Say Whaaaa? New Kanyes, Retroactive Abortions, and the Rest of the Week's Most Baffling Crap

Movieline HQ is always a fun place to be on Friday afternoons, if only because of the promise of our weekly visit from the Say Whaaaa? Singers. As such, we've compiled yet another list of the week's most outlandish, bizarre and/or unbelievable cultural happenings under on roof for them to wreak their golden-throated havoc. Who's ready?

5. Jason Reitman's disappearing act

The Up in the Air filmmaker saw his movie completely shut out on Oscar night -- most surprisingly in the Best Adapted Screenplay category, where he and co-writer Sheldon Turner were upset by Precious's Geoffrey Fletcher. So you tip your cap and enjoy the rest of the night's festivities, right? Not if you're Reitman, who we heard went AWOL at the Governors Ball and doesn't appear on the photo wires suggesting he went elsewhere. Say whaaaa? Well, give the guy a break: When all you make is Oscar-chasing fare that the Academy rejected yet again, you probably wouldn't feel much like partying either.

4. Da Vinci of the Lost Ark

Warner Bros. announced Thursday that it struck a deal for Leonardo da Vinci and the Soldiers of Forever, which would re-imagine the great artist, scientist and inventor as an action-adventure franchise hero. Say whaaaa? Wait, there's more! "Think National Treasure and Raiders of the Lost Ark by way of Clash of the Titans," the report notes. SAY WHAAAA? I know! Admittedly it was second choice after Andy Warhol and the Cauldron of Satan, but you know how picky estates can be about these kinds of things.

3. The Greenberg incident

So you might have heard Armond White doesn't care much for filmmaker Noah Baumbach. I'm not going to reconstruct all the gory details of White's latest dust-up with Baumbach's people, but let it suffice to say you should expect trouble any time you end a review with a reference the director's mother and "retroactive abortion." Say whaaaa? Yeah. He went there.

2. When The Body met The Wachowskis

Former pro wrestler, actor and Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura disclosed this week that even he doesn't know what the hell was going on when he visited the set of the new Wachowski brothers film. "Do you remember what John Travolta looked like in that horrible film Battlefield Earth?" Ventura asked Howard Stern this week. "They put multicolored dreadlocks on me all the way to here. They gave me this crazy beard that was hanging down pointed, looked like Travolta, right? And they put a third eye in the middle of my forehead. Because what this is, is this is a hundred years in the future, and they wanted me to talk about the current war in Iraq and how I felt about it." Say whaaaa? How about instead: Because what this is, is this is insane.

1. The New Kanye

Elinor Burkett made Oscar history by being the first winner to jump over her nemesis' mother's cane, race down the aisle off-camera, clamber up to the stage with the pre-designated recipient, interrupt his acceptance speech, and prompt a global Academy Awards audience to yelp, Say whaaaa? in more than 100 languages. We all much would have preferred an interruption along the lines of, "Yo, Roger Ross Williams, I'm really happy for you and Imma let you finish, but Rabbit a la Berlin was one of the best Documentary Shorts of all time," but you take what you can get. High-five, Elinor.