Say Whaaaa? Reitman Preens, Perry Snubs and Other Mystifying News of the Week

It's time once again for Say Whaaaa?, your convenient digest to the week's most confounding, brain-wrenching and/or cringeworthy cultural highlights. Your mileage may vary with the absurdities listed below, in which case your explanations -- and your alternatives -- are always more than welcome. For now, however, welcome back the Say Whaaaa? Singers for a lightning-round of recent WTF highs and lows.

5. Jason Reitman wins the Self-Regard Olympics

The Oscar-nominated co-writer/director of Up in the Air recently chatted with (or rather at) Roger Ebert, during which time the venerable critic decided to let the camera roll on some of the young filmmaker's voyage to the center of his navel. In fairness to Reitman, it's not like the speech-stricken Ebert could counter any of this. But when the director makes such misguided, ickily candid disclosures as, "My personal gut test is when I think about the movie that I'm considering, if when I think about someone else directing that movie it feels worse than that same director having sex with [my wife] Michelle, that's how I know I need to do this movie" -- over and over again -- I think we can all agree there's only one appropriate reaction: Say whaaaa?

4. Dear John rates a 29% on Rotten Tomatoes

Say whaaaa? Did I see the same movie as the critics currently lambasting this Channing Tatum/Amanda Seyfried romance that opens today? I kind of addressed this already in this morning's installment of Movieline Attractions, but there's nothing so gravely offensive, sloppy or underwhelming about this Nicholas Sparks adaptation (easily the best to date, for what that's worth) to warrant such freewheeling abuse. In fact, it's a perfectly fine and occasionally quite compelling melodrama that achieves pretty much everything it sets out to do -- except maybe put forth a discernible timeline of events transpiring over seven years. So what? A few well-considered pans aside, John is just another easy take-down target for a lot of lazy writers whose minds seem to have been made up before the lights went down.

3. Tyler Perry snubs his own movie

The mogul's latest message to his fans illuminated the success of his new touring production of Madea's Big Happy Family, the admittedly grand scale of his Haiti philanthropy, his homesickness and lonesomeness for his dogs Peter, Paul and Mary, and basically everything but the six Academy Award nominations earned by Precious -- which Perry executive produced -- that very morning. Say whaaaa? Tyler! This may be the closest you ever get to the Oscar podium, unless Why Did I Get Married 3 finally brings all the flush matrimonial terror into crisp dramatic relief some time in the next couple years. Own the moment! Or at least say "High five, team!" before expounding on how much your dogs weigh.

2. Russell Crowe and Beyoncé Knowles in... A Train Wreck is Born

The fourth incarnation of the fame-and-fortune fable A Star is Born has been in development for a while at Warner Bros. -- just long enough, it appears, for script and casting meetings to have deteriorated into random dart-throwing at a bulletin board of possible top-liners. The best arrived this week as Crowe and Knowles (the latter of whom has actually been attached for a while) were linked as the leads, with the Oscar-winner playing the diva's alcoholic burn-out mentor-cum-romantic interest. Say whaaaa? Who knows, maybe it'll be great. But for now all anyone can hear are the belly laughs from Burbank, where break rooms all over the Warners lot are doused in coffee, smoothies and anything else susceptible to employee spit-takes.

1. The Martini Ranch Incident

Of course the first thought upon seeing this hugely baffling '80s music-video collaboration between the directors of this week's leading Oscar nominees Avatar and The Hurt Locker is say whaaaa? The second thought? James Cameron and Kathryn Bigelow -- we think we have found your Norbit: