Countdown to Star Trek

As we await the outcome of the latest Star Trek revamp, we're left to wonder if the new film will include Captain Kirk and his giant rock dildo.

This Just In! Dr. Jack Gets the Lester Burnham Treatment

In last night's Lost episode, "Namaste", Dr. Jack Shepherd is finally relieved of his stressful burdens as both surgeon and savior. Following his return alongside Kate, Hurly and Sayid to the island, circa 1977, Jack's former rival, James "La Fleur" Sawyer, has now arranged for him to spend his years free of hospital scrubs and iodine cleansing. Instead, he'll savor his new found freedom in a janitor's jumpsuit doing a different kind of scrubbing. Toilets. How's that for a responsibility free existence?

"You don't ever get to tell me what to do. Ever again."

In Defense of Dr. Jack Shepherd

Okay, let's just get it out there. Sawyer is the man. He's the shit. He's the stud. He's the tough, funny guy men hope to be and the hunk the girls want to end up with. Better, he's the bad boy who actually has the good guy ready to go on the fly. Best of all worlds. Last week's Lost episode, "La Fleur" showed us the laconic con man was a hippie at heart. Hippie by way of Han Solo.

It's easy for the audience to love the wise-cracking mercenary who can be morally ambivalent when it suits the moment. Much tougher to appreciate the guy who is always trying to do the right thing even at his own personal loss, like our poor, down-trodden and down-to-his-right-hand, Dr. Jack Shepherd.

Apologies to all for the brazen parallel between Han Solo and Luke Skywalker.

Whereas Jack pees all over his idyllic game of house with Kate and Aaron in a booze-soaked fit of jealousy, Sawyer romances Juliet, sticks to her side and becomes the perfect house hubby. But TV shows never follow logic. Throwing a bone at the Star Trek geeks by quoting Spock, "logic would dictate" that three years in a stable environment would forge a much more realistic and lasting bond between any two people. Much more than a few weeks in a cage-lockup where they hump on closed circuit TV. So of course, Sawyer's bond with Juliet is much more solid than it ever could have been with Kate. And in the future where Jack and Kate paired up following her acquittal, poor Jack was carrying the burden of the secret he had the balls to put forth to protect the others back on the island. Oh, and he did have his DEAD father showing up from time to time when he wasn't saving people's brains in surgery. What did Sawyer have to deal with while picking flowers for Juliet? Seventies jive talk from horny Dharma potheads and ketchup instead of salsa?

Will the writers ever circle back with Jack and Juliet? Juliet had romantic feelings for Jack even though it mainly stemmed from survival mode, the same mode that one could argue forged the Sawyer/Kate bond. However, Juliet did back off completely when she realized his heart was with Kate.

It would seem the writers have ruled out any Kate and Jack possibility since they had their shot after the Oceanic rescue, and Jack blew it. Coupled with the trauma of giving up Aaron, Jack will forever be tied to some pretty raw memories for Freckles. Too bad. It's not like she turned out to be his sister, so it really is too bad. And now it seems that he won't get Juliet either.

We must be the only folks in the room who not only feel for Jack Shepherd but also likes the character and want to stick with him. It's easy to root for the stubbly, wispy haired rogue who gets the best one-liners. Maybe the writers just need to give Jack a few more zingers. Then again, he's a brain doctor, Jim, not a comedian! Going into his apparent integration with the rest into the Dharma commune in the episodes to come, it looks like he's growing his hair out. Good start. It's easy for people to overlook him in favor of Sawyer, because he seems bland by comparison. And he lacks the asskicking, Boba Fett talents of Sayid. Nor the wise paternal, Obi Wan qualities of John Locke. And he's not the friendly Chewbacca like Hurly or the annoying but lovable C-3PO that Charlie was. Someone stop us before we call out poor Desmond as Admiral Ackbar. "It's a trap!"

Jack Shepherd is not the louse who makes good. He's the guy who makes good but louses it up. That's tragic and compelling. He seem like a whiner, but give the guy a break. He got people off the island the best way he could, and he manned up and took the heat for concocting the lie that they all agreed to, by the way. We at the Mung Hour completely empathize with his ire against Locke, because until you actually pull that time machine lever on me, we'd be just as skeptical. OF ALL OF IT.

Sure, he's not as funny and suave and interesting as Sawyer, but similar to Desmond, he's the guy who wants to please those he loves but gets smacked down by a father figure for his efforts. Jack's the guy who wants to help the people that end up turning on him on some level. He's the guy who demands proof not just faith. He's the guy who wants to get the girl but isn't roguish enough nor confident enough to enjoy it when its right there. He's the island's Bill Pullman. He's the guy that people count on when their needs come first, then shit on him the minute he makes a mistake.

Maybe he has a shot at redemption ... and getting laid. Maybe there's some hottie we haven't seen yet that he can make amends with, if it's not Kate. Or maybe not. Perhaps he'll just have to settle for watching Sawyer and Kate huddle around the fire celebrating with the Ewoks while he stares off at the ghostly specters of Christian Shepherd, John Locke and Ben Linus.

A Day That Will Live in Infamy: India Declares War on the Oscars

As Hollywood celebutantes and celebutards innocently busied their afternoons with Rystalene and Botox injections, those Mumbai 'bombay-diers' plotted their attack. With a total of eight Oscars in its war chest, Slumdog Millionaire led the chai-fuelled charge to decimate Hollywood at a very vulnerable time. What with SAG strike anxiety rendering even the most vicious CAA agent sexually impotent, coupled with dwindling ratings for the Academy Awards, it was an insidious night of curry flavored ass-kickings. Despite a bevy of bronzed boobed bimbos, ratings were probably the lowest ever, proving that TV viewers prefer to watch Mike Rowe scrub outhouses on Discovery Channel's "Dirty Jobs" than submit to the bloated exercise of red carpet butt-sniffing and reach-arounds. Still, the show had its highlights:

Hugh Jackman - He shaved one beard and brought the other to the party. Now, now. No gay man would dare dry hump Frank Langella's leg with Brad Pitt a two feet away. The triple-threat Jackman may have seemed over-bronzed, but I think we'd all look like the Great Pumpkin next to the ghost of Anne Hathaway. Climbing atop Mt. Oscar and shouting "I'M WOLVERINE!" at the end of your song will keep you in the good graces of Comic Con booger-eaters at least until May. Nice work, Logan. Long live the Sexiest Man Alive!!




MUNG HOUR OSCAR OBSERVATIONS:
- Goldie Hawn – Sweet Jesus! There is a reason they keep the temperature under 50 degrees at Madame Tussaud’s.
- For those of you who never knew that Mrs. Partridge of the Partridge Family won an Oscar. Well, join the club.
- Proposition 8 is the new Iraq War. Rainbow colored ribbons on your lapels, duh, people.
- Daniel Craig looked a lot like James Bond in that tuxedo. Bizarre.
- Sarah Jessica Parker: you can take the horse out of the trailer but you - damn, screwed up another horse-face joke.
- The Duchess, a period film with powdered wigs and corsets won for Best Costume. Always nice when the Academy votes out of the box.
- Missed Joke Opportunity Winners - It's a toss-up between "Warren Beatty Button: The Story About a Man Aging Backwards" and "Any Mention of the Christian Bale Rant".
- Oscar-nominated songs are so much cooler when they have dread-locked musicians beating copper drums.
- Eddie Murphy - "I'd like to thank all of the members of the Razzies."
- Oscar Wall of Death was a visual clusterf*ck. Oh, and Paul Newman's shoes are gonna be tough to fill, Clooney. He's got salad dressing and spaghetti sauce. You've got what, Darfur? Get cracking.
- Ohhhhhh, Danny Booooooyle ... your Oscar's shiniiiiiiing ....
- Ms. Winslet, congratulations on your Oscar. You now have an obligation to honor those Best Actress winners before you by doing a retarded action movie that gets 13% RottenRating, then an over-budgeted period film based on children’s novels before sliding into an Oprah Winfrey produced tele-movie.
- The camera did NOT show us Mickey Rourke’s reaction to Sean Penn’s win, so we cannot fully verify if he has indeed won the Nick Nolte "You-Stole-My-F*cking-Oscar” Award. We think he won, but because Penn sucker-punched him with a speech-closing compliment, we cannot verify the win.

OSCAR 2009 GALLERY

Now We Can State the Obvious Pun - Nice Golden Globes!

The Golden Globes received their lowest ratings ever, even lower than last year which was pretty much limited to Ryan Seacrest wearing headphones on the red carpet rattling off the list of winners. Not surprising since the average broke American is probably not in the mood to watch spoiled celebrities sashay down the red carpet in jewelry costlier than their houses. The only real rags-to-tiches moment was when Sally Hawkins won for Happy Go Lucky. The gauntlet she had to pass (from her table waaaaayyy in the back of the house) included tables with Pierce Brosnan, Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks and Tom Cruise, Robert Downey, Jr, Brad Pitt, and Clint Eastwood. If she didn't pee herself when she heard her name called, she probably soiled her thong when the two Tom's stood up to shake her hand.

No offense to Mickey Rourke, but the GG's always emphasize the foreigners and the outcasts. Brokeback Mountain's 2006 snub could come back to haunt this year's Oscars, so Milk and Sean Penn might squeak in there. The Hollywood Foreign Press probably doesn't realize that Rourke pissed off a lot of Hollywood folks in his day, and his plastic surgery might frighten too many of his peers who wonder if they could end up looking like that with the wrong surgeon. But people do like comebacks, so we shouldn't count him out yet. It would be great if he got in a fight with someone on the red carpet. Maybe if we all pray together, Seacrest will insult Rourke's chihuahua on Oscar night!

• Actress whose cleavage we need to see more of: Salma Hayek
• Actresses whose cleavage normally don't raise the flag but were decently taped up: Elizabeth Banks & Beyonce
• Actresses who we had no idea who they were but would nail in a New York minute: Olivia Wilde & Jennifer Morrison from House
• Actress who satisfies our Michelle Pfeiffer fetish: Amanda Seyfried
• Actor who needs to keep the sunglasses and goatee to hide the damage: Mickey Rourke
• Actress who should wear sunglasses and a fake goatee to hide the damage: Lisa Rinni
• Actor who ditched the fright wig and finally got a decent set of hair grafts: Tom Hanks
• Gayest straight man on the red carpet: Mario Lopez
• Gay man on the red carpet who looked most like an older lesbian: fashion guru Steven Cojacaru
• Skinniest broad in the joint: Wow, too many to pick from, but if we have to, it's a toss-up between Cameron Diaz and Happy Go Lucky's Sally Hawkins. We need some group along the lines of PETA to step in. Maybe a group called "EATS" which stands for "Educating Appetites To Starlets". They ambush anorexic stars with hamburgers and fries.

And now, the Mung Hour Awards:

• The Renee Zellwegger "I'm-Privately-A-Total-Whackjob" Award goes to Anne Hathaway
• "Still Can't Tell 'Em Apart" Award goes to Amy Adams and Isla Fisher
• Angie Dickinson "I-Was-F**ing-Sinatra-20-Minutes-Before-The-Show" Award goes to Drew Barrymore
• "Huckleberry Hound" Award goes to Maggie Gyllenhaal
• Chris Klein "Your-Career-Minutes-Are-Almost-Up" Award, for the person least likely to ever win an award goes to Ashton Kutcher
• "Head! Beer! Now!" Huge Cranium Award is an ironic toss-up between future Kirk, Chris Pine and future Spock, Zachary Quinto
• "It's-Not-1990-Time-For-Normal-Bangs-Haircut" Award goes to Johnny Depp
• We need a new award, something that echoes 1998's "Nick Nolte - Why did the Prancing WOP Take My Oscar" Award. Maybe something like "Baldwin-Shaloub-Laurie AGAIN?" Award. Definite winner of that last night would be Entourage's Kevin Connolly.

Holiday Season 2008: Where Have All the Hobbits Gone?

This has been the most pathetic holiday season at the box office in a while. Remember the days when you asked yourself, "Hmm, should we see Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings? The Aviator or Chicago? A Beautiful Mind or Confessions of a Dangerous Mind?"

Maybe it was the writer's strike pushing a lot of product into 2009 to cover the gaps. Maybe it was the economy. Maybe it was the lack of pre-sold franchises available. Or maybe it was the fact that too many studio weasels were focused on shitty remakes. Regardless, this has been the perfect time to be homebound with a newborn or snowed in, since the best things to watch are all DVD's like Season 4 of Lost and Deadwood. When the best reviewed film of the weekend (Benjamin Button) only merits a 74% RT freshness rating, then even the critics have given up. Niche films like Milk, Doubt and The Wrestler aside, Hollywood simply laid up this season.

The Spirit had none of its namesake at the box office. Today effectively has ended the solo directing career of one Frank Miller, who enjoyed the two weeks humidor rental at the Beverly Hills Hotel Polo Lounge cigar room but now has been sent packing back to Los Feliz.

The real B.O. battle this weekend was between tabloid favs Aniston vs. Pitt, with GQ's naked cover girl and the dead dog kicking Brad Pitt's wrinkled old-man-ass by a mile. Who would have thunk? And here some of us were all skeptical for Owen Wilson's post-suicidal return to the big screen in a (SPOILER AHEAD) dog-dies-at-end vehicle. We stand corrected. Hmmm, sequel? Dogs never die in Hollywood. They just produce puppies. How about a cross-over franchise? Marley vs. Beethoven: Dog Eat Dog, coming Christmas 2009.

Adam Sandler's hopes that Bedtime Stories would be his Night at the Museum aren't totally dashed just yet. $28M is respectable, if not low by Sandler standards, but it can play and play in January. Nobody believes it's going to be the hit that Disney hoped it would be, marking a pedestrian year for the Mouse House. Disney has now also dropped out of the Narnia franchise after Prince Caspian tanked. Too bad too since the movie garnered good reviews.

Frankly, someone over in Disney marketing should be summarily fired up top. No way they should have released the Narnia sequel in the summer, particularly sandwiching it in between Iron Man and Indy. The original Narnia was a holiday release, and as we like to quote Crash Davis a lot on this site, "You don't fuck with a winning streak." They'd still be in the C.S. Lewis money-printing business if they had simply released the movie this past weekend instead of last June. Overall, there were NO big budget genre films, and that's a travesty during Christmas. Disney above all the other studios, dropped the ball. Adam Sandler won't save them either.

Disney also should be spanked for not marketing Bolt until right before it was released. Someone drew a chart of internet hits for Madagascar 2 vs. Bolt. The line of online interest for Madagascar showed a steady increase from summer through October, indicating the level of awareness. The line for Bolt started roughly a month out. In typical Disney fashion, they waited until right before it opened to tell people about it. It backfired. They've done the same thing with most everything else, save for the Pirates franchise and the Pixar films.

But this past week has just been BORING at the box office. Not a single movie made $40M or more. Most of that is the due to the films themselves, but there is no doubt that snow storms hurt a lot of these films on some level. Normally, it's just the east that gets hit. This month, it was entire sections of the countries and both coasts.

Will Smith's Seven Pounds (of Shit) only cost around $55M and has already made $40M. It may be a bomb by Will Smith standards, but he got his $20M worth of flesh and got to cry on camera while reading the treatments for I Am Still Legend, Hancock Returns and Badder Boys.

Keanu Reeve's The Day The Pants Should Fill is turning out to be an expensive bomb for Fox. Hell even Keanu is babbling about another Speed movie with Sandra Bullock. Fox's only silver lining this past week is that their current legal victory with Watchmen, but they don't have much else to celebrate until Wolverine five months from now, and that could be iffy. And is it us, or is Fox responsible for most of the mediocre Marvel films? X-Men and X2 aside, they've got turds like X3, Daredevil and the Fantastic Fours to account for.

Again, the holidays should include at least two big genre films. Hell even something bloated like Jackson's King Kong would suffice. Hollywood gave us a gnarled up Brad Pitt, a dead dog rom-com, Scientologists vs. Nazis and a pedestrian Adam Sandler FX film. Tsk. Tsk. Let's hope there is no SAG strike. Holiday 2009 could be even worse, if that's at all possible.

TOP 10 THINGS TO DO ON CHRISTMAS DAY

1) Marvel at how much money the cast of A Christmas Story is NOT making from the TNT marathon.

2) Reminisce about the times you braved snow and ice on Christmas night, so you could nail your college girlfriend.

3) Race to the nearest Santa you can find still working and stammer, "I know you're not THE Santa I screamed at and pee'd on 30 years ago, but please accept this apology anyway!"

4) Drink a toast to all the many talented Jewish folks who wrote your favorite Christmas songs.

5) At brunch, compliment your mother's scrambled eggs and then quickly drop that you've switched political parties and are now in fact gay and dating Neil Patrick Harris.

6) Get ripped, cover yourself completely in mud, climb onto your roof at 2am and, torch in hand scream, "Santa! I'm here! Do it! Do it now!" and see how many of your neighbors get your Predator homage.

7) Wrap a box of Magnum condoms for tonight's family white elephant game.

8) Tell your Latino buddy that you hate the song "Feliz Navidad" but that you hope it won't damage your friendship.

9) Tell your wife that her Christmas present is a two-week trip to Paris and Italy, leaving out the part about you not actually booking it until you both retire for the following morning.

10) Nude Christmas caroling outside of 7-11.