MEDIA MONDAY
What have you been reading, listening to, watching?

Scariest movie of all time?
Texas Chainsaw Massacre, according to a Total Film poll. The rest of the top 10:
2. Halloween
3. Suspiria
4. Dawn of the Dead
5. The Shining
6. Psycho
7. The Wicked Man
8. Rosemary's Baby
9. Don't Look Now
10. Cannibal Holocaust

I can definitely see The Shining and Rosemary's Baby on this list. Not sure about the others. I have to admit a few more recent films scared the crap out of me: The Sixth Sense and the Blair Witch Project, in both cases because I had no idea what I was getting in to when I went to the theater. What's the scariest movie you've seen?

Dazzling Hubris
The bad news is that Stephen Colbert is leaving the Daily Show. The good news is that he is starting his own show airing directly after. Howard Kurtz profiles "The Colbert Report in the Washington Post:

Colbert, 41, an old Second City improv player, describes his character this way: "A well-intentioned, poorly informed, high-status idiot" who "doesn't mean to be a jerk." . . . . With his promotion to anchor, Colbert says he will draw from the "dazzling hubris" of Bill O'Reilly, along with Sean Hannity and Joe Scarborough, plus "the folksiness of Aaron Brown, the way he mulls the news and loves to chew the words. And the sexiness of Anderson Cooper. Certainly they sell him as attractive." Watching O'Reilly and company inundate viewers with opinions, he says, is like witnessing a spectacle "as natural as a gorilla beating his chest."

Everybody Hearts Everybody Hates Chris
Metacritics has added a Television section. Chris Rock's new show rates very high.

When is one thumb not enough?
Doug reports on a disturbing (to me) new trend in Roger Ebert-dom:

A thumb's down from Roeper doesn't mean you shouldn't see a movie--it just means you shouldn't see it at the theater. He'll give thumbs down to a movie he'd recommend you see on video in a couple of months. That "maybe" kind of answer doesn't work so well in the binary arena of thumbs up and thumbs down. How do I know which movies aren't worth my money under any circumstances whatsoever and which maybe aren't worth my $9.50 now but could be worth 3 bucks in a little while?

In my own way I have tried to address the problem, though half in jest, with the unwieldy 19-star system. But it really puts too much pressure on the rankings. After trying to decide if a film deserves 13 or 14 stars, there's something very appealing about the thumbs up-thumbs down method. or 4 stars at the most.

Weekend Box Office
1. Wallace and Gromit
2. Flightplan
3. In Her Shoes
4. Two for the Money
5. The Gospel

I haven't seen a movie in weeks - so no help here.