Embrace Your Inner Pig, by Mike Gold
Are you a pig, or are you a sheep? I’m a pig, myself.
Contrary to popular opinion – particularly these past couple weeks – pigs are clean, intelligent, productive, and necessary to our eco-system. Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and while I must admit pigs do nothing for me, I’m not here to pass judgment on animal lovers.
Sheep are useful. I haven’t checked out their SAT scores, and they seem pleasant enough. While I understand they are more appealing than pigs in certain farmland circles (including at least one semi-famous 1960s comics artist who bragged about it) and lanolin is comforting stuff, they, too, evade my wandering eye.
As colloquial phrases, neither one is held in very high regard. Being a pig has come to mean being ugly (totally unfair), being stubborn (probably fair), and/or being a miscreant police officer (tacky). Being a sheep has come to mean being totally passive, one who follows the sheppard’s demands mindlessly, even to one’s own detriment.
Ergo, I’d rather be a pig than a sheep. But I’d rather be a sheep than an idiot.
Last Friday, Michael Davis commented about the Palin-the-Phony-Pig non-scandal, and he did so with his typical charm, wit, and aplomb. I have no intention of repeating his argument.
Actually, the whole thing sickens me.
Not the fact that McCain would seize upon a comment of Obama’s that had nothing to do with Palin and turn it into such. That’s campaigning for you, and one of the ways we can determine the make of person running is the way he or she conducts his or her campaign. McCain’s a scumbag who, according to his campaign “doesn’t speak for the campaign" (to quote McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds). Fine. We know McCain, and by now we know Palin, her ethics, her family values, and her supporters’ stand on hypocrisy and blatant lying. I’m good to go here.
At Sunday’s Screen Actors Guild 25th anniversary celebration of The Greatest American Hero, creator Stephen J. Cannell confirmed once and for that a feature film version is coming. Disney has carried the project on its development list for several years but the current boom in super-hero movies seems to have moved it off the backburner.
The other day, we mentioned that Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea was wowing them in Japan at The Dark Knight’s expense. Now we have word from Time.com that Disney will bring Hayao Miyazaki’s latest animated film to the states in 2009. It is slowly rolling out around the world, having played the Venice Film Festival last week and will hit the UK in April. 
Tarzan is returning to the Big Screen but not as an animated musical sequel from Disney but a played-for-straight adventure from Warner Bros, and director Stephen Sommers (The Mummy). Variety reports this morning that Sommers and Stuart Beattie will be co-writing the screenplay. The duo last worked together on 2009’s G.I. Joe film for Paramount, which recently completed lensing.
Several additional DVDs have been announced of late and here are some of the highlights we suspect you’ll appreciate:
The Dark Knight surpassed Star Wars twice this weekend. First, it firmly grabbed second place on the All Time Box Office charts with a total now estimated at $471,493,000. Its weekend take of $16,790,000 also surpassed the debut of the CGI-animated Star Wars: The Clone Wars which managed a so-so $15,505,000. The film received mixed reviews and little in the way of anticipatory buzz so its performance over the next week or two will be telling.
’ $461,000,000 and become the second highest grossing film in American box office history. 
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