IT ACTUALLY TOOK A SILVER YOGA STICK

1. Bee Movie/Dreamworks Wknd/$ 26.3 Total/$ 72.2
2. American Gangster/Universal Wknd/$ 24.3 Total/$ 80.7
3. Fred Claus/Warner Wknd/$ 19.2 Total/$ 19.2
4. Lions for Lambs/UA Wknd/$ 6.7 Total/$ 6.7
5. Dan In Real Life/Touchstone Wknd/$ 5.9 Total/$ 30.7
6. Saw IV/Lion’s Gate Wknd/$ 5.0 Total/$ 58.1
7. The Game Plan/Disney Wknd/$ 2.4 Total/$ 85.4
8. P2/Sum Wknd/$ 2.2 Total/$ 2.2
9. 30 Days of Night/Sony Wknd/$ 2.1 Total/$ 37.4
10. Martian Child/New Line Wknd/$ 3.7 Total/$ 3.7

BEE FUNNY
Bee Movie is actually rises to the number one spot and one of the reasons the courtroom sequence is the comedic high point is that the voice of the lawyer for the honey companies is none other than John Goodman, who is a funny muthafucka. He’s one of those actors who pretty much lift whatever material they touch and this is no exception. Unfortunately, also in this is Patrick Walburton, best known as Puddy from Seinfeld and he just leaves the material at the level he finds it. Shouting is not acting, no matter what Al Pacino tells you.

DADDY DAY CAMP THREE MONTHS AGO DIDN’T HELP
American Gangster is down to number two and also in this and trying to climb his way out of the cellar is Cuba Gooding Jr., who has so damaged his rep, they don’t even include him in the advertising with fellow “Academy Award Winners” Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe and they never miss an opportunity for that in films, even if you’re just a nominee. He plays the other Harlem gangster from the 70’s with a movie out about him, Nicky Barnes. Only his film is a documentary, so he doesn’t have a good looking movie star and a somewhat fictional portrayal of him, omitting non-glamorous details like the fact that Denzel Washington’s character couldn’t read. Yeah, no one fantasizes about being an illiterate gangster. Also in this is the man who’s career Cuba Gooding Jr. would love to have right now, Chiwetel Ejiofor, whom I’ve enjoyed since Dirty Pretty Things, but most of you know as the guy who marries Kiera Knightley in love actually, or the assassin in Serenity or one of the rebels in Children of Men. Actually, you wouldn’t since no one saw any of those movies. He was also Denzel’s partner in The Inside Man. Yeah, now you know him. I think his Oscar nomination is purely a matter of time and if you can’t get Denzel, this is the guy who should get the call. The call Cuba Gooding once thought would be his. Do I have to point out that his dad was in The Main Ingredient who’s big hit was “Everybody Plays The Fool” apparently anticipating his son’s career.

AFTER ALL, IT’S NOT THAT FAR TO “SATAN” FROM “SANTA”
Fred Claus opens at number three and if there’s something worse or more annoying than Vince Vaughn’s wiseass, motor-mouth persona, it’s his wiseass motormouth persona with no one to balance him out (The Wilson Brother, Jon Favereau) or watered down for the kids. This is both as when it was first announced they were going for an “R” rating and you know what happens to an “R” rated comedy that has to become family friendly. It seems every year brings the most horrid holiday films with major stars who should know better, but the money is too good because these things always seem to turn a profit in the end. Sadly, this is when you need Billy Bob Thornton because he wouldn’t have backed down on the rating. And really, did we need another sappy family film, wasting the talents of people who have made their careers being pretty unpleasant? Seriously, Vince Vaughn, Paul Giamatti, Miranda Richardson are not warm and fuzzy. What the world needs is more films acknowledging that the pressure to be nice and loving at Christmas sucks. You can still have your happy ending; just don’t wuss out on the venom bile beforehand. You know what I have a soft spot for? Scrooged with Bill Murray. It’s a big, bloated mess of a film, but Bill Murray carries it and saves it from giving you a cavity, because even when he’s nice, he’s not that nice.

WAR FOR DUMMIES
Lions for Lambs opens at number four and while I am as good a liberal as I can be coming from the south (meaning I’ve got no problem with the death penalty or gun ownership), the idea of having Robert Redford preach at me just makes me want to vomit as much as the idea of my beloved Meryl Streep sharing celluloid with none other than Tom Cruise. What in the name of all that is holy has these two not only in the same movie, but in the same scenes!?! Suddenly Robert Redford and Meryl Streep become Katie Holmes; making an unholy bargain with Tom Cruise because he is one of the biggest movie stars in the world. For all the good it does. This just goes on the pile of anti-war films that are too much, too soon. It took America over a decade before we could start making films about Vietnam, so why these people think they can make movies about wars going on right now is beyond me. I can turn on the news and be depressed, so why the fuck would I pay money for the privilege? Especially when it inevitably comes with a lecture? And no matter what side of the war you fall on, you don’t want Tom Cruise on your side, because it instantly brands your side as crazy.

I THINK THIS IS WHAT’S KILLING THE BEES
Dan In Real Life is down to number five, followed by Saw IV at number six and Saw V and VI are already in the planning stages. And you thought global warming was the only thing you had to fear about mankind’s folly

CONCEIRGE: IT’S FRENCH FOR TERROR!
Down to number seven is The Game Plan, followed by P2 opening at number eight and we may have a new winner for “Dumbest Movie Title” for 2007. It sounds like a video game system when It’s supposed to be a horror movie about a woman being terrorized by a security guard in parking lot and…wait. A horror movie about being terrorized by a security guard in a parking lot!?! Are you fucking kidding me!?! How’d this even get made much less released!?! What next, being stalked by a Valet? “When you get your car, be sure to check the backseat for…THE VALET!” Man, what Wes Bentley has to do for drug money after pissing away his American Beauty heat years ago. Now any role he’d do will go to that wussy guy on heroes.

MAYBE THEATER…
30 Days of Night is down to number nine, with Martian Child closing out the top ten at number ten, and also in this is none other than Amanda Peet who is pretty much a curse on the big screen and small screen. We’re getting to the point where her biggest success is going to be that Jack & Jill show.

THEM KILLIN’ FIELDS
Not breaking the top ten as it’s still in limited release is No Country For Old Men and after few years of comedies The Coen Brothers have returned to their peak form of Miller’s Crossing and Fargo. Few others can depict graphic violence with an undercurrent of humor the way they can, but I recommend having something happy planned for afterwards, because when cowboy steals $2M in drug money thinking he can outrun the psychotic assassin sent to recover it, it cannot end well for anyone connected and it does not. After all, this is based on a novel by Cormac McCarthy who just won a Pulitzer Prize for a bleak novel about a post-apocalyptic world. Happily ever after is not what he does. Much has been said about Javier Bardeem’s turn as the assassin with the odd pageboy haircut and every single bit of it deserved. He’s carved out a place for himself in cinematic bad guy history with this one. Josh Brolin is the cowboy not as smart as he thinks when he takes the money, but, ironically, his trouble starts not when he takes the money, but when he goes back to the scene for an act of mercy to a man he left dying. That single merciful misstep is when he gets found out and all his trouble begins---though it’s made clear Bardeem would have pretty much killed everyone in a ten-mile radius until he found the money. Basically, if you’ve seen him, you die. His primary method of dispatching people with the stun-gun cattlemen use to kill livestock. It’s unique and terrifying. But not as terrifying as he is with his croak of a voice and menacing manner. Every conversation he has is tense because there’s a 99% he’s going to kill that person no matter what. Your only salvation is a coin toss he offers, but he almost never offers it. Tommy Lee Jones is here as the sheriff of the small town trying to get to Josh Brolin before Javier Bardeem does and supplies a great deal of the dry wit present in the movie. In fact, most of humor comes from the tried and true Coen Brothers source: the folksy ways of ordinary people. But his sheriff is weary and doesn’t see a place for himself in the world that’s coming. A world that could produce a killer like Bardeem. You start by looking forward to his showdown with Bardeem, but as time passes and you see what an unstoppable force Bardeem his, you wonder if Tommy Lee Jones is, in fact, his immovable object. Though like a lot of movies you have to give this a certain amount of suspension of disbelief, given that Javier Bardeem could leave such a trail of blood and not attract more law enforcement attention. Or that his employers would want him generating a body count for just that reason (though the American half of the drug deal seems to have that very concern and sends Woody Harrelson to kill him). Also, in cattle country no one recognizes the device he’s using to kill people even though Tommy Lee Jones actually describes it in another scene for a separate matter? And the film takes place in 1980, not that you’re told. It’s just something you have to decipher for yourself, which is a problem in a rustic setting because things just aren’t that different on the surface. God knows cowboy fashion has pretty much been the same since the 50’s.

YOU KNEW IT WAS AN UNSTABLE, THANKLESS JOB WHEN YOU TOOK IT
Okay, so the Writer’s Guild is striking and while this will throw a huge crimp into my life which is 90% TV, I must side with my brethren on this and if you’re wondering who’s right and who’s wrong in this, know that former CEO of Disney, Michael Eisner, is against the strike. That’s like OJ Simpson coming out against safety handles on knives. His mere support of it lets you know that side is wrong. A rule of thumb is this: if the millionaires are for it and the people who aren’t millionaires are against it, chances are it’s nothing less than the purest evil. Even amongst the writers, the guys who are writer/producers are the people you hear hedging. Why? Because they make more money! This not just about DVD money, but the money to be made online. The studios insists that no money is being made there so there’s nothing to share, but he writers are going hardline on this because they got fucked as hard you can get fucked over home video twenty years ago. Also there’s a shitload of advertising on every network site and I sincerely doubt they’re giving that space away.

THE NAKED AND THE DEAD
Death took a heavyweight this week in Norman Mailer and somewhere Gore Vidal is having a drink. The man has been the face of American Literature for the last fifty years part of the post-WWII movement that defined “modern.” He also was a bit of a blustering macho Hemmingway type, which is to say he was pussy trying to be tough because everyone knows writers are anything but, no matter much they think or how many women they sleep with. And in Mailer’s case, stab.

YOU CAN GET MORE WITH A YOGA STICK AND SMILE THAN JUST A SMILE
If you’d asked me who killed that real estate broker last week, I could have pointed you in the direction of the beleaguered assistant who snapped under one insult too many and clubbed her to death with yoga sticks (talk about your Upper East Side deaths; not too many poor people die yoga related deaths). But here’s the fun part: not only did this happen at my old real estate agency, Prudential Douglas Elliman, but it was my old temp agency, Axion, that placed her there! Obviously the goal was to kill all their top brokers. Unfortunately, I failed in my assignment because you can’t kill what isn’t alive. I hope this keeps her up at night. It’s good for people to fear that being an asshole one too many times will get you killed…especially if you’re rude to the sociopath with a criminal history who happens to be your assistant. I’ll bet you this is on Dick Wolfe’s list for Law & Order story ideas the moment the writer’s strike ends.