011; a couple o' guys who were up to no good, started remakin' movies in china-hood.

will smith is pretty cool. i won't lie. one minute he's all nu-rave pre-nu-rave, chillin' out maxin', relaxin', all cool, shootin' some b-ball outside o' school, then he's shootin' some aliens, then pursuing happiness and spelling 'happiness' incorrectly. he's a machine. he's a rapping machine. he's all kinds of legit.

but i have a bone to pick with you, mr fresh prince phd. i'm not sure if you're aware of this but your son ('jaden') is going to star in a remake of the timeless classic the karate kid.

...already emotion wells up in my chest as i remember the sad passing of pat morita, the people's karate mentor. whenever i go out to the beach to perform the crane on my wood stump i can't help but hear 'wax on, wax off' in the crashing waves. i taste salt in my mouth, but it's not the splash of the ocean but my own nostalgic tears...

i don't know if this new version of the karate kid can be really be classified as a remake. a) the daniel-san character is played by a ten year old, b) it's in china as opposed to japan, c) it's in china as opposed to the us (i know karate kid 2 was in japan but you can't just launch off into asia without street smart american dicks from the cobra kai dojo) and d) it's not even about karate.

they're remaking the karate kid and it's not even about karate.

re: ten year old daniel-san, how is this interesting? the karate kid was brilliant for the awkward teenage situations! for daniel dressing up as a shower at prom! ten year olds don't have proms! ten year olds don't even have personalities yet. or souls. they may as well just re-cast ralph macchio, with his hormone deficiency he still looks about fifteen anyway. they probably serve him the children's menu when he goes out to dinner.

apparently this whole thing is being made solely as a 'star vehicle' for jaden smith. yeah, he's going to be a huge star after a film is made that has a huge ass budget, earns no money and pisses off every single fan of the original films. NO QUESTION.

if pat morita was still alive he'd find a way to either stop this or make a good movie out of it. because as we all know, man who catch fly with chopstick accomplish anything.

008; blog rumours make elliott smith fans cry more than elliott smith songs do.

i've been grossly ill all weekend, and inbetween the sleeping and the vomiting i've come across a rumour online that they're making an elliott smith biopic. while this is brilliant, the second part of the rumour says that zach braff is the actor up for the role of elliott.

lol WHUT.

don't get me wrong, i love zach braff. his comic timing in scrubs is wonderful, as is his everything in garden state, but he is completely and utterly NOT an elliott smith. zach braff is really good at playing... zach braffish characters. i mean, i'm sure he's good at doing other things too, but like jason schwartzman has his max fischer, zach braff has his andrew largeman. at this point i would like to add that i adore jason schwartzman and he has a much broader acting range than just max fischer, but hopefully you see what i'm getting at there.

however, the main reason i have doubt in this rumour is because there is absolutely no physical resemblance between elliott and zach. zach braff looks like john ritter. zach braff looks like that shady guy that went out with anne hathaway. if you're going to find an actor to play elliott smith the most important part is: THE LUMPYNESS. elliott's adorable lumpy face. you can't have a baby-faced elliott. that's blasphemous. heath ledger would've been the best choice for an elliott, but sadly this is hindered by the fact that a) much like elliott, he's dead just now and b) heath ledger was a nick drake fanboy over an elliott fanboy. the only other lumpyfaced person i can think of is gordon ramsy, but that wouldn't real work for several reasons that there's no point even going into. so, it would seem that there's no-one. however, currently on channel one kinky boots is playing (which i saw at the movies when it came out and it's one of those lovely billy elliott heartwarming-to-the-point-of-heartburn pieces of queer cinema that everyone should see) and i remember when i first saw it my brain screamed; ELLIOTT. ELLIOTT, YOU ARE IN A FILM DESPITE YOUR DEADNESS. HOW IS THIS. and it's because of joel edgerton. not only was he in ned kelly with faux elliot #1 heath ledger, but he was in star wars! anyone in star wars is cool! i strongly urge everyone to sign one of those online petitions nominating joel edgerton as elliott smith in the rumoured upcoming film. let us all forget for now that those petitions achieve nothing. let us instead BELIEVE IN THE POWER OF THE INTERNET.

because if you believe in the internet, anything is possible. even dobby/sponge fanfiction. go on, google it. then claw your eyes out and lobotomize yourself.

003; twilight - punk'd branches out into books.

at the moment every person on the planet is obsessed with stephenie meyer's twilight series and the upcoming film. that's not even an exaggeration; you're either obsessed with making i ♥ edward cullen t-shirts or obsessed with slagging it off and setting fire to i ♥ edward cullen t-shirts. according to teenage girls, middle-aged women obsessed with disney channel original movies and entertainment weekly, the twilight series are 'the hottest books since harry potter'. i think that twilight is the comfort eating of literature - in the wake of a harry potter related depression people will just read whatever the hell they can get to ease the pain, putting on a few pounds of teen angst and hot topic merchandise. even though you're only on the outskirts of a problem, you know that if you abandon twilight you'll just end up in a heap on the floor crying, so you keep going until you're 300 pounds and writing jasper/emmett fanfiction. because it'd be soooo totally hot and as a twist emmett would be really submissive during their intense hyper-speed vampire sex and jasper would have a whip!

so, i read the first three books. my best friend owns them all (oh, you!) and during a particularly traumatic period of being trapped in a dingy room by an oppressive aunt and uncle (it's true, i am the boy who lived) i read them all. i will admit, i got a bit carried away. when you're only allowed out of said room to fold mountains of washing you take what you can get, and for those two weeks i was deeply engrossed in the life of bella swan and her relationship with the vampire edward cullen, her struggle to prove her worth to his family, and the love triangle between the two of them and werewolf jacob black. i found myself smiling as i read romantic scenes. i grew concerned when bella's life was endangered. and then i woke up from the edward-induced stupor and tried to figure out what the fuck just happened.

now that i'm out of that sparkly vampire hell, i can see these books a lot clearer. i think they probably started when stephenie meyer was listening to her dashboard confessional (i'd like to point out here that the lengthy page long dedications at the book of each book are dedicated to her favourite bands that 'helped her through the writing process') and writing some buffy/angel fanfiction. then! suddenly! an idea! stephenie meyer decides to lobotomise all her characters. from then on she begins furiously writing, or perhaps just letting her cat sit on the keyboard and seeing what interesting things it can type up for her, and creates plot points that you can't actually make up (unless you're the keyboard cat, probably wearing a studded bracelet for mall goths instead of a collar).

twilight (book one) sypnosis:
a girl moves to a shitty-ass town for no apparent reason. she meets a pretty boy. he avoids her. oh no, she is heartbroken! however, all is well: he's a vampire and he thinks she's pretty cool. plus he sparkles in the sun. they fall in love very quickly but another vampire is angry and tries to ruin their lives, but luckily pretty vampire boy and his family save the day. i don't know about you but this sounds like fanfiction. possibly jonas brothers fanfiction. mary-sue character happens to meet nick jonas - he is so dreamy and holy shit he feels the same! love blossoms, miley cyrus is full of rage. luckily the other jonas brothers help to kill her violently.

it just gets even more absurd in the next few books; there's a group of 'royal' vampires living in some kind of vampire vatican city in book two, a vampire army in book three (i smell season seven of buffy, DO YOU?) and in book four (which i haven't read but have heard about in great detail) it is revealed that edward cullen is a night rapist and that bella's werewolf exboyfriend is in love with edward and bella's freak baby. woah! that's intense! you might need some time to get over that intensity. i find a good way to do this is to burn all of the books or use the pages to make some kind of papier-mâché craft. like a tree-hut to live in while you avoid the stampede of rabid fans to the midnight film premiere.

i read someone say on a forum that their sister had read all the books, and that she had said that she thought they were terrible but 'once you get started you can't stop. it's like a crack addiction'. and really, there's no better way to sum up the appeal of the series. stephenie meyer has successfully written four books of shit, vampires and angst and turned it into a million-dollar empire. the mind boggles. and there's another one coming, and, depending on how well the film does, probably some sequels. maybe one in 3d!

the only real option is probably to give in and join the phenomenon. well, the safest option. and whatever you do, don't ship bella/jacob 'cause you probably won't have long to live.

ps. don't read this if you don't want the books spoiled. oh, wait! it's okay, you pretty much know what's going to happen about two pages into each book given that the basic plot in every one is exactly the fucking same.

more information on the twilight series from the nearest teenage girl or @ stepheniemeyer.com.