• Say hello to the new Wall Street Journal. For free! [WSJ]
  

On Apocalypto's opening day, it's anyone's guess as to whether moviegoers this weekend will have a hearty appetite for Mel Gibson's Grand Guignol vision of a dying Mayan culture, or choose to instead flock to the comparatively benign pleasures of The Holiday, where they'll be spared from even a single instance of Jack Black devouring lovelorn home-swapper Kate Winslet's face. As our early review round-up first suggested, Gibson's isn't a movie for the weak-stomached or faint-hearted, and if a sampling of today's review headlines are any indication, those early warnings of a screen run red with arterial geysers and freshly plucked, still-beating hearts were right on the Mayan-dismembering money:
· Snuff Epic [Indianapolis Star]
· 'Apocalypto' soaks the screen in gore [USA Today]
· Review: Violence overwhelms 'Apocalypto' [CNN]
· Drowning in sea of blood [Edmonton Sun]
· "Apocalypto": Bloody and beautiful [Seattle Times]
· Gibson leads a brutal yet transporting Mayan journey [Boston Globe]
· 'Apocalypto': Bloody lessons [Toronto Star]
· Mayan melodrama: Gibson crafts bloody, breathless tale of doomed civilization [Mercury News]
· Apocalypto: Mel's Bloody New Beginning? [E! Online]
· Rape, murder, mayhem — there goes the civilization [SF Chronicle]
· "Apocalypto": blood, gore and not much more [China View]
· Violent excess mars Gibson's Mayan vision 'Apocalypto' [Int'l Herald Tribune]
· Savage and then some [Dallas Morning News]
· Another bloodbath, Mel Gibson's "Apocalypto" doesn't miss an impalement or a dismemberment. [LAT]
· "Apocalypto": Mel Gibson's latest pretends to care about the fall of man, but it really only wants to impale, flay, disfigure and torture him. Sound familiar? [Salon]

A Defamer operative at last night's cast and crew showing of Mel Gibson's jungle-set gorefest Apocalypto sends in this report, in which the nervous director himself was present to hand-deliver his barbaric, Mayan-flaying baby to the hard workers who helped bring it to the screen:

As Hollywood Jewry continues to debate the prospects of Mel Gibson's Apocalypto at the box office and the awards season beyond, another ancient culture with a vested stake in the director's vision—Mayan descendants—are themselves torn over the prospect of the movie's release. Would Gibson's brutal interpretation of their civilization at its most violent serve to raise cultural awareness, or would it send the world scurrying, convinced that all relatives of the characters on the screen must also by association be members of a severed-head bowling league? The AP takes a look at yet another little known people on the brink of their own Hollywood coming party:

Disney announces that it lay off 160 employees from their feature animation unit (Pixar workers are safe) in the next couple of weeks, generously offering newly superfluous employees an opportunity to spend much more time with their families during the holidays. [Variety]
Comedy Central orders six episodes of the Amp'd Mobile-originated animated comedy series Lil' Bush: Resident of the United States, a move that will surely send basic cable copycats scrambling to misguidedly snatch up the rights to whatever wallpapers and ringtones they find on their children's cellphones. [THR]
Foreign audiences once again prove they're not interested in seeing any film (not even the one with the rats going down the toilet!) but Casino Royale, which takes the international box office crown with $44.7 million, raising its worldwide total to $312.4 million. [Variety]
CBS extends David Letterman's contract through 2010, ensuring that Letterman will remain on the air longer than Jay Leno, who will be replaced on the The Tonight Show by Conan O'Brien in 2009 unless he discovers a way to quietly dispose of his youthful usurper. [THR/AP]
· Kevin Spacey finds a leading man for his MIT card-counting pet project 21, relative unknown Jim Sturgess. Spacey will produce, and may opt to play the lead's mentor himself. Please, no "Spacey mentors up-and-coming actor" jokes. You're far too classy for that. [Variety]

Reviews have already begun to trickle in for Mel Gibson's Apocalypto, and the question on everyone's lips becomes: Will audiences set aside any problems they might have with Gibson's anti-Semitic outburst if the director graphically eviscerates enough Mayans?
[Warning: Some spoilers below.]
· "[A] two-hour plus torture-fest so violent that women and children will be headed to the doors faster than you can say 'duck' when the film opens on Dec. 8...If you've ever wondered what it would be like to see heads and hearts removed without anesthesia, then this is the movie for you." [FOX411]
· "'There are gruesome, lingering shots of people having their faces torn off, their hearts ripped out, and worse,' noted one AintItCoolNews.com reviewer who said he loved the film but was 'shocked' by the violence. 'Mel Gibson may be an anti-Semitic, alcoholic, gore-obsessed maniac, [but] he is obviously an extremely talented director and I highly recommend his 'Apocalypto'.'" [MSNBC]
· "[T]he first thing seen is a freshly detached human head being bounced down the long steps of a towering pyramid toward a frenzied crowd below. Only then does it dawn on the shackled prisoners what's in store for them. At the summit preside dissolute royals as well as a high priest who, time and again, plunges a knife into a man's belly and, while the victim is still alive, tears out his still-beating heart as an offering to placate the gods to end the drought." [Variety]
· He removes pumping hearts from heaving chests, lops off sacrificial heads and bounces them down the Mayan Temple steps. Blood spurts out of an artery at a 90 degree angle. Much of the mayhem and carnage is hard to take. [Risky Biz]
· "[Y]ou'd better not be gore-shy, because Apocalypto is one brutal and bloody ride." [Rolling Stone]

Today's NY Times profiles soft-spoken superproducer Jerry Bruckheimer, noting how Disney's mandate to cut costs threatened even his sure-thing Pirates of Caribbean sequels ("They almost got canceled many times; money, budget, you name it.") and ultimately resulted in their being hamstrung with a combined budget of barely half a billion dollars, scuttling his plans to stock an authentic pirate ship with hundreds of animatronic buccaneers made of solid gold and encrusted in diamonds. Despite these troubling limitations on Bruckheimer's vision, this summer's Pirates installment eventually found modest success, in no small part due to their leader's inherent understanding of what audiences want:

Late yesterday, we noted that Disney had "taken appropriate action" (read: shot in the back of the head with a functional Pirates of the Caribbean blunderbuss) against the EuroDisney employees who thought it would be funny to make a video of them simulating various sex acts while in full character costume. The Dirty World News blog has posted the grainy video, allowing us all the chance to see how our long-held Goofy-on-Minnie fantasies play out when depicted by horny French theme park employees.

· Disney has taken "appropriate action" against the EuroDisney employees who secretly made a "Mouse Orgy" video in which they portrayed a gay-seeming Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Chip, Dale, and a "giant snowman" (do they own Frosty now?) engaging in various simulated sex acts, claiming that the footage constitutes a copyright-violating, unauthorized preview of scenes they've already storyboarded for a direct-to-DVD Fantasia sequel targeted at adult animation fans.
Jennifer Aniston went on Oprah to announce that she and Vince Vaughn are still together, though not engaged. (And don't miss The Break-Up, on DVD October 17th!) Doesn't being in a fake relationship with Aniston sound like much more trouble than it's worth?
Hold on a second—the two Nip/Tuck doctors aren't gay all the time? We thought that was kind of the whole premise of the show.
Is the Butterscotch Stallion advocating felons' rights on the NY Times website? He must've been so baked when he wrote that.
Borat's legend grows in Amsterdam: "Borat boasted of picking up a date at a popular Amsterdam bar known as a gay meeting place. 'This woman reminded me of Kazakhi woman, she was more tall than me, with hair on arms, and some hair on face, and deep voice,' he told the Dutch press."
· The "Lede of the Year" competition is now all but locked up: "A woman has suffered severe burning to her anus after being struck by lightning which hit her in the mouth and passed right through her body."

By our count, the major Hollywood studios have released 107 films featuring computer-animated, talking animals since January of this year, a numbing procession of disappointing, nearly indistinguishable offerings like The Wild, The Ant Bully, Barnyard, A Prairie Home Companion, Over the Hedge, Akeelah and the Bee, and Garfield: Lasagna Inspector that's clogged the multiplex and mostly failed to capture the imaginations of children accustomed to being mindlessly entertained by wisecracking CGI critters. Today's NY Times takes a look at the animation glut currently reaching critical mass, which threatens to confuse—and worse, bore—their core audience, but which for the time being is still producing product that achieves its primary goal: giving grandparents a way to keep this generation of ADHD-addled kids quiet in between Ritalin doses:

For followers of urban legends, Subliminal Smut Embedded Into Disney Classics division, there is perhaps no more discussed and overanalyzed single case than the Little Mermaid Officiating Bishop With A Hard-On. Disney has of course denied it for years, and per their word, from other angles the only bony protrusions peeking out from his cleric's clothes appear to be a pair of knobby knees. Still, the knot-tying moneyshot (pictured, left) does tend to suggest perhaps a surfeit of enthusiasm on behalf of the man of God, an ambiguity that the Jim Hill blog reports is now taken care of with the pending DVD rerelease (right).

On the eve of the release of The Guardian, the cinematic event that will finally provide the moviegoing public with the Kevin Costner/Ashton Kutcher grizzled veteran/pretty hotshot pairing they've long clamored for, the LAT details the incredible lengths the production went through to ensure that its doggy-paddling stars seemed like they were battling sufficiently realistic waves. Sensing that the treacherous, water-wing-shredding conditions of the Magic Mountain wave pool might not adequately mimic the churning waters of a hurricane-stirred Bering Sea, Disney decided to build its own, enormously expensive wave-generating apparatus:

Disney CEO Robert Iger told investors that the company already earned $1 million from iTunes movie downloads in under a week. "Clearly customers are saying to us they want content in multiple ways," he said. Good spin, Iger. Because if you think about it, customers didn't say a thing.

In an announcement that surprised approximately no one, Apple reveals that it will offer full-length Disney movies in the iTunes store. Equally unsurprising is Steve Jobs' desire to sell you a slightly improved video iPod on which to view your newly downloaded movies. [Variety]
· Peter Jackson options the historical fantasy series Temeraire, whose dragons-in-the-Age-of-Napoleon setting gets his naughty parts a-tingling: "I can't wait to see Napoleonic battles fought with a squadron of dragons. That's what I go to the movies for." [THR]
Gold Circle Films gives Batman franchise killer Joel Schumacher an opportunity to ply his hacky trade, signing him to direct the supernatural thriller Town Creek. [Variety]
· John Leguizamo dangles perilously close to infomercial-hosting career oblivion, signing up for a Spike TV pilot about a "bank heist that goes terribly awry," as basic cable bank heists are wont to do. [THR]
VH1 casts one of Flavor of Love's "eccentric" (read: utterly, weave-yankingly insane) contestants in her own dating show spin-off. Be very, very afraid. [Variety]

Having not seen (and no desire to ever see) The Path to 9/11, we have no idea how effectively The Path to Mickey parodies the actual miniseries. (Wasn't it a dramatization, and not a documentary? Where's Pluto as Harvey Keitel?) We do, however, feel a responsibility to pass along any work that reveals Mickey Mouse's sordid history as a Nazi sympathizer, his ties to the Kennedy assassination, and his role as a co-hijacker of the plane that crashed into the Pentagon on September 11th. We always knew in our heart that the acting career was a front for more nefarious pursuits.

• Haunted Mansion w/ Lights On During Theft - Part 1 [YouTube via BoingBoing]

Disney employees who recently lost their jobs in the recent Cast Member Massacre will be overjoyed to learn that the company made "massive gains in its fiscal third quarter," and that's even before their saved salaries and the Pirates 2 box office dollars hit the books. OK, here's a cheerier thought: The noble sacrifice of their paychecks will probably help Bob Iger boost his annual bonus. Yay! [Variety]
Great News For The Recently Shitcanned Day continues, as Paramount gets "back in the black" from the DreamWorks acquisition, corporate parent Viacom reports a large gain in profits, and super-positive CEO Tom Freston declares that the 'Mount is "re-emerging as a top-tier studio." Thanks, everybody they fired to make this possible! [Variety]
There's really nothing else to talk about in Hollywood but money, so we note that Sony beat Disney to $1 billion at the domestic box office. Remember last year when everyone thought Sony's Amy Pascal was getting fired for her bombtastic summer of Stealth and XXX? Good times. [THR]
Universal and Fox entrust 26-year-old Neill Blomkamp, who previously has only directed commercials, with directing their precious Halo project. The studios' first choice for the blockbuster hopeful, the guy who came up with the edgy, buzzed-about "Apply directly to the forehead" spots, was unavailable. [Variety]
John C. Reilly is officially inducted into comedy's New Gay Mafia by landing a second starring project in a week following Talladega Nights, this time hooking up with Judd Apatow and Jake Kasdan for Walk Hard, a spoof of musical biopics like Ray and Walk the Line. [Variety]

Pixar philosopher-kings John Lasseter and Ed Catmull might find themselves investigated by the SEC for receiving possibly illegal backdated stock options, potentially tarnishing their reputations as Disney's new, infallible Messiahs. [Variety]
· Rupert Murdoch pops a fistful of Viagra, publicly chubs up upon News Corp's announcement that the company boosted earnings 19 percent in the fiscal fourth quarter. [THR]
A Maryland court rules that Brent Redstone's lawsuit against dad Sumner's National Amusements company can go forward, but also decrees he must wait until the completion of the trial to snuff out the old man with a throw pillow while he naps during a Golden Girls rerun. [Variety]
Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson will recapture their How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days chemistry in the adventure comedy Fool's Gold, which is described as "just go rent Romancing the Stone and save yourself a trip to the theater." [THR]
· NBC greenlights reality competition You're the One that We Want, in which viewers choose which singing and dancing contestants will star in a revival of Grease. Travolta's going to look pretty ridiculous trying to squeeze into the old leather jacket during his audition, and even more so when Hugh Jackman beats him out for the part. [Variety]

· No Monday morning would be complete without a blurb about how much money Pirates 2 is making overseas. The megablockbuster sequel added $57 million to what we are contractually obligated refer to as either its "pirate's booty" or "treasure chest," lifting its total worldwide gross to a rival-sterilizing $772 million. [Variety]
· Hollywood Out of Ideas, Huge In France Edition: Jerry Lewis will do some voices in a Weinstein Company remake of The Nutty Professor as an animated film, giving new life to a story that hasn't been needlessly recycled in nearly six years. [THR]
Hollywood royalty endures the inconvenience of no direct commercial flights from Los Angeles to Traverse City, MI, to participate in the Michael Moore-hosted film festival there. Notable: Borat's unofficial premiere at the festival, held a month before it's "official" bow in Toronto in September, and Moore's failure to draw any protests to this year's event. [Variety]
The comedy heroes responsible for Wet Hot American Summer add Winona Ryder, Famke Janssen, Gretchen Mol, Liev Schreiber, Rob Corddry, Ron Silver and Oliver Platt to the cast of The Ten, which already includes Jessica Alba, Adam Brody, Paul Rudd and Justin Theroux. [THR]
The non-union actors who walked off the job at the NY American Girl Place store in NY have returned to work, with no guarantees that their stuffed, creepy, racially diverse baby-doll masters will ever recognize their attempts to join Actors' Equity. [Variety]