As Scott pointed out in his review, you need not fear that this week's Superhero Movie is another brainchild of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, whose satanic perversions of the parody genre -- Date Movie, Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans -- have been terrorizing unsuspecting audiences every year since 2006. Superhero Movie was actually directed by Craig Mazin, a protégé of the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker dream team responsible for Airplane! and The Naked Gun, and produced by David Zucker himself. But it, too, is plagued -- albeit to a much lesser degree -- by what's turning out to be the problem with the entire modern generation of spoofs going back to Scary Movie: relentless pop culture specificity.

The basest incarnations of this, of course, are the Friedberg-Seltzer monstrosities, which may be worthless as comedies but which could prove valuable to historians because they indicate precisely what dominated the American zeitgeist in the few months before their release. It's too generous to call these films' vulgar spasms "jokes," but to the extent that's what they are, they depend entirely on either audience members' awareness of US Weekly-type factoids such as Britney Spears' shaving her head or their recall of particular scenes and characters in recent box-office hits. That's not to say that these kinds of jokes can't be funny -- the problem with Friedberg and Seltzer, as others have pointed out, is that they think throwing something current on the screen ("Look, Paris Hilton!") constitutes humor. But they do limit comedies' universal appeal and staying power.

• Kathleen Canham Ross (c.1954-2007) - Head of the U.S. Army's entertainment liason office, which assists Hollywood with its depictions of the U.S. Army. While under her leadership, the office was involved with the productions of Black Hawk Down, We Were Soldiers, The Invasion and Transformers. She died of complications following breast cancer treatment May 9, in Woodland Hills, California. (Variety)
• Lois Gibson (c.1930-2007) - Writer who co-wrote the story for Crypt of the Living Dead. She died May 6, in Malibu, California. (Variety)
• Bernard Gordon (1918-2007) - Blacklisted screenwriter who wrote the Ronald and Nancy Reagan movie Hellcats of the Navy (pictured) and co-wrote Earth vs. the Flying Saucers under the pseudonym Raymond T. Marcus. Before becoming one of the tragically blacklisted, he wrote Crime Wave and The Lawless Breed. He also worked under the name John T. Williams and later worked for producer Philip Yordan, who was originally given the credit for Gordon's screenplays for The Day of the Triffids and Battle of the Bulge. He was able to put his name on 1964's The Thin Red Line and Nicholas Ray's 55 Days at Peking. In the '70s he produced three films by Eugenio Martín, including Horror Express. He died of cancer May 11, in Los Angeles. (Variety)
• Curtis Harrington (1922-2007) - Writer and director of genre pics Night Tide, Games, and Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet, the latter of which he wrote under the alias John Sebastian. He also directed Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? and What's the Matter With Helen?, both starring his close friend Shelley Winters. He was known for being able to mix a career in Hollywood with a career in the avant-garde scene; he worked for big producers Jerry Wald and Philip Yordan but also for artsy filmmaker Kenneth Anger. More recently he made an appropriate cameo appearance in Gods and Monsters. He died May 6, in Hollywood. (Variety)
• Sydney Rose (1939-2007) - Executive producer of the Who concert film The Kids Are Alright and assistant producer of The Adventures of Barry McKenzie. He died of pancreatic cancer April 30, in London. (Variety)
• Nicholas Worth (1938-2007) - Character actor who played the villainous strangler in Don't Answer the Phone! He also appears in Darkman, The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! and Swamp Thing. He died of heart failure May 7, in Van Nuys, California. (LA Times)