But wait a minute! What's this? Pineapple Express got cut down to #5? Oh, Apatow's not gonna be happy about this. You betrayed him, Stiller, for the last time... just checking. Nope! Apatow didn't produce it! Guess he's off doing his own thing. He'll have something by Christmas time, I'm sure. Meantime, there's a gloomy sheriff walking down Main Street in Apatown, population Loser.
Anyway, let's assess the fallout. Strangely enough, after the first couple weeks, Batman's had a rather linear drop-off in repeat business. Hmm! People are finally looking past the hype and studying the flaws? Oh, that's not good. That's never good. But I think it's doing all right in the long run, well enough that someone free-lancing for GQ magazine a couple decades from now won't have to write a guilty pleasure article for some Hollywood producer titled "Why I like The Dark Knight" and extolling its virtues as a guilty pleasure. No, it's above and beyond that; Patrick Swayze's not in it, after all. Or Steven Seagal. No, someday someone will have to write a similar article titled "Why I like Who's Your Caddy", or "Why I like From Justin to Kelly." But it (The Dark Knight) had to be bested by someone eventually, and Tropic Thunder, Ben Stiller's latest, was finally able to do it. If my counting's correct, this is his fourth feature film in so many years, and I think we can all attribute its success to a youth bubble that grew up on Night at the Museum and is finally able to appreciate Ben's R-rated side. And of course, I'll do my part to differentiate screenwriter Etan Cohen from Ethan Coen. It won't be easy. I mean, their names are pretty similar. They even have the same number of letters! All you do is move an 'h' around, and the two are the same! They did the Matrix, right?
Moving briskly along to #3, it's an animated Star Wars feature. Of the voices, C3PO and Mace Windu came back. And Count Dooku. Something depressing about that. I'm far too depressed to see if the guy who does Jabba the Hutt's voice is the same as from Return of the Jedi. ...okay, just looked. So, who did the voice in Jedi? James Earl Jones, right? ... Nope, someone else.
What's next? Oh yeah, that horror movie at #4, called Mirrors. Not as setting-centric as 1408, but a little more substantial than that one with ... who's that guy who looks like David Duchovny but he's different? Or that one where some gal's making her bed and you see a pair of legs standing on the bed under the covers? So many provocative images, so little time. But in Mirrors, internationally renowned movie star Amy Smart has the rare distinction of opening her mouth wider than her skull can handle, in order to display the emotion of fear. And it's not even CGI! Oh, if only I still had my DVD burner I could capture an image of that. And I've never heard Kiefer so scared since he was buried alive in ... what was that movie? Da Vanishing, that's it. Let's move on now. Pineapple Express at #5, yada yada yada...
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As for the rest of you mugs, there's the most newbies we've seen in a while, but most of the old-bies are here in the 6 to 9 range. Except of course, for the best movie Woody Allen's made in twenty years, and it's Crimes and Misdemeanors 2! Hah! I bet he gets tired of hearing about that one. But what about Shadows and Fog, he might ask? And Bullets over Broadway, for Christ's sake! Dianne Wiest only won the fucking Oscar for that! And how about Mighty Aphrodite? Didn't Mira Sorvino win for that one? Better look it up again ... She very much did! So, what's that? Chopped liver? Guess so! And how about... nope, guess that's about it. Never mind.
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