FUNNY VS. MONEY

1. Monsters Vs. Aliens/DreamW Wknd/$ 58.2 Total/$ 58.2
2. Haunting in Connecticut/LGF Wknd/$ 23.0 Total/$ 23.0
3. Knowing/Summit Wknd/$ 14.7 Total/$ 46.2
4. I Love You, Man/Paramount Wknd/$ 12.6 Total/$ 37.0
5.Duplicity/Universal Wknd/$ 7.6 Total/$ 25.6
6. Race To Witch Mountain/Disney Wknd/$ 5.6 Total/$ 53.3
7. 12 Rounds/Fox Wknd/$ 5.3 Total/$ 5.3
8. Watchmen/Warner Wknd/$ 2.8 Total/$ 103.3
9. Taken/Fox Wknd/$ 2.7 Total/$ 137.1
10. The Last House On The Left/Uni Wknd/$ 2.6 Total/$ 28.5

EARTH VS THE FLYING SAUCERS WAS FUNNIER
Monsters Vs. Aliens opens at number one and whatever Pixar is doing they need to lock it up in a vault like the recipe for Coke or Kentucky Fried Chicken, because no one else even comes close and this is another example of that. You’d think with such a premise you’d have so many jokes you wouldn’t know what to do. Well, the five people who worked on this screenplay were apparently frozen by the prospect they could barely create any at all. When Seth Rogen essentially ad libbing his role as a Blob is the comic highlight, you have a problem. The first problem is that they take monsters from the 50’s rather than modern ones (not that we really create them much any more). You have The Missing Link (The Creature From The Black Lagoon), Insectasauris (Mothra), Dr. Cockroach (The Fly), Bob (The Blob), Ginormica (Attack of the 50 Foot Woman). I get the impression that the writers may have just been too young to know what to do with them as they were very much products of their time. I mean shouldn’t there have been some satire on their roles as monsters? How they may be outdated in today’s modern world of Freddy, Jason, Predators and Aliens? Or how much money the government has spent keeping them on ice for 50 years with no return on it? They’re promised release if they fight the aliens, when it would have been funnier if they were being released anyway due to budget cuts. There are just sooo many ripe targets in this and they touch on none of them, instead choosing very sitcom level jokes like Dr. Cockroach loving garbage or The Missing Link being out of shape. Yeah, exactly. And just as they clearly have no idea what to do with these characters, they have even less of an idea of what to do with the 3-D effect. Granted, it looks nice, but shouldn’t I feel like shit’s coming at me? Shouldn’t I feel somewhat involved in what’s going on onscreen? I didn’t and you won’t.

A BIG GULP…OF TERROR!
The Haunting in Connecticut opens at number two and if the only thing stopping you from liking The Amityville Horror was it was it being a bit too New Englandy then rejoice. We’ve moved it to the tri-state area. Eventually every state will get a movie about a house that’s suspiciously cheap with a history that the agent either neglects to mention or that people ignore to later regret. Make a date for POLTERGIESTS IN PENNSYLVANIA! APPARITIONS IN ARKANSAS! I’m thinking if you’re an agent, wouldn’t it be worth your while to have it exorcised so that you could raise the price? And if you’re an investor, tear the frigging house down and make is something else. Haven’t heard many stories about a 7-11 being haunted because it was built over a graveyard---though that would be hysterical. “The microwave burritos! They are possessed! And the Slurpee has the taste of HELLFIRE!” Needless to say, I didn’t see this. I don’t do the scary and this was actually trying to be scary, not simple torture porn like we’ve seen to recently.

I DON’T LOVE YOU ANYMORE, MAN
Knowing is down to number three followed by I Love You Man at number four and this was written and directed by the writer of the Meet The Parents movies as well as Along Came Polly, which isn’t awful, but not exactly giving me confidence. And while he was also a writer on Undeclared, this pegs him as a member of the Apatow Clique, which means two-dimensional women and men who remain lovable despite being somewhat assholish and just from the trailer you can see Jason Segel is living up to his end of the deal.

PRETTY SCHADENFREUDE
Duplicity is down to number five and at just $25M they haven’t even paid for the salaries of Julia Roberts and Clive Own yet. Heh-heh-heh.

THAT THING YOU DID STILL DOESN’T WORK
Race To Witch Mountain is down to number six and also in this is Tom Everett Scott who was once a “hot young thing” when he was chosen by Tom Hanks to play the “Tom Hanks Role” in the vastly underrated That Thing You Do. I can only conclude the failure of that film was because it was too nice. I mean, Grease was raunchier. You can pretty much run That Thing You Do uncut on TV. I can’t think of a single curse word that occurs in it. His second misfire was An American Werewolf in Paris alongside Julie Delpy, who also never caught on, proving once again that we like our Frenchwomen with short dark hair. Then came The Love Letter, which was produced by Steven Spielberg, and starring his wife, Kate Capshaw. Again a movie that should have done better, didn’t but is fun to watch on a Sunday afternoon. Then came a show that’s laughable now: The $treet, which was about brokers on Wall Street. Jennifer Connelly played his love interest, but she obviously rebounded much better than he did. The failure of that was the beginning of the end. The next time you saw him he has “blink-and-you-miss-it” role in Van Wilder. Since then it’s been TV and more TV with reoccurring roles on e.r., Law & Order and Cashmere Mafia. He had another shot with a TNT show, but they don’t always take and his didn’t. Geek connection: he was the voice of Booster Gold on the Justice League series.

MAKES COMMANDO LOOK LIKE THE GODFATHER
12 Rounds opens at number seven and do you know how dumb you have to be to be considered a dumb action movie? I saw the trailer for this and my head started to hurt it was so stupid. The Rock not withstanding, if a wrestler is starring in it, it’s going to be crap. I mean crap so bad it makes Lethal Weapon look like Citizen fucking Kane. Saddest part? This was directed by Renny Harlin, who was on his way to being an action movie auteur in the 80’s with Die Hard and Cliff Hanger. Then came the train wreck that was Cutthroat Island, which put the brakes on all of it. He never came back, though I insist The Long Kiss Goodnight is underrated. Deep Blue Sea was a minor bounce back, but Driven then dragged him back down and down he’s stayed, which is why he’s now making movies with wrestlers. Somewhere his ex-wife, Geena Davis, is laughing because rumor has it their marriage ended when she walked in on him banging his assistant (though the devastation that was Cutthroat Island cooled her career just as much).

SHOWING YOUR JUNK DOESN’T MAKE IT ART
Watchmen is down to number eight and speaking of “hot young things” that made good movies which were supposed to put them on top, Billy Crudup (and his penis) are in this and you can’t make a better movie than almost famous and I can’t tell you why it failed. It definitely wasn’t too nice. All I can think of was that it was just too smart a movie to be released in the summer. Now Billy Crudup runs some bullshit about not wanting to be a star. Yeah, that’s why you were in Mission Impossible 3 and made this with Zack fucking Synder, because you’re interested in art. And yes, I’m team Mary Louise Parker and will never forgive him for dumping her when she was eight months pregnant for friggin’ Claire Danes---who just got engaged to actor Hugh Dancy and is now praying that karma doesn’t really exist.

THE END
Taken is down to number nine followed by Last House on the Left at number ten

WHEN NUDITY WAS GROOVY
Recently my friend the Fitness Woman used a picture of herself from when she was 15 as her Facebook picture. It’s soft-focus, heavy on the make-up with a white fur. Basically, it looks like porn. And creepy porn when you realize she was only 15 (and it was her dad’s idea of classy). In fact, I told her it reminded me of something from Penthouse in 1979 and that her photographer may have been moonlighting. As a joke I went looking for the photo it reminded me of and scarily enough it was a Penthouse cover from 1979. Obviously this made an impression on me to stay for so long and the realization reawakened something that briefly made an appearance at home over Christmas: an appreciation of men’s magazines from the 70’s (I’m not alone in this as Playboy recently started a function on their website where you can see ever cover ever published and I learned my favorite was September 1977). I know I’m getting old fogey, but they were truly better then (lack of minorities not withstanding). No one had fake boobs, was borderline anorexic AND THEY HAD PUBIC HAIR LIKE GROWN WOMEN ARE SUPPOSED TO! Even the photography was different with more natural light than you’d ever see today. And while there was retouching, they weren’t photoshopped into unrecognizable plasticine perfection. So I went to eBay and sure enough, for $9 you can get a year’s worth of magazines from 30 years ago and that’s exactly what I did. A few times actually, but I realized that my window of nostalgia was very narrow. Nothing after 1980 so, everything I got after that I resold on eBay. I turned 14 then and apparently whatever fascination I had vanished. Maybe the thrill was abated when social interaction with actual girls began (or semi-began considering I was a geek), but the three years before then is permanently engraved on my psyche. I can remember almost every aspect about any magazine I saw in that time period; the giddy thrill of seeing something new and forbidden alongside the anxiousness of getting caught and realization of the limited time I had to look everything over. The adult owner in question---uncle, family friend we were visiting, whomever---would be back soon and I needed to take in as much as possible as quickly as possible. No matter how beautiful the girl, I didn’t have much time to dwell on just her. I had to see them all. And they were all beautiful. They seemed so much older and sophisticated at the time, but now as an adult I realize they were just children. Especially now when I read their profiles. I shake my head with amusement at Daniella’s dream to be a writer, while she sits nude on a beach, her legs akimbo, clutching both breasts in her hands. Michelle wants to work with children. Most likely soon after she stops faux-masturbating on the hood of that Mercedes. I also realize now these women are in their 50’s at the very least and may have gorgeous daughters the same age they were when they took these photos (and supremely nervous fathers as a result). Knowing far too much about these women I know there were no books written and very little social work done. After a few appearances as “the naked girl” in movies they all wound up marrying wealthy real estate investors…or escorting, then marrying a wealthy real estate investor. But the real treats now are the ads, ads for the modern, sexy man-on-the-go, usually featuring some guy with a mustache and chest hair. Apparently women aren’t the only ones who were plucked over the last 30 years, as up until the 80’s, you needed hair to be a man. And three pages for a single cigarette ad!?! Can you imagine that now? And of course every other article was about sex in the 70’s and how great it was after the sexual revolution. Needless to say it was cruel for someone to see all this then finally come of age under Regan and AIDs. Though the vanishing pubic hair thing didn’t happen until Clinton. Which makes perfect sense if you think about it, because he seems like the kind of freak who likes it that way.

NIGHTS WILL BE FOREVER WITHOUT HIM
England Dan of England Day & John Ford Coley died of cancer last week. He and his brother were gods of 70’s lite AM rock. No, John Ford Coley was not his brother. His full name was Dan Seals and his brother was Seals of Seals & Croft. Yeah, any trip to a dentist’s office is like a Seals family reunion. And for the last time the lyrics are “I’m not talkin’ ‘bout movin’ in” not “I’m not talkin’ about the linen.”