STEAM ROOM SPACE CRUISER

1. How To Train Your Dragon/Para Wknd/$ 43.3 Total/$ 43.3

2. Alice in Wonderland/Touchstone Wknd/$ 17.3 Total/$ 293.1

3. Hot Tub Time Machine/MGM Wknd/$ 13.7 Total/$ 13.7

4. The Bounty Hunter/Sony Wknd/$ 12.4 Total/$ 38.8

5. Diary of a Wimpy Kid/Fox Wknd/$ 10.0 Total/$ 35.8

6. She’s Out of My League/Paramount Wknd/$ 3.5 Total/$ 25.6

7. Green Zone/Universal Wknd/$ 3.4 Total/$ 30.4

8. Shutter Island/Paramount Wknd/$ 3.2 Total/$ 120.6

9. Repo Men/Universal Wknd/$ 3.0 Total/$ 11.3

10. Our Family Wedding/Fox Searchlight Wknd/$ 2.2 Total/$ 16.8

NO, IT’S NOT A MOVIE ABOUT MASTURBATION

How To Train Your Dragon opens at number one knocking Alice in Wonderland down to number two giving it a taste of its own medicine. Yeah, it’s better than Alice in Wonderland but that “3D + kids” combination cannot be denied and right now every fantasy book you every bought your kids is being turned into a 3D film. One advantage of this is, unlike most kids films, this usually means a complete 3-act story. The disadvantage is, unless the producers have a passion for this particular story you’re going to get a perfunctory adaptation with none the quality that made the book special. This seems more perfunctory, which is pretty much what you would expect from the producers of Shrek. Metaphors and subtext are just words to them. What they do understand are “dragons” and “coming of age story” and that’s good enough for them and that’s pretty much what you have here. A Viking village has been at war for generations with the flying dragons that besiege them regularly (the film’s first good joke is that being Vikings they simply can’t do the logical thing and just move). The misfit son of the village chief discovers however that the dragons aren’t as bad as everyone thinks when he manages to knock one out of the sky with one of his inventions. Yeah, that’s it. But it’s enough for a 90 minute movie especially when someone had the oddly funny idea that some of the Vikings should have Scottish accents and cast Gerard Butler and Colin Ferguson. And of course, it’s easy on the eyes actually containing a few 3D worthy moments where things come at you, though they abandon it rather quickly.

I GUESS STEAM ROOM SPACE CRUISER WAS BUDGET PROHIBITIVE

Hot Tub Time Machine opens at number three and I have to say this is some inspired silliness. Basically, you have to be pretty smart to come up with an idea this dumb and then proceed full tilt with a knowing awareness of that. This is epitomized by the casting of John Cusack (not to mention an appearance by none other than Johnny from the Karate Kid himself, William Zabka). You couldn’t get more 80’s relevant if you cast Molly Ringwald or Michael J. Fox. But they don’t go for the obvious Say Anything or The Sure Thing references, instead choosing one of Cusack’s smaller comedies, Better Off Dead, which did center around skiing like one of those bizarre sub-genre of teen ski comedies we had in the 80’s. It’s seemed odd to me at the time, but then I remember some people go skiing like others go to the beach, so if you had teen beach sex comedies (Cusack did one of those too, called Hot Pursuit), then you’d have teen skiing sex comedies. It also harkens back to Back To The Future as you have protagonists with a less-than-ideal present situation who are sent back into the past where they must try not to change history---then you realize that may not be such a bad thing after all. Especially when you learn that this time in their lives that they’ve idealized was actually the time of their biggest failures, which forever shaped their lives. There’s even a character that begins flickering out as the circumstances of his conception get tampered with. Movie references continue as they invoke the Here Comes Mr. Jordan/Heaven Can Wait effect of we see the actors as themselves while everyone sees them as their characters, which int his case means 18-year-old selves and the joke of them occasionally seeing themselves in a mirror occurs frequently enough that we don’t forget it, but not overused. There was more mining of the 80’s as joke fodder to be used here but oddly goes untouched (one minor character’s obsession with Red Dawn is a good example) abandoned instead for Rob Corddry being full-tilt Rob Corddry and if you run out of actual wit to fall back on (which they clearly did), it’s not a bad plan.

CUTE CAN GET OLD, BUT BEAUTIFUL LASTS FOREVER

The Bounty Hunter is down to number four and one of the reasons that Jennifer Anniston is allowed to continue on her mediocre comedy movie career (aside from being a planet in the solar system of the white hot sun of Brad & Angelina) is that they never cost too much so they don’t have to do that well to succeed. This only cost $40M and has made almost that much back domestically. It may not be a super success, but neither will it be listed as a tremendous failure, meaning she’s going to keep doing them until she’s too old to be sold on her girl-next-door appeal any longer. Ask Meg Ryan what’s that like as she crossed that threshold a few years back. She got too old to play that “cute” card any longer and had nothing else to sell. Take a look at your future, Kate Hudson.

AND YET, NO DANNY DUNN MOVIE

Diary of a Wimpy Kid is down to number five and if you doubt the salability of kid’s books adapted into film, know this cost $15M with no stars and has made $36M in two weeks.

IT’S NOT THAT WE DON’T LIKE YOU, IT’S THAT WE DON’T “LIKE YOU” LIKE YOU

She’s Out of My League is down to number six and again, it only cost $20M and has made $25. No big smash, but not quite a blight on anyone’s film career either. And like Gerard Butler, Jay Baruchel also does a voice in How To Train Your Dragon (playing Butler’s son in fact) giving them both two films in the top ten, the better, more successful one where they’re not seen onscreen at all.

GET IT? ORIFICES? PENETRATION? YEAH, IT’S SUBTLE.

Green Zone is down to number seven, followed by Shutter Island at number eight and Repo Men at number nine and there are two actually impressive moments in this film. First, is a bloody knife fight with Jude Law and his love interest versus an entire group of repo men. The second follows almost immediately in a “sex-surgery” scene worthy of David Cronnenberg where they have to make incisions in each other’s bodies, reach in and electronically record their artificial organs. As they do so they kiss and embrace and their faces contort in what should be agony, but alternately seems like ecstasy. That they’re using some type of red cocaine as an anesthetic adds to this (“Have you ever fucked on cocaine, Nick?”). There’s also an awesome song playing on the soundtrack called “Sing It Back” by Moloko. So yeah, bloody surgery sex is one of the highlights of the film. You have been warned.

THE END

Finally, Our Family Wedding closes out the top ten at number ten.

IT’S THE “WRATH OF KHAN” TO THE “MOTION PICTURE” OF THE FIRST PART OF THE SONG

Speaking of music being the best part of something, How To Make It In America isn’t good for much aside from giving me a light-hearted show that’s clearly filmed in NYC, but it did give me my new favorite song: “Shooting Star” by Bag Raiders. Though what I really like is the last minute of the four-minute song. There’s a break and it changes dramatically into a different, better, more uptempo song. But this happens a lot. What I like most about Peter Wolf’s “Lights Out” is the last minute of that song. The Spice Girls “2 Become 1” ends with a wonderful rhythmic instrumental repetition---unlike the previous three minutes of them singing.

I NEVER MEANT TO CAUSE YOU ANY SORROW, I NEVER MEANT TO CAUSE YOU ANY PAIN

I complained recently about what I consider a massive failure of the gay men who supposed control the fashion industry: no fashionable rain boots. Seriously, if men are really running things, where are the boots of many colors, styles and designs like women? If you find any they’re like you’re going hunting or something and at best it’s either black, brown or friggin orange. You want colors? Europe. Seriously. Men in Europe have more choices than the greatest city in the greatest nation in the world and that’s unacceptable. The only time I saw a man in fashionable rainboots was a guy in Marc Jacobs on the subway. Thankfully, I live in a city with four Marc Jacobs stores in four blocks of one another (general, men’s, women’s, children’s) and at the men’s store I found men’s rain boots in a variety of colors for only $28 a pop. Now, I could have gone typical dark blue or utterly flamboyant in the florescent colors, but I went for the visual joke that no one, but my buddy OG (Original Geek) got. Dark Purple (with Lavender soles). Get it? Come on, it’s pretty obvious. They’re rain boots…in purple. Purple rain boots. Purple Rain! Sigh.

TOO TIRED TO REALIZE I’M TIRED

Since I was down in the West Village looking for boots, I decided to swing by the bookstore across from Magnolia bakery, which had been there forever and no doubt benefited from those stupid lines caused at Magnolia by its appearance on Sex & The City. But clearly not enough. My heart sank when I saw the empty storefront where it used to be. But as it turns out it was only the location that was lost. The store itself had moved over to Bleecker between 6^th and 7^th. I made the walk, but as I did so was a beset by a nonstop memories of the all time I’d spent down there from time with college friends at that damn Caliente Cab to half a dozen restaurants and bars that no longer existed. If I were out, I was down in the West Village almost always. Young Married Couple and Nice Jewish Doctor both lived in the West Village so I spent a lot of time down there with them as well. Now they’ve got kids and had to move away and hell, I’m just too old be down there. Seriously. While I was never Mr. Nightlife, in retrospect it was not unusual for me to meet friends after work some place on a regular basis, but while down there after work in my search, all I could think about was getting home to take a nap. Calling a friend and saying, “Hey, I’ll be downtown. Wanna grab a drink?” never, ever occurred to me. What did occur to me in fact, is that it didn’t occur to me.

HOW DARK CAN A GUY WITH A BOY WONDER REALLY BE?

Death continues to decimate classic TV taking Davy Crockett/Daniel Boone himself, Fess Parker, and then Robert Culp, best known to one generation from I Spy and another as the FBI Guy in Greatest American Hero. Sadly, after that he’s pretty much unknown on TV. For me, however, there was no greater loss than Dick Giordano, artist inker and editor at DC Comics, best known for inking Neal Adams’ version of the revamped “Dark Knight” Batman of the 60’s. He was also the editor in chief who greenlit Frank Miller’s updating of that concept for Dark Knight Returns, whose influence Giordano would later regret for its dark influence over comics that continues to this day.