LOVE AT FIRST BLOOD

1. A Christmas Carol/Disney Wknd/$ 31.0 Total/$ 31.0

2. Michael Jackson’s This Is It Wknd/$ 14.0 Total/$ 57.9

3. The Men Who Stare at Goats/ Wknd/$ 13.3 Total/$ 13.3

4. The Fourth Kind/Universal Wknd/$ 12.5 Total/$ 12.5

5. Paranormal Activity/Paramount Wknd/$ 8.6 Total/$ 97.4

6. The Box/Warner Bros. Wknd/$ 7.9 Total/$ 7.9

7. Couples Retreat/Universal Wknd/$ 6.4 Total/$ 96.0

8. Law Abiding Citizen/Over Wknd/$ 6.2 Total/$ 51.4

9. Where the Wild Things Are/Warner Wknd/$ 4.2 Total/$ 69.3

10. Astro Boy/Summit Wknd/$ 2.6 Total/$ 15.1

“YOU, BOY. WHAT DAY IS IT?” “CHRISTMAS DAY, 2568, SIR!”

A Christmas Carol opens at number one and Robert Zemeckis is going to keep making these ugly CGI animated features until we stop going to see them. Yes, I said we, because I got sucked into Beowulf, which sucked so badly it actually stopped for ten minutes to do a bunch of Austin Powers like dick-based sight gags. Why he’s obsessed with trying to duplicate people is a mystery known only to him. You don’t see Pixar doing it. In fact, without IMAX, this would have died with The Polar Express whose children with big soulless unblinking eyes probably caused dozens of nightmares amongst the kids who saw it. I know they bothered the hell out of me and I only saw the trailers. But at least that was new. I mean, A Christmas Carol!?! Again!?! Couldn’t you at least do something new with it. Set in space or Japan or something. Hell, Mr. Magoo would do. Anything but turn of the century England again. And who the hell thinks Jim Carrey’s voice will somehow elevate this? I mean who was thinking, “You know I had no interest in seeing that one millionth version of A Christmas Carol, but then I heard Jim Carrey was doing voices and that just changed everything.”

IT’S ONLY ACCEPTABLE TO BE HEAVY AND FEMALE IN MUSIC IF YOU CAN SING

Michael Jackson’s This Is It is down to number two and there’s something about a chick that can wail on guitar especially if she’s easy on the eyes and even Michael Jackson recognized this in Orianthi, who is his guitarist here and was going to be mouthpiece of his shows. She gained notoriety outside guitar circles when pretty much stole the spotlight from Carrie Underwood during her appearance on the Grammy’s earlier this year. She’s also been praised by none less than Steve Vai and Carlos Santana, who said he could pass the baton to her (and she’s not even using her pinky finger yet). And yes, we’re kidding ourselves to think her being thin, blonde and pretty has nothing to do with it. Somewhere there’s a young, heavyset brunette who’s being ignored as she wails away. Unfortunately like so many guitar virtuosos she’s kinda dull in the lead slot (see, Stevens, Steve). She needs to accept her job is to make something good better, because lots of non-stop trilling in dull songs is appealing only to a small group of males between the ages of 16 and 35, usually wearing a black t-shirt with their favorite metal band on it. Steve Vai pays his rent with their support.

THE MOVIE WHICH ISN’T AS FUNNY AS ITS TITLE

The Men Who Stare At Goats opens at number three and unfortunately, this isn’t as funny as you want it to be. It’s “humorous” to be sure, but never shifts into the level of over-the-top absurdity it needs to truly be funny. As a documentary this would have been hysterical, but as a narrative, not so much. It would have done better to just abandon reality altogether and use what happened as a jumping off point, not as a plotline to actually be followed. Clearly, no soldiers had psychic powers, but what if one truly had? That would have opened the story up for the crazy adventures it needed to have to make this work, because the metatextual joke of George Clooney telling Ewan McGregor the way to be a “jedi warrior” isn’t really enough to float it, even for a sparse 90 minutes.

THE FIFTH KIND: CASUAL DATING

The Fourth Kind opens at number four and speaking of overused ideas, the “based on a true story of alien abduction” is another one that seems to come out all the time and honestly, I was over gray aliens with big eyes and skinny necks back in the 80’s. I mean basically, this is people traumatized by being abducted. Yeah, so? If aliens aren’t planning something nefarious and are just conducting weird experiments on people in Alaska, then who the hell cares? It’s basically just a movie about posttraumatic stress.

AND FROM NOW ON ALL HOLOCAUST MOVIES MUST REFERENCE SCHINDLER’S LIST IN THE TITLE

Ironically, Paranormal Activity---down to number five---got a boost from none other than Steven Spielberg, who is the reason The Fourth Kind is called “the fourth” though actually, Close Encounters of the Third Kind is about the return of people who have been abducted.

CLEARLY THEY ARE UNFAMILIAR WITH WHAT MAKES UP THE SOUL OF WIT

The Box opens at number six and this is pretty much a Twilight Zone or Night Gallery episode given the big screen treatment and therein lies the problem. It’s just not a two-hour concept (it’s based on a short story by Richard Matheson) no matter how interesting: press the button and get a million dollars---but someone, somewhere will die. Now, of course this will end badly for you because you dared put your financial gain before a human life, so now this innocent person’s death is going to cost you down the road. It’s a simple morality play with an ironic twist and I don’t care if it came from the director of Donnie Darkko, there’s just not two hours of story there, which makes me think there’s a whole lot of overly-complicated nothing going, probably explaining where “the box” comes from which defeats the point. You don’t explain the monkey’s paw either. That’s not what the story is about.

ALL WE’RE MISSING ARE VINCENT GALLO, PARKER POSEY AND ERIC STOLZ

Couple’s Retreat is down to number seven, followed by Law Abiding Citizen at number eight and Where the Wild Things Are at number nine and this fairy tale of misery grows increasingly more unpleasant in my memory. Also here doing voices are Catherine O’Hara, Forest Whitaker, Chris Cooper and Lauren Ambrose and this isn’t your typical kids film so they clearly aren’t here for money, so much as hipster cred. And Catherine Keener clearly owes Spike Jonze for her Oscar nod for Being John Malkovich, which is why she’s here playing the mom.

THE MERCIFUL END

Finally, Astro Boy closes out the top ten at number ten.

NOW THAT DAMN “PALLISADES PARK” SONG IS STUCK IN MY HEAD

So apparently I’m getting wussier as I get older, because while crossing the George Washington Bridge unnerved me the only time I’ve ever done it, when I did it, it scared the shit out of me. When I stopped to take pictures my hands were literally shaking and I don’t remember that happening the first time. I couldn’t even bring myself to look over at the view as I rode either. I just kept my head down and focused on getting to the other side, trying not freak every time a biker came from the opposing direction, none of whom seem to share my overwhelming fear of plummeting to one’s death in the Hudson and a having their parents find a frighteningly large amount of porn in their apartments. Once over, I went through Fort Lee Park like I’d done before, but this time all of it and it’s just as exciting as you can imagine. Some poor girl was with her parents and apparently had to do a report on it, because as she went from exhibit to the other, she was taking notes. I think she found it as about as interesting as I did. After leaving Fort Lee, I was just going to follow the path that’s supposed to be down the Jersey side of the river and thought I was doing so when I followed another biker going down the road, but where we were really heading was Palisades Park, which was fine because I’d always meant to go there. If you’ve never been the entrance is a long, winding downhill road, which is a lot of fun for obvious reasons, not to mention gorgeous with the fall foliage now in full effect. However, once you reach the bottom and hit the river you’re then faced with a very long climb back up which takes twice a long. Not to mention I went in one side and came out the other that left me a few miles beyond the GWB on Palisades Avenue. So not only did I have to cross that fucker again, this time on the side facing the river (from the city is traffic side, to the city is water side) but now I was dead tired and with night falling. Of course I’m probably going to go back next week because there’s a lot more biking to be done there. And that damn bridge will not beat me---though I may walk my bike across from now on.

“TOO MANY DICKS ON THE DANCE FLOOR” THANKFULLY PUSHED “PALLISADES PARK” OUT OF MY HEAD

Continuing my downward spiral in my old age was my venture to a party in Brooklyn on a Saturday night, two things that were once unheard of for me. It was for the re-housewarming party of one of my Jezebels who had a pre-renovation party back in the summer. Last time it was oddly held on a Sunday night resulting in a modest attendance. This time, however, a normal party night resulted in a much larger crowd, including as we learned later, the guy who dumped her by text, clearly eager to atone for his mistake. I was late as usual, but who the hell arrives at a party before 9:00 considering it starts at 7:00? Who the hell starts a party at 7:00 on a Saturday night for that matter!?! Between this and that texting while dancing thing I saw, I’m beginning to think you kids just don’t know how to get down anymore. What hurt me the most about this was that a great deal of the cheese had been eaten before I got there. However, there was still a lot of the great chicken she’d bought and before the icebox cake came out, so it wasn’t that late. There were also a few of the other Jezebels there, though technically they have their own website where they call themselves Harpies. Yes, it’s all about irony and “owning” the insult. One of them is not only from Georgia like myself, but also from the adjoining suburb of College Park. As we continued to talk things got oddly southern when she said she called one of her relatives “Miss Bernice” which is how my grandmother was referred to. This was to the delight of a few other party guests who strangely found people from Georgia fascinating, so to have two in one space just captivated them. Strangest part of all? They were from fucking Virginia. Now after my recent drinking experience that left me a little worse for wear, I really haven’t been drinking much. In fact, until that night it didn’t dawn on me that I hadn’t had anything to drink in about two weeks. But judging by the quick effect the prosecco had on me (and the headache the following day) that’s a muscle that didn’t appreciate the neglect. As before I closed the party out around 2:00 am, with a little geek Jezebel at my side, though not my kind of geek as she’s obsessed with Lord of the Rings. Still, she won special points with me because she was born and raised in Manhattan (her father a professor at Columbia who married one of his students and while they’re divorced, to this day she still resents getting an A- in his class) and that was the first time she’d ever ridden on the Q train in her life. That’s right. Some trains are strictly the province of “you people” not us Manhattanites. But one dark taint I do have from the party was that I was made to watch various videos from Flight of the Concords, a show whose cult I’ve successfully avoided like others such as Lost, Mad Men, True Blood and The Sopranos. Unfortunately, that shit was damn funny so I may have to drink the kool aid now.

LOVE AT FIRST BLOOD

I won’t lie: I’m in love with that soccer player who was beating the shit out of the other girls on the field. I’d put a ring on that.

Orianthi - According To You
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