HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, BRAIN

1. Hellboy II/Universal Wknd/$ 35.9 Total/$ 35.9
2. Hancock/Sony Wknd/$ 33.0 Total/$ 165.0
3. Journey To The Center… Wknd/$ 20.6 Total/$ 20.6
4. Wall-E/Disney Wknd/$ 18.5 Total/$ 162.8
5. Wanted/Universal Wknd/$ 11.6 Total/$ 112.0
6. Get Smart/Warner Wknd/$ 7.1 Total/$ 111.5
7. Meet Dave/Fox Wknd/$ 5.3 Total/$ 5.3
8. Kung Fu Panda/Paramount Wknd/$ 4.3 Total/$ 203.0
9. Kit Kittredge: American Girl Wknd/$ 2.4 Total/$ 11.0
10.Indiana Jones 4/Paramount Wknd/$ 2.3 Total/$ 310.5

GO STRAIGHT TO HELL, BOY
Hellboy II: The Golden Army opens at number one and I was never a big fan of the first Hellboy, but was lured in by the amazing visuals that Guillermo Del Toro is always good for. Sadly, a lackluster story is also what I know him for and this is no different. The plot is actually a good one: a renegade fairy prince returns to try and take back the world lost to mankind centuries ago. And this is the first mistake: your villain should not be more interesting or sympathetic than your hero and he is. I would rather have seen more of the ass-kicking fairy prince fight for a land of magic and wonder over shopping malls and parking lots than Hellboy who bores me senseless. The grouchy cigar-smoking hero who looks like a monster was never done better than The Thing in the Fantastic Four and at least there’s some poignancy there because of his lost humanity. I could give a crap about Hellboy and this movie doesn’t give me any reason to. So he likes cats and candy. That’s how we’re supposed to be able to relate to him? Well, cats suck and candy simply won’t get the job done. The scene where Hellboy and Abe Sapien (the fishman) sing Barry Manilow over heartbreak would have been much more effective and funnier if they’d made it three minutes instead of ten. This way they’re simply beating you over the head with it. They also try for, and completely blow, the X-Men/Spider-man concept of being disliked by a public you’re trying to protect. But hey, you get a ten-minute, unfunny Barry Manilow scene so how can you complain? Also, no reason is ever given as to why we as humans deserve the earth more than the creatures of magic and even when they toy with the idea that Hellboy feels saddened by the killing of one such creature, there’s no follow through. The film opens with a fairy tale about the first war between man and fairy and mentions “a hole in the heart of mankind” that actually starts the war. A good fairy tale would explain why such a hole exists and what can fill it, but not this one. So things like “tooth fairies” which are beautiful/ugly little insect like creatures who like calcium (but will actually eat anything and everything) are in the end wasted by a story that has no urgency. There’s never any real feeling of tension or excitement to the conflict. Del Toro simply does not know how to direct an action sequence. Blade II worked because Donnie Yen was the fight choreographer. Left to his own devices all Del Toro gives you is “Bad guy punches Hellboy around for a while, Hellboy wins.” All the excitement you just experienced while reading that sentence? Totally equal to what the movie gives you.

SUPER SPERM, THE HEIGHT OF WIT
Hancock is down to number two and this has already made over $340M worldwide, so never, ever doubt the power of the Fresh Prince because even his crap is golden. What’s really gotta hurt is that this did better in just a week than The Incredible Hulk has done in a month. Then again, the Hulk never shoves one man’s head up the ass of another and who doesn’t want to see that? Apparently that along with some sexual jokes (underage girls and the holes in the roof of his house being from masturbation which is from an old Larry Niven essay about Superman’s sexuality called “Man of Steel, Woman of Tissue”) almost got this an “R” rating, but the sex jokes were sacrificed to keep that one joke in. One of the few smart choices the film made.

NOW YOU KNOW WHERE THE TROY MCCLURE JOKES ON THE SIMPSONS CAME FROM
Journey To The Center of the Earth 3D opens at number three and Brendan Fraser seems to be quite content being a B-Level action star bordering on being a kiddie action star. This definitely leans towards the latter and looks just one lesson about geography away from being something you’d have to watch in school. But what really kept me away was no apparent bad guy or underground civilization. What the fuck? How can you have a center of the earth movie with no mole men or lost civilization? And you can’t just have three people because who’s gonna die? Your hero can’t die, nor can the girl and sure as hell not the kid, so where’s the suspense? You know the “threat” really isn’t’ a threat because everyone’s going to live. Even the crappy The Core knew that. Of course At The Earth’s Core with Doug McClure and Peter Cushing and the one time queen of science fiction fantasy and horror, Caroline Munro, only had two people, but that’s just the best underground science fantasy movie ever made and beyond the rules.

WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY AND HE IS US
Wall E is down to number four and there are people getting up in arms because they think the movie is making fun of fat people. Yeah, because it’s the first film in history to ever do that. And the film is not making fun of fat people, but people who lay around doing nothing and become fat. It mocks those lazy bas---Hey! How dare you judge me!?!

HIS BEST SONG SINCE “MY PRIVATE LIFE”
Wanted is down to number five and what I actually liked most about this movie is the theme song “The Little Things” by none other than Danny Elfman, the composer of music for The Simpsons, Spider-man almost every Tim Burton film ever made. And it hurts me to admit this because his old ugly Oingo Boingo ass married and impregnated my beloved Bridget Fonda. I mean, it’s basically ripping off the White Stripes but it’s still good because unlike them there’s actually a guitar present and you’d be amazed at how that improves a rock song.

SOMEONE OWES WOODY ALLEN A CHECK
Get Smart is down to number six, followed by Meet Dave, which opens poorly at number seven (so poorly they retooled the ad campaign by Sunday night to look more like a family film) and I will admit to having briefly considered seeing this, but ultimately realized that, like Daddy Day Care, just because I laughed at few bits in the trailer, this will probably best viewed at home. This was originally called Starship Dave (a much better title) and the original story comes from none other than Bill Corbett, who was behind Mystery Science Theater (with an obvious debt to Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex But Were Afraid To Ask). Now, you’d think if anyone could make a funny science fiction movie he’d be him, right? Well, enter Brian Robbins, the douchebag director behind Norbit (the movie that cost Eddie Murphy an Oscar) and the guy who produced Wild Hogs and took umbrage that people would ever call such a piece of crap a piece of crap. I’m sure any genuine wit was tossed out almost immediately. And yes, he was the “tough kid” on Head of the Class twenty years ago, alongside Robin Givens

CULTURAL IMPERIALISM: WHERE AMERICA STILL RULES!
Kung Fu Panda is down to number eight and in China they’re a bit upset that a movie like this---which is also a big hit over there---wasn’t made by them and are trying to figure out why. Well, here’s a hint: STOP MAKING MOVIES ABOUT THE FUCKING MONKEY KING!!! In other words it never would have occurred to them to make a movie that used elements of their own culture without being slavishly attached to that self-same culture. It would be like us making a sports movie that didn’t have an underdog team of misfits pulling it out in the end in slow motion sequence. We just don’t know another way.

ONE FOR THE ROAD
Kitt Kittredge: An American Girl is down to number nine followed by Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, closing out the top ten, ending our Shia Lebouf jokes until Eagle Eye opens this fall. And I will give him credit for a little self-awareness. He’s said he knows he’d never be able to kiss girls like Megan Fox if it weren’t part of the script. So basically he’s the Ron Jeremy of legit films.

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!
I didn’t mean to go out drinking on Friday night, but it’s not my fault. It’s because of the clash between second wave and third wave feminists that I had to. Seriously. It begins with The Daily Show. Now, when people think of The Daily Show they think of Jon Stewart or some will even think of Craig Kilborn, but very few think of its co-creator and former head writer, Lizz Winstead. She left the show when Craig Kilborn mocked her on-air and as in many cases when it comes down between the face of the show and its creator, the creator often loses. Liz Winstead hasn’t exactly gone on to bigger and better things (though neither really has Craig Kilborn) but she’s still around doing things and one of those things is Thinking & Drinking, a part of shootthemessengernyc.com where the guests have a few drinks and are interviewed. Now this sounds like it could be fun, but it kinda went wrong when the most recent guests were two of the more prominent members of the Jezebel.com staff. It’s one thing to be funny in print, when you can rewrite and have others edit you. It’s quite another to do it off-the-cuff while inebriated and they could not. It was pretty much a train wreck showing that even when women make jokes about rape, it’s not that funny. That’s it’s your own rape doesn’t change a thing. It also didn’t help that Lizz Winstead is an earlier generation of feminist and not exactly enamored with the latest generation and felt no compunctions about going after them. Everyone showed their ass and it became the mother of all shit-storms on Jezebel.com the next week because the two staff members simply would not acknowledge how poorly they came off to a very pissed off internet audience. In fact the end result was that many long time commenters were banned and went off to start their own site: buttercuppunch.wordpress.com. This is why I had to go drinking. They wanted to have another night out to discuss what went down. Now, I was not part of the drama. I got that they’d fucked up in public, but they were also drunk and somewhat ambushed. And quite frankly, I’m a little too old for being kicked off a website to have any real meaning in my life. But for kids who’ve come of age over the last ten years, they don’t know a world without instant messengering, texting, friendster, myspace and facebook. For them the virtual world and its relationships are just as significant as flesh & blood ones (whereas when I got banned from a website I just logged in with a new name). It was also in Manhattan and given how I bitched about going to Brooklyn, I had to show. Finnally, it was one year ago to that Friday (actual vessel-popping date was July 13th) that my brain bled so I felt I had to be out doing something, anything. It was a smaller turn-out than usual. Being so soon after the last one and not starting until 10:00 didn’t help. Hell, even I didn’t arrive until 11:00 because I had to shower and recover from my martial arts class, where Brazilian Kaballah Woman popped me in the eye yet again (though once I found my bearings I gave more than I got). More dudes are showing up now which is good, but one got a reality shock when one woman asked for a consensus about a man she’d gone out with who kept hamsters. He fucked up in other ways to be sure, but the hamsters set off her radar. This is when the other duded realized that every little thing about his dating life would also be discussed publicly somewhere with women. Welcome to world of hanging with chicks. I’ve acquired an odd sort of popularity on the site, so during the night I kept hearing, “I follow your comments all the time and love reading them.” It really threw me when the two girls sitting at the bar who looked like they were out to party suddenly said it. Of course the bittersweet cherry on top of this is when the tall, slim pretty girl who sat next to me mentioned she liked my comments too. “So what do you that allows you to make comments all day?” she asked in her New Zealand accent. “Not much,” I honestly replied. “What do you do you?” “Oh, I’m a model.” Sigh. Where were you 20 years ago when that would have actually have meant something to me? Oh, that’s right. You were two years old! Excuse grandpa while he gets his medicine. Yeah, I know it looks like tequila to you, but trust me when I say it’s the only cure for what ails me