- Great writing it may not have, a hard-to-figure-out plot it may be lacking and stellar acting it may not possess, but the fifth (yes, fifth!) installment of the Fast and the Furious franchise opened in thunderous fashion over the weekend, earning more than the rest of the top 10 combined with an $83.6 million take that may not have taken it to the break-even point (blame the $125 million budget) but was as impressive a debut as any film has posted so far this year. A whopping $22,950 per-theater average was impressive as well and even if the predictability and unoriginality of the film eventually catches up with it, that won't take away from an outstanding first weekend. Last weekend’s top film, Rio, fell off 45 percent to finish second with $14.4 million. That effort pushed it past the $100 million mark after three weeks at $103.6 million. Third place and about 50 spots higher than it should be based on quality of the movie was Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Big Happy Family, which made another $10.5 million despite being the same damn Madea movie Perry has put out about five times previous. For two weeks, Big Happy Family has made $41.1 million. Water for Elephants was fourth for the weekend with $9.2 million and has scored $32.3 million for two weeks of work. Last among the top five was newcomer Prom, which was universally panned by critics and made a measly $5 million in its debut. Even with a meager $8 million budget, that’s not the sort of opening that gets a film labeled as a success. The rest of the top 10 consisted of: Hoodwinked TOO! Hood vs. Evil (No. 6 with $4.2 million in its first weekend), Soul Surfer (No. 7 in its fourth weekend with $3.3 million after a 39 percent drop from the previous frame), Insidious (No. 8 with $2.7 million, a 48-percent decline from last weekend and yet enough to elevate the film’s cumulative take to $48.3 million for five weeks), Hop (No. 9 and dropping like a rock at this point with $2.6 million and a running tally of $105.2 million through five weeks) and Source Code (No. 10 as its thoroughly mediocre run continued with $2.5 million and $48.9 million overall for five weeks in theaters). Dropping out of the top 10 from last weekend were African Cats (No. 11), Hanna (No. 12) and the über-awful Scream 4 (No. 13). The weekend’s most disappointing debut title easily went to Dylan Dog: Dead of Night, which proved a dreamy Brandon Routh isn't enough to carry a movie by making a robust $885,000 for a per-theater average of $1,011……………
- Conventions tend not to draw out the cream of society’s crop. Typically, they serve only to gather its misfits, rejects and outcasts from the fringes, from the corners of the map and from the rocks they’ve been hiding under. Fans of cult favorite movies like Star Wars have their conventions and Comic-Con draws in legions of dorks to let out their inner fanboy and shake in awkward nervousness if they happen to pass within 10 feet of one of the half-dozen female attendees to the event. With so many freaks and misfits gathering in one place for virtually any convention, this weekend’s Texas Frightmare Weekend was really the definition of what one of these loser gatherings is all about. The sight of hundreds of zombies lurching through the streets of Irving, Tex. would look absurd on any day, but it nonetheless marked the start of the convention and the misfits were out en masse. Well-known personalities from around the horror community (yes, a horror community exists) came to take part, along with memorabilia collectors, horror fanatics and Halloween fanatics. Those fanatics showed up in full horror regalia, with fake blood, ooze, slime, bile, wounds, etc. Some participants in the zombie lurch admitted to spending several hours working on their costume and makeup. Others elected to take non-lurching means of transportation to the convention, including many who showed up in tricked-out hearses. That’s right, these weirdos are taking the vehicle normally reserved to give deceased people a final, respectful last ride to their last resting place and turning it into a freak show on wheels to pay homage to their favorite horror movies and television shows. However, once horror fans arrived at the convention there was still plenty of fun to be had. They could hit up any number of specialty vendors to buy memorabilia or get pictures and autographs from their favorite horror film stars. The original Freddie Kruger, Robert Englund, was on hand to sign and pose with his legions of adoring fans. Sadly, the convention was the admitted highlight of the year for many of them and now they will go back to their disappointing daily lives working dead-end jobs and dreaming of next year’s event………
- Did anyone even notice that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was gone? Sure, there wasn’t enough angry bravado, oppressive dictatorial action and overall tyranny emanating from Iran over the past week, but the world has been so wrapped up in uprisings elsewhere in the Middle East and Africa that no one noticed that Ahmadinejad had not been seen at work for more than a week, amid reports of a rift with the supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei. The rift led to a weeklong boycott by Ahmadinejad and the confrontation came to light after supreme leader ejected the dismissal of Intelligence Minister Heidar Moslehi last month. Moleshi was forced to resign on Apr. 17, but he was promptly re-instated by the supreme leader. Having been smacked across the nose like a misbehaving puppy whose master whacked him on the snout with a rolled-up newspaper, Ahmadinejad responded by staging a boycott of his official duties. As the first week of the boycott wore on, the dictator was pressured by conservatives within the government to return to work and stop pouting like a petulant 7-year-old. He finally complied Friday by chairing a cabinet meeting, ending a week in which he was not seen in public, missed two cabinet meetings and canceled a visit to the holy city of Qom. A letter from some 300 high-ranking government officials urging Ahmadinejad to resume his duties and respect Ayatollah Khamenei's decision seemed to facilitate the end of the boycott and national media within Iran reported that a group of conservative lawmakers met with Ahmadinejad on Saturday and in that meeting, the maniacal dictator reportedly renewed his allegiance to Ayatollah Khamenei. Now, Iran can turn its hate, rage and misanthropic attitude back in the direction it is usually channeled: at the world…………
- Budgets are shrinking for all manner of non-essential services and programs across the United States now that, ya know, we’re racking up trillions of dollars in debt and for once, the people in power are trying to do something about the problem. The prime target for those budget cuts has been all things outer space, with NASA winding down its final few missions sending humans into space and searching for ways to keep exploring the final frontier sans homosapiens. But NASA isn't the only outer space entity to suffer from budget cuts and now the world's only radio telescope array specially designed to detect potential signals from distant worlds has been shut down because the money to continue operating it ran out. The search for intelligent life elsewhere in the universe now has one less weapon after the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute, headquartered in Mountainview, Calif., ceased operations early in April. Seth Shostak, senior astronomer for the group that runs the northern California facility, explained that the timing of the shutdown was especially bad because astronomers there were anticipating an onslaught of possible new research targets from the dozens of potentially life-supporting planets newly detected by NASA's Kepler space telescope orbiting distant stars in the Milky Way galaxy. "It's a frustrating thing to know that there are worlds out there that may have life, intelligent life, and not be able to look for them," Shostak stated. Shostak said the Kepler telescope has unearthed about 50 potentially habitable planets beyond the solar system in the Milky Way, sparking speculation among the scientific community that some 500 million such worlds could exist in the galaxy. Using the Allen Telescope Array, named for Microsoft Corp co-founder Paul Allen, would have been a great way to explore those new finds. With its 42 dish-like antennas about 20 feet in diameter, operated as one large radio telescope in the Cascade Mountains east of Reading, Calif., the system could have provided valuable clues in the search for life beyond Earth - if you’re among those who believe it exists. The Allen array isn't the only telescope complex capable of searching for extraterrestrial signals in deep space, but it is the only one designed specifically for that purpose and it was dedicated to that research around the clock. Unfortunately, Allen isn't as much of a benefactor of the facility as he once was and with government funds drying up, there is no support left to finance the effort to listen for a distinct, repeating pattern of electromagnetic signals, emanating from space that could indicate a source created by intelligent life. The reason the array was impacted by budget cuts is its connection to the Radio Astronomy Lab of University of California, Berkeley, which has been impacted by recent state budget cuts for university. Unless a rich philanthropist steps up and chips off the $1.5 million a year it costs about to operate the array and at least $1 million to cover the related cost of the SETI research, yet another American edge in the world of all things outer-spacey will have gone by the wayside and the rest of the world will be able to blow right by the U.S. and keep on going……….
- In a truly shocking turn of events, many Division I schools are allegedly distorting the number of students participating in sports so they can comply with Title IX, a federal law that bans sex discrimination in schools and opened academic and sports opportunities for women. Typically, being in compliance with Title IX means cutting men’s sports and adding women’s sports no one cares about or notices simply so there is a balance on campus in terms of opportunities to play sports for men and women. Colleges and universities can comply in one of three ways: 1) show proportionality of female athletes to female students on campus,
2) demonstrate a history of increasing sports for women or 3) prove it has met the interest and ability of the underrepresented group. A report surfaced last week that many schools are deliberately padding the roster’s of their women’s teams with unqualified players or even men. A New York Times investigation found that some schools continued counting athletes who no longer wanted to compete or never played for that team. Others listed male practice players, who provide warm bodies to fill out practices and push female players harder, as women. Federal participation statistics from all 345 institutions at the Division I level showed these and other disturbing trends and many administrators admitted that schools have been engaging in such Title IX end-arounds since the law was passed in 1972. Some prominent women’s basketball programs, including defending national champion Texas A&M and Duke, are among the teams that take advantage of a federal loophole that allows them to report male practice players as female participants. Now might also be an opportune time to ask if Title IX is actually accomplishing its stated goal of equality within college sports. Seeing as women now comprise 53 percent of the student body at Division I schools and yet make up just 46 percent of all athletes, the answer would seem to be no. That seems unlikely to change as long as teams continue engaging in "roster management” instead of reducing the roster of men’s teams or adding new women’s sports. Just don’t expect to hear anyone whining because their college or university hasn’t “achieved equality” by adding that much-needed women’s golf team………….
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