SAVE A PRAYER FOR THE MORNING AFTER

1. Up/Disney Wknd/$ 68.2 Total/$ 68.2
2. Night At The Museum 2/Fox Wknd/$ 25.5 Total/$ 105.3
3. Drag Me To Hell/Universal Wknd/$ 16.6 Total/$ 16.6
4. Terminator: Salvation/WB Wknd/$ 16.1 Total/$ 90.7
5. Star Trek/Paramount Wknd/$ 12.8 Total/$ 209.5
6. Angels & Demons/Sony Wknd/$ 11.2 Total/$ 104.8
7. Dance Flick/Paramount Wknd/$ 4.9 Total/$ 19.2
8. X-Men Origins: Wolverine/Fox Wknd/$ 3.9 Total/$ 170.9
9. Ghost of Girlfriends Past/NL Wknd/$ 3.8 Total/$ 50.0
10. Obsessed/ScreenGem Wknd/$ .7 Total/$ 67.5

WITH THE SEQUEL BE “UP, UP AND AWAY?”
Up opens at number one to no one’s surprise and boy does it ever deserve to be here. Even when they disappoint (Cars, Ratatouille) Pixar’s films are always once step above regular animated fare because they always have a heart to them that the others lack. Seriously, what’s the “heart” of fucking Shrek? Ice Age? Monsters Vs. Aliens? Nothing and no, “a desire to entertain” is not enough and let’s not pretend they EVEN care. No one who had anything to do with Shrek 3 had anything beyond a full bank account in mind. Up is pure heart from the word “go” beginning with lead character meeting the love of his life as a child, both of them fans of a famous explorer. This leads to a wordless montage of their lives together and if you aren’t teary eyed by its end, then you have no soul. The scene where they look at clouds and see babies only to discover she can’t have kids is nothing short of heartbreaking. Again, no tears = no soul. Left a widower, he keeps his promise to his late wife of taking her to South America by tying a million balloons to his house and floating away on the day they come to take him away to a rest home. Unfortunately an overly enthusiastic boy scout he tried to blow off with a snipe hunt was under his house at the time (looking for said snipe) and becomes an all-too-willing partner on his adventure. But he’s not some two-dimensional movie kid either, as his need for a new merit badge turns out to be motivated by his divorced father’s promise to attend the ceremony once he gets it. This isn’t to say the film’s not as funny as always, beginning with said first meeting of the main character and his wife (where she pretty much breaks his arm) and continuing on to the dogs, who absolutely steal. The. Show. Given collars that transform their thoughts into words, we learn just how deep the hatred for squirrels truly runs in the canine world. As is their dislike for mailmen with one of the best running jokes being how they constantly refer to the boy scout as a “tiny mailman” and taunt him by saying none of his other “tiny mailman” friends can help him. I will not be surprised if they are the ones to get the usual Disney spin-off. Pixar also gets major points for making the boy scout Asian without the slightest mention of it. He’s not an Asian kid, but a kid who happens to be Asian and it has absolutely no bearing on the story or his character. I’m sure Disney thanks Pixar for helping to wash away the stain of Song of the South. What also sets Pixar apart is its approach to 3D. One of the directors said he has no use for “stunts” but only what it can do to enrich the visual experience. And it does. The balloons, a major part of the story, look absolutely amazing. You forget you’re actually watching 3D then they appear onscreen and it looks like you can touch them. I’d given up on my dreams of HDTV and a blu-ray DVD player in this current economy, but there’s no point in owning this without them.

IT’S LIKE NOT HAVING BUTTER AND SUGAR IN YOUR CAKE
Night at the Museum: Battle for the Smithsonian is down to number two, vanquished as a soulless sequel should be, followed by Drag Me To Hell opening at number three and honestly I expected this to do better, but I can understand why it didn’t. Everyone knows you can’t get a good horror movie with a PG13 rating. By going PG to get a larger audience, they alienated that very same audience. When I was a kid I had to force myself to see Poltergeist for that very reason. PG means you lose two valuable aspects of the horror genre: sex and gore and the kids know it. Not to mention as any horror fan knows, Sam Raimi never did “serious horror.” All the Evil Dead movies are comedies. Not that this doesn’t seem effective. I don’t do the scary to begin with and this messed with me in the theater (the fly up the nose!?!), so there was no way in hell I was going to see it.

NOTHING BLOWED UP REAL GOOD
Terminator Salvation is down to number four and another component missing from this is the contemporary setting. Part of the fun of all the Terminator movies was watching them just wreck havoc in our world, utterly unconcerned by the consequences. Sarah Connor and her son because they knew the world was going to end anyway and The Terminators because, well, they were Terminators. Unfortunately that ended with the world ending in the third film, so you really don’t get a lot of Terminator carnage in a movie called Terminator. Seriously, what’s the point of a Terminator movie if he’s not fucking shit up!?!

TO SUMMON THE LIGHTNING OR NOT SUMMON THE LIGHTNING, THAT IS THE QUESTION
Star Trek is down to number five and this movie is rich in geek connections via the actors. Aside from Chris Pine being mentioned as a potential Green Lantern for the movie currently in pre-production, Chekhov is Kyle Reese in Terminator: Salvation, Spock is Sylar on Heroes, McCoy was in The Chronicles of Riddick and Lord of the Ring and Nero was the first Hulk. Now, the guy playing Kirk’s father in this movie has been selected to play Thor. I don’t think he’s Nordic-looking enough, but I hated the idea of Robert Downey Jr as Iron Man and look how that turned out. I’m going to have to trust Kenneth Brannagh on this one. Yes, he’s directing. Everybody’s on the superhero bandwagon now because capes sell more than Shakespeare.

THIS TRULY IS THE DARK SIDE OF THE FORCE
Angels and Demons is down to number six and also in this is Ewan McGregor and remember when he was the shit after Trainspotting? Yeah, me too. Sorry, but those Star Wars movies derailed his career as much as movies like The Island did because doing them meant he couldn’t be doing new and original movies (odds alone suggest one or two had to be good). I mean no one thinks of him as Obi Wan, so what’s the point? The last movie that did anything for him was Moulin Rouge---eight years ago! But how interesting is now that he Christian Bale and Jonathan Rhys Meyers were all in Velvet Goldmine together, sometimes having sex? How much would it cost to get that cast together now?

THESE ARE BAD MOVIES REAL ACTORS SHOULD BE MAKING
Dance Flick is down to number seven, followed by X-Men Origins: Wolverine at number eight and what the fuck is Will I. Am from The Black Eyed Peas doing here? Did they all get movie roles while waiting on Fergie to come back (another one of them was in Street Fighter a few months ago). God knows he doesn’t have his own solo career to maintain… Yeah, I’m mocking his crappy album that tanked. And the work he did for the lead Pussycat Doll was so bad they wouldn’t even release hers!

FOR SOME AGING GRACEFULLY IS AN OXYMORON
Ghosts of Girlfriends Past is down to number nine and very quietly has Michael Douglas finally started literally acting his age. He was Kate Hudson’s dad, he was Ryan Reynolds’ dad, he was Evan Rachel Woods’ dad and here he’s Matthew McConughey’s uncle in the Marley role. Of course this won’t do, so he’s now trying to make a sequel to Wall Street, which was a lame little morality play back then and I never understood its success beyond his performance.

HOW CAN WE MISS YOU IF YOU NEVER LEAVE?
Finally, Obsessed closes out the top ten at number ten and is it just me or does it seem like Beyonce never goes away? There’s like an album or movie out every time you turn around. Jay-Z, will you please knock her up and give us all a break?

SOME PEOPLE WILL CALL IT A ONE NIGHT STAND BUT WE CAN CALL IT PARADISE
So it took me twenty years, but I will finally admit what my boy, OG (Original Geek) said is true: the opening line to Duran Duran’s “Come Undone” is pretty goddamn smooth. “My immaculate dream/Made breath and skin/I’ve been waiting for you…” This came to mind as Chasing Amy and I were watching a Duran Duran concert from the last tour with all the original members (which lasted 30 seconds before guitarist Andy Taylor bailed) on her gigantic HDTV, which I insist she got just to emasculate me. I will give them credit. They sounded good. They look like shit, wearing young haircuts with weathered old faces, but Simon still hits the notes and they’re up there as a five-man band, period. It’s just them, not with any sort of backing musicians to help pad them out like some other bands I can name which have seemingly half a dozen extra guys on stage. I’m sure it’s more about money than anything else, hence the sole sista singing backup when everyone knows the rule is three black women and two only if you have to. Chasing Amy mocked me for enjoying it as much as I did, but she’s the one who just spent an obscene amount of money on Depeche Mode tickets, while I will be ignoring that ABC, Berlin, Cutting Crew, Wang Chung and Missing Persons will be playing at Roseland this month, a whopping three blocks from my house. I will. I swear. I’m only comfortable being old, fat and nostalgic in the privacy of someone’s home. Not with a bunch of other old, fat people checking their watches because they’ve got babysitters to pay. Speaking of which, Chasing Amy then gave me a horrifying vision of the future: us still hanging out in ten years time, only by then she’d be a single mom and that child would be sitting alongside us on the couch. What makes it so sad is that it might come true. I’m going to try and let that motivate me to try and change my fate. Tomorrow. I’ll let it motivate me tomorrow.

SOLE OBSESSION
Remember my shoe quest? The Calvin Klein casual sneaker, clearly based on the Chuck Taylor design but better? How I couldn’t find it in my size anywhere but online but refused to pay $80 when I’ve seen it for $24? And how I finally compromised with a Japanese version from Muji for $22? Well, while out looking for replacements for my now dead Nike high tops, I found out that Chuck Taylor came right back at Calvin Klein with their own upscale version of their sneaker, Premiere All-Star---and I want it all over again. This is only $65 retail, but to me that just means that it’s half as much somewhere else. I just have to find it. The cheapest so far has been Macys at $50. And don’t tell me Zappo’s. I find them highly overrated.

FOREVER IN BLUE JEANS, BABE
I need an intervention. I just bought another pair of jeans. My sixth pair. That comes out to one pair of jeans each month since January. In my defense at least two pair were to replace old ones I had to throw out because of holes in the crotch and one was a pair of gray jeans I found on sale at The Gap for $18. How do you turn down $18 jeans in your size in a style and cut you don’t own? Exactly. You don’t. Besides, I needed a new lighter rinse since all the others (save the gray) are dark rinse. I am not rationalizing!

FYI
That movie about Vikings and aliens that I traveled to New Jersey to see? It’s on DVD now. You know you wanna see it.

GRUMPY OLD GEEK
So I’m finally realizing I’m just too old for MTV Awards shows. Much like Mike Myers was last year as host. At least they realized it this year and hired Andy Samberg to do it. When I was younger watching I fully admit being somewhat jealous of all the young, successful pretty people onscreen. Now, however I’m flat out resentful and bitter and that makes for an unpleasant viewing experience. Also, I’m out of booze…You’d think the Billy Crystal standard of inserting yourself into films could never be dull, but you’d be wrong. Now you know why he kept getting invited back to do the Oscars…And I don’t care how funny you think you are, hit a gym, Samberg…I guess they had to give an award to the non-pretty girl from High School Musical who got the nose job. She’s the one most of the audience can relate to…don’t kid yourself: Megan Fox was just as pretty in high school as she is now, maybe even moreso. Those were humbling pictures for anyone insisting she had surgery. And I will be there for the Transformers sequel. I will not front. Giant fighting robots? Please. It’s a summer no-brainer…Twilight. I’m old, male and straight. I get nothing about this…oh, Eminem. How quickly time has passed. They aren’t half as excited as they’d be if Lil Wayne was onstage…how sad that this musical parody about explosions is the funniest thing all night. But how has he not learned that it’s even funnier if the song is good?...I’m not big on the Borat style humor where you go out and fuck with people in their real lives, but I did enjoy how Eminem got pissed off. He’s a humorless fuck and deserved no less… do these kids even know who Chris Isaak is? He’s 50! They probably think he’s Zac Efron’s dad…but they actually let Forrest Whittaker use the word “dick” for “Dick in a Box.” To bad this whole thing was overlong and not funny…I know I’m old because all I can think of Miley Cyrus is that she should be wearing a bra…10 Things I Hate About You as a series? I’ll bet $50 the people behind this show doesn’t know it’s an adaptation of Taming of the Shrew…wow. Ben Stiller has aged and that “Oh, I mean for it to look messy” is a failing attempt to hide the fact that he’s bald. So very, very bald. Triumph The Insult Dog continually harping on the fact Ben Stiller does look like an ape is the funniest thing all night. But again, this bit goes on too damn long. Why is there no booze in my kitchen!?!...Star Fleet clown college doesn’t work either…how many chances is Sienna Miller going to get to be a star?…I do like Kings of Leon though. It’s the highlight of the night…that dead cat joke should have been better. Have these guys never seen Monty Python?...Denzel’s daughter looks just like him and if she wants to be an actress shouldn’t she have been in all of daddy’s films or would that get in the way of him cheating on mom? Oh, you know it’s true…man, that was positively painful. That’s the first time I’ve ever watched an awards show without booze. I’ll never do it again.