So. New day, new post. Having got all that annoying "introduction" stuff out of the way, I can now talk about stuff. So, here goes.

Eclipse came out today, 'bout midnight-ish and made something like $30 million in it's first screening. I'll repeat - $30 million, first screening. My brain basically just shut down from the sheer enormity of that number. Some #1 films don't make that much in their first WEEKEND and Eclipse did it in ONE SCREENING. I'll give you a minute to work out the sort of royalties Meyer is making from this thing. Seriously, go ahead. I'll wait.

Back again? If you're anything like me, you'll have come up with the figure of $ashitload. Much as I dislike Meyer's actual writing, she certainly knows how to sell her stuff. I think her plans for the future probably involve buying Hawaii and a whole load of Edward look-alikes and just going nuts.

Anyway, enough of me going mad with jealousy over Eclipse ticket sales ($30,000,000 zomg). Still on the subject of movies though, The Last Airbender was recently released and has had almost universally dismal reviews. And when I say dismal, I really, really mean it. By the sounds of it it's pretty much the final nail in M. Night Shamalyan's coffin. Selected comments from Rotten Tomatoes:

"The addition of the 3-D is obviously an afterthought, and in most scenes it's pretty bad. Almost as bad as the writing and the acting. Almost."

"A soul-crushing disaster made worse by unnecessary, counterproductive 3-D, The Last Airbender fails to immediately qualify as the worst film of the summer only by virtue of the year's abundance of other candidates."

In case you were wondering, Rotten Tomatoes currently has it at a score of 5%, although it has fluctuated between 0% and 5%. Not quite the tour de force some people (including presumably M. Night himself) were hoping for.

Another major criticism, along with the leaden dialogue, acting, visual effects, 3D and probably costume design (because why the hell not, really) is the seemingly casual racism in the casting, as seemingly all of the good guys are white. It's not even that this is how it was originally written, as in the original series they were Asian. But M. Night Shamalyan (I CANNOT GET OVER THE COOLNESS OF HIS NAME) has decided that the good guys should be white, dammit and has cast them as such. Of course, the bad guys all seem to be Asian (the main antagonist is Dev Patel, who starred in Slumdog Millionaire. Kind of a step down, huh?). So to recap, crap film, borderline racist casting and so many faults that it's almost hard to know where to begin. Unless you're this guy, that is who gave it a delightfully scathing review. BURRNNNNNNNNN.

I think that's pretty much me done for the day. I would post about a book, but I'm a bit behind on my reading and I've got nothing literary for ya. I am just about to start Shame, by Salman Rushdie (he of the Fatwa of Dooooooom), so I should have something to say about that in a day or two.

Until next time then.

MusicalCynic.