News from the summit: Nicholas Cage doesn't need financial advisors to piss away his savings

It's Saturday, which marks the end of another week spent looking up at actual successful filmmakers with longing, envy, and scorn. Here are some important stories of this week in the film world, or at least some we found noteworthy.

• "Not since The Birth of a Nation has a mainstream movie demeaned the idea of black American life as much as Precious. Full of brazenly racist clichés (Precious steals and eats an entire bucket of fried chicken), it is a sociological horror show."  That's NY Press writer Armond White absolutely destroying the Oprah-endorsed film Precious, which comes out on December 3rd.  White's not the nicest person, so take it with a grain of salt, but man those are some bold claims.  We'll have to see if he's right.

• You remember that documentary, The Cove, about Japanese dolphin hunters?  Well, apparently it's really good, and it was nominated for seven awards, including best feature, at the Cinema Eye Honors awards, which specialize in non-fiction film.  This is a good opportunity to announce that the Cinema Eye Honors exist (you didn't know either?) and that they'll be happening in New York, on January 15th. 

• Nicolas Cage is suing his business manager, claiming that his awful financial advise lead to Cage owing the goverment 6.3 million dollars in back taxes and being beat broke.  I'm sure Cage's past decisions to buy 50 cars, 12 mansions, $1 million in comic books, shrunken heads, two castles, two islands, and a two hundred-thousand dollar dinosaur skull, among other things, had nothing to do with it.

• Our resident prophet Roland Emmerich will not only tell us how the apocalypse will happen, but now will use a TV show to reveal what life will be like after it.  2012, the TV series, is in the works.  It actually takes place during 2013, and in the words of Emmerich, "It is about the resettling of Earth. That is very, very fascinating."  It would be, if it were an intelligent, fact-based depiction of what post-apocalyptic life might be like.  But judging from the trailers to his movie (out this friday), and as someone who's read about 2012, I will venture a guess that fact will probaby suffer a little bit in favor of scenes involving jets and fire rainstorms.  I hope you didn't fall off your chair with that shocker.

• A computer animated Yogi the Bear movie is in the works, with Justin Timberlake playing the part of Boo Boo. 
  

So the contest we were working on is the Dorito's commercial contest, where three winners get their stuff screened during the Super Bowl.  The deadline is monday and I've spent all weekend so far editing Go Hard's entry for it.  That's the good news but the sad news is that today was a beautiful day in Chicago and I had to spend it indoors.  Oh well.  But at least I was able to take a hungover bike ride down 53rd street, and people were outside playing music from their cars or just hanging out, everyone in a good mood, even greeting me as I rode by.  One of those rare nice weather November saturdays, before this place inevitably becomes miserable.

Anyway.  I was an avid fan of Yogi when I was little, so here's a little blast from the past.  There's a Youtube playlist with 71 episodes from Yogi, in case you're interested.