, because of the sickness of a 20-year-old frenching a 45-year-old mom...
The sick world still sick, and not because of a mom kissing someone old enough to be her daughter...Microsoft is responding by shutting down chat rooms in almost 30 countries to protect children from pedophiles...Apparently, the tech rooms were becoming breeding grounds for abusers...
SAG president Melissa Gilbert was re-elected to a second two-year term as president of the performers guild on Tuesday...
No happy middle ground as report says profanity on TV is on the rise while Notre Dame blocks a racy sitcom..Also, more on the controversial show, as a letter to a local TV station in Utah refuses to air COUPLING...
IT'S A BIG ONE: NOAA PREDICTS DIRECT ISABEL MAINLAND STRIKE
Trouble in paradise?...Report claims Hollywood celebrity couple Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez have split up...
***
ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO number 1 film this weekend with $24 mil...MATCHSTICK MEN second $13.2 mil...CABIN FEVER distant third with $8 mil...
Bush is seeking broad new authority to allow federal agents without the approval of a judge or even a federal prosecutor to demand private records and compel testimony..
New book: Wacko Jacko wacko in bed...
MORE: Pastelle said the odd couple, who split in January 1996 after secretly tying the knot in May 1994, spiced up their sex sessions with "role playing" - but that Jacko wouldn't let her see his body if the lights were on.
"The first time, she went to turn on the lights afterwards, and he leapt out of bed and ran into the bathroom so she wouldn't see his body," she said.
"He emerged 20 minutes later, in full makeup and wearing a silk robe. Then they went at it again. They were into role-playing games, although Lisa would never say who was playing what kind of roles"
...
THEATER COUNTS: Once Upon a Time in Mexico (Sony) / 3,282
Matchstick Men (Warner Bros.) / 2,711
Cabin Fever (Lions Gate) / 2,087
...Summer decline: Jeepers Creepers 2 (MGM) / 2,784 (-340)...Freddy vs. Jason (New Line) / 1,577 (-928)
The Senate voted Wednesday to halt the administration's effort to rewrite decades-old rules on overtime pay, risking a veto showdown with President Bush and heeding labor's claims that the changes would harm millions of workers at a time of economic uncertainty...
THE WOODS Shyamalan getting permits for filming starting in October...
SEPTEMBER 7, 2003
The President addressed the nation to say that Iraq has become the central focus of the war on terror...
MORE: President asks for $87 billion for future Iraq operations...the $87 billion that Bush requested is about 50 percent more, officials say, than the cost of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, which cost $60 billion--a majority of which was paid by Saudi Arabia and other allies FULL STORY >> FULL BUSH TEXT >>
Weekend box: DICKIE ROBERTS may be a former number 1 hit next week, but for this week it has enough $$ to put JEEPERS CREEPERS 2 to 2...
1. "Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star," $7 million.
2. "Jeepers Creepers 2," $6.7 million.
3. "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl," $5.5 million.
4. "Freaky Friday," $5.1 million.
5. "S.W.A.T.," $4.6 million.
6. "The Order," $4.3 million.
7. "Open Range," $4 million.
8. "Seabiscuit," $3.7 million.
9. "Freddy vs. Jason," $3.2 million.
10. "Uptown Girls," $2.4 million
Exhibitor Relations Co: Overall ticket sales of $50.4 million were down more than 14 percent from last year, when "Swimfan" topped the box office