Quick Hits

• Here's something from last week that I keep putting off, and if I don't post about it quickly it'll soon be too dated. (I'm shamelessly stealing it from The Beat, by the way). Film director Uwe Boll got tired of taking criticism for misguided masterpieces such as BloodRayne (2.5 stars on IMDB, 5 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, 18 on metacritic.com). Since he was having trouble besting the critics with his work on the screen, he turned his attention to where he might have a chance: in the boxing ring.

Boll took on four Internet critics in a Vancouver and won with a knockout over each one. Boll claimed he had a new respect for the critics, who at least showed up to take him on. Rue Morgue's Chris Alexander had a good response by filling his mouth with fake blood to spew after Boll hit him.

"I spat it out. I freaked him out exactly like I wanted to do, it was poetry. It was my Jedi mind trick to try and disorient him."

He said he got in a punch for each of Boll's bad films. "I think I got him once in the face for 'Alone in the Dark' and I got maybe one or two for 'BloodRayne.' " he said. " I have absolutely no ... regrets. ... This is the weirdest pop culture bizarre journalism stunt I've ever been involved in."

But he still went down in a knockout. Some of the other participants weren't quite so enthusiastic.

Jeff Sneider of Los Angeles, a journalist with Ain't It Cool News, went down in a technical knockout in the first round after his trainer threw in the towel.

He said Boll, 41, had told him it was just a joke, a public relations stunt.

"Then he started beating the crap out of my head," he said. "I think he's a jerk. This might be PR but I don't want to keep getting punched in the head."

• I noticed an odd statement at the end of commercials for Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette. It claims that the movie is "based on a true story." Does this mean that there really was a queen named Marie Antoinette in a country called . . . what was it, again . . . France, or something?

I guess the famous names of the historical figures weren't enough to clue us in that this story actually happened. I wonder if Pearl Harbor and The Alamo might've done better if they'd added the line to their publicity. Maybe it's not too late for The Queen or Flags of Our Fathers to do the same.