TOUGH GUYS WEAR WARM-UPS

1. 30 Days of Night/Sony Wknd/$ 16.0 Total/$ 16.0
2. Why Did I Get Married/LGF Wknd/$ 12.1 Total/$ 38.9
3. The Game Plan/Disney Wknd/$ 8.1 Total/$ 69.2
4. Michael Clayton/Warner Wknd/$ 7.1 Total/$ 22.0
5. Gone Baby Gone/Miramax Wknd/$ 6.0 Total/$ 6.0
6. The Comebacks/FoxA Wknd/$ 5.9 Total/$ 5.9
7. We Own The Night/Sony Wknd/$ 5.5 Total/$ 19.8
8. Nightmare Before Xmas 3D Wknd/$ 5.1 Total/$ 5.1
9. Rendition/New Line Wknd/$ 4.2 Total/$ 4.2
10. The Heartbreak Kid/Paramount Wknd/$ 3.9 Total/$ 32.0

120 MINUTES OF GEEK
30 Days of Night opens at number one and even though this is the scary I almost went to see it because of my comic book loyalty and this began as a graphic novel (big comic book). The premise is so brilliant in its simplicity you wonder why no one has ever thought of it before: vampires hunting above the Arctic Circle where night lasts for a full month. It makes sense that someone snapped it up immediately for a movie. It was also a huge comic book success and has spawned a half-dozen sequels. I ultimately decided against it because a) if it’s done well, it’ll be scary and who the hell wants that, and b) if it sucks it’ll be a waste of my time and who the hell wants that? Your first warning for the latter is the casting of Josh Hartnett who has one expression and one expression only: Blue Steel. Now, remember what we said about doing horror films? Usually it’s a safe career bet because it’s a “genre” film, with a built-in audience that could give a crap who’s in it so long as people die. Well, since Pearl Harbor (which was the beginning of the end for Ben Affleck as well), Harnett has been struggling to find a role beyond “New Pretty Boy” especially since Orlando Bloom sewed that up with Lord of the Rings and Pirates of the Caribbean. To his credit, he’s tried different types of roles and even going indie film, but he needs to accept he’s just a pretty boy, not an actor. There’s nothing wrong with just being a movie star. And he’s a 6’3” pretty boy, which goes a long way in a town filled with little guys who lie. But this means when you make a Pearl Harbor, you don’t have some “crisis of conscience” you just make sure Michael Bay calls you for the next one. Yeah, he missed The Island, but he also missed Transformers, but by this time, Bay had moved on to new 6’3” pretty boy, Josh Duhmael. You snooze, you lose.

UNFORTUNATELY THIS TIME THEY DO ALL LOOK ALIKE
Why Did I Get Married is down to number two and while normally I despise marketing people who come in and say shit like “Well, you’ve got two blondes, so make one cut her hair short so the audience doesn’t get confused,” as if everyone is a moron. But then you see a movie where the actors are so dull and you wish someone had made them a little different because you really can’t tell them apart. Here you wonder how not one suit looked at the cast said, “You’ve got three guys here about the same age, with the same build, same haircut even the same fucking facial hair. Are they playing brothers? If not then someone needs a shave and a wig.” But as Tyler Perry likes to brag, he answers to no one, so this kind of crap slips through.

MURDER---AND PEOPLE WHO DISAPPEAR IN THE BOSTON AREA---IS MY BUSINESS
Michael Clayton holds at number four, followed by Gone Baby Gone opening at number five and Casey Affleck plays the toughest private detective you will ever see. I’m not kidding. What he does in the end makes him tougher than Phillip Marlowe. You keep expecting him to go soft, but he does not. Samuel Archer came close to this level of toughness at the end of The Maltese Falcon when he sent Brigid O’Shaughnessy away even though he was in love with her, but it doesn’t equal what goes on here. And Ben Affleck continues his career resurgence. Like Josh Harnett, Pearl Harbor was the beginning of the end, but unlike Hartnett his salvation may be actual talent. First he shows some acting chops in Hollywoodland last year and now he apparently knows his way behind a camera. And he had a hand in the screenplay, suggesting that maybe, kinda, he deserved his Oscar. Now this has gotten some unwarranted publicity thanks to a sad similarity to the case of the missing child in Europe. Both little blonde girls and in both cases were left alone by their parents. The similarities end there as the English girl came from upper middle class parents, whereas Ben Affleck apparently had the greatest white trash casting call in Hollywood history. My god. He doesn’t cheat and fill it with pretty movie stars slumming. Nope, he picks actors who look the part. Bitch all you want about black people constantly playing criminals in movie, but since it’s Hollywood, it’s always good looking black people. When Ben Affleck decided to show white trash, he kept it real as a muthafucka. When one character says to another, “Ah, go suck a nigger’s dick,” you know it’s real (the same cast member was actually stopped by the cops from returning to the set because they thought she was just another person in the neighborhood). Casey Affleck, who with partner/girlfriend Michelle Monaghan (for some reason playing Italian when she’s obviously as pasty Irish as everyone else in the cast) are the most unlikely pair of private detectives in movie history. They look like a couple of high schoolers and you keep waiting for the older, real detective to walk in and say, “I thought I told you kids to stop playing detective!” But they are, in fact, missing persons private detectives brought in to augment the case of the missing girl because he has a connection to people who don’t talk to the police---and because he apparently went to school with every lowlife in the Boston area. Like any good private dick story, what he turns up reveals things are not quite what they seem, starting with mom actually being a cokehead who was doing lines at a local bar when her kid was snatched. It’s downhill from there and by the end of the movie there are double crosses and bodies in the ground. But Casey Affleck hangs tough through it all, so not only has Ben Affleck saved his own career, but like a good big brother has opened up his brother’s, who will now be up for leading man roles.

ARE YOU TELLING ME RADIO WASN’T MEANT TO BE A COMEDY
The Comebacks open at number six and while sports movies are wide open for this type of parody, these are obviously not the guys to do it. Who would have thought the only person to come close to the Zucker, Abrams, Zucker crew who did Airplane and The Naked Gun would be Keenan Ivory Wayans family. Sad days indeed. Sadder still? Two of the guys from Best Week Ever co-wrote it and that show is fucking hysterical. Then again, they’re two of like, a dozen other funny people, so maybe they should have brought the whole crew with them.

YOU’RE TELLING ME THIS IS BETTER THAN CHASING PAPI?
We Own The Night is down to number seven and apparently when Jennifer Lopez cooled off, she took all the Latina actresses who had a shot with her, Jessica Alba notwithstanding. Roselyn Sanchez is on TV and Eva Mendes has yet to try and carry her own film. It makes no sense because Hitch made $368M worldwide and she was the female lead. There’s Something About Mary made $369M and Cameron Diaz at least got that one crappy movie, The Sweetest Thing. Yeah, she’s skinny and blonde, but Eva Mendes is way prettier (imagine Cindy Crawford Latin and with an ass) and does full frontal nudity! Doesn’t that count for anything anymore!?! Where have our values gone when money and a willingness to show your bush can’t get you your own movie!?! This is why she’s here getting finger-fucked by fugly Joaquin Phoenix in the opening minutes of this movie. Ew.

I AM JACK’S RAGING CHOICE IN MOVIES
The Nightmare Before Christmas 3-D opens at number eight and I never liked this movie. I fell asleep in the theater the first time I saw it and cannot muster the interest to try again. Mainly because I hate Tim Burton. No, it doesn’t make any sense, but welcome to my world.

OF COURSE THEN ASHELY JUDD WOULD HAVE TO STAR
Rendition opens at number nine and look how far we’ve come when every other movie is attacking our own government. Remember when Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins stood alone in the wilderness? Speaking of Susan Sarandon, why isn’t she here? You’d think she would have been all over this, but instead we have Meryl Streep, but she’s playing the bad guy and maybe Susan just couldn’t do it, not even for a movie that supported her position. Speaking of fugly Joaquin Phoenix, his Oscar-winning co-star, Reese Witherspoon stars here and this should have been more of an estro-thriller rather than some polemic against torture. I can’t stop bring up Costa Gravas insistence that he doesn’t make political movies, because he understands that it’s entertainment first, politics second. This obviously has its politics in mind first and suspense second. Especially since they don’t make the government super-movie-evil and have assassins trying to kill her for trying to learn too much about her husband being taken by the government. Now that movie I might have gone to see. But someone trying to school me in what America is supposed to stand for? I think not. I don’t need your lessons. I know what America is all about! I haven’t missed an issue of Captain American in 23 years, goddamnit!

CHICKS & FLICKS
The Heartbreak Kid is down to number ten and this is now officially a failure (I’ve got $5 says they rush it to DVD for the holidays). They’re trying to say its audience never showed because they were too busy playing Halo 3. Well, I guess that’s why you should pay more attention the majority of the populace. You know, the ones with boobs!?! Women!?! Hello!?! Anyone home!?! This is partially good news because it will hopefully be the final nail in the coffin of The Farrelly Brothers. Unfortunately, while Ben Stiller will emerge unscathed, his two female costars may not be so lucky. The Cameron Diaz replacement is already filming Zak Snyder’s follow-up to 300, Alan Moore’s comic book classic, The Watchmen (for you geeks in the know, she’s The Silk Spectre), which I predict will tank like a muthafucka, so maybe her band will save her. Okay, stop laughing. We all have our stupid dreams. Luckily, Michelle Monaghan she’s also in Gone, Baby Gone, which should help wipe the stain of this away. Also, in her next role, her two leading men are Lucius Vorenus (Kevin McKidd) and McDreamy (Patrick Dempsey) so apparently even she got the romantic comedy Eva Mendes couldn’t. And not that you were ever going to see Lara Flynn Boyle again onscreen, but whatever roles she might have played will most likely go straight to her. I mentioned once seeing Michelle Monaghan in a restaurant and thinking initially it was Lara Flynn Boyle, but Lara Flynn Boyle hasn’t looked this good in years (aging, anorexia and collagen don’t mix). But you know Michelle is rising because she keeps getting cast alongside men a decade her senior, from Robert Downey Jr. to Tom Cruise to now, Ben Stiller (she was in Mr. & Mrs. Smith, but was obviously not Brad Pitt’s love interest). Trust me, if anyone still gave a shit about Harrison Ford, she’d be making out with him onscreen right now. Unfortunately, they’ve all been about as successful as this, but hopefully she won’t follow the Lara Flynn Boyle career path, where her optimum fame was fucking Jack Nicholson. Though I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.

LIKE A BABY’S, MY BOTTOM
During my unemployment, I did cut back on a few things. First, I swore I wouldn’t date because I refused to be some woman’s loser, jobless boyfriend without the virtue of even being in a band (hey, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!). Next, I stopped my compulsive habit of buying lotions from Bed, Bath & Beyond. If you’ve been there, you know those suckers are $10 a pop so it was purely an extravagance. Well, that drought came to an end when I stepped in for the first time in over two years and found them in the middle of a massive “5 for $20” sale. Needless to say, I left with five all-new scents: Sensual Amber (got two because it’s just that good), Pink Grapefruit, Fresh Pineapple and Tropical Passion fruit. Laugh all you want, but I need this for my skin! Swimming isn’t exactly friendly to it. Okay, fine. I don’t wear cologne so this is the closest you’re going to get to a scent on me…and there was that woman who kept telling me over and over how soft my skin was, but originally, I swear, it was strictly medicinal.

ONE MORE TIME: HAPPY PEOPLE MAKE BAD ART
Annie Lennox has the Billie Holliday disease: she picks men who are bad for her, but she turns it into art. She’s been divorced no less than three times, the most recent result being her underrated album, “Bare.” Well her latest crap choice in men is in choosing Glen Ballard to produce her latest album, “Songs of Mass Destruction.” As you may remember, Glen Ballard was the soulless force behind Alanis Morisette’s “Jagged Little Pill” the album borne of the record label’s order to “Sound more like Sinead O’Connor” so all you women who where teenage girls who took refuge in it, sorry. It was nothing but a soulless corporate ploy. But is sold a billion copies and allowed someone as unattractive as her to land Ryan Reynolds, so he’s never stopped working, draining the soul out of everyone he touches, from Aerosmith to my beloved Shelby Lynne to Annie Lennox. But Annie Lennox has that kind of a voice where not even this slick, packaging bastard can diminish hearing it. Plus, I’m old and new music scares me, though I did use my emusic.com account (that I keep forgetting to cancel) to download the album “Real Life” from Joan Wasser’s band “Joan As Policewoman.” Joan Wasser is one of those people who have been around forever, playing with everyone as a violinist for hire, be it Lou Reed or Scissor Sisters. She was also in the band The Dambuilders (who had a nice little single called “Break Up With Your Boyfriend”), but for better or worse she’s best known for being Jeff Buckley’s girlfriend when he drowned.

ECETERA, ECETERA
Death is back and clearing the decks of the older crowd. First, none other than Deborah Kerr, she of The King & I, From Here to Eternity and the overrated, An Affair To Remember. Yes, I know it’s Cary Grant. You don’t have to fucking tell me it’s Cary Grant. But it’s bad Cary Grant. Successful yes. Good, no. Joey Bishop also died and as was his place as the least talented member of The Rat Pack, he died a cranky old man, railing against the superior remake of Ocean’s Eleven. Know how it’s a comedy? The original was stone cold serious, complete with members of the group dying.