Carnival of souls

* I hesitate to read any more into the failure of particular genre films at the box office than “hey, these particular genre films failed at the box office,” so with that caveat firmly attached I’ll point out that both Doomsday and Funny Games bombed, the latter even given its limited release. But as I said earlier, if you miss Doomsday at the theater, it’s your loss. Get drunk and go with friends!

* While we’re on the subject, Rich Juzwiak loved Doomsday too. “A new classic,” he calls it, by which he means cult classic, by which he’s saying he’s not 100% sure that Neil Marshall knew what kind of movie he was making, which I say he obviously was, but who’s counting. I’m sorry, are you still reading? Haven’t you bought your tickets yet?

* Postscript: The trailers before Doomsday included a pair of lovely looking and promising genre efforts, The Ruins (which I’ve talked about a lot) and this impressively disconcerting clip for The Strangers.

* Battlestar Galactica Season Three, which contains at least two of the series’ best storylines and my single favorite episode, comes out on DVD today. Related: The Chicago Tribune talks to BSG creator Ronald D. Moore about notable behind-the-scenes developments at the show since the end of the writers’ strike. (Via Jason Adams.)

* Also via Jason comes this very funny and informative interview with the great Joel McHale, host of E!’s The Soup. That show is truly one of the great pleasures of contemporary television, distinguished from its celeb-stalking peers by its low-budget sense of humor (fitting given Joel’s background with the Seattle-area sketch comedy show Almost Live) and apparently genuine contempt for the famous and semi-famous people it lampoons. Watch it already.

* Also also, here’s 20 things Jason loves about Donnie Darko.

* Frank Miller is blogging about his upcoming film adaptation of The Spirit and no doubt driving the reverence brigades berserk in the process. Woo! Alas, it’s also driving me berserk because the dopey blog has no permalinks. (Via AICN.)

* Trent Reznor shit-talks Radiohead as all hat no cattle when it comes to new-media record distribution. It’s the battle of people who made albums I listened to on repeat incessantly for weeks at a time in college! (Whitney Matheson.)

* Outside investigators are searching for dead bodies at an old Manson family compound. One of the most memorable (and I’m guessing thinly sourced) aspects of Vincent Bugliosi’s account of the Charles Manson murders and trial, Helter Sketler, was his suggestion that Charlie and his followers killed a double-digit number of people across the country over a span of years without being charged for any of the slayings. I guess this is a test of that theory.

* Finally, apparently there’s a Brazillian death squad that goes by the name of The Thundercats. (Via Matthew Yglesias, who goes with the obvious headline.)