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Man Blames Reckless Driving on Martians
MARSEILLE, France (Reuters) - A Frenchman who raced through
a motorway road block, triggering a high-speed police car
chase that ended in a minor crash, has blamed aliens from
Mars for his reckless driving.
Under police custody in a hospital in the Mediterranean city
of Marseille, the 42-year-old told police he was being "chased
by Martians" when he charged through a road block on the A55
motorway Monday evening, police sources said.
A breathalyzer test for alcohol proved negative, but police
are still awaiting the results of drugs tests and a psychiatric
examination.
France, which has one of the worst accident rates in Europe
with more than 8,000 road deaths each year, is in the process
of stiffening its speeding and drink-driving laws to try and
reduce the carnage on its roads.
'Sin Eater' Is Off Movie Menu for January
HOLLYWOOD (Variety) - Twentieth Century Fox has pulled Brian
Helgeland's occult thriller "Sin Eater" from its Jan. 17 berth
because the special effects were unintentionally funny.
The effects, originally handled by Mill Film in London, are
now being done by Santa Monica-based Asylum. A Fox spokeswoman
said the studio and Helgeland are now much happier with the
progress of the f/x at the Asylum.
The movie's title has also been changed: the picture is now
called "The Order," and while no release date has been set,
a late-summer date is a possibility.
The title refers to an ancient order of rogue priests who
would eat food off a corpse, taking unforgiven sins upon themselves
and absolving the deceased. In the Heath Ledger (news) starrer,
a sin eater resurfaces in modern-day Rome, and begins to allow
great evil to go unpunished.
The picture depicts sins flying out of the human body. Post-production
insiders who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the
problem was that Mill's "Sin Eater" effects were producing
hilarity instead of fear. One insider described the exiting
sins as "looking like calamari."
Helgeland and Ledger previously worked together on "Knight's
Tale." Three weeks after production launched in Rome, French
thesp Vincent Cassel (news) ("Brotherhood of the Wolf") departed
the title role due to creative differences. He was replaced
by Benno Furman, who most recently toplined Tom Tykwer (news)'s
"The Princess and the Warrior."
In Wake of 'Taken,' Sci Fi Ratings Soar
By John Dempsey NEW YORK (Variety) - It's called the halo
effect, and the Sci Fi Channel basked in its glow during the
week after chalking up its best-ever ratings with the two-week,
20-hour "Steven Spielberg (news) Presents: Taken."
For the week ended Dec. 22, following the "Taken" blitz,
Sci Fi averaged 838,000 households in primetime, which tied
it in 10th place among all basic-cable networks.
Compared to the same week a year ago, Sci Fi was up a strapping
95% among households and 88% among adults 25-54, the network's
target demographic.
Sci Fi was gloating because most of its primetime schedule
last week consisted of rerun episodes of "Stargate SG-1" and
"The X-Files (news - Y! TV)" and movies such as the well-worn
"Dante's Peak" and "The Witches of Eastwick" plus lesser-known
titles like "Army of Darkness," "Gargantua" and "Epoch."
New episodes of "Stargate SG-1" and "Farscape," heavily promoted
to "Taken's" solid audience, won't kick off until Jan. 10.
Sci Fi's new show, "Tremors: The Series," originally scheduled
for Jan. 10, won't make it to the schedule until March, the
victim of delayed post-production due to elaborate special
effects.
ESPN dominated the basic-cable primetime scene for the week
ended Dec. 22, propelled to an average of 2.136 million households
by two National Football League games. The sports cable network
averaged a gaudy 600,000 homes more in primetime than the
three networks that tied for second place for the week: Nickelodeon,
TNT and Lifetime. USA and the Disney Channel tied for fifth
place in primetime. TBS was seventh, Cartoon Network eighth,
ABC Family ninth, and Fox News Channel tied with Sci Fi for
10th.
The Seattle monolith: an odyssey By Tyrone Beason
When a mysterious gray steel slab appeared on a hill at Seattle's
Magnuson Park two years ago New Year's Day, people joked that
a UFO piloted by space aliens had planted it there. Maybe
the vibrations that came from inside whenever gawkers spoke
were replies resonating from the mother ship. (complete
story)
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