Today's program is all about movies. You could say we're sort of getting back to the show's roots this week. When it started, it was heavily skewed towards movie news and talk. That got dimmed down a bit and mixed in with even more entertaining topics. But this week we spend pretty much the whole show talking about the moving picture industry.
One exception is a short mention of Conan O'Brien and his first week back on the air. It kind of felt like a movie premier in a way. There were tons of trailers, tons of Internet discussions and postings, followed by more trailers and commercials, then some skit/commercials until finally the big debut. And what a debut it was. Conan had a very strong opening week beating out Leno, Letterman, Kimmel and Stewart. Those numbers won't last, but hopefully our favorite bearded Twitter-army commander will hold his own against these network drones.
It's then onto the movie news of the week which includes aliens and zombies! I mean, come on! It's not a movie without an alien or zombie.... or both right? Rolland Emmerich decided to take a break from his cookie cutter natural disaster flicks and get back to alien invasions instead with his latest project, THE ZONE. Hey, as long as he stays away from a certain giant lizard I think we'll be okay. This may all be a mute point though given what was supposed to be a micro-budget found-footage film has been unexplainably canceled. No word from Rolland's camp on why he pulled out of the project and his crew is dumbfounded.
Perhaps Rolland Emmerich couldn't get THE ZONE copyrighted. That didn't stop George A. Romero though with his NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD movie. Did you know that a clerical goof put the film in the public domain since its release? The Internet has opened the doors to freely distributing the black and white zombie classic, but YouTube has taken it a stumbled-step further. The 60s zombies are now fumbling their way through a "choose-your-own-adventure" movie created out of clips from Romero's film. You can try it out for yourself in the Show Links.
And the bulk of our show is taken up by one of those occasional in-depth debates between either Charlie and Dennis, Charlie and Mike or Dennis and Mike. This time around it's Charlie and Dennis. After comments Dennis made on a previous show about people blowing box office totals out of proportion these days and not taking inflation into account, we received an E-Mail from our Arnold-Button maker and show fan, Jason. He included a link to a site where you can examine the top-20 grossing films from the last 3 decades as well as other ticket sales numbers. The page calculated the box office revenues of many big films and tweaked those numbers for inflation. It's quite fascinating to see how the list changes when you make those adjustments.
Be sure to tell us how you're liking Conan's new show by casting your vote on this week's poll question. And if you've got something to say, do so in an E-Mail to the show. We'll be your soap box and megaphone. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm jonesing for a plug. Damn! My Zune battery is almost dead...
