1. The Blind Side/Warner Wknd/$ 20.4 Total/$ 129.3
2. The Twilight Saga: New Moon Wknd/$ 15.7 Total/$ 255.6
3. Brothers/Lion’s Gate Wknd/$ 9.7 Total/$ 9.7
4. A Christmas Carol/Disney Wknd/$ 7.5 Total/$ 115.0
5. Old Dogs/Touchstone Wknd/$ 6.9 Total/$ 33.9
6. Armored/ScreenGems Wknd/$ 6.6 Total/$ 6.6
7. 2012/Sony Wknd/$ 6.6 Total/$ 148.8
8. Ninja Assassin/Warner Wknd/$ 5.0 Total/$ 29.8
9. Planet 51/Sony Wknd/$ 4.3 Total/$ 34.0
10.Everyboyd’s Fine/Miramax Wknd/$ 4.0 Total/$ 4.0
APPARENTLY MORGAN FREEMAN WON’T HAVE MANY JOBS IN THE FUTURE
The Blind Side moves into the number one slot and if there’s one thing more annoying the “Benevolent Negro” it’s classic “Noble Savage” which is clearly still with us, where the person of color manages to somehow rise above their station---thanks to the help of the White man. Even the subject of the movie is being very diplomatic in how he talks about it. Give it a few years and he’ll cut loose with how he was portrayed. You have to wonder what goes through the mind of a moron who thinks that an audience won’t like it if he has too much responsibility for his own survival. I’d love to hear that meeting for its clear racism: “We need the white people to save him more.” Then again, it’s risen to number one, so how can you tell them they were wrong? I guess this means the age of the Black person helping some White person (Will Smith in the Legend of Bagger Vance, Djimon Hounsou in In America, almost every Black female role ever…) is done for now.
BUT WHERE’S KIRSTIN DUNST?
The Twilight Saga: New Moon is down to number two and also in this is Dakota Fanning, which with her eerily pale skin is pretty much typecasting. She’s always looked like a vampire child. She’s also apparently the anti-Lindsay Lohan, staying in school despite a very successful career as a child actress. She’s even a freaking cheerleader, which is what normal thin, pretty blondes are supposed to do in high school. I can only hope puberty took care of the scary old man voice she had for most of prepubescence. Geek connection: in an episode of the Justice League animates series where Wonder Woman was deaged to kid, she did the voice.
LIKE THOMAS JANE AND AARON ECKART
Brothers opens at number three with the picture-perfect casting of Tobey Maguire and the man who would have replaced him as Spider-Man and did as the boyfriend of Kirstin Dunst (man, did she probably freak when she heard of this casting), Jake Gyllenhaal. They’re two guys whom you think look alike when apart but when side-by-side…eh, not so much. And art imitates life when Tobey Maguire goes missing, Jake Gyllenhaal as the hunkier-yet-still-a-loser brother (not that it’s difficult to be hunkier than Tobey Maguire) steps in to take care of his family, all the way down to giving Natalie Portman a little lovin’, which probably would have happened in any story involving this set up. Your hotter, shiftless brother always hooks up with your hot wife. I didn’t see it because this story has just been done so many times, so unless he comes back from the grave or as a brainwashed assassin or something like that I’ve no real interest. I’m just not up for almost two humor-free hours of post-traumatic stress disorder, sibling rivalry and adultery right now.
EVIL NEVER DIES
A Christmas Carol actually rises to number four and remember what I said about counting this out too early? It’s three weeks until Christmas and this fucking thing isn’t going anywhere.
ROBOT CHICKEN THE MOVIE YOUR TIME HAS COME
Old Dogs is down to number five and Seth Green deserves so much better than this. He’s funnier if five minutes on Robot Chicken than Travolta and Robin Williams have been in the last decade. Hell, he alone has been the funniest thing on entourage in forever. I’d much rather see him in the “less-attractive-guy-gets-the-hot-girl” role than Seth fucking Rogen.
NO ARMORED CAR DUTY FOR OLD MEN
2012 is down to number six, followed by Armored opening up at number seven or as I call it, “A Lot of Old Guys vs. A Young Guy.” Seriously, it’s Matt Dillon, Lawrence Fishburne and Jean Reno fighting the kid who killed it as Little Walter in Cadillac Records last year. Even Skeet Ulrich is 40 now. But aside from Skeet Ulrich who I wouldn’t mind seeing die a few times, I’ve no desire to see a bunch of actors I like being unable to defeat some kid I barely know. Especially when part of the reason is the kid is trying to protect Milo Ventimiglia, whom I’d also like to see die a few times over.
BLACK & YELLOW BRUTHAS UNITED AGAINST THE MAN!
Ninja Assassin is down to number eight and this makes me both happy and sad. Where’s the audience for non-science fiction buttkicking? Must is all be incredibly over-the-top Asian stuff? Is it so much to ask to see people in US of A kicking each other in the head competently? Apparently so. But the good news is this won’t advance the career of the director, James McTeigue who was on tap to possibly direct the next Superman movie and his interviews show him to be a dickhead company for Warner Brothers. See, heirs to the creators of Superman have won back certain rights to the character including Superboy and Kal-El and Krypton, which means if you want to do a Superman movie and tell his origin, you have to pay them. Warner Brothers does not want to pay them so “suddenly” there’s no merit in telling his origin again. Yeah, there’s a little movie called Batman Begins that suggests you’re full of shit. And how much of a misstep was it not to bump up the partnership aspect of Naomie Harris given how Black people love martial arts people and Asian people tend to love Black culture (if not us). See, there was another little movie called Rush Hour, which suggests there may be some money in that.
EVERYBODY’S OLD
Planet 51 is down to number nine, followed by Everybody’s Fine opening at number ten and finally Robert DeNiro has settled into the dad role he should have been playing for the last 15 years rather than forcing the hideous idea of him boning Carla Gugino on me in Righteous Kill just recently. Now, he’s playing the dad to Drew Barrymore who is actually the same age a Carla Gugino. The ride is over, old man. But did it have to end in something like this, which looks so heartwarming and sickeningly sweet I got a cavity and diabetes just watching the trailer? Luckily, I know he finds out his kids aren’t so happy, which is a much needed bitter tang something like this needs to save it from being yet another Hallmark Hall of Fame movie that’s escaped into the wild.
WHERE THE AIR IS RAREIFIED
Not yet in the top ten is Up In The Air, another George Clooney vehicle where he pretty much gets to play himself, but ten or fifteen years ago this would have been a perfect Richard Gere movie as the narcissist who discovers himself and nobody did that better than Gere. Clooney is Clooney as a corporate hitman, called in to layoff employees for faltering businesses. In classic narcissist style, he loves his solitary life with no connections but finds it upended by two things: love and a younger person. The other thing that usually up-ends the status quo is death, be it a parent or one’s own self, but this thankfully is not that type of movie, as I had no desire to Clooney face his own mortality through prostate cancer or something like that. Honestly, it’s movies like this that keep that type of drama alive as they all think they can be this good, but rarely are. I’ve been a fan of director Jason Reitman (yes, son of Ivan) since the Zero Effect and he rarely disappoints me. What’s sad is that he’s from the Apatow camp, but they never seem to use him, probably because he prefers movies about grown-ups usually starring attractive men (George Clooney, Bill Pullman, David Duchovny) and even when it’s not, it’s something like Juno which also has no place in a camp filled with fat hairy dweebs lusting for shicksa goddesses. Thankfully, the movie doesn’t get too sentimental at the end because it is difficult for some leopards to change their spots, and not to give too much away, but someone you’re only seeing casually should never accompany you to a wedding or similar event. It will not end well (I speak from personal experience, but I was an idiot blinded by good sex). Clooney is supported by a top notch cast from Anna Kendrick and Vera Farmiga as the youth and the love, respectively, as well as Jason Bateman playing the soulless boss to perfection. There are also nice appearances from J.K. Simmons, Danny McBride and Sam Elliot. Oh, and Young MC. No, I’m not kidding. I enjoyed the movie so much it fills me with a stupid optimism for other Oscar bait, which I know will go unrewarded (Nine, I’m looking at you).
I’M TOO SEXY FOR THIS WEDDING
Speaking of weddings, I went to one of the best ever over the weekend, courtesy of Surrogate Sister. Seems her new husband was too busy serving his country in the Air Force Reserve to accompany her to a wedding, so I got called into duty at the request of the Bride-to-Be herself, best known as Not Reese Witherspoon. The wedding was held at a restaurant down in the West Village on Wooster and it occurred to me I’d never attended one where the open bar was literally a bar and we actually watched the ceremony with drinks in our hands. All weddings should be like that! Drinking before, during and after is the way to go! The ceremony was mercifully short, though it could have been shorter if the guy presiding over it was as funny as he clearly thought he was, but once it was over we went to our tables where the highlight of the evening was to be discovered in the form of our seating assignments. There were two couples at our table, one, which was just pretty, and the other, which was pretty crazy. The first couple was a six-foot-blonde named Heidi---no, I’m not kidding---and her mancandy escort, whom I just called “Mancandy” all night as he was tall, good looking and just too goofy to be gay. They were a good looking couple, but perhaps too good looking because the other couple---The Sexy Couple---took a liking to them, but then again, they took a liking to everyone. Surrogate Sister called them swingers and I was hard pressed to argue the point as they were hypersexual and freely shared it. He looked like John Schneider, better known to you as either Bo Duke or Jonathan Kent from Smallville, while she looked like any attractive sharp-featured brunette you’d ever seen, though we settled on Kate Jackson. He was a guy who clearly knew he was good looking, but also knew the peak years were over. As it turns out she was also pretty in a professional sense, a fit model and from same agency as none other than Dorito Cheeseburger Woman (aka, Kayrn Plonsky). Yes, it’s a small fucking city. Now The Sexy Couple seemed to looking for “friends” to have fun with and took a great many pictures of Heidi and Mancandy, when not asking for pictures to be taken of themselves. I jokingly said that pretty people like themselves never make sex tapes only to be corrected by Kate Jackson almost immediately. I began to like them more and more, especially when they bullshitted Surrogate Sister into thinking they’d been married ten years with two kids, when everyone else at the table knew they were not (they even told Heidi and Mancandy they’d met online a few months earlier). Then again, I wasn’t one of their targets, as Surrogate Sister clearly was---until they found out she was a smoker, which then left them focused solely on Heidi and Mancandy. Well, I thought I wasn’t a target, until I regularly felt my ribs being poked and my ass slapped on the dance floor, only to turn and find The Sexy Couple next to me. The dance floor had it’s own amusements from the cliché aged British DJ with the “messy” hairstyle clearly trying to cover a receding hairline to “The Terror” who is that guy at every wedding who thinks he can dance and while he may know the steps, has no sense of them and terrorizes anyone woman he thinks he’s “getting down” with, which happened to be the bride at one point. He was not helped much by the music. I enjoyed the irony of Surrogate Sister complaining about it when she was a ruthless dictator at her own wedding, but she had a point. Not Reese Witherspoon is in her late 30’s so a lot of the music came from 20 years ago and as much as I love The Smiths and The Cult, they aren’t what you’d call danceable. Neither were U2 or friggin’ Coldplay (seriously, Coldplay?). And requests for Lady GaGa by Surrogate Sister and The Fabulous Gays (a very nice couple who were good friends to the bride and were our companions for most of the night) fell on deaf ears. Around midnight when the crowd had thinned down we climbed into the white stretch limo and went to the afterparty down at the SoHo Grand and the most hysterical thing about that venture was how the crowd was constantly scanning you as you walked by to see if you were anyone. And they were all clearly wannabes, not people out to have a good time in a nice place. Far too much “posing” going on. We were only there briefly to make an appearance, which was for the best as my vodka gimlet was the best one I’d had all night. If we’d stayed, I’d have hurt myself on them. Now, I’m just waiting to hear back from Dorito Cheeseburger Woman (aka, Karyn Plonsky) to see if she knows more about The Sexy Couple.
DUE TO THE STATE OF MY ABS, YOU CAN NOW CALL ME “THE PREDICAMENT”
So The Jersey Shore debuted on MTV and it is worst best TV show to hit in a looooong time. Here you have some deplorable people who represent the worse in Italian stereotypes short of being in the mob and are incredibly proud of it. Now, as a Black person I’m used to this bullshit of people attempting to reclaim something negative and make it a positive (to paraphrase Animal House “Ugly, drunk and stupid is no way to through life”), but some Italians are losing their minds over it. But what’s really funny is watching it and seeing just how much of Black culture is appropriated but people who traditionally don’t care for the bruthas. You’re not going to see a lot of ethnic diversity on this show. You’re also not going to see a lot of anything resembling self-awareness or intelligence. Basically, it’s a show to allow everyone to laugh at a group of dumb people and I’d almost feel sorry for them, given they’re kids, but that’s only an excuse up to a point (you know, in what you spend on hair gel and tanning, you could probably visit Italy). And the irony that the men never stop working on their bodies, while the girls have clearly never set foot in a gym is hysterical. What’s really sad is when a similar type of show was attempted on BET called “Hot Ghetto Mess” and in a rare display of effectiveness Black groups were able to stop it, but there’s apparently nothing The Knights of Columbus could do about this. Everyone else in the world seems to love it, but I found it awful beyond enjoyment, like Charm School, where you couldn’t laugh at girls so clearly damaged. And trust me, there’s something wrong with Snookie. No one who gets drunk that fast and is that desperate for attention had a happy childhood. I’ll just wait for the next Rock of Love, thank you.
NUDITY, YES, BUT THERE IS A LIMIT
I’ve started to sell off my old DVD collection to finance the purchase of replacement blu-rays and this week added Bullitt, Die Another Day and Swordfish. Bullitt for obvious reasons as one of the greatest cop movies ever made and the others basically to look at Halle Berry in the highest definition possible. But I will draw the line at high definition porn. Seriously, why do I need to see breast implant scars, stretch marks and pubic razor bumps? Illusion, illusion, illusion. That’s my motto. If I want to see naked flawed people I’d walk naked in front of a mirror.
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