From IMDB:

Actress Nancy Cartwright, the voice behind cartoon character Bart Simpson, has been awarded Scientology’s Patron Laureate Award after donating $10 million to the faith in 2007. Cartwright’s gift - almost two times her annual salary from The Simpsons - puts her top of a list of celebrity benefactors, who have handed over their hard-earned cash to the Church of Scientology. She gave even more than Tom Cruise - who is reported to be the controversial religion’s second-in-command - who has donated $5 million in the last four years. According to Impact magazine, Kirstie Alley gave $5 million last year and has picked up the Diamond Meritorious Award. Fellow followers John Travolta and Kelly Preston gave $1 million each and were awarded the Gold Meritorious Award, while Priscilla Presley was handed the Patron Award for a donation of $50,000. The prizes were handed out at a top secret ceremony in Florida last summer, according to the American publication.

10 million dollars. That is a lot of scratch. I suppose suing everybody that criticizes your religion can get expensive. I’m sure the Church of Scientology will put the money to good use, probably helping needy rich people and their publicists. Then again, the guilty elite have been giving huge sums of money to all other manner of religions and gambling institutions for years, so it’s not all together that impressive. Gigantic Cathedrals and Super Sized Babtist Churches don’t build themselves.

What I’m truly glad about is that the voice actors from the Simpsons make so much money. They deserve it. And if Nancy Cartwright wants to spend it on some perfectly legitimate religion, that is in no way a whack job cult, then so be it. It’s her call.

(Note to David Miscavige or any of his rabid bloodthirsty attorneys: Please don’t sue me. Please. I was nice. See how I made sure not to call you and your religion bogus? I didn’t have to do that. Tom Cruise was bad ass in Magnolia. I’m good people. And while I’ve never actually read anything by L. Ron Hubbard, I’m sure he was a highly qualified science fiction writer, in the days before he started a religion about aliens. That last book was totally true. I get it. No connection, I’m sure. But really, good thing he already knew how to write. You guys really dodged a bullet on that one. Imagine if Paris Hilton have been privy to divine revelation.)

So it’s been pretty busy on the political front lately. Mitt “Well He’s at Least Controllable” Romney came in second in the big Florida contest, putting his chances at the nomination in jeopardy. John McCain was the triple winner last night, winning the actual contest, pushing Rush Limbaugh a little bit further towards his inevitable massive heart attack, and being able to beat Giuliani, eat him, and devour his life force. Rudy will have his head ceremonially cut off by McCain today, in what is widely expected to be a joint Drop Out of the Race/Endorse McCain maneuver. And with Huckabee staying in the race, acting as tape worm to Romney’s electoral digestive system, things have never looked better for good old John.

While that’s exciting, the real news of the day is the surprise drop out of John Edwards. I figured he would stay in until after Super Tuesday, but I guess I was wrong. He must be broke. Too bad for him. It had to be hard to be the white male candidate during an election like this. He spent a lot of time on stage during debates looking like the defacto clansman, and he did his best to try to get his message out. Good for him.

So the question is this: Who will this help more? Obama is doing well, but maybe not well enough, and something like this, happening so close to the day when about half of America goes to the polls, could tip things either way. I hope it helps him, because I have to be honest, with McCain out there picking up misguided independents, somebody like Hillary might have a hard time in the general. The only thing capable of uniting conservatives behind a moderate like McCain, might just be Hilliary Clinton, who they hate more than they distrust McCain. Most of these Limbaugh types have had a 16 year hate on for the Clintons, and they would back Pauly Shore if it meant keeping them out of the White House. Plus, Obama hits McCain among those in the middle, those independents and crossover votes, and could weaken McCain’s base. It’s just a matter of Barack getting that message out there in six days. But we’ll see. It’s all coming together though, and regardless of who wins, it’s a lot of fun to watch.

Hey everybody! Remember President Bush? Well, I’ve done a little research and have discovered, much to my surprise, that he is still president. I know. I was shocked too. Well, tonight he will give what is largely thought to be his last State of the Union address. He will most likely talk about the economy, as that is the big issue of the moment, and he’s got his name all over this possible stimulus package. He’s quite proud of it, since it’s the only thing he’’s really managed to do since being reelected, and I think he wants it to help pad his flimsy domestic legacy, which at the moment pretty much begins and ends with the whole “No Child Left Behind” debacle.

I will have my trusty vomit bucket handy, always essential anytime I subject myself to one of his speeches, and I assume tonight will be no different. He probably won’t have anything new to say, and will probably restrict himself to justifying his stupid war, trying to scare the crap out of everyone, and taking credit for achievements that he has very little to do with. That plus the usual round of totally unachievable crap ideas that every president throws into the State of the Union. Like every time he talks about energy independence and sending manned missions to mars. That sort of thing. It’ll be a greatest hits album, and really, why not one more round for old times sake. He’ll be as irrelevant as VHS in a few months anyway, even more so than he has been since the last congressional elections, so lets let him enjoy his last few moments in the spot light before the last of the rats jump his ship, and he’s relegated to the scrap heap of history. It’s the last lap of a very LONG, very badly run race, so come on America, let’s watch him try the old lines one more time. They still won’t work, but it will serve to remind everyone how important this election is, and how absolutely sweet it will be to have this lazy, arrogant, liar out of office. Should be fun.

OH, and watch for him to claim the lack of an attack since 9-11 as some sort of achievement. He does this a lot now, even though when he had an actual disaster to deal with, (Katrina anyone?), he totally screwed it up. You know times are hard, legacy-wise, when the best you can do for a positive is to tout the lack of anything horrible happening (even though it did, again, ask the people of New Orleans). The earth didn’t crash into the sun. WAY TO GO BUSH!

Scrappy non-contender Dennis Kucinich has dropped out of the presidential race. While he never had any sort of chance, I liked his message, and his style, and the fact that he had know he was never going to be president, and ran anyway. He will be missed.

Read about it here.

The media spends a great deal of it’s time seeking out answers where none are available. Speculating about motive. Trying to tell the future, as we saw so brilliantly on display back in New Hampshire. Trying to supply reasons for unreasonable acts. Talking out of their asses basically.

I suspect that this sort of thing has started in regards to Heath Ledgers death.

Nobody knows what happened to Heath Ledger. As of right now, all that is known is that yesterday a masseuse and a cleaning lady found him naked, face down in his apartment, dead. There were apparently sleeping pills or something on his bedside table. He had stated that he had trouble sleeping, so a little Ambien by the bed isn’t really that unexpected. That’s it. That’s all we know.

But the media loves a good story line, and I am afraid that one is festering out there, just waiting to be exploited, unsupported, of course, by any sort of real evidence. They do this kind of thing all the time. They get some sort of baseless idea in their head, and they push it, quizzing pundits about the assumption, calling in “experts” so discuss the “issue”, and generally pontificating about it in a slyly editorial fashion. In fact, on MSNBC at least, you may be in for an obscure literary reference or two. (I think I heard Keith Oberman or Chris Matthews throw out a reference to the Illiad the other day. And when you get the two of them together, wow, WATCH OUT ENGLISH MAJORS.) None of it means anything, and it gets the public no closer to any sort of fact. It’s pointless wheel spinning. Entertaining, yes, but not really Journalism.

So when I read this little tidbit in an article about Heath Ledger’s death, I got a little concerned. From CNN:

At the time of his death, Ledger had just finished playing the villain The Joker in “The Dark Knight,” the latest installment in the Batman series. The film is to open in July.

The role disturbed him, according to The Associated Press. He called The Joker a “psychopathic, mass-murdering, schizophrenic clown with zero empathy.”

“Last week, I probably slept an average of two hours a night,” Ledger told The New York Times. “I couldn’t stop thinking. My body was exhausted, and my mind was still going.”

He said prescription sleeping pills didn’t help, according to AP.

What the hell does that have to do with anything? The only reason I can account for it’s inclusion in an article about Heath Ledger’s autopsy is because, in some slick, back handed sort of way, they are trying to imply that somehow his portraying The Joker drove him suicide, or to an overdose of sleeping pills, or to whatever tragic end befell him. What an insane assumption. When he played that guy in Brokeback Mountain, did he run right out and cop to a little anal sex? Here’s a news flash: HE WAS AN ACTOR. He plays all sorts of different roles, and then moves on to play another. Sure, he thinks about his role a great deal when he is in the middle of working on it, but then once the movie wraps, that’s it. He moves on like all actors do. It’s entirely playable that he may have had other problems, totally unrelated to what is sure to be the baddest movie of 2008, that may have effected his situation. Things we don’t know about. Real, human, non Hollywood related things. But that’s how it works. We don’t know anything about what happened, so we just start randomly putting together the pieces of what we do know. Heath Ledger is dead. Heath Ledger just got finished playing a disturbing psychopath. Therefore, the portrayal of a disturbing psychopath led to his death. No evidence or common sense needed.

And one more point. Heath Ledger was totally finished playing the role of the Joker. His part in that had wrapped. He was working on the Terry Gilliam movie, “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus”, that is about a traveling theater company. No psychopath clowns on that one. But does it make any difference? No. That’s all we know, so let the insinuations continue unabated. The media hasn’t started pushing the “Dark Knight Killed Heath” line too hard yet, but it’s implication is there, and that is enough. It’s the same thing that happens every time some fruitcake student shoots up his English class. One copy of Halo 3 at the house, and it becomes another kid compelled to commit horrific violence because of video games. It’s just lazy Journalism, and a result of the fact that most news agencies have too much time to kill, and not enough to say.

Even though it remains unclear if there is even going to be a ceremony this year due to the ongoing Writers Strike (Solidarity!), we at Brain Pan were still excited to learn that the Oscar Nominations are out today. I was happy to see that “Falling Slowly” was nominated for best song. I’d have liked to have seen more nominations for Once, which for my money remains the best film I’ve seen all year, but I guess room has to be made for crappy Oscar bait like Atonement, so I suppose a best song nom will have to do.

Now, considering that most of the articles about the nominations fail to tell you anything about who was actually nominated, we have decided to present the list, in full:

Best Picture
“Atonement”
“Juno”
“Michael Clayton”
“No Country for Old Men”
“There Will Be Blood”

Actor
George Clooney, “Michael Clayton”
Daniel Day-Lewis, “There Will Be Blood”
Johnny Depp, “Sweeney Todd the Demon Barber of Fleet Street”
Tommy Lee Jones, “In the Valley of Elah”
Viggo Mortensen, “Eastern Promises”

Actress
Cate Blanchett, “Elizabeth: The Golden Age”
Julie Christie, “Away From Her”
Marion Cotillard, “La Vie en Rose”
Laura Linney, “The Savages”
Ellen Page, “Juno”

Supporting Actor
Casey Affleck, “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford”
Javier Bardem, “No Country for Old Men”
Hal Holbrook, “Into the Wild”
Philip Seymour Hoffman, “Charlie Wilson’s War”
Tom Wilkinson, “Michael Clayton”

Supporting Actress
Cate Blanchett, “I’m Not There”
Ruby Dee, “American Gangster”
Saoirse Ronan, “Atonement”
Amy Ryan, “Gone Baby Gone”
Tilda Swinton, “Michael Clayton”

Director
Julian Schnabel, “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”
Jason Reitman, “Juno”
Tony Gilroy, “Michael Clayton”
Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, “No Country for Old Men”
Paul Thomas Anderson, “There Will Be Blood”

Foreign Film
“Beaufort,” Israel
“The Counterfeiters,” Austria
“Katyn,” Poland
“Mongol,” Kazakhstan
“12,” Russia

Adapted Screenplay
Christopher Hampton, “Atonement”
Sarah Polley, “Away from Her”
Ronald Harwood, “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”
Joel Coen & Ethan Coen, “No Country for Old Men”
Paul Thomas Anderson, “There Will Be Blood”

Original Screenplay
Diablo Cody, “Juno”
Nancy Oliver, “Lars and the Real Girl”
Tony Gilroy, “Michael Clayton”
Brad Bird, Jan Pinkava and Jim Capobianco, “Ratatouille”
Tamara Jenkins, “The Savages.”

Animated Feature Film
“Persepolis”
“Ratatouille”
“Surf’s Up”

Art Direction
“American Gangster”
“Atonement”
“The Golden Compass”
“Sweeney Todd the Demon Barber of Fleet Street”
“There Will Be Blood”

Cinematography
“The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford”
“Atonement”
“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”
“No Country for Old Men”
“There Will Be Blood”

Sound Mixing
“The Bourne Ultimatum”
“No Country for Old Men”
“Ratatouille”
“3:10 to Yuma”
“Transformers”

Sound Editing
“The Bourne Ultimatum”
“No Country for Old Men”
“Ratatouille”
“There Will Be Blood”
“Transformers”

Original Score
“Atonement,” Dario Marianelli
“The Kite Runner,” Alberto Iglesias
“Michael Clayton,” James Newton Howard
“Ratatouille,” Michael Giacchino
“3:10 to Yuma,” Marco Beltrami

Original Song
“Falling Slowly” from “Once,” Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova
“Happy Working Song” from “Enchanted,” Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz
“Raise It Up” from “August Rush,” Nominees to be determined
“So Close” from “Enchanted,” Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz
“That’s How You Know” from “Enchanted,” Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz

Costume
“Across the Universe”
“Atonement”
“Elizabeth: The Golden Age”
“La Vie en Rose”
“Sweeney Todd the Demon Barber of Fleet Street”

Documentary Feature
“No End in Sight”
“Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience”
“Sicko”
“Taxi to the Dark Side”
“War/Dance”

Documentary (short subject)
“Freeheld”
“La Corona (The Crown)”
“Salim Baba”
“Sari’s Mother”

Film Editing
“The Bourne Ultimatum”
“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”
“Into the Wild”
“No Country for Old Men”
“There Will Be Blood”

Makeup
“La Vie en Rose”
“Norbit”
“Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End”

Animated Short Film
“I Met the Walrus”
“Madame Tutli-Putli”
“Meme Les Pigeons Vont au Paradis (Even Pigeons Go to Heaven)”
“My Love (Moya Lyubov)”
“Peter & the Wolf”

Damn. The debate tonight was fierce. Barack Obama and Hilliary Clinton threw down on each other for about ten minutes at the beginning. It was crazy. Here is the video from Youtube:

See? Wow. I have never before seen anything like that in any debate, much less one between two Democrats. And say what you will about Obama. He isn’t afraid to fight. Nobody goes after Hilliary like that to her face. At least nobody I’ve ever seen.

It’s getting a little ugly out there. This whole thing is going to turn people off.

Yeah. I don’t have much else. I just thought that headline was funny, and I hadn’t seen it yet. For more on crazy ass Bobby Fischer, and his death, go here. Enjoy.

News is breaking that the planned big screen adaptation of DC Comics staple The Justice League of America, has been shelved. Apparently the script was bad, and since the Writers are on strike, it would have had no hope of getting any better. The studio claims that they still want to make the movie at some point, but you know how those things go. Out of sight is out of mind in Hollywood.

This is one of my all time favorite comics, and all the news I had heard about the production up to this point had been distressing, bad cast, stupid plot, cheesy production angle, and so on, so I’m pretty happy that things worked out like this. Better to kill the thing before it ruins the genre for much better films, like this Summer’s sure to be bad ass Batman Begins sequel, The Dark Knight. Now THAT will be a movie worth watching.

Already, this early into 2008, what will most likely be the most stunning entertainment story of the year has come to light. Be warned, you might want to sit down for this, from CNN:

Medical examiner says Ike Turner died of cocaine overdose

*GASP*

Ike Turner? Death by substance abuse? I won’t believe it. If you intend to tell me that a life long drug addict died from a drug overdose, then I have a bridge to sell you.

I mean really. That’s not news.

However, Ike’s death did produce the funniest headline I have ever seen ever. A good friend sent this around to me, so I can’t claim to have discovered it myself, but here it is:

Ike Beats Tina To Death

I laughed for half and hour when I read that. Jesus that’s funny.