1. 2012/Sony Wknd/$ 65.0 Total/$ 65.0
2. A Christmas Carol/Disney Wknd/$ 22.3 Total/$ 63.3
3. The Men Who Stare at Goats/ Wknd/$ 6.2 Total/$ 23.4
4. Precious/Lions Wknd/$ 6.1 Total/$ 8.9
5. Michael Jackson’s This Is It Wknd/$ 5.1 Total/$ 68.2
6. The Fourth Kind/Universal Wknd/$ 4.7 Total/$ 20.6
7. Couples Retreat/Universal Wknd/$ 4.3 Total/$ 102.1
8. Paranormal Activity/Paramount Wknd/$ 4.2 Total/$ 103.8
9. Law Abiding Citizen/Over Wknd/$ 3.9 Total/$ 67.3
10. The Box/Warner Bros. Wknd/$ 3.2 Total/$ 13.2
BUT FOR ONCE WE DON’T WATCH NYC GET WIPED OUT
2012 opens at number one and I have one question: when your calendar runs out at the end of the year, do you expect the fucking world to end? No, so I join the actual Mayans who wonder what the fuck is wrong with you people who think that this calendar ending means the end of the world. That said, it’s a good thing people do subscribe to this, otherwise we wouldn’t have a perfectly serviceable piece of disaster porn. We have an odd fetish of watching beloved buildings being destroyed and this satisfies that need in spades, especially if you’re an American…or hate America for that matter. LA goes down in serious detail. They even find a way of showing the subway’s destruction. Of course actual science and the laws of physics have no place here, or the family we’re rooting for to survive would be dead at the first signs of trouble (um, you shouldn’t be able to drive on broken streets, much less accelerate). But perhaps the biggest piece of suspension of disbelief is that the world leaders would not only believe scientists who tell them the world is ending, but they’d be somewhat prepared when it did---though not so prepared they’d have a manned space station set up to coordinate things even though an international space station is part of our currently reality. I won’t even get into cell phones still working when half the world is underwater. But seriously: we need to see buildings all over the world be destroyed. Yeah, it was fun watching the Sistine Chapel fall on the pope and cardinals praying for salvation (the crack that leads to it of course goes right between God reaching out to touch Adam, signifying the covenant was broken and we were on are own) but there’s a world filled with landmarks to wipe out. Let’s see Big Ben tumble! And you can never see The Eiffel Tower fall too much! The Pyramids and the Sphinx have had a good run, time to go! Considering part of the film takes place in China it seems odd we don’t see The Great Wall of China go down. Or when a tidal wave hits India, the death of the Taj Mahal. And what about the Sydney Opera House, those giant twin skyscrapers in Thailand, Tokyo going down without a monster present…so many choices. And Dubai is simply fucking evil, so if you’re going to take Las Vegas down (and they do), you have to take that hellish place too. I think I speak for moviegoers everywhere when I say we’d rather see more destruction than John Cusack bonding with his son in the middle of it.
SOME MOVIES AND CAREERS ARE LIKE COCKROACHES
A Christmas Carol is down to number two and while I’d love to join others in predicting its failure, I once did that for The Polar Express only to see it do better and better as the holidays approached and be saved by IMAX. You see, it’s hard to kill evil.
PERSONALLY, I’M DRUNK, BUT WHATEVER WORKS FOR YOU
The Men Who Stare at Goats holds at number three and also in this is Jeff Bridges who has for his entire career been the most underrated combination of looks and talent. He’s never been considered B-list, but he’s never gotten the type of attention an A-lister usually gets either, though he’s always in A-list films doing top work (his Oscar nomination for The Contender is well-deserved). But I’m still waiting for him and Beau to do a big screen version of Sea Hunt. In the meantime A SEQUEL TO TRON IS COMING! It’s telling that it and The Big Lebowski are his two most beloved films. The Last Picture Show may be considered a work of art, but who the hell wants to watch that stoned at two in the morning?
I SWEAR IT’S NOT SELF-HATRED
Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire enters the top ten at number four and what the fuck is up with that title? It’s a sad statement that either the writer was that egotistical or---and this is the more likely scenario---they felt the book’s audience would be too dumb to realize it had been made into a movie without it. Now, I’d like to see this, but probably won’t because seeing it in the theater means seeing it with bruthas and sistas and “seeing” is all I’d be able to do, because hearing actual dialogue will not be an option. It’ll probably be on video in time for Oscar season, so I’ll check it out then.
LET’S SAY MICHAEL WAS GRENDEL…
This Is It is down to number five and the fucking monster that Joe Jackson is almost makes me feel sorry for Michael Jackson, because it’s pretty clear he was doomed to be utterly fucked up.
A QUEEN OF GEEKS
The Fourth Kind is down to number six and starring in this is Milia Jovovich and if it’s better to rule in hell than serve in heaven, then she is a queen as she never appears as a supporting player in mainstream A-list Hollywood fare, but stars in her own genre flicks and yes, there is a fourth Resident Evil movie coming. Don’t ask me how considering the world had pretty much been destroyed in the third one, but it’s coming. I ended my pain with the second one and only saw that because it promised me a hot girl in a mini-skirt with guns. I’m easily swayed.
IT’S LIKE YOUR LOCAL THEATER HAS A MILD RASH
Still hanging around at number seven is Couples Retreat and in the business this is what we call “having legs” and while $124M worldwide isn’t nearly as impressive as it should be with a $70M budget (next time use Hawaii as paradise), it’s nothing to sneeze at either and will probably have a long life on DVD and cable.
MRS. ROBINSON WOULD BE PROUD
Paranormal Retreat is down to number eight, followed by Law Abiding Citizen at number nine and closing out the top ten at number ten is The Box, and add to the list of misfires for this movie is setting it in the 70’s. What the fuck for? And while I wouldn’t see it, part of me wanted it to do better because a) I’m a geek and Richard Matheson is a minor god, and b) it’s one of the rare movies where you’ll see an actress with a man not only prettier than she is, but younger. Yeah, I know Sandra Bullock did it twice this year alone, but she’s the producer of her films now. That makes sense. The irony here is, the last hit Cameron Diaz had was with a younger man prettier than she is: Ashton Kutcher in What Happens in Vegas.
IT’S NOT LIKE I NEED MONEY FOR DATING OR ANYTHING
So, I finally did it: I bought a flatscreen like I’ve been talking about doing for the past year, only every time I started preparing for it, something else came up like rent or food or seeing my family at Christmas and buying them gifts (damn moochers). Then there’s the fact I suffer from the worst buyer’s remorse in all of recorded human history. Every major purchase I make is followed by intense guilt and regret over not using the money for more constructive reasons and I spend the next few weeks scouring the sales in the paper looking for better deals to torture myself with how much I could have saved had I just waited a week, or a month or six months, utterly ignoring that I wouldn’t have been using said purchase for all that time. I almost bought this a month ago when I found an open box sale at Best Buy for $50 off the regular price. I was literally in line with it in my hand when I chickened out. The whole “open box” thing rubbed me the wrong way. As did my usual path, which would be to buy it off eBay. I needed to be able to go to a store and yell at people should something go wrong (also, there’s the matter of warranties that don’t exist that way). But on the upside, my nonstop research served to eliminate brands like Toshiba. The model I had in mind had just as many complaints as it did praise. Also, numerous visits resulted in Panasonic looking the best in my eyes (Sony was clearly out of the price range), so that was the deal I was looking for. Only it never really came. At best it was one of those “only a few pieces at this price” things. Eventually, the fatigue of the hunt set in and so long as it was under $400 I didn’t care any more. I found it at B&H for $380 and it was a go. Panasonic, 32-inches (LCD, 720p) was not only all my budget allowed for but space as well. Yeah, I could have then gone to Best Buy and had them match it, but I hate Best Buy because they jack up prices the week before a sale so they can say they lowered them. Because I did it on a Sunday, I couldn’t go down to TimeWarner cable and get my new HD box, so I’m really not getting all I can from basic viewing, but DVD’s sure as hell look nicer (don’t make my think of BluRay right now or I’ll start to cry) and I haven’t even fine-tuned the picture settings yet. The model I have oddly comes with an iPod dock but apparently this is fairly common these days, but who the hell plugs their iPod into their TV!?! I mean I guess this allows me to now run my iPod through my stereo but still. Now my only issue is, of course, the remorse, especially when the holiday sales kick in. I’m trying to head it off by looking at a website that tracks price drops and this same unit was selling for $600 back in July and was $500 as recently as September. I’m not saying it’s working, I’m just saying I’m trying that. I’ll feel better if someone actually buys my old one off Craigslist (if for no other reason than to get this big ass thing off my floor and save me from hauling it to Goodwill). But you know what my real problem is? My old CRT TV was big enough for me to safely put my superhero statues on it. The new one, not so much. Maybe if I get some these damn books off my bookshelves I’ll have room for the things that really matter.
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