Hello readers. "Aaaaah". That's the sound I made when I spotted the front page of The Sun this morning. Remember when I told you that Amy Winehouse was papped ordering only nugget sauce from McDonlad's? Well it turns out her actions make perfect sense. She was cracked up to her eyeballs. Mere hours before attending her husband's court appearance she was honking on a crack pipe. Firstly, if someone wants to smoke crack, let them. And then offer to buy their HD TV off them for a tenner at 3am the next morning. Secondly, I think all the papers trying to cover their asses by liberally sprinkling their pieces with the word "allegedly" need not worry. She must have been off her tits if she wasn't suspicious of one of her "friends" following her around all day with their (secret?) videocamera. If I'm taking hits off a crack pipe in front of my wedding pics and I spot a blinking red light, I'm gonna ask questions. See the vid here.
Flicking through Thelondonpaper at lunch I spotted a couple of gems in the "Funny Old World" section. First was the story of a £75,000 theft-proof BMW that was stolen - when the police left it unlocked with the keys in the ignition...Second was the story of Vietnamese Customs finding a crate of live snakes on a plane. Wait what?? The illegal cargo, on board a Thai Air flight from Bangkok, was hidden inside 60 ice boxes marked "fresh fish".
"Who knows what would have happened if they had broken out and crawled around the plane when it was flying?" said Dao Van Lien, head of customs at Hanoi airport. Erm, I do. Are there cinemas in Vietnam or what?
Remember when I told you that No Country For Old Men would make the Oscar shortlist for Best Motion Picture? Remember how I eulogised over the magnificent performance of Javier Bardem? Creamed my pants over the superb use of sound? Or praised the cinematography? Well the Oscar Noms have been released and guess what? No Country has won nods in the Best Motion Picture of the Year, Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role, Achievement in Sound Editing, and Achievement in Cinematography categories, among others. Both No Country For Old Men and There Will Be Blood topped the class with eight nominations. Click here for the whole list.
All this talk of movies reminds me how much I want to see Cloverfield. On release in the US it beat out Star Wars to break box office records for a January Weekend with an estimated $46 million gross over those 3 days*. Considering it cost an estimated $35 million to make that's pretty impressive. Interestingly enough, some research on Boxofficemojo shows that it's not the biggest monster-flick opening weekend; Hulk and King Kong opened to $62 million and $50 million.
For the past 3 months or so I have ardently refused to get involved in all Cloverfield's interactive online nonsense and I've been tiptoeing around spoilers since 1-18-08. Annoyingly I still have about another 10 days to go. Doesn't help that my friends over at online mag LOAD Magazine have seen it already and are taunting me. Apparently the newest marketing technique is torture people with little snippets of info then make them wait 2 weeks for the film to come out while everyone over the pond says how amazing it is. It worked, I will be first in line on general release!
Of course, all this will soon be immaterial once the entire world economy crashes. Yesterday saw the worst day since 9/11 for many stock indices in Europe. With the US observing Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday, US Federal Reserve took today's market opening as the opportunity to try and prevent a similar massacre in US markets by slashing interest rates by an unprecedented 75 basis points. The move down to 3.5 per cent was the first unscheduled Fed rate cut since September 17 2001 and its largest single cut since August 1982.
For those who dismissed all the above as gibberish here's your take-home: SELL YOUR STOCKS NOW!! Oversaturated is predicting a major market correction in the next 28 days. Don't say I didn't warn you. Turns out it's all George Dubya's fault. Click here for an interesting video on how he managed to so spectacularly fuck up. Go Ron Paul!
At the time of writing this, The net is abuzz with the news that Heath Ledger has died! Not good news...
*However, Star Wars' $35 million would equal over $53 million adjusted for ticket price inflation
