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First Word

Notes from a burial: Making sure no moment of Anna Nicole Smith's final procession to the grave went uncovered, Entertainment Tonight provided TV coverage from inside Smith's service on Friday, where 100 mourners -- including her mother, Virgie Arthur; partner, Howard K. Stern; ex, Larry Birkhead; and a weird cast including former Guns 'N Roses guitarist Slash -- gathered to say farewell. (ET Online includes a timeline of the entire day, from when Smith's body left the Broward County Medical Examiner's Office to when she was buried at Lakeview Memorial Gardens in Nassau, Bahamas.) It was a muted affair, reported MSNBC, or at least as muted as any service featuring a coffin covered in pink velvet can be. In a classy addendum, the celebrity Web site Starpulse notes that tour operators are already offering a trip to Smith's final resting place for $58.50. (ET Online, MSNBC, Starpulse)

Another Voice editor in chief rolls: After only six months at the helm of the Village Voice, David Blum was fired on Friday night. The ostensible reason for his firing was comments he made at a meeting on Wednesday about the lack of racial diversity on the Voice staff; one witness says Blum told the people at the meeting he didn't need to apologize for being a "white male Jew from the Upper West Side" and that he was sorry the paper wasn't reaching "Joe Jones from Flatbush." But other staffers tell Gawker the comments weren't "outrageous," and the paper may have already been looking for Blum's exit. As the New York Times reports, a spokesperson for the Voice said, "The incident this week brought to a head concerns that the newspaper's management had for a period of time." Village Voice Media director of new media (and former Boston Phoenix editor) Bill Jensen has taken over as interim editor in chief. (Gawker, N.Y. Times)

White noise . . . Actor/rocker Jared Leto broke his nose during a concert with his outfit 30 Seconds to Mars on Thursday. He was hurt when he jumped into the crowd and his adoring fans surged, overpowering the concert's security. A promoter for the show told the press: "I've been producing shows for 25 years and this was one of the scariest moments I have witnessed." (People) ... While filming for "The Simple Life" on Friday, Nicole Richie (right) collapsed and was taken to a nearby hospital, where she was treated for dehydration and quickly released. (The Sun) ... A stolen Norman Rockwell painting, "Russian Schoolroom," has turned up in Steven Spielberg's house -- the director unwittingly bought the painting, which was stolen during an exhibition in 1973, for his art collection back in 1989. (BBC News) ... A judge in New York has given Naomi Campbell community service for throwing her phone at her maid, but she won't be sweeping up city streets -- she'll do her five days of service cleaning up inside an undisclosed city facility. (Rush & Molloy) ... During a match in Madrid, Spain, on Sunday, soccer star and future Angeleno David Beckham left the game after injuring his right knee -- he's undergoing tests on Monday to determine the extent of the injury. (People)

Talker

"300" has a political angle? The film "300" -- an action movie about the battle of Thermopylae in ancient Greece that comes out on Friday -- has taken on political overtones, but, the New York Times reports, no one is sure exactly what those overtones are supposed to mean. Are audiences meant to see George Bush in Leonidas, the Spartan king leading a small force to "defend freedom at any cost"? Or is Bush Xerxes, "the Persian emperor who led his force against Greek's city states in 480 B.C., unleashing an army on a small country guarded by fanatical guerrilla fighters so he could finish a job his father had left undone." While the film's director, Zack Snyder, says he intended neither reading, online fans and some journalists have started a discussion about the film's point of view -- during a recent screening at the Berlinale film festival, some audience members stormed out, and Snyder was grilled at the movie's press conference on the topic. ("That Film's Real Message? It Could Be: 'Buy a Ticket,'" N.Y. Times)

Buzz Index

• Most viewed story on Yahoo News: "Markets Across Asia Plunge," Associated Press
• Most e-mailed story in the New York Times: "Darwin's God"
• Most popular news story on Technorati: "Lunar Eclipse Wows Sky Watchers," BBC News
• Most popular story on Google News: "Anna Nicole Smith Buried but Far From Gone"

; )

"Unreleased Jimmy Page Guitar Riff to Be Retrieved From Secret Vault to Save Rock and Roll" (The Onion)

Judgment

A monster for our time: South Korean director Bong Joon-ho's "The Host," and its giant killer tadpole, gets praise lavished on it this week by the New Yorker's Anthony Lane, who calls it "a perfect mixture of the silly and the grave." The monster, the product of an environmental accident that takes its revenge on downtown Seoul, boasts "a lashing tail, which also functions as a lasso; legs as thick as a dinosaur's, with claws that can churn up concrete; eyes as dull as glue; and a mouth that seems to peel open in many directions at once." The movie, the "most successful release in the history of Korean cinema," follows a father's battle to free his young daughter from the grasp of the beast. Lane, meanwhile, tells us that he has "seen 'The Host' twice and [has] every intention of watching it again." (The New Yorker; not available online)

The Fall Out: Sasha Frere-Jones, meanwhile, considers the latest from Fall Out Boy, the Illinois hard-rock outfit whose new record, "Infinity on High," has topped the charts since its release last month. Frere-Jones points out that hard rock, once a staple of the Top 10, now rarely makes it there, and says what sets FOB apart is their "universally catchy songs" and "the star power of its eyeliner-wearing bassist and spokesman, Pete Wentz, who is also responsible for the group's exceedingly self-conscious lyrics." Frere-Jones calls the record "deeply pleasurable, consisting of compressed, torqued-up rock songs that rarely detour into instrumental passages and return single-mindedly to choruses that range from the reasonably hummable to the eminently hummable." What also separates FOB is their almost singular obsession with ... Fall Out Boy, the traps of success and selling out. "They say I only think in the form of crunching numbers, in hotel rooms collecting Page Six lovers," Wentz sings on "Thnks fr th Mmrs." Frere-Jones writes: "Wentz is emo's Woody Allen, unable to enjoy his increasing fame and determined to lampoon himself before someone else does." (The New Yorker; not available online)

Relatedly, we've always enjoyed this YouTuber's attempt to translate FOB's megahit from 2005, "Sugar, We're Going Down":

Numbers

The weekend box office:

(Box Office Mojo)

Turn On

On Monday night, "Heroes" (NBC, 9 p.m. EST) airs its last episode before going on hiatus, while "The Class" (CBS, 8:30 p.m. EST) and "The Naked Trucker and T-Bones Show" (Comedy Central, 10:30 p.m. EST) both end their first seasons. Plus, all you Colbert ice cream fans check out tonight's guests -- I think we're in for an announcement.

Talk

Fix contributors: Heather Havrilesky, Scott Lamb, Kerry Lauerman, David Marchese, Laura Miller, Andrew O'Hehir, Amy Reiter, Stephanie Zacharek

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