THE BOURNE IDENTITY THEFT

1. Enchanted/Disney Wknd/$ 35.3 Total/$ 50.0
2. This Christmas/ScreenG Wknd/$ 18.6 Total/$ 27.1
3. Beowulf/Paramount Wknd/$ 16.2 Total/$ 56.4
4. Hitman/Fox Wknd/$ 13.0 Total/$ 21.0
5. Bee Movie/DreamWorks Wknd/$ 12.0 Total/$ 112.1
6. Fred Claus/Warner Wknd/$ 10.7 Total/$ 53.1
7. August Rush/Warner Wknd/$ 9.4 Total/$ 13.3
8. American Gangster/Universal Wknd/$ 9.2 Total/$ 115.8
9. The Mist/MGM Wknd/$ 9.1 Total/$ 13.0
10. No Country For Old Men/Mira Wknd/$ 8.1 Total/$ 16.6

GOOD MOVIES DON’T MAKE DISNEY ANY LESS EVIL
Enchanted opens at number one and this has actually gotten some decent reviews as sort of a post-modern take on the classic Disney characters as they find themselves, not just in the real world, but in New York. I didn’t see it because I had no faith in Disney to actually “go there” with their characters, but apparently they do and the result is perhaps the second best reviewed film in the top ten. Eh, maybe I’ll see it. Maybe.

USHER WAS TOO BUSY CUTTING HIS APRON STRINGS TO BE HERE
This Christmas opens at number two and I can pretty much promise you I’ll never see this. No, this isn’t my self-hatred run wild, refusing to see the story of a Christmas with a middle-class black family. I only hate my geek self (that sad, fat, comic book reading loser). No this is my pure hatred of Chris Brown. If you’re too old, you may not know who Chris Brown is, but he’s the latest Michael Jackson to come down the pike. At least, that’s how he sees himself. He’s actually little more than a third-rate Usher and given how annoying Usher himself can be, imagine if his songs weren’t top notch (I can’t hate on Usher in that regard; he has the best in the business doing his stuff), he was an even worse singer and he over-danced even more. Now, I can avoid him for the most part because I don’t listen to the radio and god knows I don’t watch MTV, but now he’s starting to turn up in the movies! Next he’ll be in comics and I’ll have nowhere left to turn! Needless to say he plays the son who wants to be a singer and supposedly everyone is knocked out when he sings, which is the magic of movies, because he can’t sing worth shit with that thin, reedy voice of his. It’s right up there with every movie that wants you to believe that Julia Roberts and Jennifer Garner affect men the way Angelina Jolie and Salma Hayek do. Otherwise this is your typical overly conscious effort to “counter program” against negative images of Black people in films. You know this because the producers always tell you so and Mehki Pfeifer who also stars in this is one of those producers, has also said so. Which is the problem. Make your movie first, your message second. A documentary of my family would be funnier, more interesting and probably have better singing.

IN CASE YOU WONDERED JUST WHY GRENDEL WAS SUCH A WHINER…
Beowulf is down to number three and also in this is none other than Crispin Glover, one of the most annoying actors of the 80’s. He plays the misshapen Grendel, who in this looks more like a giant burn victim than a monster (though making him look like Glover would have been equally horrific). It’s proof that time heals all wounds, because you’d think if Robert Zemeckis had replaced me with Eric Stoltz in the Back To The Future sequels and made him up to look like me and I’d sued Zemeckis over it, I’d never be working with or for him again, but 20 years later here they are. Then again, it’s not like Glover has so much on his plate he can turn down a big movie like this. Looks like Zemeckis bought himself some forgiveness.

STILL WAITING ON COMMAND & CONQUER: THE MOVIE
Hitman opens at number and this is based on yet another videogame I’ve never played. I’ve no idea what the game story is, but here the Church has a side business of assassins that they raise and train from childhood, shaving their heads and imprinting them with bar codes. Supposedly, this organization is so secret no one knows about it, which makes no sense because how do they get hired if they’re a secret!?! Sigh. If you didn’t know to check your brain at the door before, you find out with that little piece of idiocy. Also, even though they’re all bald with bar codes, absolutely no one notices them in their missions all over the world. Like I said, “Brain, you can wait here until the movie’s over. Maybe we’ll go read something afterwards.” Now the best of these assassins is #47, played by Timothy Olyphant (in the role Jason Statham was born to play and has kinda played in other movies) who seems to be chafing at the bit to play such a non-character (if you’ve seen him as the sheriff in Deadwood, you know what I’m talking about). We’re given the hint that he wants more than his life offers (he’s reading articles about relationships between men and women), but it’s never really followed up on. Not even when he gets the pre-requisite Beautiful Girl He Kidnaps, do we expand upon it. The template for this is obviously The Bourne Identity, except they knew to let there be some degree of romance in Bourne’s life. If you throw out the protagonist’s desire to be with women then put him with a sexually aggressive woman, you don’t have him knock her out the way they do here. Well, you do if you don’t want to have his character evolve at all. Because this is a movie made for adolescent males (and grown men who haven’t matured much more than that), she’s a beautiful hooker. They toy with the parallel of their lives both being in distasteful occupations, but still being at the top of it, but never follow through. And why should you deal with things like character when you can have a four bald guy swordfight (no, not the dirty kind)? Just as Jason Bourne had other assassins sent after him, so does 47, but while Jason fought them one at a time, five descend on him at once. And like a broken record, if you’re expecting him to make the super secret organization that turned on him, pay, look for another movie. No, I’m not kidding. He even tells them he’s coming after them, but apparently the words, “in the sequel” were removed in editing. It’s too bad, because the action is pretty well done, you have some strong actors (Timothy Olyphant, Dougray Scott), a smoking hot girl (Olga Kurylenko, a Russian model/actress playing a Russian rather than and American actress doing a bad Rocky & Bullwinkle type accent), an R-rating so you can really do the sex and the violence, but it all collapses with a lame story.

OLIVER TWIST AND SHOUT
Bee Movie is down to number five, followed by Fred Claus at number six and opening at number seven is August Rush, and I’ve been looking forward to seeing this since I saw the first trailer. It is what it seems: a musical fairy tale. It’s the story of the lead singer of an up and coming Irish rock band (John Rhys Myers, finally getting to use his natural accent and doing all his own singing) and the reluctant star cello player of the New York Philharmonic (Keri Russell) who meet on the rooftop of a party overlooking Washington Square Park, share one night of passion (he woos her with Van Morrison the way a good Irish lad should) but are then separated by her father who drags her away. Unbeknownst to the heartbroken singer, she’s pregnant and when she’s injured in a car accident, her father forges her signature and gives the child up for adoption. Ten years later he escapes from a boy’s home to New York City because he’s convinced music will lead him back to his parents. And why shouldn’t he? We see him react to the sound of a music box as a newborn in the neo-natal ward of the hospital. In New York he’s found by a musical Fagin type played by Robin Williams, who instead of having kids steal, has them as musicians in the street. In a nice touch of whimsy, their home is the condemned Filmore East (recently reopened, by the way). In one night the prodigy teaches himself how to play guitar and Robin Williams sees him as meal ticket, giving him the stage name “August Rush.” In the meantime, Rock Star and Cello Player are sleepwalking through their lives in San Francisco and Chicago, respectively (but because this is a movie, no one has aged a bit), but slowly begin to make their own way back to New York and reunite in a series of incredible coincidences. You know it ends happily. Hell, the trailer tells you that. We’re just here for the journey and it’s not bad. I’m a sucker for a movie that tells you music has the power to make it all better (I can even over look the laughable editing where aged, calloused hands playing guitar are supposed to be those of11-year-old August Rush). The fact that it’s shot in NYC is just the icing on the cake. Nonetheless, there are some things you must swallow, like this kid making it through eleven years of school and never once demonstrating a musical talent. Or that, Julliard would take in a kid with no records whatsoever in as a full package scholarship student. And they fail to flesh the characters out a little more (director Kristen Sheridan should have gone to daddy Jim for a little help). We understand why Keri Russell gives up music; she thinks her son died. But John Rhys Myers seems ready to leave his band even before he loses Keri Russell and one night doesn’t really seem to be enough to leave him as affected as he is. And don’t get me started on the Black people who help them make it through, from the Children’s Service Caseworker (Terrence Howard in his second NYC civil servant role this year) who initially helps August and later his mother, to the Artful Dodger kid guitar player who initially leads him to Robin Williams, to the little girl singer living in the church where August later finds refuge (drawn by the music), to the reverend she finally tells about him who then takes August to Julliard. Black folks: helping pretty white families come together in movies since Gone With The Wind! But perhaps the biggest hurdle in a movie about the power and wonder of music is that the music isn’t that powerful or wonderful. I don’t remember a single note of the original work.

IT’S ACTUALLY A COLLECTION OF POST-TURKEY FARTS
American Gangster is down to number eight followed by The Mist opening at number nine and who the hell thought “Hmm, Thanksgiving. How about a horror movie?” Even Christmas is a better idea. And how the fuck is this ready for Thanksgiving but couldn’t be ready for Halloween? It would have made more money there in the first weekend that this will for its current release schedule. And I’d like to thank 20/20 for showing me the monsters in The Mist in their promos for their Stephen King interview. If I’m a producer on this I’m still cursing them out a week later. Them and whatever idiots in the advertising department that gave them a clip with the fucking monsters in it to begin with! And I’ll never see this either. First, it’s “the scary” and we know I don’t do that and second, it’s Stephen King and I sure as hell don’t do that crap.

CLIFF HAS HAD A BETTER CAREER IN DISNEY MOVIES
Finally, No Country for Old Men closes out the top ten at number ten and also in this is Woody Harrelson and I still can’t believe there was a time this bonehead was considered a potential movie star. He’s a decent enough supporting actor (Welcome to Sarajevo, EdTV, Wag The Dog) but he should never have seen time as a leading actor. Ever.

CRANBERRY SAUCE ONLY IF YOU WIN THE CAGE MATCH
So I spent Thanksgiving with The Young Married Couple, who opted to be in the city this year. It worked for me since my cooking aunt was ironically in Georgia and as much as I like my cousin, she’s not ready to step into mom’s shoes just yet as the architect of Thanksgiving dinner (also, I didn’t want to travel to wherever the hell she lives now, because I’d have to catch a ride with my other aunt and be trapped there until she was ready to leave). But there’s no such thing as a free meal and the price was the non-stop assault on my person by their six-year old son. You want to blame society, but the male need for violence may be genetic, ‘cause we seem to want it from the womb. The upside is I was able to get a bit of a workout for the day. He was dressed as a pirate with a hat and a red cape and when I tried to take his cape, he decided to give me one of my own that he could then take it from me. Only this one had a yellow “S” on it. Yes, he gave me Superman’s cape, so obviously my being there was destiny. Unable to match his energy, the struggle took a turn for the worse when I decided to use my greatest weapon and just sit on him. He seemed fine with it, but when I finally let him up, the mood had changed from playful to vendetta and daddy had to take him in his room for a time out lest he kill their hapless guest. After that I was mostly used as a horse. The meal was your typical orgy of far too much…everything, pretty much ruining my new discipline of going to the gym three times a week. And I’ve got leftovers. Sigh. The universe wants me fat.

THE BUSINESS THAT PAYS MY SALARY
I have to say, I love that Kia car commercial where the guy does Flashdance. And the Burger King commercials where the moms are flat out trying to kill Burger King. But that Bud Light "Dude" commercial was stolen from one of David Spade's old routines. Basically, I like my commercials movie-related, twisted and dark. Not that I’m throwing my money either way…but I’m so tempted by that double cheeseburger melt I can’t stand it. Sigh. The universe wants me fat.

WILL ACT FOR FOOD
You’d think with all the actors not working between Hollywood and Broadway, there’d be more sightings, but it’s just Ryan Gosling smoking at 42nd & 10th around 11:00 pm, looking exactly like Ryan Gosling. Not skinnier or shorter than imagined. Pretty much dead on. Not so much for David Morse on 8th Avenue after work one day. Older and slouchier than expected.

WILL I HAVE TO BUY BRITNEY NOW?
It’s been a disappointing musical quarter for old people. The Annie Lennox album “Songs of Mass Destruction” is a letdown from her previous albums, “Bare” and unless you’ve been in a box for the last three weeks, Seal has a new album out and in typical Seal fashion he treats the previous album like a redheaded stepchild, extolling how working on this latest one was the best time ever. Well, this time he’s without Trevor Horn and instead has one of Madonna’s producers with him to try and recapture a club feel. You’re the 40-something father of three. Your club days are over, old man. “Seal IV” is so much superior to “System” I’m tempted to take “System” off my iPod in disappointment. But amazingly, the duet he has with Heidi Klum doesn’t suck like it absolutely should. I mean like any Seal album it’s good music to have on in the background while you’re fucking, but that’s about it.