1. Up/Disney Wknd/$ 68.2 Total/$ 68.2
2. The Hangover/Warner Wknd/$ 43.3 Total/$ 43.3
3. Land of the Lost/Universal Wknd/$ 19.5 Total/$ 19.5
4. Night At The Museum 2/Fox Wknd/$ 14.7 Total/$ 127.3
5. Star Trek/Paramount Wknd/$ 8.4 Total/$ 222.8
6. Terminator: Salvation/WB Wknd/$ 8.2 Total/$ 105.5
7. Drag Me To Hell/Universal Wknd/$ 7.3 Total/$ 28.5
8. Angels & Demons/Sony Wknd/$ 6.5 Total/$ 116.1
9. My Life In Ruins/FoxSearch Wknd/$ 3.2 Total/$ 3.2
10. Dance Flick/Paramount Wknd/$ 2.0 Total/$ 22.7
‘CAUSE THE KIDS DIG LOU GRANT
Up holds on to the number one slot and another one of the reasons Pixar always makes better product is that they cast for the role. No one thinks “Hey, lets get Ed Asner. That’ll really bring in the bucks.” No, they chose the actor best suited for the character, unlike the Dreamworks philosophy, which brought you Brad Pitt as Sinbad. Anyone even remember that movie? Exactly. Pretty pictures and big names do not a good animated film make. First of all, it really doesn’t matter a lot that you cast Brad Pitt, Catherine Zeta Jones and Michele Pfeiffer BECAUSE NO ONE IS GOING TO SEE THEM ANYWAY!!! And it’s not like any one of them has a distinct movie voice. Those days are long over. Rich Little would starve if he started out today.
WHAT’S THE SEQUEL? THE DRY HEAVES?
The Hangover opens at number two and I’m really not a fan of man-boy comedies, but this was heavier on the man side and every commercial and every trailer had me laughing my ass off. It’s got the best hook ever: three guys try to figure out what happened to them the previous night which left them married, missing a tooth, briefly hospitalized, in the possession of a cop car, not to mention a tiger and down one friend. You’d have to be pretty fucking incompetent to fuck that up and they are not. Don’t get me wrong; this is not Noel Coward. It’s crass comedy, but it’s crass comedy that delivers. Unlike so many in the wake of epic crude masterpieces like Blazing Saddles and Animal House, they don’t’ think all it takes are some boobs, some drinking and one gratuitous use of an animal to make one of these. It actually takes some imagination which is why Road Trip (from the same director) has not stood the test of even 9 years, much less 20. When was the last time anyone even thought about American Pie outside of the launching pad of Tara Reid’s self-destruction? But this director learned which how we have Old School and now this. This also takes the near revolutionary tactic of jettisoning the nice guy. All these movies have your typical four-man crew: Nice Guy, Roguish Best Friend, Mutual Dorky Friend and The Freak. In Road Trip that was Breckin Meyer, Sean William Scott and Paul Costanzo and DJ Qualls playing both dorky and freak (but with Tom Green also playing freak). In Old School it was Luke Wilson, Vince Vaughn and Will Ferrell playing dorky with a touch of freak. Now, usually the Nice Guy is at the center trying to restrain the chaos of his best friends, but here we have him MIA as his friends trying to track him down with no calm center in the middle. It’s an inspired choice.
WHERE’S SIGMUND AND THE SEA MONSTERS!?!
Speaking of Old School and Will Ferrell, Land of the Lost opens at number three and I have to confess, though a die hard fan of all the Sid & Marty Kroff universe, this was ironically my least favorite, though by far their biggest hit. It guess it was because I came in late and there already seemed to be an established universe with an ongoing plotline that I felt I had to play catch up, and back when I was a kid there was no internet where you could just look things up or watch old episodes. If you missed it, you just had to wait for the summer reruns. Also, the Sleestak scared the shit out of me and I didn’t need that on a Saturday morning. But they decided to jettison the actual dramatic adventure premise of the show for a comedic one and the fans have not responded. The original fans are clearly annoyed and to the rest of the world this is just another Will Ferrell buffoon comedy act slapped onto an old kid’s show. The third one in just two years (Semi-Pro and Step Brothers both came out last year). Ferrell suffers without strong comedic players around him to balance him out and Chi McBride is just not in his weight class yet. He needed John C. Reilly or one of the Wilson Brothers to help him out here.
AND WHERE’S THE BEST DAMN DANCER AT THE ABT TODAY, HUH? EXACTLY.
Night at the Museum: Battle For The Smithsonian is down to number four, followed by Star Trek at number five and no one is happier for the success of this than Zoe Saldana who is one of those actors you’ve seen forever in at least one or two films that you like or even love (in my case it’s Center Stage and fuck you very much if you’ve got some shit to say about that), but she’s never been a household name. And worse, she’s one of the only speaking members of the Pirates of the Caribbean cast not to come back for the record-breaking sequels. Well, baby, you may have missed out on a billion dollar movie, but you’ve hopped onto a multi-billion dollar franchise and what’s more, thanks to the change of Uhura actually being Spock’s girlfriend, you’ll always have a significant role and not just be handed one or two token lines or a single small scene like the others. So tell Keira Knightley so kiss your Vulcan-loving ass.
SOMEWHERE ROBERT PATRICK AND KRISTANNA LOKEN WONDER WHY THEY DIDN’T GET A CALL
Terminator Salvation is down to number six and they’re so desperate to get people into see this now they’re giving away the “secret cameo” by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the commericals. Well, it’s a CGI (by the way, that’s Computer Generated Image) version of him from the first film. Linda Hamilton also returns, kinda, in the audiotapes that John Connor listens to. But this sadly completes the failure that Terminator 3 started in the lack of a kick-ass female. T3 realized its mistake in the last five minutes, but by then it was too late (it took a military brat two hours to figure out she knew how to fight rather than just scream a lot?). Moon Bloodgood as resistance fighter clearly should have been that woman here (as John Connor’s wife is pregnant) but they totally waste her. She seems to be destined to be in failed science fiction and fantasy efforts from Daybreak to Pathfinder to Journeyman to Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li. Still she could still be the latest Caroline Munro, just like Dina Meyer has become. And if you know who Caroline Munro is, you’re a sad geek. And we probably need to hang.
AND YOU SHALL KNOW IT BY THE TRAIL OF THE DEAD
Drag Me To Hell has fallen to number seven and the other aspect this is missing is cannon fodder. Every horror movie has a certain amount of people whose sole purpose is to die at the hands of the monster on the way to final conflict between it and our hero. This doesn’t seem to have that and since we know she’s gotta make it, what fun is there for the horror fan there to see blood spilled and creatures run amuck?
WHO LOVES YA, BABY? NO ONE, IT SEEMS.
Angels & Demons is down to number eight, followed by My Life In Ruins, opening at number nine and I totally hated My Big Fat Greek Wedding. I thought it was a sub-par Lifetime movie that escaped to the theaters and somehow became a big hit thanks to Greeks who apparently felt neglected since Telly Salvalas left the screen and Jennifer Anniston refuses to own up to her ethnicity. Well, this also is clearly for them, actually taking place in Greece this time, but looking as lame and uninspired as before. Like slob comedies and action movies, romantic comedies look easy, but are actually very difficult to do well, as Nia Vardalos keeps proving.
IN LIVING COLOR BACK ON THE AIR IN 3…2…1….
Finally, Dance Flick closes out the top ten at number ten as the Wayans family sits back and looks for the next movie trend they can try and mock, because this dance thing clearly didn’t work out.
I GOTTA RIDE LIKE THE WIND TO BE FREE AGAIN
So Wednesday morning I go to the doctor to get my final check up and it’s good, so ten hours later, I’m is out the door capturing the last remnants of daylight, riding against traffic down to the bike path next to the West Side Highway, slipping through the tourists in front of the USS Intrepid and the Circle Line, blowing past the leisure riders on their cruisers, but being smoked by the pretentious twats who keep their racing numbers still on. The wind is against me, but I’m actually glad because it means I get to work a little harder, but in no time I’m down past Chelsea Piers and the gorgeous IAC building, then the West Village (thinking the Richard Meir designed apartments in the West Village have to be cold in winter with floor to ceiling glass windows facing the Hudson), into Tribeca, past the sad hole glowing with construction lights that used to be the World Trade Center until a pause for water at the Battery Park pier where the brave and foolish fish under the gaze of the Statue of Liberty after the tourists have left. Then it’s back up, faster now with a tailwind and a second chance to admire the gorgeous female joggers with legs of banded steel I first saw coming down, now also on their return. I go further up the west side, past home, on beyond the block-long Hustler Club, through the shadows behind Lincoln Center until the lights of the George Washington Bridge are visible, stopping there to return home because that ride is and was for Saturday. 14 miles, one hour, the greatest ride in the world, in greatest city in the world, always reminding me why I suffer to stay here. Baby, I am back! But oddly my legs weren’t nearly as sore as expected, while my crotch was moreso. Time to do a bike overhaul and replace things, starting with that damn seat cushion.
SOLE SURVIVOR
So I found my shoes. Actually, I found them a few times, but never my freaking size. Damn my average sized 9.5 sized feet! And if it was my size it wasn’t in the color I wanted. Damn you Macy’s, where I could have gotten it super-cheap thanks to a coupon! Finally, a David Z. on 14th street came through, which was slightly embarrassing given the David Z’s I’d walked past not thinking they’d be carrying it. Now, I’m briefly happy.
NOW IT WILL BE REFERRED TO AS “DOING A CARRADINE”
I was a bad week for 70’s kung fu when David Carradine accidentally died playing some stupid sex game. But I guess when you’re 72 years old and a child of Hollywood, you’ve pretty much gotten off every normal way possible and need new way to get your kicks. The family is going for a murder investigation, but they should let it go. I mean it’s freaking Thailand. You might not like what you may find, Taylor. It could be some 12-year-old girl assassin getting revenge like in Kill Bill for the way he treated her mother who was a caterer on Lone Wolf McQuade Shih Kieh, best known to you as Han from Enter The Dragon, also died at the age of 93 of natural causes, because apparently he knew better than to tie a rope around his neck and balls in an effort to get off.
HOW STRANGE, SO MANY JEWS IN SHOW BUSINESS IN HEW YORK
Very minor celeb sightings, but they’re plentiful recently. Jonathan Schwartzman on 11th Avenue, Jackie Mason on Broadway and 55th, Gilbert Gottfried on 8th and 47th, David Hyde Pierce on 8th & 49th (he’s doing a show on Broadway) and Richard Kind and his kids running for the bus on Broadway and 58th.
THEN I REMEMBER THAT JOEY LAUREN ADAMS HERSELF IS 41
Chasing Amy threw herself a birthday party for the very first time and this one I had to make. I’ve been feeling a modicum of guilt over recently missed birthday parties thrown by friends which were actually on the isle of Manhattan and never on the upper east side, so I had no excuse other than twice I simply forgot and the other I was geeking out and working on a computer. Chasing Amy has a good-sized studio on Park Avenue in the 30’s and I was there no less than five minutes before she again brings up the idea that we’ll still be doing what we’re doing ten years from now because all that’s changed in the last 10 years that we’ve known on another is more expensive toys and better clothing. It only hurts because it’s probably true. Were I more career oriented, I might have taken advantage of the fact that Chasing Amy and I are in the same line of work now and made some contacts with her friends who are also in the advertising business, but we all now that’s not me. Instead I talked a little shop with the people from her karate class who were there in force, which made it probably the most fit group of partygoers I’d ever seen who were actually straight. And given that Chasing Amy is attractive it was no surprise a good deal of her female friends were as well. While making frozen margaritas (the only reason I think I was actually invited), I was talking to one who was thinking of moving from swimming to kung-fu. Hmmm, that sounds familiar. Of course she lives in Jersey City and seemed to delight in taking pictures of Chasing Amy’s cat. Seriously, what is with women and cats? They don’t love you, you know. They’d sell you into slavery for a fish head if they could. In any case, there were also people from our mutual Columbia House past. Not that I remembered any of them. Well, one but only because he was sleazy and annoying (he actually used the line “I think all women are actually bisexual” after a slightly dim, large breasted co-worker spoke proudly of kissing a girl). Now he’s 20 pounds heavier, even more bald and just as sleazy, trying to talk up 25-year-old hottie who had a six-foot doctor husband so good looking in his own right, the gays in the corner were in a tizzy over him. It’s not a good party unless someone goes too far and they did---falling asleep while on the toilet with her pants around her ankles. Someone had to pick the lock to get her out and then it took us half an hour of sobering her up to find out where she lived other than “415 Williamsburg.” The party lasted until around 3:00 am when it was just four of us left standing---and by standing I mean one guy fell asleep in a chair. And he was wearing the shoes I was looking for! If they’d been in my color, I would have taken them off his drunk ass. The next day Chasing Amy and I met for brunch at Markt on 6th and 21st to cure our mild hangovers with butter and grease. My waffle was good, but as light as air and I prefer that “rock-in-your-stomach” heaviness in my morning meals. My bacon, on the other hand, is going make me go back.
ALL THE TRAMPS KNOW EACH OTHER
My guiltiest pleasure right now has to be the Denise Richards reality show. I never cared for her one way or the other until I saw it and found out she usually has a thick midwestern accent and curses like a sailor. And is it just me or does it comes as no surprise that she’s friends with C-list sexpot, Krista Allen, whose claim to fame is once dating George Clooney and apparently boning him so well he put her in his HBO show, Unscripted, even after they’d broken up? She also seems to be a bit of a “frienemy” the way she kept telling Denise none of the dresses worked even though they were in a hurry, and also while shopping for herself with no one judging her. I hope she shows up in every single episode doing the same shit all the time.
THE MYSTERY REVEALED
So, in case you’re wondering just who and what a Dorito Cheeseburger Woman is (Karyn Plonsky), this a screen test she did a year or so back that I helped her post on YouTube last week during yet another late night IT visit, not to be confused with the upcoming late night “This is how eBay works” visits. She didn’t get it, but given it went to Robin Weigert, who played Calamity Jane on Deadwood and is all kinds of awesome, she shouldn’t be ashamed but flattered she was even going for the same type of role as someone like that. But it didn’t help that the guy playing opposite her is actually the screenwriter and he sucks. He also directed the screen test and he’s no good at that either. Thank god the movie had a real director.
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