[cnn] Tom Cruise vs. 'South Park'?

Tom Cruise represents Scientology. its not like he's Pat Robertson. Cruise has a direct link to Hubbard. Robertson wasnt chosen by Jesus or any of his followers.

part of me thinks that Cruise is angrier that he's portrayed as 'stuck in the closet' than the Scientology stuff he does.

Going on TV and saying criticizing Brooke Shields for taking prescription drugs after her birth or telling people on TV he knows more about pyschology doesn't help his status of not being a target of ridicule.

Also the whole Katie Holmes thing is the fakest thing I've seen in my life. Wasnt this guy married twice? why wasn't he jumping on the sofa and make public scenes with his other wives?

Scientologists shouldn't direct their anger toward South Park, they should direct it at Tom Cruise and Travolta.

Travolta made that stupid Battlefield Earth movie, know that it would completely bomb. Can you write that off on your taxes if you make a film that bombs under your own wallet?

 

here's a film review of Battlefield Earth, based on Hubbard.
supposedly a religion. How could a guy start a religion if his novels are worse than William Shatners?

http://www.flickfilosopher.com/flickfilos/archive/002q/battlefieldearth.shtml

Based on the L. Ron Hubbard novel -- and there's your first hint of the godawfulness to come -- Battlefield Earth is "A Saga of the Year 3000," we're told right away, which left me half hoping that Bender and Fry, Leela and Dr. Zoidberg would show up eventually. Instead, the first half of the film left the audience with which I endured this flick flattened into their seats in a sort of stunned, horrified silence as the contextless action unfolded onscreen. We are told this movie was "directed" (by Roger Christian), but I have my doubts. There is much running about, shooting, and stuff blowing up as Stone Age-looking humans (the girls' artfully plucked eyebrows are a nice, anachronistic touch) get chased by big, overgrown, Klingon-y looking dudes whom we later discover are aliens, but who look so human that I was thoroughly confused.

Actual human Jonnie Goodboy Tyler (Barry Pepper: The Green Mile, Saving Private Ryan), apparently an escapee from an 80s hair band, is captured by the Klingon guys and stuns their leader, Terl (John Travolta: The General's Daughter, A Civil Action), by being able to use one of their guns to kill a guard. This is pretty much where the jaw-dropping begins, and doesn't let up until your chin is on the floor and threatening to drill right through. The idiot aliens, called Psychlos -- this is Hubbard's swipe at psychology and psychiatry -- don't think the humans are smart enough to handle weapons or even do basic manual labor like mining, yet they know that humans built the abandoned cities. But Terl throws the seemingly precocious Jonnie into a Psychlo teaching machine to see if he can be taught -- something no one else thought to do in the past thousand years, I guess -- and the teaching machine quite thoughtfully instructs Jonnie in how to read English so that he can later read, yes, the Declaration of Independence and be motivated to lead an uprising of humans against their alien overlords.

But just when you get to the point when you want to scream, "Dear merciful God in Heaven, make it stop!" Battlefield Earth turns side-splittingly funny. So hang in there. Because by the time Jonnie decides to take his band of Neanderthal buddies down to Fort Hood, Texas, you will be on the floor laughing. Here, houses still have brightly painted wooden shingles, power lines still droop nicely from utility poles, and there's a ton of cool stuff just lying around waiting to picked up. I'm talking nukes, fighter planes, walkie-talkies, and the fuel and batteries to run them all. Yes, Ugh and Grok fly Harrier jet and kick alien ass. It's indescribably hilarious.

The juvenile quality of the writing here is simply breathtaking. The aliens have no motive for conquering Earth that we can see, except perhaps a shortage of rebar, those steel bars used to reinforce concrete, on their home planet -- the aliens are using slave "man-animals" to break down the abandoned Earth cities with sledgehammers. The Psychlos b**** about what a hellhole Earth is, which also makes no sense whatsoever because their planet looks like the industrial cesspool of Newark off the Jersey Turnpike, and here they are hanging around the verdant, snow-capped mountains of Colorado. And the script would have us believe that there is surface gold that has gone unmined in the general vicinity of what was once Denver.

But for sheer audacity, the stupidity of the Psychlos, as a species as well as on an individual level, has to win the Just Plain Wrong prize in Battlefield Earth. I suspect that they are intended to be a satire on corporate culture, but the writing is so appallingly awful that snickers of disdain are the only possible reaction to it. There is much debating and arguing among the Psychlos about employment contracts, memos, who is or isn't an executive vice president, and how to get transferred away from Earth, with the kind of puerile hair-splitting that makes the movie simply unbearable. Terl tells a subordinate on whom he's got some dirt, "I could forget to write the report, as a friend -- but I'm not a friend. Bwahahahahahahaha!" It's like listening to a bunch of squabbling eight-year-olds fight on the playground.

This is bad 50s B-movie sci-fi, where everyone, human and alien alike, talks and acts like they're right out of mid-20th-century middle America -- "piece of cake" seems to be the favorite term of the illiterate, cave-dwelling humans, and Terl derogatorily calls his new female secretary "missy." The acting is uniformly deplorable, with special recognition going to Travolta for his jaw-clenching histrionics and to Forest Whitaker (Platoon) as Terl's dim-witted assistant, just for being here. The science is horrendous, and I can't even bear to go into that. This movie will leave you feeling pummeled, your defenses worn down till you're trembling and babbling incoherently. Just bend over, put your head between your knees, and take deep breaths. The nausea will pass.

It saddens me that Battlefield Earth is John Travolta's labor of love (he's one of the film's producers), his valentine to Scientology founder Hubbard. How dreadfully sad. How very... Ed Wood of him. It's tragic, really.

 

SCIENTOLOGY = AMWAY

How else is John Trovolta buying leer jets? he didnt make that many good movies.

 

http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/TV/03/21/television.southpark.reut/index.html
'South Park's' Chef back -- but not Hayes
New season will launch with 'Return of Chef'

LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- Soul singer Isaac Hayes may have quit his job as the voice of Chef on "South Park" after a disagreement over religion, but his character will live on when the satiric cable TV cartoon returns to Comedy Central this week, the network said Monday.

Hayes and his "South Park" alter ego are at the center of an ongoing flap over an episode last November that poked fun at the Church of Scientology and its celebrity adherents, including actor Tom Cruise.

The tenth season of "South Park" will launch Wednesday with a new episode titled "The Return of Chef!", marking the "triumphant homecoming" of lusty school cafeteria cook James "Chef" McElroy to the show, the network said in a statement.

Hayes, 63, himself a follower of Scientology, surprised producers a week ago by announcing he was leaving the series because he objected to its "inappropriate ridicule" of religion, though he made no reference to the show's spoof of Scientology last fall.

Two days later, Comedy Central abruptly pulled a scheduled repeat of that episode, titled "Trapped in the Closet." Sources close to the show said the rerun was canceled after Cruise threatened to boycott promotion of his upcoming film, "Mission: Impossible III," for sister studio Paramount Pictures. (Watch why Cruise was allegedly so upset -- 2:56)

Representatives for Cruise and the studio denied this. But "South Park" creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone fed the furor by issuing a statement suggesting the Church of Scientology was behind the decision to scrap the rerun.

The network has also noted that various religions including Christianity, Judaism and Islam have been targets of the show's satire since its inception.

The network statement announcing Chef's return for the "South Park" season premiere this Wednesday was a clear sign that Parker and Stone planned to use the Hayes imbroglio as further grist for their comedy.

"Knowing these guys as I do, I can't imagine that they're not going to do just that," Comedy Central spokesman Tony Fox told Reuters. He added that the producers routinely "turn around" new episodes in just six days, leaving them ample time to incorporate last week's dust-up into their season debut.

Fox said he assumed someone besides Hayes would supply Chef's voice. Details of the new episode were vague.

But a network synopsis said the fictional town of South Park, Colorado, is "jolted out of a case of the doldrums when Chef suddenly reappears," leading to new antics by the group of foul-mouthed fourth graders who are the show's stars.

"While Stan, Kyle, Kenny and Cartman are thrilled to have their old friend back, they notice that something about Chef seems different. When Chef's strange behavior starts getting him in trouble, the boys pull out all the stops to save him," the network said.

"South Park," launched in 1997, remains the highest-rated series on Comedy Central, which like Paramount, is owned by Viacom Inc.

Copyright 2006 Reuters. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.