But either way, read this Wired article about Philip K. Dick.

Dick, who died in 1982, was something of a cult figure until very recently. However, once Hollywood started to accumulate some success with his work, he became dramatacally less obscure. He’s the science fiction author who wrote the stories upon which Blade Runner (novel, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”), Total Recall (short story, “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale”), and The Minority Report (short story of the same name) were based. There have been others, and there’s more coming.

According to an interview with Simpsons creator Matt Groening, Fox News threatened to sue the makers of the Simpsons, a show broadcast by sister company Fox Entertainment. At issue was the Simpsons’ portrayal of Fox News in the show, which included a number of satirical headlines in the “crawl” (e.g., “Do Democrats cause cancer? . . . Rupert Murdoch: Terrific dancer . . . Study: 92 percent of Democrats are gay . . . Oil slicks found to keep seals young, supple…”). Fox News denies the story, but it certainly has the ring of truth.

You see, Elvis actually switched places with an Elvis impersonator, and is still living in a retirement home in Texas, where his best friend is an elderly black man convinced he’s the real JFK; together, they battle an ancient Egyptian monster menacing the Shady Rest Home.

No, I’m not kidding. It’s even in IMDB. Starring Bruce Campbell as Elvis and Ossie Davis as JFK.

I am so there. It’s playing now in limited release, where it’s apparently doing very, very well. Houston’s at the end of the list (December 12), but it opens this weekend in Austin (guess where) and, of course, Memphis.

1. We should, in general, be wary of people with keyrings that match their cars.
2. High blood pressure is rampant among doomed assassins, yakuza bosses, and half-Japanese/half-French attorneys.
3. Quentin Tarantino really, really liked “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon“
4. Daryl Hannah as a bloodthirsty killer with one eye is almost as sexy as Daryl Hannah as a black-eyed would-be killer replicant of 20-odd years before.
5. David Carradine need not actually appear completely on screen to be creepy.
6. Assassins will stop their knife fight when the little girl gets home.
   (Actually, we learn this from the trailer.)
7. Quentin Tarantino can still make movies that are fun to watch, visually compelling, and full of cheesy dialog that somehow manages not to be cheesy just long enough to be uttered and enjoyed.

Ever wonder what happened to Lane Myer’s Camaro from Better Off Dead? Wonder no more. (via Memepool)

Viggo Mortensen and punk pioneer Exene Cervenka (1) were once married and (2) have a child together.

Someday, that kid’s gonna have the best show and tell story ever. “Yeah, my mom was in X, and my dad played Aragorn.”

Underworld, the Kate-Beckinsale-vampires-vs.-werewolves film, topped the box office this weekend at $22 million. N.B. that when I say “partly our fault,” I mean approximately 0.000082%.

Critics seem to loathe it, but I had a much better time than I expected, and I’m notoriously hard on films. It’s certainly not high art, but at least it seems to care about whether it makes sense within itself or not. I’ve seen much, much worse vampire movies. I’ve seen much worse movies that didn’t even have vampires in them, in fact. And this one has Beckinsale in goth fetishy clothing, of which she seems to have a bunch, and what’s not to like about that?

It’s marketed, sorta, as a Romeo-and-Juliet kind of thing, but that’s a real stretch — not every story about (potential) lovers from warring clans is a rehash of R&J. A better case can be made for a racial politics theme, but even that is subordinate to “run, fight, shoot, jump, and look fancy in black leather or latex, pausing occasionally to reveal more of the plot and backstory” (and thank God for that).

Beckinsale is easily the best of the cast; most of the rest seem to have been hired for look rather than talent, but fortunately Beckinsale is (usually) the only one who’s called upon to do anything that really looks like acting. What ultimately saves the film is a more-intricate-than-you’d-expect plot that isn’t over-explained (though the Exposition Fairy does make some unnecessary visits early on).

Oh, I was going to link to the official film site, but it’s a nasty full-screen all-Flash thing. The Sony site, though, includes a link to an Underworld Half-Life game mod, which is a marketing tie-in I’ve not seen before. Clever.

Mike Nichols has been signed to direct a musical adaptation of Monty Python and the Holy Grail for the stage.

The good news? It’s Eric Idle’s idea.

John Ritter collapsed on the set of his current show yesterday before dying at a Burbank hospital, apparently succumbing to a heretofore undiagnosed heart ailment. He was a week from turning 55, which is entirely too young, particularly considering the dramatic work he’s turned in over the last ten years (beginning with Sling Blade). Ritter was the youngest son of western hero and country artist Tex Ritter, which I didn’t know until today.