THR ran a story the other day about the disappointing first-weekend box office reults for Slither, which happens to be a pretty enjoyable horror-comedy. Sadly, Cinematical soon linked to the story like it was the gospel, going so far as to call the article "rather excellent," which is a cataclysmically retarded way to look at it. The article was far from excellent, and actually played right into the stupid numbers game the studios run, focusing on cash over content.

For starters, the THR piece proclaimed the death of Slither after the film had been in theaters for five days. Five. It took less than a week to be pronounced a failure. In this era of publicity onslaughts leading up to an opening weekend, followed by deafening silence shortly thereafter (does anybody remember V for Vendetta?), Universal couldn't even muster up a convincing ad campaign for the film (not the first time they failed at marketing, either). Not to mention that Slither opened against Ice Age: The Inevitable Sequel, which made an unholy $68 million its opening weekend. Nothing else performed well that frame, so to write off Slither as a failure just because a bunch of stupid families took their braindead kids to see a crappy cartoon is missing the big picture: Namely, box office often has little correlation with film quality.

It just sucks when yet another reporter writes the money story the studios want, instead of actually putting their mind into the story and looking for the big picture.

"Orlando Rojas."

"I don't know who that is."

"Orlando Rojas, the pitcher."

"Oh, Orlando Rojas, the pitcher!"

"Yes."

"I don't know who that is."

"He's pitching this afternoon."

"Orlando Rojas?"

"Yes."

"I don't know who that is."