Todd  Camp, the founder of Fort Worth’s Q Cinema film festival, has been MIA for a few weeks, ever since he was unceremoniously let go from his job writing for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram last month. He had been there for 18 years, so hardly a last in-first out situation. Damn mainstream media!

Anyway, word comes from Camp that he and his partner just returned from a vacation to the Great Northwest — just in time for him to undertake a very different occupation: Acting. Camp has been cast as one of the leads in Neil Simon’s play “God’s Favorite,” a modern adaptation of the Book of Job, at Onstage in Bedford. As he notes: “My character was originally played by Charles Nelson Reilly on Broadway, so that should give you an idea of what to expect.”

At least he hasn’t lost his sense of humor. 

It’s not something I’m proud of, but it’s true. His name is Manuel Mendoza, and we’ve known each other about 13 years, back when I was the film critic at the Dallas Observer and he was pop music critic at the Dallas Morning News.  We were at a going away party for Manny (he returned the following year) and he was videotaping his friends and asking them to lick foodstuffs off his body. I  think I was the only one to agree. I have no idea what happened to the video, but I assume it’ll show up on YouTube one of these days.

Possibly the last professional act Manny took in journalism was 18 months ago, when he joined in on the Dallas-Fort Worth Theater Critics Forum luncheon where we chose our best in North Texas theater. (He took the buyout that decimated the arts staff at DMN.) But he hasn’t been far from newspapers — just on the other side of the notepad.

Manny has a documentary in competition in this year’s AFI Dallas International Film Festival. “Stop the Presses: The American Newspaper in Peril” addresses the plight on old media in the new media age. I haven’t seen it yet, but having talked with Manny in bits and pieces over the last year, I can tell you I won’t miss it. Who knows? Maybe he included the video of me licking him… which, come to think of it, may have been the precise moment when newspapers began to decline in this country.

“Stop the Presses”premieres April 2 at NorthPark (sold out), but there are additional showings at the Angelika — Thursday at 4 and Saturday at 1.

I admit it: The only reason I went to see “10,000 BC” (the “BC,” of course, stands for “Bad Cliches”) was because of the humpy caveman in the ads. Why else would any self-respecting gay man waste his time on a movie like this? Keep in mind, the studio has been promoting it as “from the director of ‘The Day After Tomorrow’” … as if that makes it seem more appealing instead of less.

Anyhoo, there was always the chance the film would surprise me by being better than I expected — and since my expectations were lower than sedimentary rock, that seemed possible.

Not. Gonna. Happen.

Yes, the lead, played by Steven Strait (please!) — and all the other men for that matter — have the odd physical trait of sporting 4-foot long dreaklocks, but otherwise are all hairless twinks. I didn’t realize depilatory existed in the neolithic epoch. Then there’s the scenery. I want to know what Realtor these cavemen used. They appear to live at the top of the Himalayas — snow-covered craggy peaks which, inexplicably, are also stomping grounds for wooly mammoths — but just two days’ walk gets them to verdant tropical rainforests where bamboo as thick as your wrist and 12-foot tall grasses are commonplace. (So are giant killer chickens, which I assume are called velostrich raptors.) Another few days on foot, and they’re at an arid desert (which also experiences torrential monsoons) before happening upon emormous pyramids, which can’t really be the Egyptian pyramids, but sort of are. (It’s pyramidiocy!) At the end, they acquire corn, an indigenously mesoamerican crop that magically appears along the Tibetan-Tropical-Saharan landscape they usually occupy (I kept looking for the penguins and wallabees, just to make sure they weren’t trying for a tour of all the continents). I’d love to know how corn grows on Mount Everest anyway.

Director Roland Emmerich at least has the good sense to remove clothing from his star as the movie goes on, just so we have some eye-candy to suckle on. So do it: Look at him. The picture’s there. And save your money.

— Arnold Wayne Jones

This year, I feel a little out of it when it comes to the Oscars. I’m deeply ambivalent to many of the major nominees (”Michael Clayton,” “There Will Be Blood” and “Atonement”) and the ones I really do like (”No Country for Old Men” and “Juno”) are so dissimilar, it’s difficult to compare them — or figure how the Academy will compare them, either. So what’s gonna win? What deserves to?

Check out the print edition of the Dallas Voice this week to see my pix-versus-predix in the major categories, but tune into Lambda Weekly, KNON 89.3, at noon on Sunday to get my most up-to-the-minute, my-opinions-keep-changing guesses. I’ll definitely be watching the awards on Sunday night. I just don’t know what I’ll be thinking as the winners are announced.

— Arnold Wayne Jones