oh what's the fucking point?

Baruchel negotiating for 'Apprentice' - Entertainment News, Film News, Media - Variety:

Jay Baruchel is negotiating to play the title role in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" for Walt Disney Pictures. He joins Nicolas Cage, who plays the sorcerer in the Jon Turteltaub-directed live-action pic.

Jerry Bruckheimer is producing.

Baruchel, who co-starred in "Tropic Thunder," next plays the lead in the DreamWorks romantic comedy "She's Out of My League."

He's also attached to co-star with Seth Rogen in "Jay and Seth vs. the Apocalypse," a project they've set at Mandate Pictures. Baruchel is also lead voice in the DreamWorks animated film "How to Train Your Dragon."

Scripted by Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal and rewritten by Matt Lopez, "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" takes place in contemporary New York, where a wizard searches for an apprentice.

talk about bereft of ideas...*sigh*

every attempt in the last 20 years to take a great 8-20 minute idea and turn it into a 90 minute film has sucked.  seriously.  all of them.  that includes every Dr. Seuss "movie" ever made.  that includes every full-length feature built on the looney tunes characters.  that includes 65% of all Steven King films (the ones built on his short stories).

it simply doesn't work.

Walt and Leopold and crew created delicate crystalline perfection in 1940, an absolutely flawless gem (then embedded in a ring of gold, silver, and some lesser jewels).  Please Please PLEASE don't tarnish it's memory with this.

*sigh*

this about expresses my view as well.

Good Math, Bad Math : Another Bad Metric Error: Wages vs. Labor Costs:

None of this should be taken as my supporting bailing out the automobile companies. I honestly can't make up my mind whether I support that. On one side, the companies really, basically deserve to fail. They made huge quantities of money selling giant SUVs for a few years, and used it to go on a spending spree, paying ridiculous amounts of money to their executives, and investing next to nothing in actually planning for the future. Now they're producing cars no one wants to buy, and due to their own stupidity, they've got no capacity to produce things that people want. That sounds like a formula for failure - and it is. It would be downright criminal for the assholes running those companies to be allowed to pocket the money they made destroying them, have the government rescue them, and then pocket the resulting profits when they get back on their feet. But on the other side, there are tons of people who don't deserve to be out of work, and who are going to be hurt by the companies failure much, much more than the people who are actually responsible. So I'm at a loss; I don't know what the right thing to do is.

But what I do know is that you can't have an honest discussion if you're starting it with a big ol' lie. And the $70/hour labor cost [taken by adding in the cost of pensions for already retired workers into the labor costs of their existing workforce] is a lie.

Celebrate 75 Years!

Since the Repeal of Prohibition!!!!!

I'll drink to that...

oh...

and happy birthday to Walt Disney, who would be 107 today.

Collage of the Day: Shrewsbury, Shropshire, 2005

Includes the remnants of Brother Cadfael's monastery.