JESUS THE VIKING

1. Paul Blart: Mall Cop/Sony Wknd/$ 21.5 Total/$ 64.8
2. Underworld: Rise of the Lycans Wknd/$ 20.7 Total/$ 20.7
3. Grand Torino/Warner Wknd/$ 16.0 Total/$ 97.0
4. Hotel for Dogs/Paramount Wknd/$ 12.4 Total/$ 37.0
5. Slumdog Millionaire/Fox Searchlight Wknd/$ 10.6 Total/$ 55.9
6. My Bloody Valentine 3-D/Lions Wknd/$ 10.1 Total/$ 37.7
7. Inkheart/Warner Wknd/$ 7.8 Total/$ 7.8
8. Bride Wars/Fox Wknd/$ 7.0 Total/$ 48.7
9. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Wknd/$ 6.0 Total/$ 111.0
10. Notorious/Fox Searchlight Wknd/$ 5.7 Total/$ 31.8

LEFT HANDED PRAISE: FUNNIER THAN ADAM SANDLER
For some Paul Blart: Mall Cop holding at number one may signal the end of civilization, but as I said last week, I totally understand. Stupid. Fun. In a bad. Time. And apparently, though all appearances to the contrary, Kevin James didn’t make it, say, Adam Sandler stupid, which is why this almost tripled its budget in two weeks while Adam Sandler’s last film barely made it over its budget and it was a family film released at Christmas! Not that we didn’t already know whom to blame for I Now Pronounce You Chuck And Larry.

AH-OOOO/WEREWOLVES OF UNDETERMINED EUROPEAN COUNTRY…
Underworld: Rise of the Lycans opens at number two and this was nothing but a good time, better than the second Underworld film that’s for damn sure. This tells the full story of how the war between the vampires and the werewolves began, which was already briefly recounted in the first Underworld film. Not sure why we needed it again, but given that all the most interesting characters from the first film were dead by the end of it or just totally missing from the second, I can see why they decided to go back rather than forward. One of these characters was Bill Nighy’s Viktor, head of the vampires. In fact, the first ten minutes of the second film was also a flashback with him because they realized how much gravitas he brought to the film. Also missing from the second was Michael Sheen as Lucien, the werewolf king. Between the two of them they help to make this Romeo & Juliet story with werewolves and vampires better than that description would suggest. Also, the director of the first two films, Len Wiseman, left out co-writer Kevin Giroux from the second along with the character he played, Raze. He’s back in both capacities here and you realize just how valuable he was, because like the first, he recognized the need for lots of individual characters aside from your leads, something else the second film lacked. In fact the vampire/werewolf element is just an added bonus to what is a satisfactory medieval story with sword battles galore (people tend to forget Romeo & Juliet actually had no shortage of them). Rhona Mitra continues her ascension to science fiction and fantasy goddess playing the daughter of Bill Nighy’s character. Her resemblance to Kate Beckinsale is perfect and hopefully deliberate, because the very reason Beckinsale is adopted by Viktor is due to her resemblance to the daughter he killed. They even address this in the film, much to the delight of continuity fans like myself (not to mention correcting the flaw of the first film where she didn’t look like Beckinsale and was blonde). George Lucas needs to see this and learn how a prequel is done, as this doesn’t just recount a story you already know, but also throws new light on the characters and motivations contained in the later stories. What both Viktor and Lucien do and how they react in the first Underworld film takes on a deeper meaning after seeing this. Lucas could also learn not to waste time on the origins of a character he claimed was a throwaway and whose fan obsession he couldn’t understand (yes, Boba Fett, I’m looking at you).

DO YOU FEEL PROFITABLE, PUNK? WELL DO YA?
Grand Torino is down to number three and leave it to Clint to teach the kids how it’s done. $97M from a $33M budget. This was rumored to be his last acting role, but with a return like that in an economy like this, you can better believe Warner Brothers execs will be on their knees begging him to keep going.

SHOW THEM GOOD MOVIES AND LET THEM LEAD THE WAY
Hotel For Dogs actually rises to number four and that’s more of a threat to civilization than Paul Blart: Mall Cop because it threatens the kids and you know they’re our future.

WELCOME TO THE BANDWAGON
Thanks to Oscar nominations and an additional 800 screen roll out Slumdog Millionaire jumps to number five, so millions of people can now start whining, “It wasn’t nearly as good as people said it was.”

THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU SEE THE YEAR IN QUARTERS
My Bloody Valentine 3-D is down to number six and shouldn’t this have been released in February? So not only do the filmmakers need never to work again, but so the corporate heads who decided on the release date.

THE BLONDE NOT REALLY LEADING THE BLONDE
Bride Wars is down to number eight and do you think Candace Bergin offers any advice to all the younger blondes she winds up making films with about their potential future? I mean we’re talking Sarah Jessica Parker, Reese Witherspoon, Gwyneth Paltrow and now Kate Hudson. And nobody needs like more than Kate Hudson. Trivia: Meg Ryan has played her daughter twice, once 28 years ago in Rich & Famous and last year in The Women. See, knowing shit like that is why I can’t learn a new language. There’s just no more room at the inn!

COSTUME DESIGNER = SOMEONE WHO WATCHED HAPPY DAYS
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button pops back up into the top ten thanks to 13 Oscar nominations and 40 more screens---neither of them deserved. Okay, that’s not entirely true. All the technical nominations were well deserved. Everything else…not so much. I predict a non-technical shut out and by “predict” I mean “hope for.” Except for costume design. Those 50’s and 60’s outfits were smoking. Though how can you design clothes that actually existed.

ALREADY DEAD
Finally, Notorious closes out the top ten at number ten and also in this as Biggie’s mother is Angela Bassett who seems to be making a minor career out of music bios. Aside from this there was the Tina Turner bio pic she should have won an Oscar for and playing the matriarch of the Jackson family. Who’s taking bets on if she winds up playing Tupac’s mom too? No wonder she hates Halle Berry so much. She’s more talented, but doing TV and crap like this, while the beauty queen (literally) has an Oscar and the A-list career.

JESUS THE VIKING
Not breaking the top ten but soon to debut on The Sci-Fi Channel one Saturday night in the near future is Outlander, a movie with the greatest premise ever: Jesus leads the Vikings to fight an alien monster. Okay, not Jesus, but Jim Caviezel, the guy who played Jesus. And technically he’s an alien too. The alien race he’s at war with kills his crew and causes his ship to crash land on earth, where it then begins to feast on the Vikings. He then leads the Vikings to fight it. It’s The 13th Warrior (which I loved), Alien and Predator all wrapped into one. And maybe a little of the great 80’s sci-fi film, The Hidden. Now, this movie has been sitting on a shelf for about a year thanks to The Weinstein Company falling apart, but let’s face it: even during their Miramax days they’d let movies die this way. In any case, it was finally released in the US this week in about ten cities---none of which was New York. I was so pissed I did the unthinkable: I hopped on a train to New Jersey to go see it. And I’m not talking PATH, but NJ Transit. Out to Hamilton, where Angelina Jolie Smile lives. Of course she wasn’t in town this weekend (Happy Birthday!), but that’s okay, because I wasn’t there to socialize. I was on a mission. A geek mission. A little research online showed me the movie theater was just down the road from the train station. I arrived at 10:30 and at 11:00 had bought my ticket and was sitting in an empty theater for the 11:25 show. Out at 1:30 and I was on the 2:08 train back home. You know how I do! No, it wasn’t the greatest film in the world, but was definitely entertaining enough that I didn’t regret the effort I took to see it on the big screen. Sorry, but it matters. The budget wasn’t major, but big enough for them to make some use of it. I mean John Hurt, Jim Caviezel and Ron Perlman aren’t A-list, but they don’t have to do children’s films either. So they had money for a decent cast, sets, locations and specials effects and that’s lost on the small screen (yes, I’m still not part of the HD generation). And it was fun. It’s no surprise that some of the people behind this were also behind Lord of the Rings and Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (also, Sophia Myles, who played Erica, the conniving blonde vampire from the first Underworld is here). One of the nice twists of the film is that Caviezel speaks to the people in terms of their own experience, telling them he’s hunting a dragon who sunk his ship, never once trying to explain he’s and the creature are both aliens. And the movie is just as much about him becoming part of the Viking tribe as it is about fighting the monster. Yes, characterization! There’s also the very novel twist in that the alien may be as much victim as anyone else. If there’s any problem I had with it, it’s that the Vikings…are kinda wussy. If you’ve seen The 13th Warrior you know those actors looked and conveyed the feeling of people who walked around with axes and swords cutting off heads. Caviezel and the others…not so much. Apparently there was no money in the budget for a “300” type of training. And the costumes weren’t great. Nothing really dramatic or inspiring. Just generic furs. Again, it suffers in comparison to the greatness that was The 13th Warrior---though ironically, this may actually be more historically accurate. The clichéd Viking names, however, Freya, Wulfric, Gunnar, Erik, where studio forced. You know, the same studio that all but abandoned the film?