Free Republic

Tom Cruise delivers the performance of his career in a movie whose real subject only comes into focus after it has already started playing with your head.Near the beginning of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “Digger,” oil baron Digger Rockwell (Tom Cruise) is briefing the president and his Cabinet. Digger, preoccupied with his terminally ill cat, has just set off a calamitous global environmental disaster and is meeting with the president to mitigate the fallout. None of us, not even the most rational people, is immune to the power of emotional messaging. The president, played by a slimmed-down John Goodman, is an...

Has climate hysteria finally run its course? I ask because the latest Hollywood blockbuster on the subject seems to have bombed. Digger, in which Tom Cruise plays an oil tycoon so intent on drilling that he causes an ice shelf off Greenland to collapse, provoking climatic disaster, took only about $8 million in its first weekend, not great when it needs $280 million of box office takings just to break even. According to seasoned observers it is on course to lose Warner Bros $245 million, which would make it one of the worst cinema disasters of all time. Not even...

Hollywood just spent a fortune to tell you the fuel that heats your house, moves your food, and keeps the lights on is a moral crime. The audience looked at the trailer, looked at the ticket price, and stayed home. Tom Cruise’s climate sermon Digger opens Friday, and the early math says Warner Bros. is about to bury more than $100 million in a hole of its own digging. John Nolte at Breitbart called the thing what it is. A shrill, unsubtle, 129-minute attack on the people who dare to use oil to make a better life. Director Alejandro González...

Japan says lunar chasm measuring 50km long and 100 metres wide could be used as a base for astronauts and their equipment.Scientists have fantasised for centuries about humans colonising the moon. That day may have drawn a little closer after Japan’s space agency said it had discovered an enormous cave beneath the lunar surface that could be turned into an exploration base for astronauts. The discovery, by Japan’s Selenological and Engineering Explorer (Selene) probe, comes as several countries vie to follow the US in sending manned missions to the moon. Using a radar sounder system that can examine underground structures,...

A WOUNDED Australian soldier continued fighting in southern Afghanistan for two days before he sought help - because he did not want to let his mates down. Defence said yesterday the latest casualties occurred last Tuesday when a roadside bomb was detonated by Taliban insurgents. The soldier, who sustained back injuries, was one of six Australian soldiers hurt while travelling in a Bushmaster military vehicle in the Chora Valley, in southern Afghanistan's Oruzgan province.

As we NASCAR fans settle in for another great Sprint Cup race with Miles the Monster at Dover today, we bid a fond adieu to D.W. and his famous "BOOGITY, BOOGITY, BOOGITY ... LET'S GO RASING BOYS!" But we shed no tears over the year-long hibernation of Fox Sports' animated irritant called "Digger."

ANOTHER Australian soldier has died in Afghanistan - the second this week - as he tried to protect his mates from a roadside bomb. As the body of Corporal Mathew Hopkins was being flown home, Australian Defence Force Chief Angus Houston tonight revealed an unnamed Digger had became the 10th Australian to die in Afghanistan since 2002. Air Chief Marshal Houston offered his thoughts and prayers to the soldier's family, but said he was aware his words would do little to ease their pain. "I want them to be aware from the outset that their loved one died protecting his...

AUSTRALIAN special forces in Afghanistan have avenged the death of commando Gregory Sher by killing the Taliban leader who orchestrated the fatal rocket attack of a week ago. As Private Sher was buried in Melbourne yesterday at a service attended by Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull, Defence chief Angus Houston was in Afghanistan to console and congratulate the troops that moved against Taliban insurgents last week. "It is quite clear you made them pay for the death of a comrade," Air Chief Marshal Houston told the special forces soldiers at their Tarin Kowt base in southern Afghanistan... Houston confirmed one...

      You got a crush on my missus?       Mangled ... remains of Simpson’s 4x4 after Wright was finished with it       Powerful ... 13-ton digger       By ALEX PEAKE Published: Today     JILTED plant hire boss Martyn Wright took revenge on a love rival – by destroying his car with a 13-ton digger. Wright, 30, turned Anthony Simpson’s Toyota Land Cruiser into a heap of metal. He went berserk after discovering risque text messages from childhood friend Simpson, 22, on his partner Linda’s mobile.   Revenge ... Martyn Wright...

LOS ANGELES - Like a miner prospecting for gold, NASA hopes its latest robot to Mars hits pay dirt when it lands Sunday near the red planet's north pole to conduct a 90-day digging mission. The three-legged Phoenix Mars lander fitted with a backhoe arm is zeroing in on the unexplored arctic region where a reservoir of ice is believed to lie beneath the Martian surface. Phoenix lacks the tools to detect signs of alien life — either now or in the past. However, it will study whether the ice ever melted and look for traces of organic compounds in...

A MAN purporting to be a Muslim cleric wrote to the father of slain Australian soldier Luke Worsley telling him he "can't be proud" of his son who "died for nothing" - then posted the letter online. John Worsley, father of 26-year-old commando Private Luke Worsley who was killed by the Taliban in Afghanistan last month, received the letter from “Sheikh Haron” just days after news broke of his son’s death. “We were hurt (by the letter),” Mr Worsley told NEWS.com.au. “We’re very proud of our boy.” The letter – topped with Mr Worsley’s home address – has been posted...

Former "Moonlighting" star Cybill Shepherd is way too picky!

Gold digger finds money men unappreciative By Tim Shipman in Washington Last Updated: 12:20am BST 14/10/2007 Money can't buy you love, but it might get you a "spectacularly beautiful" woman - as long as you think she's worth it. In a move that could have come straight from the television show Sex and the City, a lovelorn American woman has sparked a debate about the true value of good looks by advertising on the internet for a husband earning at least $500,000 a year. However, the 25-year-old, who was direct about her gold-digging objective, has received a harsh lesson not...

Class Act. You can take the woman out of the ghetto...but you can't take the ghetto out of the woman. Nice choice Ben! Hope they taste good JLO.