high quality meds... iqafrkltevfskrrdyblm

Egad... more tech malfunctions. On my end, not Blogger's of course. Why I haven't even begun to use my new Blogger / Google hybrid account yet! Now, would the new hybrid name be either Blogg-oogle or Google-logger? Sigh; always a new question on the horizon. Anyyway, let's get this one last mother out before the new box office totals come in in about 30 minutes. The way I see it, the big story is night at the museum vs. The Good shepherd: a pairing even e.e. cummings didn't see cumming. I mean, think about it: a 90-minute movie the whole family can enjoy, or an almost 3 hour movie that almost no one is going to enjoy, so you have to dump your kids off at the former for two showings. What's gonna win out at the box office? Hmm! That's a mystery even the current White House couldn't solve! But enough about the Iraq war, let's just dive right into the list as it still stands now.

At #10 it's ... let me call up the other window here. It's Happy Feet's last stand! Boy I bet Spielberg had a hand in this one now.
At #9 it's The Holiday, a take on Christmas that only Conde Nast could love. Yawn. Moving on...
Debuting at #8 it's McG's prestige pic, We are Marshall. And the box office says, we are not interested. But go figure, I'm gonna call it, Strathairn'll get the Oscar on this one. Eat that, Sayles and Clooney!
#7 brings us Dreamgirls. Everyone's talking about it, except Solange.
At #6 it's Eragon. This bird's got wings, I tells ya! Guess it needed a stronger web campaign.
Charlotte's Web hangs on at #5. Not pig enough.
And finally, at #4 it's The Good Shepherd. Why, even the CIA couldn't catapult this epic to #1, no matter what strings they pulled. I didn't realize Francis Ford had a hand in this til I saw it a couple weeks ago. I think he'll push for Oscar nods on this a little harder than Marie Antoinette this year. No offense.
At #3 it's Rocky Balboa and clearly this film is dividing a nation between all those people who don't care, and all those in the media declaring Rocky the last American hero, which obviously means Gen X is in serious, serious trouble.
Pursuit of Happy-ness, don't care. And I think I care about as much as Will does.
And finally at #1 it's NATM, as all the web kids out there are calling it. There's my argument, down with net neutrality. It was a fine experiment, but I'm sorry, the web should only be for the elites so they can maintain their dominance over society by being able to check stocks on CNN.com in one window and keeping an eye on their siblings on You-Tube in another.
Sorry if I seem a little negative this week, but as usual I'm in a rush what with all these new year preparations, and a little heartbroken that my portable storage devices let me down again. Been having bad luck with the 3 1/2 inch diskettes lately! You know how it is. But I'll be back in form with the next installment of ... Box Office Breakdown!

Kill Mel, Vol. 2

My mind is being blown too often these days. Wayne Newton, a transgender? Uploading whole human brains into computers? I can't even get my MyBook to work how I want it to. And now, a whole new version of Blogger to learn? Of course, the hot blogs get to go first. Oh, the title alone of my blog precludes me from ever being a Blog of Note, like Remember the Milk, Scobb's non-Blog or mySQL DBA. As with most all things, it's probably for the best.
Anyway, gotta wrap this mother out, or up. I'm tired. The bad kind of tired that seems to be a byproduct of the... well, after learning about The Singularity, I guess the Internet age is pretty primeval or primal, but that's where I'm at nonetheless. Anyway, sometimes after a hard day of work my body seems to have just enough strength to hit the bed before falling asleep, but usually I'm in a de-facto insomnia state where I feel like doing naught but lay in bed and fall asleep, but to little to no avail. So, might as well blog and get something done. Where were we? Oh yeah, the Top 5 this week, seeing as how in a couple hours a whole new top 10 starts, with some serious heavy hitters coming to the fold. So let's look at these lighter hitters we got now.
Clocking in at a lofty #5 it's The Holiday. I heard the radio ad for this movie, this Nancy Meyers movie. What, Charley Shyer's just chopped liver now? Well, after The Affair of the Necklace and Alfie, yeah, I would say so. After hearing Jack Black's dialogue, I guess I couldn't help but recall the Simpsons' homage to Cuckoo's Nest, where Barney visits Homer in the hospital, and after hearing Homer say "No! Beer bring pain!", Barney says "I hate to see him like this" and he proceeds to smother Homer with a pillow.
I'm just sayin'. :) Incidentally, it's a small Box Office world after all: because, you see, Nancy's also the director of What Women Want, starring Mel Gibson, whose Apocalypto ALSO took in 8.01 million this week! This battle kettle's boiling over, baby.

And checking in at the #4 pigeonhole, well, what more can we say about Happy Feet that already hasn't been said? Grab a pebble and wail, baby, this holiday turkey's got legs!

And finally, we get to some new entries this week. It's ... ta da! Another damn remake! Charlotte's Web. Why, Iwao Takamoto must be spinning in his grave with the other Hanna-Barbera guy that passed away recently. Rooby Dooby Doo!!!

Fangmeier! That's all I gotta say about the #2 entry this week, Aragorn. It's another Everybody Wants to Direct sob story about a guy, working his way up through the ILM chain of command, flirting dangerously with Digital Domain for a bintel brief, then back to ILM full-bore until finally he cashes in all his chips on a LOTR knock-off like this. Still, it all might work out. Maybe he can team up with Feige!

And finally... I am reminded of what Triumph the Insult Comic Dog once yelled at Will Smith passing by on the way to some awards show: "Where's DJ Jazzy Jeff? Doesn't he get to poop on movie screens once a year, too?" Evidently, not. But Biz Markie did have that cameo in Men in Black 2! But I digress. I guess that still doesn't help out the former, huh?
Where was I? Oh yeah, it's the follow up to that golf movie, the Ballad of... something. Jack Rose? Ah yes, The Legend of Bagger Vance, that's it. See, once I get that Singularity computer chip in my brain, and they have T-1 lines in the sky, we can eliminate all this needless rambling mambling pambling. The point being, his 2006 project, The Pursuit of Happy-Ness, kicked some major ass this week at the box office. Plot-wise, it seems to be some kind of Black Dilbert thing going on, something like that. It's a hopeful story, of course, but it seems to validate the corporate infrastructure a little too much for my taste. You know, the whole CEO thing, three days of vacation a year, Armani suits and Ferrari cars, living in the top floor of the building all your life, studying the public statements of Steve Case and trying to emulate them; he was awfully good, wasn't he? Whatever became of AOL's urbanization plan anyway? Even TimeWarner himself couldn't handle that one, I guess.

And with all that in mind, it is time to tuck this week's Box Office report into bed and kiss it goodnight. And good night to all of you, suckers! Hah hah hah.......

Kill Mel, Vol. 1

Gotta keep this short for many reasons, mainly because it's my bedtime. Actually, I guess that's the only reason, but also to mix things up a little bit. Also because I wanted to assemble an image with Will Smith on a dragon, but it's taking a bit longer than I expected. And furthermore I've gotten a request from one of my peeps! Well, indirectly, actually, but here it is. You know, the Looney Tunes people were like the Simpsons, putting a lot of subliminal or inside jokes in their cartoons. The Simpsons don't animate the name "Groening" a whole lot, unlike the Looney Tunes; their Groening equivalent. Here, for example, is a reference to Michael Maltese, and the obscure reference is to Filboid Studge. Google it yourself, you lazy bums!
Anyway, let's quickly gloss over 10 to 6 here, as it's too depressing to dwell on, frankly. At #10 it's Unaccompanied Minors about to wander into the video store desert to be lost on an obscure shelf for 40 years. At #9 it's The Nativity Scene, and they're employing a unique ad strategy here. Billy Graham is doing commercials saying "If you don't go to see The Nativity Scene, you're all GOING TO HELL, you cheapskate ingrates!"
Rounding out the Top 8 it's Casino Royale. C'mon, all you poker fans! Poker's still hot, isn't it?
Rounding out the lucky Seven it's Blood Diamond. Nah, can't think of a joke here. Sorry, Ngila!
And finally at #6 it's someone's beloved Mel Gibson and the Jolly Folly Factory! You know, there was an early TV spot featuring Mr. Mel himself, talking briefly about the movie. Say like a 30-minute HBO special squished into 15 seconds. Why not, after all Republicans are good at sound bytes, right? So anyway, Mr. Mel says "It's basically a picture about a guy trying to save his family." Same thing that Spielberg said about War of the Worlds, except the Mayans don't try to terraform anybody. While the poor performance of Apocalypto Now is surely not the Christmas present that Gibson was hoping for, me myself, I'm still hoping Santa brings me what I'm wishing for: the new Lego Apocalypto set, and Jesus willing, I'll be drawing and quartering my very own Lego Rudy Youngblood and Lego Bird Yellow Head under the Christmas tree next week! That is, unless you all want the terrorists to win.
Okay! That's about all the damage I can do in this half of the week. Stay tuned for part two sometime this week. Now my bedtime's really long gone. Oh well. I can catch up tomorrow... oh wait, no I can't. Sigh. :(

Auteur Watch: Ralph Bakshi / Cable 4Ever: Fritz the Cat for Kids (or, yeah! More like Not-So-Cool World! Tee hee hee...)

You know, every so often there's what I'll call a Movie Nirvana feeling that sets in, like when you watch Goodfellas over and over and over again often enough, so often in fact that, eventually, you start to hate the movie and think of the Henry Hill character as as hollow of a shell as, say, Jimmy Fallon in Gangs of New York. Something like that. Or maybe it's that I realize I could've spent that time multi-tasking somehow, like clipping coupons, I don't know. Then, there's another phenomenon that I'll call Movie Erosion, where there's a movie they show on cable over and over that you know in your heart and gut is a bad movie, but eventually you see enough of it, and you start to think to yourself, "You know, this isn't all that bad!" That's how it happens. At least, I'm sure that's what Dan Aykroyd's hoping for Nothing but Trouble. He's given up hope on Neighbors, at least. And My Stepmother is an Alien.

This phenomenon just might work on some for the movie Cool World. Not quite for me, although some of the animated backgrounds are nice. Bakshi does anime, that kind of thing. It's still just a fourth-rate Roger Rabbit that only a trade journal could love. It's like if you have a really creepy uncle who says "Aw, that Roger Rabbit is nothin'. Come on down to the basement and I'll show you my collection of vintage post-Nuclear War comic books. It's just as good." It's like if Kevin Smith made Roger Rabbit, only less Catholic. The film is really completely obsessed with sex, even more so than Bakshi's adaptation of Lord of the Rings. It's as if in Roger Rabbit, Jessica Rabbit got it on with Eddie Valiant, that kind of thing. Coonskin or Heavy Traffic for kids, in other words. I'm surprised it's rated PG-13; it should be at least upgraded to R. They've given it a TV-14 for cable, whatever that means. It's also a sickly nod to the Looney Tunes camp: the film ends with a nod to the "That's All, Folks" ending. I'll bet Arthur Davis got a smile out of it; this film is something he might've come up with if given the chance. The film is populated with unfamiliar faces, which might've been an asset in another film, but not here. I did kinda like that paranoid phone, though.

Another problem: there was very little budgeting for shading on the animated characters. In Roger Rabbit, when there was a scene in the dark, the cartoon characters were dark, too. Here they're almost always bright. Also, some of the animation is rather blatantly recycled, something not done in Roger Rabbit. Or probably the Looney Tunes movie, for that matter.

I'm too weary to do a comprehensive analysis of what percentage of the movie is strictly practical shots around Las Vegas, and which are on the Bakshi motion-capture stages of old. There's a couple New Generation voice-over geniuses in the cast, Charlie Adler and Maurice LaMarche who will undoubtedly defend Bakshi to the end, so I can't beat up on him too much here. As for the three live action leads, Gabriel Byrne looks like he's in hell, Brad Pitt looked like he was just happy to be his own handsome-ass self, and Kim Basinger turns in a nice performance in what can only be described as a fun exercise for an actress; I'll bet Byrne was kicking himself a little bit for falling for Ellen Barkin first, but 'nuff said; that's too personal a dig even for me. John A. Alonzo, ASC is burning in hell for this one. Well, this and Deuces Wild.

But because of Basinger's gratitude in her Oscar speech from 1998, Bakshi is finally on the mend with the upcoming feature, The Last Days of Coney Island, and even though the plot sounds a little generic (the main live-action characters in Cool World are named, what else? Only Frank and Jack, only the most common first names in bad movies), he's sure to have an Ace or two up his sleeve in the script department, just like Cool World's Magic Spike, that Movie Enigma that holds the world together, or rather, keeps it from falling apart, although I must confess I would've rather seen that happen in this movie. Might've been more interesting. And I'm sure Bakshi's finally learned the Biggest Showbiz / Film-making No-No of them all: It's impolite to pass the audience through the alimentary canal of a giant cartoon gorilla.

* 1/2
So sayeth the Movie Review Hooligan

The Miracle on the (Box Office) Highway

Have you noticed that no one ever says they want to go to Detroit? They always say they HAVE to go to Detroit. Is it just me, or did I overhear that correctly?

Well, the worst nightmare came true, didn't it? The Vestiges of Secularia on the hillside are continually being eroded away by the fire hoses held and sprayed by the Kingdom of Religi-slovakia. Some call this vindication for Mel Gibson, and I agree. He directs a #1 movie, and he didn't even have to star in it! For me, Lethal Weapon 5 will be the real test. Which is why we'll look at the cumulative totals first.
Coming in at the cumulative #1 it's Happy Feet which actually came in at #3 this week. Having banked a grand total of 138 million, Mad Max director George Miller surely has happy feet of his own, but I don't think they're running yet to Mad Max 4, still MIA from the IMDb where it once stood proud and tall, and pre-budgeted at 105 million Kangarouros, or whatever Australia's currency is now.
Next it's Casino Royale at #2, which came in at #4 this week. Okay, so it technically was never #1, and they had the dignity to not run the ads saying "It's the #1 Live-action Action flick this week!" If they wanted to, that's another story. It's still the most profitable movie Mr. Craig's been in yet, so suck it up.
#3 is the Santa Clause 3, which came in at #10. ...nope. No catty quips come to mind. I'm all out. ...wait! Thought of one. I don't think it'll pass Don Rickles' test; the next time he runs across Martin Short he can still say "One hit! That's all you need! One hit!"
#4: Déjà Vu at #7 this week. No catty quips here either. But I did get the accents over the vowels right, finally!
#5: deck the halls at #9. Still haven't seen it, but I'll never forget the sight of that sled flying over the interstate, lookin' all blurry as though they were Panning and Scanning on it. They weren't, because the rest of the screen stayed in place. Very strange. Well, that's digital video film for you!
#6: the nativity story at #8. Might've made more money if it was a direct-to-DVD release.
#7: someone's beloved Apocalypto, because it wouldn't have sold if it was called Mel Gibson's Touchy Feely Warm Fuzzies movie. Okay, Mr. Gibson, you're on the wagon again, but for me the real test of salesmanship will be Those who Trespass. If THAT's number one, then we've truly entered the Seventh Day Adventists Armageddon, people. Something about the next elected pope, and Ahnold Schwarzenegger turning California into a giant German embassy. Incidentally, what does that say about your religion if it depends on the outcome of another religion?
#8: the Holiday. Sorry, Pick of Destiny. Let the big horses drink from the trough first.
#9: Blood Diamond at #5. What a poor performance. How do you think this makes all the New York City DVD bootleggers feel? Back to anonymity with ye until ye hitch yer wagons to a more shooting of a star than this.
#10: Unaccompanied Minors at #6. Well, don't listen to the angry critics. It's time to bombard the airwaves with the Oscar ads. You know, John Williams conducting the Boston Pops in the background, the words 'For your consideration' in the corner, the name of the film in the lower-right, something dignified! The Oscar speeches. Strike while the iron's hot, my friends.

Well, that's about all the damage I can do right now! But the story's far from over. Why, Apocalypto's cumulative totals is rounded up to 15 million dollars! That's GREAT NEWS!

It's a nuculear kinda Box Office!

As some of you may have noticed, the Box Office totals tend to get re-adjusted a couple days after they're released. Why this is, I don't know. The battles are very contentious, I guess. So this week let's see how the totals changed over the course of the week, as a new way of looking at the old figures.

At #10 it's Van Wilder 2. It started out having 2.29 million at the box office, but later on ended up having 2.31 million. It gained a whole 0.02 million over the course of a week! Guess all the die-hard fans had class during the week. Or maybe they felt they needed to see the first movie, otherwise they might not understand all the obscure references to the first movie. And to think this was going to be a direct-to-video release! For shame! Right, D-Day?
Hanging tough at #9 it's STF as all the die-hard blogger fans abbreviate it. Its total was adjusted down from 3.4 million to a more precise 3.36 million. It lost my yearly salary! Oh, snap!!
At numero ocho, it's Turistas. (Sorry, that's all the Spanish I know.) At the start of the box office week it had 3.54 mill in the bag, but ended up having 3.58 mill later on. Man, that's some bad hostage negotiatin'.
At Lucky #7 we still got Borat to contend with. Adjusted down to $4.75 mil from $4.83 mil on Sunday, the movie has now made more than Kazakhstan and Tajikistan combined! Didn't see that one coming either, didja?
Santa Claus(e) 3 at #6 just seems like the biggest adjustment, but at this point in my analysis it's probably not. Dropping from 5.01 to 4.89 million it just might get a Christmas boost, just like they were hoping with The Polar Express.

Ah, finally, the Top 5. It feels good to be home again. Sorry, DeVito, your drunken tirade against President Numbnuts didn't help, he's still in office. And to punish you, we're dropping you down from 6.68 million to 6.65 million this week. But hey, it beats doing DVD audio commentary for The Van, am I right?
At #4 it's yet another chip in the Secular Stronghold on the Box Office for the past, oh, let's say 50 years or so. Yes, it's The Nativity Story, and it made a sterling 8.03 million on that glorious Sunday, but as the money-counters took off the rose-colored glasses and subtracted the proverbial 30 pieces of silver, it came to 7.85 million total. Not so heaven-sent, I guess. Incidentally, for all you math dweebs out there, that would mean that each of the 30 pieces of silver are worth $6,000 apiece. That's a lot of silver! And for once, I didn't mis-type it as sliver the first time out, before the spell-checker... actually, that's the kind of thing my not-so-smart spell checker wouldn't catch. It's not a Context Checker as well like the big guns have.
At #3 it's Deja Vu. Didn't I just say that? Starting off with 11 million, it was actually 10.9. Hmm! Kinda like how car dealers say this new luxury sedan is a steal at $49,999.99. I mean, c'mon! Just say it's 50 thousand, because it is. Well, with 8.2% tax it would be $54,099.98 - and that right there is a bonafide Second Shout Out to my fellow effete anti-social anti-people ZPG math nerd loners out there. Not to mention the luxury tax. I thought the Repubes took care of that!
Double sadly, it turns out that Casino Royale's Box Office take stayed the same throughout the week, solidly at 15.1 million, solidly at #2, still right there behind that prissy little bitch called Happy Feet, which was adjusted upward by a full half a million! That's the most yet. And that's probably how things are going to stay for a while, at least until Night at the Museum gets released. That thing's gonna clean up big!
At least Ben Stiller hopes so, I'm sure. Which brings us to the close of another blogging day. ...oh what the hell. I'm too tired to do the hyperlinks this week, but I'm also waiting for the Daily Show to come on so I can tape it. Got 35 more minutes or so. It takes about that long to do, anyway.