WHAT'S HARD, BLACK AND 4 INCHES LONG?

1. The Game Plan/Disney Wknd/$ 22.7 Total/$ 22.7
2. The Kingdom/Universal Wknd/$ 17.7 Total/$ 17.7
3. Resident Evil: Extinction Wknd/$ 8.0 Total/$ 36.0
4. Good Luck Chuck/Lions Wknd/$ 6.3 Total/$ 23.6
5. 3:10 To Yuma/Lions Gate Wknd/$ 4.2 Total/$ 43.9
6. The Brave One/Warner Wknd/$ 3.8 Total/$ 30.9
7. Mr. Woodcock/New Line Wknd/$ 3.0 Total/$ 19.3
8. Eastern Promises/Focus Wknd/$ 2.9 Total/$ 11.2
9. Sydney White/Universal Wknd/$ 2.1 Total/$ 8.6
10. Across The Universe/Sony Wknd/$ 2.1 Total/$ 5.5

BODYBUILDING APPARENTLY TAKES MORE BRAINS THAN WRESTLING
The Game Plan opens at number one and this has got to be bittersweet for The Rock as he could have, should have, been the next big action star. But after the promising start that was The Scorpion King, they stupidly released The Rundown in the fall when it should have been a summer movie, which was then followed by the inane Walking Tall remake, then too little too late sequel to Get Shorty, Be Cool, then the utter stupidity of making him the bad guy in the movie adaptation of the game Doom (not that it would have made that movie any better) and then the surrender of just making something uplifting, with The Gridiron Gang. But it was a moderate success, which led us to this, sealing his fate and his doom: family films. Basically, he just relieved the career of Vin Diesel. From their “Oh, I’m not really Black” ethnic origins (if one of your parents is Black in America, you’re black and they both have Black dads) to promising opening films, to their big-budget follow-up flops, to their purgatory in family films, they’ve had uncanny similarities. What’s sad is that they both should have been the heirs to Schwarzenegger (who acknowledged this by making a cameo in The Rundown), both possessing in tons of charisma, but it’s been bad career decision after decision. We’re getting a new sense of how smart The Governator really was. After all, he hooked up with James Cameron early on. Followed by Paul Verehoven and John McTiernan; guys with vision. Even Conan was directed by John Milus, who helped write movies like Dirty Harry and Apocalypse now, not to mention none other than Oliver Stone was in on the screenplay. When he made a family film or attempted at departure it was from a place of security not necessity. Not like these guys. Needless to say, I won’t be seeing this failure any time soon. I just hate this kind of cutesy crap. Is it so difficult to respect your audience enough to realize that orphaned, bastard children just don’t show up at your doorstep. Given that America has a 50% divorce rate, odds are that half the kids in the audience know what a lawyer is, so why not just have the lawyer show up with the kid!?! It’s just easier to say, “it’s just a kid’s movie; no one cares.” These are the differences between good films and bad, people.

ARABIAN KNIGHTS
The Kingdom opens at number two and speaking of The Rock and The Rundown, the director of that is pig-faced actor, Peter Berg, also the director here and at least he calmed down with the camera. When actors take over as directors they either move the camera too much or too little. He was a too much guy. He’s gotten better and for that I thank director Michael Mann, who was a producer here. One of the best parts of the movie is the very beginning where we get a brief and creative history lesson about Saudi Arabia. What’s scary is 90% of the audience probably had never heard of any of it before. I’ll give it credit for flat out saying our interest in Saudi Arabia is oil and they love our money and not offering any opinion on it. They aren’t evil for it and neither are we. It’s just the way things are. In fact, no one anywhere has any political opinions. Despite the volatile setting, this is about as political as an episode of Law & Order. So if you’re a liberal looking for an indictment of the status quo or a conservative looking for validation, look elsewhere. And this may be a problem, since not much happens between the opening credits and “The Big Shootout” that climaxes the film. It’s just an investigation, like any police procedural you’d see on TV. Now Jamie Foxx is the head of the team and his best friend is killed by one of the bombs at that beginning of the movie. Jamie Foxx actually got him assigned there to save his career because of his non-romantic relationship with Jennifer Garner (in the Hilary Swank role) but if there are any feelings of guilt from the two of them, they’re not onscreen. We’re also given a heroic Saudi colonel whose job it is to protect the FBI team. Of course they start off a bit antagonistic, but then become friends. He also has no political opinions about anything. Like the FBI team, he’s just a professional doing his job. Not that anyone really cares. We came to see guns fired, shit blow up and some Arab bad guys die, let’s not kid ourselves. They just can’t be bad guys, they have to be bad guys we don’t like right now (the main bad guy is described as an “Osama Bin Laden wannabe”). And you get it. You get it in spades, which one guy getting stabbed in the balls and then the head for daring to fuck with the US of A. It tries to get thoughtful in the last 30 seconds, but it’s just a dumb attempt at relevance which you can’t take seriously after seeing a guy get stabbed in the balls and then in the head.

NEXT UP: JAMES VAN DER BEEK IN HALO
Resident Evil 3 is down to number three and yes, I know Ali Larter is actually another action girl in the movie, but she’s not slutted up the way the girls have usually been, so I still have no interest in this. Everyone knows, if you want to appeal to the 14-year-old in all men, that girl kicking ass has to be doing it in something hot, not a bunch of drab rags. I don’t necessarily need a micro mini-skirt like the girl in the second movie (though I won’t pretend I didn’t enjoy her in it), but at least skintight. It’s like a male action hero whose shirt doesn’t get ripped off. Who wants to see that? At least Mel Gibson was clad up in leather in The Road Warrior and everybody loves that! But they’re actually talking about continuing the Resident Evil series with Ali Larter and her character of Claire (which I assume means something to you game players) and she seems to be in place to be a new geek queen if it does. Her role on Heroes has her halfway there (and I’m sure she’d rather be a geek queen than forever remembered as the girl who wore the whipped cream bikini in Varsity Blues).

THE BIG SEXUAL CONFUSION
Good Luck Chuck is down to number four, followed by 3:10 To Yuma at number five and the men guarding the gold for the railroad here are from the Pinkerton Agency, for whom none other than Dashiell Hammett also worked as a private detective, but there’s no romance here for them and deservedly so. These fuckers were strikebreakers and pretty much did whatever they had to do for their clients. The head Pinkerton man here is played by Dallas Roberts, whose claim to fame so far is playing Angus on The “L” Word who was Pam Grier’s lover. Someone should have told him if you’re going to play the kind of man who can bed Pam Grier you might want to “act” straight. Watching him made me occasionally think I’d accidentally tuned into Queer As Folk. Needless to say, he’s primarily a theater boy.

OH, MY PAPA…
The Brave One is down to number six, followed by Mr. Woodcock at number seven and Eastern Promises at number eight and playing the head of the Russian mob is Armin Mueller Stahl, who is the go-to guy when you need an older Eastern European dude. I think he’s spent half his career being calld “papa” and this movie is no exception. I’d say he’s known to most people as the dad in Shine, but since no one remembers Geoffrey Rush won an Oscar for Shine, why should you remember his Oscar nomination? Chances are you know him best as the Russian general in The Peacemaker with George Clooney, given that TNT runs it every other fucking day.

YOU THOUGHT BEING USED IN COMMERICALS WAS BAD
Down to number nine is Sydney White and entering the top ten at number ten is Across The Universe, rumored to be this generation’s answer to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club band as a movie musical that wastes the music of The Beatles. Well, I’ve got a confession to make: as much as it sucks, I love Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club band because it was my introduction to The Beatles. I was 12 years old with only a passing knowledge or interest in The Beatles but then this crappy movie came on cable and just grabbed me. I got the soundtrack album and from there went off to discover the real thing. So if this has the same effect in a year (which is when I’ll see it) for some other kids, it’s not totally bad. This has been roasted by every critic alive and even beforehand the producer re-cut it and got a better response, but apparently he didn’t have a right to final cut so director Julie Taymor released hers and producer Joe Roth would be laughing if he weren’t, you know, the producer and losing money on this. Just as Sgt. Pepper had characters like Billy Shears, Strawberry Fields, Mr. Kite and Sgt. Pepper himself, this has characters named Jude, Sadie, Prudence and oh, Eddie Izzard is back as Mr. Kite (ironically an actor named Martin Luther is here, but not as “Martin Luther” but that was a Wings song anyway). While Sgt. Pepper took Peter Frampton and The Bee Gees at their 70’s peak, this uses mostly unknown actors and it’s celebrity guest list is noticeably smaller. Yes, Bono shows up (as Dr. Robert), but that’s about it. Eddie Izzard and Salma Hayek don’t match the first film having Aerosmith (kicking ass on “Come Together”), Earth Wind & Fire (kicking ass on “Got To Get Your Into My Life”) Steve Martin, Alice Cooper, Billy Preston or in the gigantic group which turn up in the closing credits (including Peter Allen, George Benson, Keith Carradine, Carol Channing, Rick Derringer, Donovan, Yvonne Elliman, Leif Garrett, Heart, Nona Hendryx, Etta James, Dr. John, Nils Lofgren, Curtis Mayfield, Bonnie Raitt, Helen Reddy, Minnie Riperton, Johnny Rivers, Seals & Crofts, Tina Turner, Frankie Valli, Del Shannon, Grover Washington Jr, Hank Williams Jr, Wolfman Jack, Bobby Womack). But one thing both films do have in common is the presence of Cousin Brucie Morrow, who introduced The Beatles at Shea Stadium. So if you’re going to make a concept Beatles movie, don’t have him in it and you’ll be okay. Let me put it this way: he wasn’t in Yellow Submarine.

‘CAUSE BOOKS ARE FOR LOSERS
The new fall season is here and more than in recent memory were shows I at least wanted to give a shot and like a fat kid in a candy store, I tried everything I could lay my eyes on:

The Big Bang Theory: A show about geeks living next door to a hot girl. First of all, Kaley Cuoco isn’t that hot. She’s “New Jersey Dive Bar At The End of The Night” hot. With all the pretty blondes in Hollywood, this is the best they could do? I gave this a shot and it blows. Hard. It’s every typical sitcom you’ve ever seen. You wanna see geek jokes done right, Tina Fey drops them all the time on 30 Rock.

K-Ville: I hate Anthony Anderson, so this was doomed from day one. Also, it’s exploiting New Orleans because it’s just doing a typical dumbass cop show there without themes that explore just what the hell went wrong. And no one, and I mean no one, uses the expression “K-Ville.”

Chuck: At first I thought this was going to be a silly version of the underrated Jake 2.0, but this is actually a much better show smarter and funnier than I expected and a perfect lead-in for Heroes.

Journeyman: Despite my sci-fi geekness, I’m not a time travel fan, especially when your plot requires the character to change history, which should cause all sort of reverberating changes, but don’t. But what makes this show work is the intensity of Kevin McKidd, best known to some of you as the intense Lucius Vorenus of Rome. He’s also not your typical bland hero. He’s married to his brother’s ex-girlfriend, has had trouble in his marriage because he’s not over his dead fiancée and when he goes missing on his journeys they think he’s back doing drugs. Oh, and did I mention the dead girlfriend turns up halfway through the episode as a time traveler herself (she’s played by Blood Moonglow who was Taye Diggs’s girlfriend whom he was trying to stop from dying in his time travel show, Daybreak)? It’s a nice twist you never see coming (sorry to ruin it). Also, it’s filmed on location in San Francisco, which looks as beautiful as ever (they actually give him a modern version of the famous Mustang from Bullitt as an in joke). This is on after Heroes, making Monday night geek night!

Reaper: Again an old show that failed is seemingly retooled as a comedy. This time it’s Brimstone where a man was given the task of returning souls to hell. That show was dark and seeming trying to capture the feel of the movie Se7en, this is a comedy and Kevin Smith directed the pilot. Rather than a goofball comedy, the actual crux of the plot, his parents selling his soul to Satan, isn’t done as a joke. It’s stone cold serious. They made the deal when they had no children because they thought it was impossible. Turns out, their doctor had his own deal with The Devil. Also, they’re consumed by guilt over it, his mother an alcoholic as a result. But other than that, it’s pretty funny. Ray Wise is obviously enjoying himself in his role as Satan and it only adds to the show.

The Bionic Woman: The team behind the Battlestar Galactica revamp continue to mine cheesey science fiction shows of their youth, this time with the spin-off of The Six Million Dollar man, done dark and straight. Which may be a problem here. Yes, I know, “How could sexy killer robots in space work but not this?” Because that has no context you can relate to. The Bionic Woman is set here in our world and the whole “bionic” thing (here it’s more nanobots inside the body than flat out limb replacement) does come across as silly and illogical, because why would you just make one arm or one eye “super” and not both? And to have that gravity without any sense of humor tends to make it more ridiculous. It speaks volumes that the best part of the show was from someone who isn’t a regular cast member and was allowed to portray and over-the-top type character. If this show wants to survive it had better find sense of humor quickly. And on a shallow note the lead actress isn’t that attractive and displays no charisma.

Private Practice: The Grey’s Anatomy spin-off using the Grey’s Anatomy formula so rigidly, that I could fast forward through scenes I didn’t like because four years of Grey’s has taught me exactly what’s going to happen and how (if it’s any consolation, I did some fast-forwarding through the Grey’s season premiere as well). One big problem is that the show is an ensemble in a way that Grey’s only developed into. Initially, Grey’s was about Meredith and eventually everyone began to matter just as much. Here, Addison is regulated to co-star almost immediately, when we’re following her here. I loved Moon-Unit Zappa when I was a kid, but her storyline with Amy Brenneman (who drank her way off her last spin-off, CSI Miami) bored me silly and I jumped right through it. Because Taye Diggs is on it, I’ll hang, but this is in a three way tie between Bionic Woman (which I have to watch because I’m a geek) and Gossip Girl (which I continue to watch ‘cause it’s pretty) and something has to give because my DVR can only record two things at the same time and my gym membership reactivates this week so I can’t just watch the third show on my roommate’s TV. This may get regulated to online viewing.

Life: The innocent man falsely accused is popular plot idea (Hitchcock loved it, The Fugitive was successful on TV and the movies, Burn Notice has it and it was in Daybreak last year) and in this instance it’s a cop who spends 12 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit and gets to $50M payout from the city and his job back. For me the premise is faulty because 12 years is too much. You don’t do a decade and come out even remotely normal. Yes, they have him embrace Zen to compensate for it and he’s obviously a little crazy, but for a good cop in prison (meaning unlike a dirty cop he’d be another crook and could make allies) he’d go full on crazy, not just cute eccentric crazy like here. Also, there’s no way LAPD would allow him to come back after that embarrassment. It would make more sense if he were a private detective, but they’ve got a whole conspiracy aspect going on here, which is going to be an ongoing thread. That thing kinda gets old quick, so I hope they know to give us progress. Fortunately, it’s got a strong cast, including Damian Lewis (from Band of Brothers), Adam Arkin, Robin Weigert (who was Calamity Jane on Deadwood) and the amazing Sara Shahi (who was Carmen on The “L” Word). That they went for actors rather than just trying to pack it with small screen stars speaks volumes (and honestly, Sara Shahi is so fine I’d watch her in just about anything, acting be damned).

Dirty Sexy Money: Now this is just a cast of names (Peter Krause, Donald Sutherland, Jill Clayburgh, William Baldwin) amounting to not a whole lot. Normally, shooting in NYC automatically gets you time from me, but these people don’t convey the “feel” of the city the way even Gossip Girl does. And they’re trying too hard with the crazy, rich family (ooh, William Baldwin loves a tranny). They’re all caricatures, not characters. Too bad for Peter Krause, who was originally slated for Journeyman, but blew out his knee and couldn’t do it.

Big Shots: Apparently there was an outcry for Desperate Husbands, because that’s all this is. And if Dirty Sexy Money can’t convey NYC even though they film here, imagine how ineffective this is shot-totally-in LA but claiming to be in NYC. IT’S OBVIOUSLY FUCKING LA SO WHY NOT JUST SET IT THERE!?! This is supposedly the secret lives of otherwise successful men. Dylan McDermott still sleeps with his ex-wife (the gorgeous Paige Turco), has a rebellious daughter and is trying to hide an arrest for getting a blowjob from a tranny (“straight guy with tranny” is this year’s “left for another woman”) from Prince’s ex-wife (yes, Mayte). Christopher Titus is flat out whipped and Michael Vartan apparently has a perfect life until his boss fires him, but is killed before he can tell anyone and at his funeral Vartan learns the boss was sleeping with his wife (as if any woman would cheat on Michael Vartan). There’s a fourth storyline with some dweeby guy and his wife and mistress, which I fast-forwarded through. It’s not totally uninteresting (aside from that dweeby guy), but the New York thing bothers me and the whole “broad strokes” comedic aspect of it doesn’t appeal to me, even on Desperate Housewives and that’s actually done with some skill! Michael Vartan is apparently in a different show as he plays his role as the wounded husband totally straight, while the others camp it up and it’s only his story that will have me give this another shot.

Moonlight: Another detective vampire show and I haven’t even finished watching it, which tells you everything. Another clue is that the entire cast but the lead was fired and they started from scratch. I’ll stick with Blood Ties on Lifetime, which is your final clue. When you’re better off watching Lifetime, it’s bad.

THE BEST THING IN MY PANTS
So the hospital finally let me know they would be paying for my stolen iPod which allowed me to buy a new one this weekend. It was a matter of principle that I wouldn’t buy another one until I knew the money was coming. I wasn’t just going to eat it and hope for the best. But it actually worked out for me, as they dropped the price of the 80G last month to what I paid for my lost 30G and it’s gotten so much better since last year. Technology is wonderful. It may be even thinner than my old one, but holding more than twice as much. And the software has improved on top of it, so it even looks better on my little color screen. Not to mention because I now have so much room I can put video on it---starting with the Aquaman pilot. It’s so sad. I’m gonna geek this thing up so badly now…gonna put some superhero cartoons on this sucker. But I really needed it back. I was starting to sing to myself in the streets, I missed the music so badly and you don’t want me singing Fleetwood Mac’s “Say You Love Me.” The gays didn’t appreciate it, in terms of musical choices or degree of execution. They prefer Stevie Nicks and my voice just isn’t that deep.