SAW? MORE LIKE BORE.

1. Saw IV/Lion’s Gate Wknd/$ 32.0 Total/$ 32.0
2. Dan In Real Life/Touchstone Wknd/$ 12.1 Total/$ 12.1
3. 30 Days of Night/Sony Wknd/$ 6.7 Total/$ 27.3
4. The Game Plan/Disney Wknd/$ 6.3 Total/$ 77.1
5. Why Did I Get Married/LGF Wknd/$ 5.7 Total/$ 47.3
6. Michael Clayton/Warner Wknd/$ 5.0 Total/$ 28.8
7. Gone Baby Gone/Miramax Wknd/$ 3.9 Total/$ 11.3
8. The Comebacks/FoxA Wknd/$ 3.5 Total/$ 10.0
9. We Own The Night/Sony Wknd/$ 3.3 Total/$ 25.1
10. Nightmare Before Xmas 3D Wknd/$ 5.1 Total/$ 5.1

QUEEN OF THE GEEKS
Saw IV opens at number one and sadly, this gives hope to the movement known as “torture porn” (I call it “snuff horror”) after it saw one of its originators, Hostel stumble with its first sequel. Then again, you could open at number one at Halloween with home movies, so long as you sold it like a horror movie. I could give a shit about this. I didn’t care about the first one---based on the oldest “shock” idea in the book about sawing through the chain or your leg before the bomb goes off and your leg would take less time (somehow every version of this misses out that whatever the chain is attached to can probably also be sawed through quickly)---so you know I don’t care about sequels. In fact, they only interest me because they’ve given my girl Dina Meyer regular work and solidifying her place as a geek movie queen. That she’s been in all four Saws is obviously her horror requirement (that and Bats); her comic book requirement was Batgirl (Birds of Prey TV show); she’s got one old-school semi-literary science fiction movie with Starship Troopers and one new school with Johnny Mnemonic. There’s the fantasy requirement of Dragonheart and the mother of all geek requirements: Star Trek (though it was the Next Generation and its worst movie, Nemesis). So, if this keeps her off Cinemax playing a bi-sexual private investigator in something called “Seduction Is My Business” then I guess it’s not a total waste (the irony being she’s confessed to little same sex loving in real life).

SPELLED “R-E-E-L”
Dan In Real Life opens at number two and if this looked any more sweet natured and heartwarming, I don’t think I’d ever stop vomiting. I mean you’ve got the nice guy, precocious kids, funny siblings and warm loving movie star parents. It’s one of those movies where everyone is comfortably middle class, everyone gathers at mom and dad’s for the holidays and no seems to watch TV, instead choosing to engage each other and put on little shows. Where the fuck does this happen except in the movies? It’s a little early for Steve Carrell to be going this way, isn’t it? After, all he didn’t get here by playing dumb (The Daily Show), nice (The Office) or overly sweet (The 40 Year-Old Virgin). Or maybe he just wanted a day off from being a little smarter, meaner and honest. How this isn’t a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie I’ll never know. And who the fuck opens this at Halloween and not Thanksgiving or Christmas so people can escape and see the fantasy family they wish they had?

CAN IT BE NEPOTISM IF DAD’S DEAD?
30 Days of Night is down to number three and also in this is Danny Houston, who is threatening to become one of the Hardest Working Men in show business. Yes, he’s the son of John Houston and the brother of Angelica and if you saw The Kingdom, you saw him. If you saw The Number 23, you saw him. If you saw Children of Men, you saw him with an English accent. If you saw Marie Antoinette, The Constant Gardner or The Aviator, you have seen him. He’s got an oily kind of look, so he’s usually playing an oily person, usually a government official of some sort. It’s fitting. Whenever his dad was in front of the camera, he usually played some type of rich, corrupt bastard, most famously as the father/rapist of Faye Dunaway in Chinatown.

THE OTHERS
The Game Plan is down to number four, followed by Why Did I Get Married at number five and Michael Clayton at number six and why is George Clooney smart and funny? Doesn’t that violate the rules? If you get looks you cannot have the brains and the wit? That’s what I was told but I’m thinking it’s a lie for those of us who only got one. It keeps us from either killing ourselves or killing people like Clooney. And probably some smart, pretty bastard like Clooney came up with it. Muthafucka.

“FEARLESS “ = “SAGGING BUTT”
Gone Baby Gone is down to number seven and also in this are Ed Harris and his wife Amy Madigan and the pretty one still looks good and the one who was never about being pretty…well, let’s just say it’s good that wasn’t what her career was based on, because it would be gone, baby, gone. And I like Amy Madigan, so I’m hoping her look here was padding and make-up to make her fit in with her white trash family. Aside from Ben Affleck and his brother, Casey, the person to benefit the most here is Amy Ryan, who was the actress I mentioned that was briefly kept off the set by the police because she seemed more like a real neighborhood girl and not some actress. She plays the foul-mouthed, drug dealing negligent mother of the little girl and if she’s not at least nominated for awards at the end of the year, there is no justice because she rocks it hard here. This is one of the rare times when a woman’s “fearless” performance doesn’t mean she’s got an ugly body but still does nudity. She’s also in Dan In Real Life as one of his sweet sisters and you probably wouldn’t know it unless I told you.

THE END
The Comebacks is down to number eight, followed by We Own The Night at number nine and Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas 3D closing out the top ten at number ten.

ACTUALLY CAN YOU GET MORE PORN SOUNDING THAN “VERA WANG”?
So, The Libertine is leaving me this week for a new job at the University of South Carolina and we spent our last weekend together doing what friends who are soon to be parted do: eating, drinking, looking at wedding dresses, engagement rings and porn. It started off because The Libertine used to work at the German Chamber of Commerce here in the city, which is how she got her German boyfriend. And why she invaded Poland. But that aside, anything German I notice in life goes back to her, including a particular porn star named Annette Schwartz who once yelled out, “Fuck me like a German whore, not like an American princess!” to a guy who was clearly too intimidated to do either. Needless to say, she became a regular part of our conversations, so I decided to finally show her just who we were talking about it. She found it disturbing because the girl wound up reminding her of someone she did actually know, which will make future conversations difficult. But as anyone knows, porn is meant to be watched alone…in an empty apartment…with the lights out…behind a locked door and with your junk in your hand. Otherwise, it can get boring quickly. I mean, there’s only so long you can watch it and make jokes about it and try to see which porn stars remind you of your friends. This is how, while numerous carnal acts that violated the laws of god and man where going on, we were actually busy looking at engagement rings and wedding dresses. Now the last time the ring came up, she panicked and I got a drunken 1:00 am plea to join her on the lower east side. She’s a lot better now and we looked over cuts and settings in relative calm. Then came the wedding dresses and let me tell you now: anything less than white is unacceptable! I’m not down with even champagne, much less burgundy or black? Black!?! Are you fucking kidding me!?! What are you, the fucking bride of Dracula? Grooms wear black tuxes and brides wear white, I don’t care if it’s your first marriage or your 15th. White, period! No colored sashes around the waist either! And it’s a wedding dress, not a fucking nightgown so there’s such a thing as too simple! It should be otherwise a totally impractical piece of clothing. If you can wear it elsewhere and not be noticed, you were ripped off. People are getting away with murder with the shit they’re designing. You know what was nice? The Vera Wang that Grace wore on Will & Grace, silk duchesse with molded corset bodice, trapunto stitching and pin tucking with Sergio Rossi boots. Very nice. $20,000 and one of a kind. I swear I’m straight. I brought porn, remember?

I WILL WATCH THIS SHOW IN A MOUSE, I WILL WATCH IT WITH A MOUSE…
The last show on the fall agenda for me was “Samantha Who?” starring Christina Applegate This began as “Sam I Am” before they realized they had to ask the Dr. Suess estate for permission first and they were either declined or wouldn’t pay up (like the Sean Penn movie did). The premise is, she was a raging bitch who was hit by a car and has lost her memory and is now trying to be a better person. It’s pretty funny and Jean Smart as her mother pretty much steals every scene she’s in (and at least once an episode she recovers a memory and you get a flashback to the old Samantha). That Jennifer Esposito is in it as her best friend who preferred the old Samantha is just icing on the cake. And we’re done for now…at least until they start canceling the shows and sticking in replacements. One of which will not be New Amsterdam, the show I was really looking forward to. It’s about a 400-year-old cop in New York who won’t die until he finds true love. They actually filmed it here in the city and not Toronto (I know because they were doing it around the corner from my house). The network literally called them in the middle of filming and told them to stop. I guess they realized that this new season had overdosed on geek/sci-fi stuff and if Heroes is down, this probably wouldn’t fly at all and it wasn’t cheap being filmed here. Too bad. I loved Highlander and this seemed right up that alley, but with the advantage of being New York based.

THAT CRAZY MUSIC ALL THE KIDS LIKE
Finally, this weeks attempt to listen to music made by the young people leads us to Paramore, which is kinda what Avril Lavigne would sound like if she were actually a rocking chick and not a Canadian poseur. As always, it comes my way courtesy of Fearless Music. I swear those people should be paying me.