WU TANG IMPROVES EVERYTHING

1. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps/Fox Wknd/$ 19.0 Total/$ 19.0

2. Legend of the Guardians/Warners Wknd/$ 16.3 Total/$ 16.3

3. The Town/Warners Wknd/$ 16.0 Total/$ 49.1

4. Easy A/Screen Gems Wknd/$ 10.7 Total/$ 32.8

5. You Again/Touchstone Wknd/$ 8.3 Total/$ 8.3

6. Devil/Universal Wknd/$ 6.5 Total/$ 21.7

7. Resident Evil: Afterlife Wknd/$ 4.9 Total/$ 52.0

8. Alpha and Omega/Lions Gate Wknd/$ 4.7 Total/$ 15.1

9. Takers/ScreenGems Wknd/$ 1.7 Total/$ 54.9

10. Inception/Warner Wknd/$ 1.2 Total/$287.1

WALL STREET: C.R.E.A.M. STARRING THE RZA.

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps opens at number one and I passed on this because I remember all too well the suckage that was Wall Street 20 years ago. It was the most heavy-handed morality play you could ever dream of, with poor Hal Holbrook being forced to give the very definition of a one-note performance. Favorite bad part: while Hal Holbrook is spouting off another one of his homilies, Charlie Sheen is looking at his reflection and they literally “darken” it. Get it!?! He’s following the dark path! Get it!?! It’s so bad I’ve never, ever had any interest in watching it again. Subtlety has never been a part of Oliver Stone’s oeuvre and he hasn’t gotten any better with age, especially when he feels he’s teaching his audience a lesson like here. Casting Shia Lebouf didn’t help as I’d rather not see his face onscreen. It’s sad too, because I love when New York is made to seem like a playground for the rich and glamorous. It’s the only reason I put up with the anemic Gossip Girl every week.

WHOOOO ARE YOU? HOO-HOO, HOO-HOO (SEE WHAT I DID THERE?)

Legend of the Guardians opens at number two and computer animated owls at war directed by the man who brought you 300 and Watchmen? Again, I think I’ll sleep in instead. Yeah, it looks pretty, but that’s a given with a Zack Synder movie and it’s simply not enough if you don’t care about the subject matter. I mean seriously, it’s not like it’s cool like eagles or falcons or ravens; it’s freaking owls. I mean, they may technically be birds of prey, but know of any football teams named “The Owls”? Exactly.

YEAH, IT USUALLY MEANS YOU’RE NOT GOOD LOOKING ENOUGH TO LEAD, BUT STILL

The Town is down to number three and Ben Affleck knows how build a solid supporting cast. This is filled with recognizable faces, but they are people who are as solid as fucking oak. You’ve not only got Chris Cooper as Affleck’s father (he instantly elevates anything he appears in because the man apparently never heard a “B game” only it bringing it A-style), but his usual drawl gone and replaced with a “Bah-stun” accent. Also here is Pete Postlewaite as an Irish mob boss, again providing a solid foundation for other people to work with. And sorry, as much as I like Blake Lively and that she’s trying to broaden by playing roles like this, she needs all the help she can get from the people around her.

THEY SHOULD HAVE GIVEN BEN AFFLECK A CALL

Easy A is down to number four and speaking of solid supporting casts, there’s a great one here with Stanley Tucci gone from being a dependable weasel to the supporting male of choice for actresses young and old. Great with Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway in The Devil Wears Prada. Great with just Meryl Streep in Julie & Julia and will probably be great in the upcoming attempt to duplicate The Devil Wears Prada with Cher and Christina Aguilera in Burlesque. But while that looks like crap, he’s got an easy chemistry here with Patricia Clarkson and Emma Stone and more should have been done with it. Also wasted is the comic timing and deadpan of Thomas Haden Church, while Lisa Kudrow as his wife makes the most of her small role as his wife a far-from-perfect guidance counselor. And Malcolm McDowell is given one moment to shine and never used again. What the fuck!?!

JUST BECAUSE IT WORKED WITH LINDSAY LOHAN, JAMIE…

You Again opens at number five and I couldn’t be more disinterested completing the hat trick of mainstream releases I could give a rat’s ass about. Seriously, I’ve no patience for people dealing with high school issues after high school. It’s over. Get over it. It’s made doubly pathetic by the oh-so-clever idea that the mother still has high school trauma from a relative of the girl who caused her daughter’s trauma. Ooh, so clever! So now you get two generations of actresses being utter wasted. A better film would have had the character be over it, but when she meets her old nemesis finds out that she’s just as evil as she was in high school but is only hiding it. That way your protagonist isn’t pathetic but forced back into a situation. And honestly, I just don’t like Kristen Bell. She’s a TV star, not a movie star. There’s a sitcom somewhere with her name on it.

AND MAGGIE GYLLENHAAL!

Devil is down to number six and also in this is Parker Posey and remember when she was the indie “It” girl? Do they even have “Indie It Girls” any longer? Oh, yeah they do. That’s what Zoey Deschanel was and kinda still is. Sadly, like so many “It” people Parker never ascended like we hoped like we hoped and instead winds up doing mainstream crap like this to pay the bills. How crappy is it? She’s not even credited for this on IMDB. It’s as if the shame were too much. If that’s the case she should take Blade: Trinity and Superman Returns off as well.

WHORES, EACH AND EVERY ONE

Resident Evil: Afterlife is down to number seven, followed by Alpha and Omega at number eight and is there anything sadder than this being the last film of Dennis Hopper? Pray there’s something else in the can. At least we know why he did it (golddigging young wife), but let’s take a look at who else is here going for an easy paycheck… Justin Long and come to think of it I haven’t seen any Mac commercials recently…Hayden Panttiere and she’s about two seconds from soft-core porn her fall from “Hot Young Thing” to “Who?” has been so drastic…Christina Ricci, who could explain to Hayden how precarious it is to be a frat boy sex symbol and how you really can’t make a career on it…Danny Glover, which just makes me sad…Chris Carmack, who had the immortal line of “Welcome to The OC, bitch” but again, you can’t build a career on it and he hasn’t…and finally Vicki Lewis, who once jokingly said she was going to sue Kathy Griffin for copying her NewsRadio personality. She might want to look back into that. Kathy’s got some loot now and could it be worse than doing this?

LOOKS LIKE THIS COULD BE THE END

Takers is down to number nine, followed by Inception, finally closing out the top ten. But we’ve said that before.

OOH, YOU’RE MY BEST FRIEND

The new TV season has started up in earnest this week and we should be ashamed as a nation that we can’t find a better show for the greatness that is William Shatner. Shit My Dad Says, an adaptation of a fucking Twitter blog, sucks as much as you’d expect an adaptation of a fucking Twitter blog to suck. It’s simple: the Tweeting is funny because the shit his father says actually is funny. This show is not funny, because none of the shit any of the characters says is funny. Undercovers is the continuation of a tradition going back to Hart To Hart and The Thin Man of a sexy couple having adventures (Mr. & Mrs. Smith didn’t create it, kids, they just added firepower). And boy did they up the sexy. You will not find a prettier couple on prime time TV. And I’m thinking they got a pretty writing staff too, because ugly people write better than this. But if they give me shots of her amazing ass with that British accent every week, I promise I really won’t care. Equally pretty but not playing it up is Chase, the new show about a blonde US Marshal (In Plain Sight is the other one). Aside from the striking blonde lead, the cast includes Cole Hauser, Jesse Metcalfe and the chick who played Tasha on The L Word. She finally gets to smile. Hawaii 5-0 is also very pretty, but it still sucks. It’s every dumb action movie you’ve ever seen in your life, note-for-note, cliché-for-cliché but lacking in any sort of appeal from the actors that makes it tolerable. Stallone, Willis and Schwarzenegger made dumb action movies, but carried them off due to their movie star charisma. Alex O’Loughlin (as Steve McGarrett) is a pretty boy with zero charm or personality so he can’t even begin to carry this off (he’s also lacking Jack Lord’s amazing hair) and is getting no help from the writing. His father is murdered (action movie plot cliché), but despite being a native of Hawaii (thank you clunky expository dialogue), there’s no one at his funeral at Pearl Harbor (where his grandfather died, thank you again, clunky expository dialogue) that Steve knows, but a high school buddy working nearby as a security guard!?! Scott Caan has second generation personality as his reluctant fish-out-of-water partner (action movie character cliché), but he’s not the star and isn’t helped by the pretty but bland Daniel Dae Kim and Grace Park who is as only as good as her material, because she was a lot better than this on Battlestar Galactica. Also the costumes hid how freaking skinny she was, so if you’re going to keep stripping her down, give her a sandwich. But hey, points for casting two Asians from the same ethnic background as relatives (they’re both Korean). This pilot was actually directed by Len Wiseman, who directed the first two Underworld movies and Live Free or Die Hard and it’s becoming more and more apparent how lucky he got with Underworld (yes, this includes stealing Kate Beckinsale from Michael Sheen), because it remains the best thing he’s ever done (yes, this includes Kate Beckinsale). Best part of the whole show was the re-creation of the opening credits with McGarrett on the balcony. I gave Detroit 1-8-7 five minutes before checking out never to return. Just can’t do another police procedural. And you know, people have made music in Detroit other than Motown, so enough on the goddamn Temptations.

GRATEFUL DEAD

Death once again taunted Mickey Rooney with the release he so desperately craves by taking Eddie Fisher (father of Carrie and all around douchebag) and Kevin McCarthy, who starred in one of the best science fiction films of the 50’s if not of all time: Invasion of the Body Snatchers. He also made a cameo in the excellent 70’s remake playing a character with the same name. And he was in the very underrated Innerspace.