According to numerous news sources, Heath Ledger was found dead of a possible sleeping pill overdose at 3:35pm New York time. NBC says his body was found surrounded by pills.

What the heck? Was this an accident, or intentional? He seemed to have a lot going for him, and his career was just in it’s “early” stages. “The Dark Knight” will apparently be his last full length film, as he was in the middle of filming “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” when he passed, and it’s doubtful he completed all his scenes, being the lead and all.

Wow, anyways. What a bummer. Another young actor lost.

David at The Hot Blog has written two articles recently about the movie “Hostel 2” that came out this past Friday. His first one was a direct shot at “horror porn” as he so effectively puts it. After reading that entire article, I wanted to e-mail him and tell him how much I agree, and that we sometimes go too far. I just never got around to it. But last Friday he posted a followed up message, regarding feedback he’s received on his original post. Both articles are well worth your time to read.

I’ve never seen Hostel or Hostel 2, but I have no desire to. The concept and the execution of that concept are enough to keep me away. However, I’m game for most any “horror” flick. For example, I think Saw is brilliant, and it’s got a little gore in it, but I am able to rationalize/deal with that as part of the storyline. The gore isn’t there just to take the story “over the top”. The story is what’s totally messing with you. Hostel, it seems (and perhaps Eli Roth) is trying to use the gore element to make the audience happy. This is one thing that majorly turned me off about Saw 2 and Saw 3. There was just too much gore for the sake of gore, too much nudity for the sake of nudity, etc… and the story sucked for it.

I’m all for the first amendment, but there’s obviously a line/filter that each of us determine in our own minds as to what’s “okay” and what’s “crossing the line”. Christians would call it the Holy Spirit. Others can call it morality or humanity. But it does exist in most people. Do we really want this sort of entertainment advertised and pushed to thousands of movie theatres across the country? I sure don’t. I cringe at the thought of teens seeing this film. And it doesn’t matter if you’re not 18. You and I know it’s easy to get into rated R movies at an early age, thanks to movie theatres who don’t voluntarily enforce the MPAA ratings. It isn’t required by law, after all.

But this is garbage that shouldn’t be viewed at any age. I can’t imagine someone who would actually enjoy or defend watching something like that. Ugh.

Is anyone really surprised about this news? I mentioned that some titles had been cracked in my last DRM rant, but now everything is wide open. At least the titles that are currently available.

They (the movie studios) could revoke this key, forcing the software/hardware players to have to push out a software/firmware upgrade, or if that’s not possible, replace people’s players. How stupid crazy is that?

Since it’s most likely a software player that was used to compromise the key, people will have to download a patch to the latest version. Is this patch going to be 100% free? What if the version is really out of date? What if this happens again, but two major revisions of the software later? Will the older version users automatically get upgraded to the latest, or will they have to pay to watch the latest titles?

Just, ugh. We as consumers need to grow a pair, and tell the studios off. But that’ll never happen. And meanwhile, the people who wanted it for free/to steal in the first place have it, without having to deal with patches or firmware updates or players that don’t play.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,20349888-2,00.html

Wow, bummer. I even went and saw his Crocodile Hunter movie with Jason.. he seemed like a great guy who had a big vision for educating the world about animals, often misunderstood ones.

In case you didn’t catch the Emmys last night, it opened with a parody/skit of many different Emmy nominees. They spoofed Lost up front, with Conan crashing on the island (mind you, they don’t show an actual plane crashing..) and running into Hurley, who leads him to a hatch, which leads him to the Office… just watch and see.

Anyhow, there was a real plane crash in Kentucky a few hours before the Emmys aired, and people are calling the Emmy spoof insensitive. Look, I’m sorry the plane crash happened, that sucks (and I’m still trying to figure out how that happened.. talk about a stupid mistake), but come on, it’s clearly spoofing LOST, a show about plane crash survivors. Also, I doubt the network is going to ditch an entire opening segment (which they probably spent numerous hours/dollars on) just because of an accident.

Nikki Finke over at the Deadline Hollywood daily rants how poor taste it was, blah blah here, asking “What was NBC/Conan thinking?” I’ll tell you what they were thinking.. that 99.99999% of the country would find it FUNNY, genius.

People just need to lighten up. It was a hilarious opening. Not that I really care about the Emmys, though..