1. Four Christmases/WB Wknd/$ 18.2 Total/$ 70.8
2. Twilight/Summit Wknd/$ 13.2 Total/$ 138.6
3. Bolt/Disney Wknd/$ 9.7 Total/$ 79.3
4. Australia/Fox Wknd/$ 7.0 Total/$ 30.9
5. Quantum of Solace/Sony Wknd/$ 6.6 Total/$ 151.5
6. Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa/DreamW Wknd/$ 5.1 Total/$ 165.7
7. Transporter 3/Lion’s Gate Wknd/$ 4.5 Total/$ 23.4
8. Punisher: War Zone/Lion’s Gate Wknd/$ 4.0 Total/$ 4.0
9. Cadillac Records/Sony Wknd/$ 3.5 Total/$ 3.5
10. Role Models/Universal Wknd/$ 2.6 Total/$ 61.7
YOU REALIZE THERE’LL BE ANOTHER VINCE VAUGHN XMAS MOVIE NEXT YEAR, RIGHT?
Four Christmases holds strangely at number one and you people have no one but yourselves to blame with all the crap holiday films that come out every year when you keep making them successful. This isn’t awful, but it’s not two-weeks-at-number-one good. In fact, the best thing about it is how it’s giving good older actors some exposure. There was a time when Sissy Spacek was “the shit” so I enjoy seeing her whenever she pops up from time to time. I just wish it was in better stuff. Like Robert Duvall and Jon Voight and even Mary Steenburgen, she seems to realize this is just an easy payday and goes with it. At least she’s not playing a grandmother…yet.
YOU’LL NEVER BE TREKKERS, YOU PUNKS
Twilight actually rises to number two and the kids must have heard me ranking on them for not supporting this film more and went out for another round.
MAYBE ALL THE BOTOX USERS IN THE WORLD SUPPORT HER
Bolt is down to number three, followed by Australia at number for which is now shaping up to be a yet another failure for Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman, which is totally disproportionate to their fame. You look over Hugh Jackman’s resume beyond X-Men and you’re going to see one failure after another. Similarly, you look at Nicole Kidman’s history and you’re not going to find a lot of money-makers either. How do they remain stars? Apparently it stopped being the measure of a movie star long ago. I understand Hugh Jackman’s success is partially because every woman and quite a few men want him, but I don’t think every man and a few women want Kidman. I mean, I’m actually kind of a fan and she annoys even me.
THE “M” IS FOR “MOM”
Quantum of Solace is down to number five and are there no other double-O agents that M has so much time do devote to James Bond? She flies to Italy, Bolivia and Russia in this movie because of him. What happens to all the other agents who need her in this time. “I need to speak with M only! It’s vital!” “Sorry, M’s away with 007. Can I help you, 008? Hello? 008? Hello? Sigh. We need a new 008!”
BISHOP 2.0
Madagascar: Back To Africa is down to number six, followed by Transporter 3, down to number and I don’t watch Prison Break, so I have no idea what it means to have the actor who plays Tea Bag (perhaps the greatest name for a character in prison, ever) here or how different or alike the characters are. All I know that is whenever Lance Henriksen can’t make it or turns someone down or needs someone to play his brother, this is guy you call. Hey, this opens any Alien movies to him!
BUT THE KING WILL ALWAYS BE “DAMN, TERMINATOR.”
A man’s existential crisis is not among the things to expect to find in The Punisher: War Zone, opening at number eight this week, but there it was. Some dude who at first seemed to be your typical moron yelling out his comments at the screen during the previews, suddenly became introspective when he said, “I ain’t gonna say another word in the movie, y’all. I ain’t gon’ ruin it for you…just know you die, they look over your body say ‘I’m sorry’ and then they gone. Just keep going.” I was torn between yelling at him to shut the fuck up and yelling at him, “That’s what they’re supposed do. You mourn and you move on. You don’t dwell. When you dwell, in your own way, you die too.” But he was as good as his word and was pretty much quiet for the rest of the movie. Or maybe it was stunned silence over how they cannot get something as simple as The Punisher right. This is the second best Punisher movie ever made, but given that only puts it above the Thomas Jane version, isn’t saying much. That it’s still behind the Dolph Lundgren version says even less. At least they finally get the casting right with none other than Titus Pullo himself, Ray Winstone, a man who looks like he’d kill you for even jaywalking. It’s sad it took them 20 years to cast a dark and dangerous looking man to play a dark and dangerous man and not some fucking blonde. Also they finally get the amount of bloodletting right, as when The Punisher truly ascended in the 80’s to the point where he had a couple of comic books (they even released one just about his weapons) he was as noted for how he killed criminals as anything else, sometimes in a darkly comedic fashion. Let me put it this way: one of The Punisher toys we sold at St. Mark’s Comics was of him torturing a guy. The freaking toy! That’s here in spades, reaching a peak when he kills an acrobatic criminal in mid-leap with a rocket launcher, blowing him to bits (at one point he also punches his way through a man’s head). But like every Punisher movie to date they maintain a total disregard for the intelligence of the audience, starting with the depiction of the criminals, which looks like a Godfather parody, but sounds like a 30’s gangster parody with every actor speaking in terms of “Dese, dems and dose.” At any minute I expected to see either Sonny Corleone or Edward G. Robinson pop out---then get blown to bits with a rocket launcher. I mean, is it so much to ask that you not have The Punisher walk down the street in full regalia, with weapons exposed and not have anyone notice him!?! And if you’re looking for a criminal who’s doing a deal about a weapon being brought into the country, you’d think that place WITH HIS NAME ON IT IN NEON BY THE DOCKS would be the first place you’d go, but not the law enforcement here. It’s only in scenes where the movie seems to embrace its own absurdity that it works, such when the lead criminal, Jigsaw (one of the rare Punisher villains to live in order to make repeat appearances) begins recruiting gangs to help him fight The Punisher, under the twisted premise that they are an minority that no one cares for and the only way to achieve “justice” is to take upon themselves to do so---just like The Punisher. He does in front of an American flag with music swelling behind him. It the entire movie had just run with that-over-the top approach it might have been a better film.
I SPELL T-Y-P-I-C-A-L
“I’m the muthafucka!?! I’m the muthafucka!?!” Now I love that Cadillac Records (opening impressively at number nine while in less than a thousand theaters) went balls out for the “R” rating in terms of sex, violence and language in its depiction of the rise and fall of Chess Records, in contrast to movies like Ray and Walk The Line where it seems men could be rich and famous womanizers and/or drug addicts and not curse once or see a naked boob (Chuck Berry has no less than six in once scene here), but “I’m the muthafucka” as the dramatic anguish of a character simply does not work and borders on parody. Sex, language and violence aside, this is just a typical bio pic, depicting an enormous amount of time and numerous events with as little depth as possible, so one minute Adrian Brody is a polish immigrant (with a New York accent) living in barely a shack unable to marry the girl he loves, the next minute he’s running a club and has a totally different girl as a wife. One minute Muddy Waters (Jeffrey Wright who apparently can’t do a bad job in anything) is playing on the street, just talking to Gabrielle Union, the next he’s in her bed and the next they’re married. I understand you can only show so much, but in this case the movie has a narrator who could and should easily fill in all these blanks. Also, almost every artist shown had a recording career before showing up at Chess, but this movie makes it seem like Leonard Chess discovered them. But this does avoid the most common bio-pic commit the sin of not putting the accomplishments of the characters in any sort of context. While Walk The Line appropriately showed Johnny Cash as an initial contemporary of Elvis Presley, they ignored just where his accomplishments stood in light of the events of the 60’s. Ray was even worse, because you wouldn’t even know any musician besides Quincy Jones existed in Ray Charles’ lifetime by that movie. This is better because it has to be: Chuck Berry (wonderfully played by Mos Def) is defined by his times as is his story. You have to mention Elvis and The Beach Boys because one stole his rightful title as the King of Rock & Roll and the other ripped him off. Similarly, The Rolling Stones make an appearance here (the movie’s only truly poor casting) because they took their name from a Muddy Waters song. This actually three movies crammed into one. The first part of the movie is the best, The Muddy Waters Story. It contains the most detail (and I use that word loosely) and the best performances including Wright as Muddy Waters, Eamonn Smith as Howlin’ Wolf and Columbus Short as the self-destructive Little Walter. Cedric The Entertainer continues his journey to be a real actor as the film’s narrator, Willie Dixon (but if he really wanted respect he’d drop that stupid stage name). This story pretty much ends when rock & roll and Chuck Berry’s story begins and the movie would have done better by itself to give him a similar amount of detail, as the few bread crumbs they throw out are pretty interesting (Berry is initially booked into a club that thinks he’s a white country singer). Like his initial career, Chuck Berry’s story is cut short by his arrest, which is where Etta James and her story begin. Beyonce is…not as bad as you might expect and it helps that the entire film is not about her, but you aren’t going to get the kids in to see this with a real actress. Like the others, they not only ignore Etta James already had a significant career before she wound up at Chess, but they use the legend of her discovery, and stick Leonard Chess into it. Also, her drug problem most likely came from being on the road with Little Richard doing that time, so how could you miss out on putting Little Richard in your movie? And creating some sort of fictional romance with Leonard Chess was unnecessary and always begs the question: if you have make things up, why are you doing a bio pic anyway? Finally, I get you put Beyonce in the movie to get the kids in. We didn’t need to end with Q-Tip crapping, I mean rapping over a “Mannish Boy” sample in Chess Studios to show the music “mattered.” That’s as insulting to the intelligence as The Punisher walking down 6th Avenue.
THE END
Finally, Role Models closes out the top ten at number ten.
LEMON/SEE THROUGH THE SKYLIGHT…
I won’t try and describe the immense pain that went through my body upon receiving an invitation to a “My Last Night As A 23-Year-Old Party.” Let’s just say that grandpa made sure to take a nap beforehand. And of course this was the night that it started snowing. And I missed my subway stop. Then walked in the wrong direction. See, you shouldn’t let grandpa out without his medicine or a nurse. He’ll just get lost. This girl was of course one of the Jezebels, so it was like a mini gathering of them. Actually it was more Jezebel A, as since our first big initial gatherings we’ve kinda split off into two groups. The group I’ve been drinking with the most and with whom I watched the elections, is Jezebel B. Jezebel A is a very appropriate designation, because they are more “Alpha” and the “B” group is more laid back. As it was, the evening was short because, like true Alphas, more than a few were tired from an “Alpha Saturday” of running around. But before that two wonderful things happened: 1) a friend of one of the Jezebels from Virginia told the most amazing stories of bad southern weddings, including one with a---wait for it---Civil War Reenactment theme (sadly they didn’t go the extra mile and make the differing sides of the families wear Blue and Gray), and 2) we went for cupcakes on the lower east side at one of the Magnolia offshoots and I had a lemon cupcake that has changed my life. I have to have more. The only thing saving me is that they are so far away.
THE FOREST GETS EMPTIER EVEN WHEN THE SMALL TREES DIE
And so Death begins her year-end rush to get people in. Minor stars Nina Foch and Beverly Garland died. They were both in their 80’s so it was nice long life. Nina was Bithia in The Ten Commandments, while Beverly Garland was most famous for Roger Corman movies Swamp women and Not of This Earth, and continued the geek into her later years, playing Lois Lane’s mom on Lois & Clark. Speaking of which, Patricia Marand, who played Lois Lane on Broadway in “It’s A Bird, It’s A Plane, It’s Superman” passed away. And speaking of the geek, none other than Forrest J. Ackerman also passed away. Also gone is Paul Benedict, who aside from playing Mr. Bentley on The Jeffersons, was The Mad Painter on Sesame Street
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