Proposal does Decently...

My god! Has it been about sixteen years? Oh, that reference not only dates me, it's so old it CARBON dates me.
Well, David Carradine passed away recently... that's what I get for not taking care of this at the beginning of the week. There's been a veritable spree of celebrity deaths this week, but no one tops the King, who died because of all the lawsuits in the world. But the one I'm going to focus in on is Carradine. You might remember him as Bill of the Kill Bill franchise, or as Kane from Kung Fu in a close second, but I remember him most fondly as ... let me scan his IMDb resumé for the most obscure thing I can find... as Man Playing Dice in 1987's Heartbeat, that's right. Now, there's been a lot of ugly, scurrilous rumours about how he died, but just like Steve Guttenberg coming to Phil Hartman's defense at the moment when he least needed it, I don't want to hear anything more in the mainstream press about the dubious circumstances surrounding his departure from the planet. But I will say it might have had something to do with this picture of him in this year's Crank: High Voltage. I mean, check out the (false?) teeth and beard! WTF, dude? Even Quentin wouldn't do that to the screen legend.

Anyway, on to more pressing matters. Am I giving too much away by telling you it's my birthday this week? Did you get me a nice present? I hope not, because frankly, I can't think of anything nicer than Sondra Bullock's latest comedy, The Proposal, debuting at #1 this week. And frankly, she probably couldn't, either! She would never admit it publicly, of course, but she NEEDED this badly. I mean, producing the George Lopez show is nice and all, but that's just a day job. She's not going to do that forever... it's cancelled? Oops! Awkward... Anyway, it's the story of ... ah, who cares. All I know is, it's my life on the screen all over again. Girls are always asking me to pose as their boyfriend for one crazy reason or another. What I want to know is, for a 45-year old Sandra Bullock, isn't this technically a cougar attack? Or do we still give her a pass on that, due to the many ugly connotations of that phrse? And how is Van Wilder gonna get out of this one? Will he ever have a normal love life ever again?

Ambling quickly on to #2 is what comes after the proposal... and after the subsequent bachelor party. It's still The Hangover, still making Pixar's Up its bitch. I know these kinds of movies come along once in a lifetime, but if it makes 300 million domestic, sequel please? Just remember, Ed and Zach, Bradley Cooper's the boss here, being the most handsome of the three of you. He's still waiting on that Wedding Crashers sequel, and you'll wait on him, because that's how it works. It's all part of the grand hierarchy of show business. This just in: Ed Helms' tooth just signed a three picture deal with Fox Searchlight.

Up drops to #3. Guess you shoulda brought more balloons, fella! Seriously, though, Pixar, why so coy with the budget information? All the others gave it up! You couldn't have cost more than Wall-E, could you?

At #4, Year One makes 20 million dollars. A little less than Nacho Libre, but still too much for my taste. I still don't know why, but I still hope it bombs. So far it's right on track. Not as badly as Imagine That, but hey. Can't always get what you wish for. And rounding out the top 5, it's Pelham 123. It's John Travolta reliving his Broken Arrow-Face Off days, and Denzel... reprising Inside Man? As Donald Rumsfeld might say, you tell me!
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As for the rest, no debuts, so who cares. For those interested, Star Trek stays at #7, same as last week. Thank the new Spock for such constancy. As for Will Ferrell and Eddie Murphy, they'll work again, of course. But The Daily Show is still the hot new movie springboard in town, as you can see from The Hangover's success. Or maybe just Comedy Central in general. Who knew. For an all-comedy channel there's not a lot of laughs.

Well, that's about it for this week's box office. I assume Transformers 2 is already breaking box-office records, but we'll get into that soon enough. Over 'n out.