The remake of The Omen has received mixed reviews, which you can read about at Rotten Tomatoes. Personally, the more the critics complain, the more I want to see the film because their idea of what a good film is usually doesn’t match what the general public thinks.

Quoted from user review at Yahoo! Movies:

The remake was an entertaining and suspenseful film. It was BY FAR the best suspense film that I have seen since The Sixth Sense. This movie doesn’t just tease with promises of a little fright and suspense, IT DELIVERS.

I saw the original and the first sequel when they came out on cable years and years ago. One thing I have to agree with, after seeing the movie trailers, is that the new Damien (played by Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick) doesn’t look nearly as creepy as the original. Still, the special effects look very good. Have you seen the movie yet?

Other than the primary election for our state governor, 6/6/06 has been very unremarkable in my area, as far as I know. The day isn’t over yet, though. Bill Gates could very well reveal himself as the Anti-Christ if Harry Potter refuses to step up to the plate.

Seriously. No one knows who the Anti-Christ is or if he/she is real. Jeff Pearlman (quoted below) wrote a great article about 666 and its power over the course of our history since 1666.

Quoted from Nation:

By “the beast,” is the Bible referring to a three-headed, red-eyed ogre? Unlikely. Instead, most scholars interpret 666 to be the numerical code for Nero, the fifth Roman Emperor (54-68 AD) of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, who ruthlessly persecuted Christians. “The legend of the anti-Christ is that of an agent of Satan empowered to pave the way for the end of times,” says Phil Stevens, a professor of anthropology at University at Buffalo and an expert on religious symbolism. “The myth of the anti-Christ has been passed down through the generations. But to start with, it appeared to be simply a very disliked man.”

Not everyone shares the same doomsday attitude, as you will see with the snippets below.

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Hell, Michigan: Screams Ice Cream is selling cones for 66 cents and the Damned Site Inn’s dinner special will cost $6.66. So far, they have received over 1,000 tourists.

Hundreds of couples in Malaysia are rushing to get married because they feel that 666 represents a good omen. The Hokkien dialect pronounces the number six to sound like the word “luck.” Therefore, these couples are hoping for triple the luck.

The 666 Man: Peter Spyche’s unusual association with the number 6.

Ann Coulter is launching her book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism, much to the delight of liberals everywhere.

An online gambling site has come up with odds (which stand 10-to-1) on whether 6/6/06 will be the start of the apocalypse. So far, so good.

Last but not least, the remake of The Omen opens today in theaters.

Quoted from Hindu News Update Service

The villagers of Bhalej, about 15 kilometers from Anand town, has completly banned the Reshamiya song after several persons from the village got “possessed” while dancing to this Reshimiya number from the film starring Emran Hashmi and Udita Goswami.

“There is an atmosphere of fear among the villagers after three persons, who were part of a Muslim wedding procession, began to act strangely a week back”, said Gajendra Jani, an elderly resident of the village which has a population of about 17,000 constituing largely of Muslims.

“They danced as if they were possessed and sang this song whenever somebody tried to talk to them. They also began to eat more than what they normally did”, he told PTI while relating some of the incidents that took place in the village in the past few days after this song’s popularity.

I’ve had songs that hypnotized me before. It all depended upon the mood I was in and the atmosphere. Some songs are just that good.

This story reminds me of the hysteria created by the War of the Worlds radio program back in the 30s(?). Thankfully, nobody in the Indian village was hurt; they just simply destroyed the offending music.

Although our culture is more advanced, we still have our bouts of hysteria brought on by superstition and fear of the supernatural. For example, the Harry Potter books were banned from several public libraries because several Christian groups felt that the books promoted witchcraft and sorcery, which they felt was a product of devil worship.