Entertainment news

1. Ever since Brett Ratner was announced as the director for X-Men 3, there have been howls from the collective of geekdom. At least Ratner has the humour and grace to recognize that "online they think I'm the anti-Christ."

But then strange things began to happen. The reviews were not totally horrific, although its Rotten Tomato rating has been decreasing over the past two days. It was more than 60% at one point. As of this writing, it's around 52%. Still, consider what the other big movies of the summer are getting so far. The Da Vinci Code is at 23%. Poseidon is at 29%. MI 3 is at 73%. So it's not doing bad.

The consensus, according to Rotten Tomatoes, is that "Director Brett Ratner has replaced the heart and emotion (and character development) of the previous X-Men films with more action and explosions. The film should still provide ample entertainment, but viewers may truly wish this to be the Last Stand."

But whether or not the studio will let it rest is another matter altogether. Granted, it's only been one day, but apparently the movie is doing better than they could have dreamed. Highest opening ever on a Friday, second highest opening ever behind the last Star Wars movie. It's made about $44.1 million in one day. This is the Memorial Day weekend in the U.S. It could make as much as $150 million over those four days. To put that in perspective, that's almost as much as the final total of the first X-Men movie.

We'll see how it pans out over the coming weeks, but I suspect that a fourth X-Men movie might have just become that much more likely. After all, it's not like there's a shortage of X-Men (like Shadowcat here) to use on the screen if you can't get some of the big name stars like Jackson, Stewart, Barry and McKellan back.



Annoyingly enough, we've gotten MI3, Poseidon and Da Vinci here on opening weekend, but not X3. Hopefully next weekend.

2. Remember how I was talking about the fall schedules of the US networks a week or so ago? Well, NBC apparently checked out the opposition and went "ummm, can we think about this again?" Which is why they completely revamped their fall line-up. Most notably, and the only change I particularly care about, is that Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip is moving from Thursday nights at 9 p.m. to Monday nights at 10 p.m.

So it is no longer up against Grey's Anatomy and CSI. That means it stands less of a chance of getting killed before it had a chance. It also means Cathy won't lose her mind on what to watch Thursday nights.

3. I love comic book writer Alan Moore. I consider him if not the best, then certain top three, when it comes to writing for comics. Still, it's going to be interesting to see how his latest project Lost Girls is received. The concept is simple enough. Imagine if Alice (from Wonderland), Wendy (from Peter Pan) and Dorothy (from the Wizard of Oz) all meet up at an Austrian resort in 1913.

Now imagine it's pornography. I'm not being flippant with the word "pornography." Even in this two part interview, Moore calls it pornography. However, it is an attempt to make really good pornography.



I've actually already read a portion of the story. Years ago Moore and artist Debbie Gebbie attempted to publish this with another company. It went bankrupt before the whole story could be printed. I will say that the writing is as intelligent as you would expect with Moore, the art by Gebbie is beautiful and it is every bit as explicit as Moore indicates in the interview.

It's being created to be deliberately provocative. So not only is there lots of sex, but there is the hint that some of the characters in the book might not be 18 when they were...illustrated. Which brings other kinds of attention to the work. Moore addresses this in the interviews and I'll leave it to you as to whether or not you think his defence holds weight.

I'm also not sure if it's going to be distributed in Canada. Diamond, which distributes most comics in North America are apparently not sending it to Canada, for fear that Canada Customs will stop it at the border. So far, both Chapters and Amazon have it listed, but that's certainly subject to change.

Will I buy it? I'm not sure. I'm quite tempted because I own an awful lot of Moore's writing. Hell, I might be in San Francisco when it comes out this August. Then again, these always the risk I could get stopped by Customs coming home and they might have a problem with it. I'll see...the fact that it costs more than $50 Canadian and that I might be unemployed may also play some part in deciding whether or not I'll buy it.