I PREFER A MATURE WINE

1. Quantum of Solace/Sony Wknd/$ 70.4 Total/$ 70.4
2. Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa/DreamW Wknd/$ 36.1 Total/$ 118.0
3. Role Models/Universal Wknd/$ 11.7 Total/$ 38.1
4. High School Musical 3/Disney Wknd/$ 5.9 Total/$ 84.4
5. Changeling/Universal Wknd/$ 4.2 Total/$ 27.6
6. Zack & Miri Make A Porno/Weinstein Wknd/$ 3.2 Total/$ 26.5
7. Soul Men/MGM Wknd/$ 2.4 Total/$ 9.4
8. The Secret Life of Bees/Fox Wknd/$ 2.4 Total/$ 33.7
9. Saw V/Lion’s Gate Wknd/$ 1.8 Total/$ 55.4
10. The Haunting of Molly Hartley/Free Wknd/$ 1.6 Total/$ 12.7


THE BOND IDENTITY
Quantum of Solace opens at number one and this continues the more nitty-gritty Bond that was in Casino Royale, which is to say more like Jason Bourne. But unlike Bourne Bond can still smile and crack a joke---even when he’s dressed to the nines and hell bent of making anyone connected with Vesper’s death suffer and die (this film literally begins just after the last one ended). This unfortunately leaves the plot a little muddled as it pretty much takes a backseat to the story of James Bond going off the reservation for revenge, an idea already used in License To Kill (it’s a statement of progress that they left the title as is, rather than dumbing it down the way they did for License To Kill which was originally called License Revoked). There’s even the same scene were M turns up on location (are their no other agents that M has this much time to devote to Bond?) with other agents to take Bond in and he kicks their asses and gets away. But that’s not a deliberate reference. That actually occurs at the beginning of that same scene when we see a murdered British Agent who’d been drowned in oil laid naked in Bond’s bed like Jill Masterson in Goldfinger. But it doesn’t stop there as the bad guys are the same secret organization who trapped Vesper in the first film and they are essentially a new version of SPECTRE from the older Bond films. One of the best moments in the film is their meeting at the opera for Tosca that Bond infiltrates and after disrupting it, everyone runs to the exits, the villains from Bond and Bond from their bodyguards. In a wordless scene where the only sound is the music from the opera, Bond and the central bad guy actually run into each other in the lobby. The scene cuts back and forth from opera to the ensuing firefight and is your first clue you’ve got something other than your typical action movie guy (Mark Forster, director of Monster’s Ball and Finding Neverland). This is also the second Bond movie that actually makes notice of the fact that the women around Bond tend to die (the first being Goldeneye) and I wonder if they’ll make notice of it in future films, as some plot threads were deliberate left dangling. Ironically, there’s a bit too much of Bond being physically invulnerable even as they show his emotional vulnerability. There’s just way too much jumping and falling and even though he’s shown with cuts and bruises, he’s popping back up much too quickly. Next week we’ll trying to understand why a hot Bolivian girl is played by a hot Russian and why a British girl in Bolivia is running around in Uggs and a raincoat. You wish I were kidding.

I AIN’T SCARED OF AFRICA, MUTHAFUCKA
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa is down to number two and it’s going oddly unmentioned that Bernie Mac is also one of the voices in this, as none other than Ben Stiller’s dad. That’s my most compelling reason to see this yet.

ALYSSA MILANO REGRETS IT TOO AND SHE OUGHTA KNOW
Role Models is down to number three and the climax of the film is a big role-playing game battle where the last person standing becomes king. Given this is just a bunch of dweebs with swords made out of foam rubber with duct tape over them, I thought it was a bit strange how accomplished some of the fighting looked so I stayed to see the credits and there’s a reason: Jeff Imada did the fight choreography. It’s a tribute to my supreme geekness that I even know this man’s name, thanks to years of him being in martial arts movies. Ironically enough, he was the fight coordinator for last two Jason Bourne movies. A friend of Brandon Lee, son of Bruce, he’s worked on Daredevil, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Blade and obviously, The Crow. Because I like him I won’t bring up his involvement in Double Dragon. Oops.

COULD I GET ONE OF THOSE IN A LARGE?
High School Musical 3 is down to number four and Vanessa Hudgens has always disturbed me by being a little too hot for someone her age. She didn’t help matters any by taking that nude photo of herself in a perfect pose. Well, relief is at hand. She always seemed very familiar to and last week it suddenly dawned on me: she’s just a little Brooke Burke, whom I can lust after (and have for years) with no guilt whatsoever. Sigh. Life is good.

TV LOVES ME
Changeling is down to number five and just last week a study revealed that unhappy people watch more TV. Duh. What next? Dudes, with no girlfriends jerk off more? Lonely people eat more chocolate? This matters because also in Changeling is Jeffery Donovan, best known as the star of Burn Notice, a show I love but have strangely not watched though I have every episode from the summer on my DVR. Now could this mean I’m not as unhappy as I was last summer? You know, the summer where my frigging brain bled? Hmmm….

NOTICE HOW OLD PORN DUDES NEVER GET MAINSTREAM WORK. THAT’S SEXIST.
Zack And Miri Make A Porno is down to number six and how can you have a movie about porn without real porn stars? You can’t, hence the presence of Katie Morgan, that squeaky voiced girl from HBO and none other than Traci Lords, whom I never thought would let herself be identified this way given her time in the porn business was underaged and with a coke addiction. She should consider herself lucky, given how many girls from the 80’s and 90’s are now back doing porn as part of the “MILF” and “Cougar” trend. I mean, that’s what I heard…from a friend. You don’t know him. He’s from Canada. I was never a fan of Traci Lords back in the day and I can’t remember Katie Morgan from the one thing I know I must have seen her in. So basically Kevin Smith’s taste in porn stars sucks too. No, that’s not a pun, so get a life.

SEE!?! YOU’LL NEVER SEE TOM BYRON NEXT TO SAMUEL L. JACKSON.
Speaking of porn, making an appearance in Soul Men, down to number seven this week, is none other than Vanessa Del Rio, which tells you flat out your director is probably over 40. I’m both curious and afraid to see what she looks like now. Mostly the latter.

SOON TO BE ON A DVD SHELF NEAR YOU
The Secret Life of Bees is down to number eight, followed by Saw V at number nine and closing out the top ten is The Haunting of Molly Hartley.

GOT ANY ASS BONE CREAM?
For better or worse, global warming has given me more days of riding on my bike. I thought for sure I’d put this thing away in October and not see it again until spring. That’s because I was still thinking there were four seasons. No, it’s mid-November and I’m not only still riding my bike, but on Saturday I was riding my bike in shorts and short-sleeves. And yes, hot rollerblading women are still out there as well as those douches who feel the need to run shirtless so long as the temperature remains above freezing. I didn’t think it was going to happen because I woke up to rain, but when I came out of the movies, the sun was shining and the skies were blue, so I rushed home to get my bike on because I’ve actually become one of those guys who needs to be active a certain times a week or I get weird. It’s a betrayal of all my slacker impulses. But helping to maintain my enthusiasm is my new odometer! Now I know how far I’m going and how fast. Because I’ve no sense of these things, I had no idea I average around 15 mph, which lets me know that I’m always breaking that 5 mph rule on one of the paths. My weekday route down to Battery Park is 13.3 miles, all flat and takes me about an hour. My current weekend route is a modification of my original one; up the West Side and back down. It takes me about two hours and ranges 20-30 miles, but is not totally flat especially since I now go into Inwood Park with its steep hills and odd winding, broken trails, which get a little hairy when they’re carpeted with fallen leaves. So much of it really is broken and you may unknowingly hit the equivalent of a pothole. Add to the mix the leaves are wet on some steep hills and you’re asking for trouble. I didn’t mean to go through the park this time, only around it, but you can’t fully. That’s because it’s more a place to walk and take in the beauty of the multi-colored leaves falling---one of which fell directly onto my face, briefly blinding me. It was impressive enough to prompt a guy to shout out, “You got hit with a hot one, son!” I’m not sure how a gigantic, cold, wet leaf is a “hot one” but okay. Remember those clear, blue skies? By the time I started going around Inwood, not only were they were gone, but it got so dark street lights started automatically switching on. I always carry my Metrocard with me for occasions like this, in case the weather turns on a dime and I have to hop on the train. Luckily, it didn’t and the darkness did eventually a tiny bit. At least long enough for me to get home semi-dry. But I may need a new seat cushion because now my ass bone is starting to hurt when it never did before.

LADIES NIGHT…AGAIN.
When my liver collapses you can blame women, because these Jezebels gatherings are coming a little too frequently. This time is was at a Lower East Side bar called Tribe on St. Marks and 1st (which, of course meant a geek stop before the night was over at St. Mark’s Comics) and for the first time, I was the sole member of the core group still around with a few newbies, not the least of whom was The OshKosh B’Gosh Girl, always strangely smiling at me. It’s actually very sad when you realize in almost two years of usually being the sole male in a group of up to twenty women, this the first time anyone has even attempted flirting with me. And she was flirting because she accused me of giving her a “James Bond look.” I don’t even know what that means. I knew I had to get away from this because well, aside from her obviously being too young and talking about her boyfriend, I’m not made of steel, so as we all began to depart for the night and OshKosh B’Gosh began to make it very clear she was willing to continue blowing off the friends she’d already been blowing off most of the night, I decided to see if Dorito Cheeseburger Woman was around to save me from myself, as I was only six blocks from her apartment. She was and I was gone. The aforementioned Global Warming was still in full effect, so DCW and I went up to her roof where she proved to be more entertaining than usual, showing me how a thong was good for holding a lighter when you’re wearing exercise pants with no pockets, weirding me out by standing a little too close the edge of the roof, then telling me the amusing, yet slight creepy story of a dude trying to turn a business trip she was on into a business/pleasure trip. What made it amusing is that she told me he looks like Shaggy from Scooby Doo and imagining Shaggy trying to put his mack down is just funny (“Zoinks! You’re so fine I’d drink your bathwater.”). She also told me she’s still getting some grief over coming out as a Republican, albeit good-natured. Then she showed me her photo with John McCain and Sarah Palin that all the drivers got to take. For the sake of her career, she might want never to mention that to anyone.

BOOTS, NO LONGER JUST FOR PUSS
I’ve been thinking about this for awhile and now it’s reached critical mass: wearing boots with the pantsleg tucked in. Now for women it’s redundant. If you’re wearing boots with jeans, of course your pantsleg is tucked in, because the point of boots is to show the boot. No woman in the world is covering her $1000 Ferragamo boots with denim (though usually it’ll be a nice skirt). With men, it’s only done by gay men (their appreciation of fashion leaves no other choice), dudes in bands (trying to be different) and Eurotrash (because…they’re Eurotrash). This has nagged at me since seeing I’m Not There where Richard Gere’s amazing boots pulled me out of the movie because I want them, but have no idea how I could wear them. Now, as fall has descended, seeing women constantly in amazing boots on display everywhere leaves me envious with my boots thoroughly covered by a variety of boot cuts, but could I do it? After much discussion with both women and gay men, I’m afraid the answer is “No.” I’m simply not skinny enough, the one constant present in all the types of men who do wear boots with their pantsleg tucked in. Besides, my next fashion desires are cape and canes with swords in them and it’s such a slippery slope, that I’d best not risk it.