1. Alice in Wonderland/Touchstone Wknd/$116.1 Total/$ 116.1
2. Brooklyn’s Finest/ Wknd/$ 13.4 Total/$ 13.4
3. Shutter Island/Paramount Wknd/$ 13.2 Total/$ 95.8
4. Cop Out/Warner Wknd/$ 9.3 Total/$ 32.5
5. Avatar/Fox Wknd/$ 8.1 Total/$ 720.6
6. The Crazies/ Wknd/$ 7.1 Total/$ 27.5
7. Percy Jackson & Olympians/Fox Wknd/$ 5.1 Total/$ 78.1
8. Valentine’s Day/WB Wknd/$ 4.2 Total/$ 106.3
9. Crazy Heart/Fox Wknd/$ 3.3 Total/$ 29.5
10. Dear John/Screen Gems Wknd/$ 2.8 Total/$ 76.6
I LOVE THE XTC SONG..THAT THEY DIDN’T USE FOR THIS
Alice in Wonderland opens at number one, thanks in no small part to inflated 3D prices, so let’s not kid ourselves that this is a straight up success. Based on both Alice In Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, we see Alice as an unconventional young woman in very conventional turn of the century England. Her time in Wonderland is just something she believes are dreams she had as a child---until the white rabbit appears at her surprise engagement party (it’s a surprise to her that she has to get engaged) and she follows him back down into the world actually called Underland. Given it’s Tim Burton using Lewis Carroll, that it’s darkly beautiful goes without saying, but that’s all it is. A core of substance is decidedly missing. We’re told from the beginning that Alice is there to save Underland from the Red Queen who has decimated the place since seizing control from her sister, The White Queen. While reluctant heroes of prophecy are hardly unusual, it’s such a conventional story, you have to add something to it to make it interesting (can you say “The Matrix”). They don’t. In fact they take away from it by detailing exactly how Alice is going to win. She just has to follow the steps. The only interesting moment in terms of character is when she actually declares, “I make the path.” If only there’d been more of that, it might have been a better film, but Tim Burton has never, ever been about story. Not that Lewis Carroll’s books are big on it either, but you’d think he’d try to improve on that with something a little more than the most conventional “hero’s journey” story ever. They’d have been better off going the route of her time in Wonderland being a metaphor for her life in the real world, which they actually touch on, but only for use as a single visual gag.
SEE ME, BUT DON’T HEAR ME…
Brooklyn’s Finest opens at number two and I meant to see this, but opted for sleep instead because if I wanted to hear any dialogue, I’d have to catch the 10:00 am Sunday show. Oh, don’t pretend like you don’t know why. That Black people talk in movies is a given, but if it’s about Black people as well, you can just forget about it. Not to mention it’s set in fucking Brooklyn. That meant trying to see it in NYC would have been an exercise in futility. Hell, even in Alice In Wonderland there was a sista next to me who was heavily involved with what was happening to a 19th Century English Blonde girl, so I don’t want to think about what was going on with Wesley Snipes and Don Cheadle in the Brooklyn projects.
ONE MORE TIME: FUCK YOU, SCORSESE
Shutter Island is down to number three. My concern is now in negative numbers.
BYE, BYE MISS AMERICAN PIE
Cop Out is down to number four and didn’t Sean William Scott have a decent hit in Role Models last year? Then why is he the third lead in this pile of crap? And the funny thing is the most successful member out of the American Pie main cast is Stifler. They all had their shot at the brass ring after the film made them hot, but all pissed it away. Yeah, Allyson Hannigan is on her second successful TV series, but never as the lead and theatrically you can forget it. And Mena Suvari went white hot with American Beauty, but likewise wasn’t able to build on it (she was a white girl with ass too soon). We’ll avoid discussing the sadness that is Tara Reid and Natasha Lyonne. And notice I said “main cast” because buried in that film is none other than John Cho who is now better known now as “Harold” of Harold and Kumar. No, he is not Sulu and that was not Star Trek, goddamnit!
YOU KNOW WHERE ALEC BALDWIN’S EX-WIFE WON HER OSCAR
Avatar is down to number five and did Hollywood ever give James Cameron the finger over this, which is odd given they sucked his dick mightily on Titanic which wasn’t as good as Avatar, while The Hurt Locker isn’t as good as L.A. Confidential.
LOTS OF PEOPLE FREE ON OSCAR NIGHT
The Crazies is down to number six, followed by Percy Jackson & The Olympians The Lightning Thief at number seven and Valentines Day at number eight.
TIME FOR THAT SEA HUNT MOVIE!
Crazy Heart is down to number nine, but thanks to the wins, should get a good bounce next week. Jeff Bridges is long overdue for this one and while it may be at the expense of others (like say Colin Firth) it’s par the course with these awards. At least it was for a good performance anyway like Denzel Washington and not a crap one like Paul Newman or Al Pacino.
RULING IN HELL
Finally, Dear John closes out the top ten to begin its run on Lifetime or Oxygen for the rest of eternity, where it should have been born, lived and died without the rest of us ever having known about it.
ANOTHER EXCUSE TO DRINK HEAVILY
Okay, so the Oscars have come and gone and this was actually one of the highest rated Oscars in five years. So much for mocking the Academy’s strategy of doubling the Best Picture nominations. Batman and Wall-E win in the end it seems….Okay, clearly the song and dance contingent aren’t going anywhere as Doogie Howser opens with a number that wasn’t nearly as funny as Hugh Jackman’s a year ago…Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin make a better team than anyone would expect---or maybe it was because I was already half a bottle of wine in before it even started. But clearly George Clooney has become the new Jack Nicholson; the studly superstar every man wants to be, but actually attractive. The joke with Alec Baldwin is funny because it’s true. Clooney’s career is what Baldwin’s should have been and was on the path to becoming before it collapsed in the late 90’s…the Best Supporting Actor category was pretty much a given and the gay German guy at the party reminds us that like the winner, Hitler was Austrian and not German. And after the party he invaded Poland…this bit with Cameron Diaz and Steve Carell is anything but funny and they probably should have gone with Jude Law. There was no doubt Up was going to win Best Animated Feature, but I’m super curious to see the Secret of Kells…Randy Newman is a plague on music and needs to be stopped. Thank god he lost to the infinitely more deserving T Bone Burnett. His name alone tells you he’s better…Best Original Screenplay was pretty much a given too and a sign of things to come that some Cameron backlash is in full swing, unlike The Hurt Locker backlash which has only been around for a few weeks, including ironically enough, some guy suing over the story saying the main character was based on him…I’m of the age where John Hughes meant a lot to me and apparently we’ve finally supplanted the baby boomers as he gets a death segment all to himself. Not bad for a man who only made three or four really good films. And Emilo Estevez is just a dickhead not to do this tribute. Granted no one on stage was even still talking to John Hughes when he died, but they all showed up. They even dug up Judd Nelson who clearly is preparing for a New Jack City sequel that only he knows about…the French guy behind the animated short winner is funnier than he has any right to be and should probably give lessons… I thought the joke of the Ben Stiller bit was that it was a bad idea. But, if you’ve only got three nominees for Best Makeup why are you even bothering!?! And how the fuck does someone win for fucking Vulcan ears!?! The look the same as they did forty years ago! That’s not Star Trek!!!...I was wrong about Adapted Screenplay and I should have known better. Precious wins and the guy who wins can barely believe it either…Lauren Bacall is a goddess so stand the fuck up and pay your respect. She’s from Brooklyn and might cut you…so Monique has decided it’s better to do what’s right over what’s popular. Was that before or after Charm School?...I made the mistake of listening to the gay guy for Costume Design over the surefire lock of a serious period piece in Young Victoria. When does a film like that ever lose even to something called Coco Before Chanel? It’s "before Chanel" so how good can the costumes be?...this horror movie montage is bullshit as is the statement that it hasn’t been to the Oscars since The Exorcist. What the fuck do you call Silence of the Lambs, which you show in your montage? They were more intent on showing you a big stars starting out (Kevin Bacon in Friday the 13th, Johnny Depp in Nightmare on Elm Street) than doing a comprehensive look at a genre that more often than not pays the fucking bills and always has…The Hurt Locker wins for sound, Avatar for Cinematography and the death roll leaves out Farrah Fawcett for Brittany Murphy because of time constraints. Time constraints. This will become a joke when the dance routines for Best Score come up right afterwards… I only saw a Nightline story on The Cove two days ago, but knew that was going to win. Some closure for the man who trained Flipper…The Hurt Locker continues and the German guy led me wrong with choosing a German film about war for Best Foreign Film. And then he invaded Poland…Jeff Bridges gets the award he deserved years ago, Sandra Bullock gets an award she doesn’t deserve at all (but at least she seems to know it) and Kathryn Bigelow gets Best Director and Best Picture and apparently cures cancer the way some people are going on about it. Look, I know it’s important for a woman to win and for something not typically “feminine” but so many are projecting their own issues onto this it’s not even funny. The only people who don’t think James Cameron and Kathryn Bigelow are competing are James Cameron and Kathryn Bigelow. Sorry, but her win changes your lives about as much as Denzel Washington’s changed mine, which is to say not at all. And Kathryn Bigelow isn’t some outsider who made good. She played the mainstream, big budget Hollywood game with shit like Point Break, K-19 and Strange Days, with the help of then husband, James Cameron. Who, by the way, advised her to do The Hurt Locker. And his “defeat” leaves him with only two billion dollar films and a license to do any fucking thing he wants to. Kathryn Bigelow could get clearance to do Star Wars remake from Lucas himself and still have an uphill battle. In the immortal words of Jane Child, “Welcome to the real world.” At the end of the day, it’s an indie arthouse film that made good. And ask anyone in indie land how much clout that gets you in mainstream Hollywood. If her next movie isn’t about vampires in love she’s still going to have to get overseas funding. And there’s no Santa Claus either.
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