1. The American/Focus Wknd/$ 13.1 Total/$ 16.3
2. Machete/Fox Wknd/$ 11.4 Total/$ 11.4
3. Takers/ScreenGems Wknd/$ 10.9 Total/$ 37.4
4. The Last Exorcism/Lions Gate Wknd/$ 7.4 Total/$ 32.2
5. Going The Distance/WB Wknd/$ 6.9 Total/$ 6.9
6. The Expendables/LionsGate Wknd/$ 6.7 Total/$ 92.2
7. The Other Guys/Sony Wknd/$ 5.3 Total/$106.8
8. Eat, Pray. Love/Sony Wknd/$ 4.8 Total/$ 68.9
9. Inception/Warner Wknd/$ 4.6 Total/$277.1
10. Nanny McPhee Returns/Universal Wknd/$ 3.5 Total/$ 22.4
FOOL ME ONCE, SHAME ON YOU; FOOL ME FOUR TIMES AND YOU’RE A CLEVER HACK
Resident Evil: Afterlife opens at number one and I saw the first and it sucked. I was sucked into the second by the promise of hot women in short skirts with guns and it still sucked. And it had Mike Epps. I decided not to be a three-time sucker and passed on Resident Evil even though I later discovered Mike Epps died, and I’d have paid money to see that. Now we have the fourth film and even though there’s no Mike Epps, Paul W.S. Anderson remains a crap filmmaker successfully keeping his wife, Mila Jovovich, on the B list with his B-list movies. All his movies are movies that had the potential to be much, much better. Even if they were enjoyable like Mortal Kombat and Death Race, they were still screaming out to be so much more and that it happens with every film shows you it’s him and no one else. And now his next film---one of the Three Musketeers movies coming---is a stab at “A-list” status with Orlando Bloom. I guarantee it will be the suckiest of the two. That Mila Jovovich is in it as M’Ladyt De Winter pretty much guarantees this. She should have been The Black Widow over Scarlett Johansson and saved from her husband.
DARWIN WOULD BE PROUD
Takers is down to number two, followed by The American at number three and here we have an instance of déjà vu as the beautiful Italian actress who is nude (and how) conducting a romance with a mysterious American on the run is Violante Placido, who is the daughter of Simonetta Stefanelli (man, these names are great) who played the doomed Apollonia in The Godfather, who was nude and conducted a romance with a mysterious American on the run. Some of us are just born hot and it then their duty to be naked as much as possible (they also both posed for Playboy). And she is. And curved like a mountain pass, looking like a woman, not a little girl. Actual pubic hair helps.
TRULY A NATIONAL TRAGEDY
Machete is down to number four and Steven Segal chose this over The Expendables? He can go sit in the corner with Jean Claude Van Damme who at least is going to be a voice in the Kung Fu Panda sequel. What’s Segal got going? Lawman on A&E? What kind of law enforcement entity lets this buffoon and a bunch of cameras represent them on nationwide television? Louisiana? Jesus, just when you thought you knew how bad Katrina hit them, you realize it was even worse than that. So bad they have to whore themselves out to Segal, probably just to buy bullets.
ORIGINALLY THEY ATTENDED A FLOCK OF SEAGULLS CONCERT
Going the Distance holds at number five and you can tell how long a script has been sitting around based on how much modern technology plays into it. In this for example, Drew Barrymore is trying to become a newspaper reporter and Justin Long works as an A&R man and while they give lip service to newspapers being in trouble the word “blog” literally comes up only once. Once. She’s person dying to be a reporter where newspapers are in trouble and working for a website never, ever comes up. And while they at least give lip service to the trouble facing newspapers, everything is peachy in the world of music for Justin Long, which is odd given it was the internet that killed the music business as well. He’s also the world’s dumbest A&R man given he’s trying to find a job closer to her, but he only looks in San Francisco where she lives, rather than say Seattle or LOS ANGELES!!! I’m figuring this script is from the early 90’s. Yes, there’s some token texting and videoconferencing, but when it comes to the phone sex scene it makes zero sense they wouldn’t have used it for the video conferencing. Unless, of course, you know it was written when Bill Clinton was in office. His first term, given how they don’t seem to acknowledge Seattle as a place where music is made, putting this pre-grunge.
REMEMBER WHITE TIGER? OF COURSE NOT.
The Other Guys is down to number six, followed by The Last Exorcism at number seven and The Expendables at number eight, and I have to give Stallone points for having C-List action star, Gary Daniels in this. If you know anything about straight-to-video action, you know this dude had his own minor career in the early 90’s actually appearing in the film version of Fist of the Northstar (it’s okay if you don’t know what that is). He was like an English Jean-Claude Van Damme in that he actually competed in kickboxing in real life. He was also about the same type of quality actor. But if you dug up Gary Daniels, where are Michael (American Ninja) Dudikoff, Sho (Enter the Ninja) Kosugi, Jeff (The Perfect Weapon) Speakman, Cynthia (Too Many Crap Movies To Mention) Rothrock and Don “The Dragon” (Bloodfist) Wilson!?! If we’re gonna do this, let’s do this!
HERE’S WHERE I MAKE MYSELF ANGRY OVER THINGS THAT HAVEN’T HAPPENED YET
Inception is holding at number nine and from a $160-200M budget has made over $700M worldwide. Profitable even before DVD and it needed to be given it only made $200M domestically. I can’t even say this is the future of movies, because it’s been like this forever. But this second massive hit makes me fear for the next Batman movie and the next Superman movie, which Christopher Nolan will be overseeing, but not directing. This much success means a lot of creative freedom and even in the The Dark Knight you saw far too much self-indulgence and not enough critical scrutiny. Also here, things just go on a leeeeetle bit too long. Seriously, if I had to watch that van fall backwards one more time…
THE END. THANK GOD.
Eat, Pray Love closes out the top ten at number ten.
MY BEST FRIEND HAS RETURNED
The new TV season has started, which is bad news for me given my DVR is already at 92% (I’m trying to clear it out as I write this). First up is Hellcats and grown women in cheerleading outfits is a recipe for heaven for me. At least I thought it was before I saw the very porn-star looking lead actress. Sorry, but she’s a little too hard looking to be playing a college girl and they needed to dial her look back about a thousand percent. Yeah, she’s playing a tough girl, but there’s a difference between “I’ve seen some pain” tough and “I’ve seen a lot of ball sack” tough. Also, out of all the actresses and dancers in LA, you couldn’t find people with actual dance and athletic ability to play these roles? It’s made even worse by the presence of people with actual skill being shown in the “audition” scene. I suppose hers is a name to get the kids in, but Ashley Tisdale talking about how she can bench twice her body weight (which admittedly would only be about fifty pounds) is about as plausible as her discussing her doctorate in micro biology. Not to mention this all takes place in a mythical Memphis where only one person has a southern accent and I find myself torn between not hearing bad accents as opposed to ridiculously not hearing any at all. Also I was expecting some trashy soap opera fun, but this likes to pretend it respects cheerleaders as athletes but didn’t bother to hire any and the plot requires her to beat out dozens of trained cheerleaders because she watched a video one afternoon. Also starting up this week was Nikita, the third American incarnation of the French film, La Femme Nikita (Point of No Return, La Fenne Nikita The Series came before it). In this one we pick her up after she’s escaped from the government rather than watching her act as a secret agent. Shows about secret government groups that kill foreign leaders crack me up because when was the last time you ever heard of a diplomat dying period, much less on American soil? The fact of the matter is, governments have an odd gentleman’s agreement not to bump each other off, because they don’t want to be bumped off. Maggie Q is the star this time around and she seems poised to take away the title of “The Hot Asian” from Lucy Liu. It was much better than I expected, mainly because a lot of the footage shown in previews hadn’t been processed yet giving it that professional sheen. Also, there’s a nice twist at the end and given how much Covert Affairs wound up sucking, I need a new show where a woman kicks ass. Terriers also started up and it’s nothing new. An alcoholic ex-cop turned private detective in LA. You’ve seen it before, but it’s all in how you do it and this does it well. In this case they’re so scruffy they’re not even legally private detectives, but it goes classic Raymond Chandler in the first episode with a case of missing girl turning out to be about corruption and the rich and powerful and it looks to be a continuing plotline. Also, I like Donal Logue and Chandler’s legendary “knight in tarnished armor” character suits him.
AND GET OFF MY LAWN WITH YOUR AUTO-TUNE!
Why do I watch the MTV Awards? I don’t know anyone any longer and the people onstage are literally young enough to be my children. Where are the VH1 Awards so I can feel like I belong?...so we open up with Eminem and to show how quickly the transition happens, when he first blew up I was well aware of him and all his music. Now, this is probably the second time I’ve heard this song…why is Rhianna dressed like Madonna? And I hope this song of domestic abuse is cathartic for her, because it’s a little creepy for me…Elizabeth Banks is hosting? Oh, no. It’s Chelsea Handler…glad to see someone gave Lindsay Lohan a job…“Hi, mom. I got a dancing job. Yeah, I’ll be the guy on Chelsea’s left grinding on her! Is dad there? Why doesn’t he want to talk to me!?!”…seriously? A Justin Bieber lesbian joke? Time to fast forward…My god. How much botox is in Elle Degeneres’ face!?! And I never notice these things…how long have they been promoting this Brett Michaels reality show about his kids?...Jared Leto’s shitty little band is still around and getting recognition!?! Do the kids know this fucker is like 35!?! Yeah, I guess he’s still pretty…honestly, Justin Bieber does not bother me. Every generation has one. Getting mad at him is like your great great grandparents getting mad about the Frank Sinatra kid that made your great grandmother swoon. And he did single-handedly get rid of The Jonas Brothers who did truly suck, even for teen pop idols…I won’t lie. I hate Trey Songz simply because I hate his name. I’ve never heard him sing a note, but I hate that dumbass name. And dressing like Ming The Merciless won’t change my mind…Usher bores me performing. There’s no love lost for the late Michael Jackson, but they’re all really poor imitations of him. Hell, he was a poor imitation of himself by the time he died. And when did Usher stop doing R&B for this generic dance music?...how old am I? I’ve read about Florence and The Machine, but never heard them. That’s old, baby. But I like this, so the night hasn’t been a total waste…I liked Gym Class Heroes, but the front man’s solo work sucks balls…is this weird ass performance commercial by Pharell and I think Ciara (remember her) really going to convince some kid to convince their parents to buy them Chevrolet?...Taylor Swift really needs to write Kanye West a check. He did more for her than her songs…do you know how wussy you have to be to make Justin Timberlake look like a man? Well, you succeeded, Jesse Esienberg...I hate Swizz Beatz for the same reason I hate Trey Songz even though he’s a producer. Drake I’m indifferent to…let’s call it like it is: Sofia Vegara is the new Charro…I do like B.O.B. and his song with Bruno Mars was the song of the summer for me, not that “California Girls” bullshit. And I’ve always loved Paramore so this is the highlight of the show for me…ROBYN!!!! I can’t believe she only got a minute while we got half an hour of Usher Aerobic Workout...You know why Linkin Park is elsewhere? Because they didn’t want to feel old either…and then my DVR stopped recording and I don’t care what happened next.
MY OTHER BEST FRIEND HAS RETURNED
Football started! And my Falcons lost to the fucking third string quarterback!?! Are you shittin’ me!?! Well, at least Dallas lost.
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