Saturday, June 10, 2006

Latent Box Office Séance


Okay.... (sighs heavily) I'm going to try this ONE MORE TIME! I think the Devil really is watching me! The Blogger servers went down last time I tried to post, and before that I couldn't post a pic to save my life! (see previous post) But now it looks like ... All Systems Go, Friend or Foe, It's something with the Devil - it's Touch and Go, followed by the coolest synth riff in the history of MTV videos... although it manages to escape the many lists on TV now. Face it people! We're living in a List Renaissance. It's time to sit back and revel in all the great cultural achievements that have come before our time. Yes, there's never been a better time for a critic to make their mark in the world...
Anyway, let's look at the Box Office tally for this week. Hanging by fingernails at number 10 it's Donald Petrie's Just My Luck, and his luck must be taking a turn for the worse. Then again, what busboy in the heart of Hollywood wouldn't kill everyone they ever knew for a streak like Miss Congeniality, How to lose a Guy in 10 days and Welcome to Mooseport? Meanwhile, Lindsay Lohan's parents are scolding her, saying "You were beaten by A DOCUMENTARY ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING, FOR GOD'S SAKE!!!" On the plus side, Lindsay's brother is now an understudy for Alan Cumming in the Broadway play... well, just a general understudy.
Meanwhile, coming in at number 9, from the director of Gossip, it's An Inconvenient Truth. Eat your heart out, Michael Moore! Actually, I think F9/11 had a little bit stronger opening, but never mind. Global Warming is just becoming a celebrity in its own right. Oh, I miss the days of El Niño! Anyway, so they had a commercial for AIT during The Daily Show, kinduvan Action Movie-style trailer. The next commerical was this Tanqueray commercial where this wicked British black dude was on a cruise ship somewhere amongst the ever fewer icebergs, and he says "I'm told there's over a billion ice cubes in one of those things." Kind ov a depressing thought: it used to be an iceberg had at least 5 trillion ice cubes in it. That was the size of the one that took down the Titanic, I'm told [by James Cameron himself! :) ]
Moving on, from impending real evil to good old fashioned made-up movie evil, it's See No Evil making just, pitiful numbers. That's 2 million dollars this weekend from people too impatient to wait and see The Omen. Or, for that matter, Saw 3.
At #7, RV is still riding strong on low gas mileage, but it probably hasn't made a profit even yet. 5 weeks on the charts - you know why? It's outta respect. Oh sure, maybe it's only doing slightly better than Wild Wild West, surely not as good as the first two Men In Black's. And didn't Get Shorty spend its first three weeks at #1? The point being, theater distributors give respect to these great directors who've entertained the hell out of us... oh yeah, and Sonnenfeld too. :)
At #6, in a cruel ironic twist, Poseidon's box office totals are slowly sinking into the oblivion that all movies must endure. 3.49 mill? That's not even enough to pay the illegal aliens working on the picture, for Chrysler's sake! Moving on...
All right! Now we're getting into those extra-bloated ticks sucking all the blood out of the proverbial Box Office dog. The next four in a row have already raked in 100 million. Now they're just greedy! New rule: once a film makes 100 million, it's immediately pulled from theaters, and they just start selling the DVDs.
Anyway, #5 brings us MIIII as Stephen Colbert is fond of saying, and no, it's not Men in Black 4 misspelled. Rather, it's Tom-Kat's Mission Impossible 3: Talladega Nights. And even after all that, the Cruise-missile-meister STILL won't do a guest shot on Lost for poor, long-suffering J.J.! You bastard!
#4 brings us the Red State fave, The Da Vinci Code. And guess what? It's already made Entertainment Weekly's 25 Most Controversial Films of All Time list, just edging out Freddy Got Fingered. Payola Forever!
#3 is Over The Hedge, and it's hardly over the hill, my friends. Why, the now defunct DreamWorks has already got three sequels planned, and they're even going to let Bruce Willis into the script meetings so he can sneak in some of his many right-wing views. Bruno will sing again, oh yes... Idar-Oberstein Uber Alles!!!
#2 is X3, already well on its way to make 300 million, or the catering budget of Spider Man 3 (never to be outdone). I'm already way behind schedule so I'll append my further remarks til next time. Trust me, it'll make my head spin.
Finally we come to the magic that is the Vince-ifer Vaughn-iston... Jen-ince-fer Anis-ghn? Vin-gifer Vaughn-niston-ghn. Obviously this requires a lot more study, and I'm hardly the guy to do it. I didn't get no Doctoral Dissertation from USC! If they can't do it, who else would want to? Yes, it's The Break-Up! All part of my New Rat Pack theory. Actually, it's my New Rat PackSSS theory. Now the 3 S's are for who's at the helm of each prospective Rat Pack: Soderbergh, Stiller and Sandler. Now, Sandler's crew is about to hit big with Click, so watch out, Stiller! See, Vaughn is in the Stiller Rat Pack (Exhibit 1, Exhibit 2) although at this point he's clearly the Sinatra, what with his Shirley MacLaine on his arm, JenAn. But moron that later, I gotta go shopping. G'night!
(now Post, damn it, Post!!Like an idiot I won't save a backup copy, as usual...)

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