WICKED AWESOME

1. Shrek Forever After/Dreamworks Wknd/$ 71.3 Total/$ 71.3

2. Iron Man 2/Paramount Wknd/$ 26.6 Total/$ 251.3

3. Robin Hood/Universal Wknd/$ 18.7 Total/$ 66.1

4. Letters to Juliet/ Wknd/$ 9.1 Total/$ 27.4

5. Just Wright/FoxSearchlight Wknd/$ 4.2 Total/$ 14.6

6. MacGruber/Universal Wknd/$ 4.1 Total/$ 4.1

7. Date Night/Fox Wknd/$ 2.8 Total/$ 90.7

8. A Nightmare on Elm Street/WB Wknd/$ 2.3 Total/$ 59.9

9. How To Train Your Dragon/Para Wknd/$ 1.9 Total/$ 210.9

10.Kites/ Wknd/$ 1.0 Total/$ 1.0

ONE LESS EXCUSE FOR MIKE MEYERS TO TROT OUT HIS SCOTTISH BROGUE

Shrek Forever After opens at number one and this may be the best overall movie of the four, but that’s not saying much given how utterly unimpressive 1 was and how 3 just outright sucked. Some people call this the “Star Trek Rule” because 2, 4, 6 were the better ones but I call those people fucking children because Star Trek III: The Search for Spock is the movie Saving Private Ryan just wanted to be! This works because for the first time it’s just about the story and not a series of satirical jabs at fairy tales or pop culture references. Shrek is bored with the “happily ever after” and he makes a deal with Rumplestiltskin for to get one day of living his old life in exchange any day of Rumplestiltskin’s choosing from his entire life. Stiltskin chooses the day Shrek was born, meaning he never rescued Princess Fiona and her parents also wound up making a bad deal with Rumplestiltskin, one that cost them the kingdom and apparently their lives. My only complaint is that, logically, this should have not happened until after Shrek was done living his day. He should have come back to find the world changed, but instead Rumplestiltskin just throws him into it without him knowing. What this means is he violated the terms of his own deal which should have made it null and void, but that’s just me being a geek…but so long as I’m doing it, Shrek 2 was about a pissed off Fairy Godmother who wanted her own son, Prince Charming, to get Fiona, so where was she in this? We see what’s happened to everyone else’s lives, but not her’s. But it’s a small quibble, because watching Shrek, Donkey and Puss In Boots (as always, Eddie Murphy and Antonio Banderas make the movie) do another mission is enjoyable and again without all the pop culture references which became very tiresome very quickly. But the real upside is no Smashmouth anywhere.

GIVING NEW DEPTH TO NAVEL GAZING

Iron Man 2 is down to number two and Gwyneth Paltrow talked in interviews about how she got in shape for this movie. To do what? All action scenes in this damn thing are CGI. Not even Downey needed to be in any sort of physical condition to do his job. She’s also never uncovered at any time so clearly someone has a deluded sense about her importance to the overall proceedings. They could have swapped her out with the redhead (an actual redhead) from Private Practice and I’m pretty no one would have cared.

BODY HEAT SPOILED HIM FOREVER

Robin Hood is down to number three and did I mention that William Hurt is in this? Yeah, it was a surprise to me too. You’d think your “other” Oscar winning leading man would bear some mentioning in the promotion, but that’s how far we are from the days when he was the shit. Where you think Crowe, Clooney, Pitt or any other leading man sits, is where William Hurt sat and he backed it all up with Yale talent (he was there along with Sigourney Weaver and Meryl Streep). And like most insanely talented people he’s incredibly difficult to work with and borderline crazy. He got into fights over Lost in Space. Let me say it again: in a movie that should have been an easy popcorn payday, he got into fights with the director over it. Of course the irony is, he was right. Lost In Space had a great cast, a good budget but ultimately failed because of a bad story from people who thought if they had everything else they really didn’t need that. And the sad thing is, I like it still because of all it could have been.

AND YOU MAY WANT TO USE IT TO GIVE YOURSELF WORK TOO

Letters to Juliet is down to number four and one of the producers of this is none other than Ellen Barkin, clearly putting some of that money she got from Ron Pearlman to good use and by “good” I mean investing in film. Be string-puller, baby. Not the puppet.

AS JOSH LUCAS IS TO MATTHEW MCCONUGHEY…

Just Wright is down to number five and also in this as the bad-girl-gal-pal is Paula Patton and she continues to be that girl you think is Halle Berry when you see her out of the corner of your eye and honestly, so long as Halle Berry is still around doing lead roles, she’s going to be here as Zoe Saldana has sewn up all the rest.

UNAPPRECIATED GEM: THE CONEHEADS MOVIE

McGruber opens at number six and I see we’re back to even the lamest SNL skits being turned into movies (Stuart Smalley movie anyone?). MacGyver himself doesn’t deserve a fucking movie, but a one-joke sketch does (literally it’s one joke: something distracts McGruber from disarming a bomb)? But it only cost $10M and made $4M already so it won’t be an utter disaster either. And I do give them credit for going straight up “R” with rather than a PG13, but when you’re spending something that couldn’t feed the crew of Robin Hood, you get a lot of freedom.

TINA FEY, NOT-QUITE-A-MOVIE-STAR

Date Night holds at number seven and is coming up on $100M domestically ($142M worldwide) and they will probably leave it out there until it does so they can promote the DVD as being a $100M film. Unfortunately, the fact it cost $55M takes away from it a bit. It needs to hit $165M to be a pure theatrical success.

SMALLEST GENRE IN THE WORLD

A Nightmare on Elm Street is down to number eight, followed by How To Train Your Dragon at number nine and finally Kites opens up at number ten for all you people who wanted a Latino-Indian Romantic Adventure Thriller. Both of you.

WANNA SEE ZEUS LAUGH? MAKE A PLAN.

Saturday was not my day to get things done on time. It seemed like my day when I came out of Shrek Forever and After at 12:00 meaning I could probably be done with my ride by at least three and be able to run my errands and take a nap before the party that night. I got to the halfway point up at Innwood Park when I noticed my front tire was going flat. Given I’d just replaced the inner tube a few weeks ago, this was a bit of a surprise, but fortunately enough there’s a bike shop on Dyckman so I just got a new one and changed it right there in front of the store. I got five feet before the new one just popped, much to the amusement of the people out front, one of whom thought he was bestowing knowledge on me to tell me something has to go inside the tire. No shit, Sherlock. Because I wasn’t going to go back into the store like an idiot who didn’t know how to change a tire (remember: men would rather be physically injured than embarrassed) I hopped on the nearby 1 Train and came back to my neighborhood where I went to a bike shop that hadn’t seen my shame and had them do it. It was there I found out what I’d suspected but didn’t want to deal with: my tire was the problem. It was worn out and killing my tubes. He told me the replacement was $50 but since I’m trying not to put any more money in this damn thing, I told him to just give it back to me…and that’s when he gave me a mountain bike tire for free. So for $13 plus tip I was back out with a new tire. I was so annoyed by all this I decided to start my entire ride over, which is how a 21 mile ride which normally takes me between 90 minutes to two hours ultimately wound up a 31 mile ride stretched out over four hours. I barely had time to shower and take a 30-minute nap before making the infamous cheese dip and heading out to the party, which started, at the godawful hour of 7:00 pm. Seriously, are we farmers? Then again it was the 35^th birthday of one of my Jezebels and old people don’t want to be up too late. This was Jezebel “B” not Jezebel “A.” Jezebel A has the partying lesbians. Jezebel B is pretty hetero which is probably why it’s one of those talking-eating-drinking parties rather than a talking-eating-drinking-dancing party. You need the same-sexers to really get down. I got there a little before 10:00 pm thanks to a 40-minute ride strangely becoming an hour-and-fifteen minute ride (thank you MTA) and they were onto dessert, having killed most of the booze, including the homemade sangria I completely missed. But who the fuck starts a party at 7:00!?! It’s not like last week when we were on a deck and there was a point to starting early. It was the usual suspects plus a few more and I have to say as anti-social as I am, I do occasionally enjoy the company of a group of people I do consider as smart as I am, if not considerably smarter. Of course you wouldn’t know it by a comparison of childhood traumas induced by catching your parents acting like sexual beings. But I did meet someone who shared my belief that had Buddy Holly lived, he would have not only had as much of an impact as The Beatles, but would have preceded them in a lot of ways. I got back home around 3 or so in the morning and experienced that most unusual of occurrences: “2^nd Wave Drunk.” That’s when you don’t think you’re so drunk because you’re up and talking and your blood is flowing and there’s a modicum of adrenaline flowing, but when you lay down you’re suddenly as drunk as shit. Yeah. Good times. Hopefully, you’re asleep as soon as possible, because laying there with a moving bed is not fun. I was fortunate enough to have the former---though jolted awake around 6:00 am to rush to the bathroom deal with the effects of jerk chicken, cake and booze with no vegetables. I only wish it were vomiting. But I’d do it all again.

LULLABY OF OLD BROADWAY

I don’t do theater. I really don’t. I’m a movie/TV guy. My only live theater experiences come from when someone I know is in them. And they’d better be in them on the isle of Manhattan, because after that it gets iffy. But I did make the mistake of telling my live-performance-Broadway-loving cousin, that the one show I did try to see was Wicked. She then promised to get tickets and we’d see it in June. That was back in February. Guess who got a text of “Meet me at the Gershwin at 3:00 on Sunday.” Oh, yeah. Now my interest came from seeing Idina Menzel do “Defying Gravity” on Letterman and she was still doing the show when I was trying to see it, but I was only doing lottery. I wasn’t paying Broadway prices. I didn’t care too much, so I gave up fairly easy and not even Taye Diggs appearing could motivate me, but not only was this free, but it was family, meaning I couldn’t say no if I wanted too. Now, I’d read the book, but I know it was drastically changed because the book is one of the most needlessly dense and depressing things you will ever read. The Wicked Witch of The West (known here as Elphaba based on the initials of the original Wizard of Oz author, L. Frank Baum) has a horrible, depressing life, burying almost everyone she cares for---thanks in no small part to The Wizard who is actually her father, having drugged her mother with a green potion---and then gets killed by Dorothy. The end. They couldn’t jettison that enough for me. But the bare bones are there. The Wicked Witch of the West and Good Witch Glinda were actually roommates in college and their time there pretty much sets the stage for all you see in the Wizard of Oz movie from The Tin Man (accidentally created by Elphaba’s sister from a man she loved but couldn’t have) to the Cowardly Lion (a cub Elphaba saved with her doomed lover) to even the Scarecrow (originally her lover whom she transforms in order to save him from death), but with a happy ending this time, though that’s not hard to do. It’s a fun show, though like most musicals there are songs that make you want to take a nap. Fortunately “Defying Gravity” single-handedly sweeps most of them away. Unfortunately for the performers they just seem to be echoes of Idina Menzel (who won a Tony) and Kristen Chenoweth. I’ve only seen clips of their performances and it seems they stamped the roles forever. It was nice end to month or so of being social which quite frankly has exhausted the shit out of me. I’m looking forward to just sitting home alone again eating pork products in my underwear. Especially since it’s going to start up again in June with at least two parties already on my docket and at least one more coming and that one has hard-partying lesbians, so I’ll need my rest.