Well I'll Go To The Foot Of Our Stairs

Man, Google has everything!  And Lycos has that 2 percent share that iMacs seem to occupy these days... Oh, right, almost forgot our sponsor.  This week's Box Office Report Retort is brought to you by Chipotle.  Chipotle!  Remember: you can't spell Chipotle without E. coli.  In other news, some in my corner have given up hope and have resigned themselves to the possibility that Kavanaugh is going to get on the highest court in the land.  But who knows?  I mean, everyone thought Roe v. Wade was doomed before John Roberts became Chief Justice.  Why, even he himself thought he was going to get to be the lucky one to put the final nail in the coffin.  But then... then he got the job, time gets away from you, and somehow it never came up.  The rubes didn't seem to mind either, as long as they have their guns.  If you can't have an abortion, after all, you might as well have a gun.  Better than abortions!  The only other thing that comes to mind is this show I saw some of called "Mysteries at the Museum."  Better put a link to it before I forget.  They had a piece about an unsuccessful prospector named Ed Doheny.  After several unsuccessful attempts at getting gold, he eventually struck oil: literally and actually.  They said something to the effect of that oil made him one of the richest men in the world, richer than... Rockefeller?  Now, maybe I'm losing my faith in humanity in general, and in American capitalism in particular, but I really wish they said something about how we've been dealing with climate change ever since.  I mean, God bless the Dohenys and all that, but man!  We gotta dump sulfuric acid in the sky now for... probably the rest of our days!  Pretty big mess to clean up.  And they already considered putting ... no, PUMPING all the excess CO2 into the ocean, but go figure!  It's ALREADY HAPPENING!  AUTOMATICALLY!!!!!  It's, um... kinda how Mother Nature works.  But, you know... these guys are Capitalists, not scientists!  They also said Doheny was the inspiration for the Daniel Day-Lewis character in There Will Be Blood... you know, no time to dwell on how that character was a complete bastard.  On to the next get rich quick story!  Quickly on to it!
And so, we find that it's not 2004 after all.  Back then, Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 was #1 at the box office!  Sure, the week after it was Spider-Man 2, but still!  No small thing.  But nowadays we got all these streaming services... maybe his latest is a big hit on one of those.  His latest is called Fahrenheit 11/9 and it's about Agent Orange, as you all might know.  Now, let's all sit back and let the death threats just roll on in, Anti-Semitic and otherwise.  You know, I was just thinking about how the Republicans are always pushing for a government shutdown.  And then, when it actually happens, what's the first thing out of their mouths?  "The Democrats wanted this!"  But who knows?  Maybe someday there'll only be one political party in this country, but it'll be divvied up as the Rich Republicans and the Poor Republicans.  I mean, there will have to be a dividing line somewhere, no question, so it might as well be an economic dividing line.
No, the #1 movie this week is in the realm of the fantastical, which is where most of us would rather have our heads right now.  This one's got an old-timey long title, in the grand tradition of films like Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines and its even more ridiculous follow-up.  This one is called The House with a Clock in Its Walls.  I'd be very, very surprised if Cate Blanchett's actually been looking for a project to do with Jack Black, but whatever.  Here she is as Ian Anderson, by the way.  Who would've thunkett, Blanchett?  In any event, it's a triumph for the PG rating.  It used to be the kiss of death for a movie!  I haven't done the stats on this, but a PG-13 is typically what you want if you want a #1 movie.
(Monday night) I... wow.  I know the Supreme Court is a prestigious place to work and all that... I mean, it's right there in the name!  Supreme!  Doesn't Taco Bell (TM) (C) (R) still have a burrito that's supreme?  I dunno, though... I might have to go back to Subway (C) (R) (TM) for one of those new... whatever they were, something with beef.  Not quite pastrami; that's not cost effective.  Simply not.  I think I got distracted again.  So, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, AKA "Bart O'Kavanaugh" just wants everyone to know, it's just these two victims and that's it.  And maybe the whole gang rape thing.  Trust me, even the hardened agents over at the FBI don't want to look into these three dozen victims or so.  They really don't, because they'll have a couple of months of sleepless nights over the 150 victims of Judge Kavanaugh's Gang Rape Ring. (TM) (C) (R)  So many victims, and why this is all coming out now about the 780 victims is beyond me.  Bad timing, jealousy, hard to say.  And Michael Avenatti's in on this one too!  Let me be the first to suggest it... Avenatti / Biden 2020!  Run, Joe.  Either run or take an early retirement, one of the two.  Yes, Avenatti's a busy guy these days, what with Stormy Daniels and all, and also helping these over 3,528 alleged victims of Judge Brett "Drunken Busyhands" Kavanaugh's permanent floating orgy through the legal process.  Who better to overturn Roe v. Wade than someone who apparently needs it the most?
But let's try to put out of our minds the X-rated world we're living in.  I was musing on the PG rating earlier, wasn't I?  It seems most of your big-time mainstream directors have flirted occasionally with the PG rating.  The first few Star Wars movies had that rating, and the first two Indiana Jones did as well.  The Coens' The Hudsucker Proxy is their only PG-rated outing.  Not Kevin Smith, though.  He won't go under a PG-13; a pride thing.  Quentin Tarantino sticks with the 'R', I'll give him that.  Probably will for the other two films he's apparently only going to do, bringing the total to ten.  Well, probably good to get out of the game before you get old and stale.  But Eli Roth, a bit of a Tarantino protegé, is the director of this The House with a Clock in Its Walls thing.  He's stopped his worrying and has learned to love the PG!  Well, he got tired of all his R-rated fare completely tanking, and he, like most people of his generation, loved the first The NeverEnding Story.  So why not something fanciful like that?  A little less gritty than 2011's Hugo?  And of course, Jack Black was in the third one, so that's a connection to geek out about.