America's Next Top Kitten

Frazzle Dazzle! I love it. I'm back, folks. Gosh it's been a busy week. Alot of stuff happening. And it's just now starting to snow! But let's forget about all that crap happening in the real world, and focus instead on what's really important: this week's top 10 movies.

And, in a stunning reversal, something I haven't seen since Clerks 2, my favourite movie of the year No Country for Old Men is bumped off the chart to I presume #11! WTF? And on top of it, this week's Entertainment Weekly doesn't include the Coens in their latest bullshit list, what was it, the 25 smartest people in the movies today, something like that. Spielberg was #2, close enough, I guess, as they both work with some of the same cast and crew. Screw off, James Cameron!

But I guess my boys will just have to settle for the love of the French, and the fact that this thing, to me, is the independent movie equivalent of Lord of the Rings, as it is climbing another important chart, the Imdb Top 250. Easily bypassing Fargo and Big Lebowski, their other top 250 mainstays. Man, I just revel in that kind of shit myself, I don't know why. It's just how I'm wired, I guess. Oh dear, the hyperlinks are down but the swears are up.

Bearing that in mind, let's quickly go over the rest on the list to tie it all together in sort of a metaphorical torus of sorts. Sorry, Coens, but Mr. Magorium won the recount at #10. At #9, it's The Mist, and once again Frank Darabont gets Stephen King to write his movie. Is it just me, or are Stephen King movie adaptations getting less and less like the more refined ones of the 90s, and getting back to the more exploitative ones of the 80s? Just a thought.

American Gangster is a get-rich-quick story at #8 with 116 million total in the bank. Somehow ironic that a movie about a gangster does gangbusters at the box office. Maybe they should re-release Mobsters to take advantage of Patrick Dempsey's second coming. (We'll just forget about Outbreak, Pat; they left you on the cutting room floor, didn't they?) At #7 it's August Rush, the mainstream version of ... what's that independent movie, got some buzz a couple months ago, this guy with a guitar... ah, skip it. Deal w/that later.

Xmas is all over the charts, 'specially w/Fred Claus at #6 and This Christmas at #2. Are you sure Tyler Perry didn't have something to do with that one?

And so we segue to Pixar-esque fare from that other Pixar in the sky, PDI DreamWorks... are they trying to split from Disney too? Anyway, we go from Bee Movie, full computer animation, at #5, to the half-computer animation, half-real life of Beowulf at #3, to the full real-life cartoonishness of Hitman at #4. Man, I just blew my own damn mind.

After all that, I think we finally have just #1 left, which is Enchanted, and one of its 50 executive producers is ... ta-da! Barry Sonnenfeld, the Coens' old pal from way back. Small world that turns back in on itself. And I'm spent.