LUNCH FOR DOUCHEBAGS

1. Inception/Warner Wknd/$ 27.5 Total/$ 193.3

2. Dinner for Schmucks/Paramount Wknd/$ 23.3 Total/$ 23.3

3. Salt/Sony Wknd/$ 19.3 Total/$ 70.8

4. Despicable Me/Universal Wknd/$ 15.5 Total/$ 190.3

5. Cats & Dogs 2/Warner Wknd/$ 12.5 Total/$ 12.5

6. Charlie St. Cloud/Universal Wknd/$ 12.1 Total/$ 12.1

7. Toy Story 3/Disney Wknd/$ 5.0 Total/$ 389.7

8. Grown Ups/Sony Wknd/$ 4.5 Total/$ 150.7

9. Sorcerer’s Apprentice/Disney Wknd/$ 4.3 Total/$ 51.9

10. Eclipse/Summit Wknd/$ 4.0 Total/$ 288.2

AND DREAMSCAPE AND THE 13^TH FLOOR AND ST. ELSEWHERE AND NEWHART…

Inception holds at number one and if you wonder why some of us are less than impressed by it, it’s because the whole “what’s real vs. what’s a dream” is a concept as old as science fiction. It was the pilot episode of Star Trek and the concept of The Matrix. One thing that gets lost in Total Recall is the possibility that it may have all been a dream, especially when you remember the scene where the doctor tells him all that does actually happens to him after he kills the doctor, including details like “…one minute you’ll be the hero of the rebellion and the next Cohagen’s bosom pal.” And what reason would you have to dump someone on earth as a construction worker when what you wanted him to do was infiltrate the rebellion on Mars? But the best use of this in recent memory was on Buffy The Vampire Slayer when she wakes up in a mental institution and is told her entire existence as a Slayer was merely a delusion. Of course in Buffy’s world it’s a demon making her think that, but in the end she has to accept one as “real” and one as “fantasy” and which ever she chooses the other gets left permanently. What makes it killer is that in the “delusion” her parents are together and she has a normal life and she chooses the “reality” of a life filled with danger and no small amount of tragedy. Now that was a mindfuck. This? Just some mild mind-heavy-petting.

NOT THAT THE FRENCH OR THE ENGLISH ARE AS FUNNY AS WE ARE

Dinner For Schmucks opens at number two and this is a remake of a French film and I’m sure the French probably did it better, because in America there’s this strange need to apologize for being ruthless and mean in our comedy. The French don’t suffer from it nor do the English and that’s why I didn’t see this. I didn’t see the lame-ass director of Austin Powers and Meet The Parents going for the jugular like you need to. I also have this horrible feeling that Paul Rudd ultimately turns on his mean boss for the schmuck who’s not his friend and I have no interest in that kind of bullshit moralizing. And did I mention this guy directed Meet The Parents and its sequels, which are all shit just like the Austin Powers movies, save Dr. Evil? Yeah, it’s rare I just hate a director like this, but he’s on my list.

DROPPING SOME GEEK KNOWLEDGE ON YOU MUTHAFUCKAS. SPOILER ALERT!

Salt is down to number three and I’m going to give away some plot details, so skip this if you care. Now, in Iron Man 2 Scarlet Johansson played The Black Widow and poorly, but I can’t blame her as she was horribly miscast. Blonde hair and big tits doesn’t makes someone perfect for every role, dudes (but ironically enough in the comics there was a second, blonde Black Widow). The Black Widow in Marvel Comics is the best secret agent in the world. She initially starts off a Soviet agent sent after Tony Stark, but later becomes an agent of SHIELD and a superhero (she’s known Wolverine since she was a child, dated Daredevil, briefly made out with Spider-Man once and is now dating Captain America’s sidekick). But the point is, she’s a major league ass-kicker trained in special Soviet facility since childhood to be an agent. In Salt we find out that she is, in fact a Russian sleeper agent, trained at a special Soviet facility since birth to be an agent. Basically everything Scarlet Johansson should have been in Iron Man 2 and wasn’t (including an adult woman) Angelina Jolie is here in Salt.

OH, AND A SIX-YEAR-OLD ISN’T GETTING THE KITTY GALORE JOKE

Despicable Me is down to number four followed by Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore opening at number five and this is bankrupt corporate filmmaking at its lowest. There is no reason whatsoever for this film to exist and when I saw Despicable Me the trailer came up and the kids couldn’t have been more bored. No laughter, no interest and as the box office clearly shows, they’d rather see Despicable Me again than see this, period.

AND WHAT’S WITH THE GAY PORN STAR NAME FOR A TITLE!?!

Charlie St. Cloud opens at number six and judging from the commercials and the trailers, this is about a champion sailor who loses his brother in car accident so he retreats from life, finding consolation in the delusion that he’s playing catch with his dead brother until a girl comes along who’s also a sailor and when she gets lost at sea, he finally rises out of his depression, puts the delusion behind him and goes off to save her. Talk about giving it all away. Not that I would ever see it, but why would I need to now? And this looks like yet another Hallmark Hall of Fame movie that escaped from TV and made it into the wild.

THIS HEAH’S THE NURSERY. WE HAVE A DIFFERENT WAY OF DOIN’ THANGS.

Toy Story 3 is down to number seven and dragging out his Big Easy voice is none other than Ned Beatty as the voice of Lotso and I thought for sure it was going to be John Goodman, who co-starred with him in The Big Easy but he’s already done this once for Disney with The Princess and the Frog. I’m sure if neither was available they would have gone on to Dennis Quaid.

BILLY MADISON AND POOKIE THE LATER YEARS

Grown Ups is down to number eight and honestly this has shown a little staying power and made $150M off an $80M budget, which isn’t gangbusters, but it’s not a failure either. Not sure how many people want to see these guys grown up and domesticated.

THIS IS WHY HE HAS TO TAKE THE IDOL, DR. JONES.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is down to number nine and this is the second “based on a Disney product” Albert Molina has been in this summer, the first being Prince of Persia, which he walked away with. He isn’t quite so fortunate here given he actually has another actor of weight to compete with in Nicholas Cage, but do you think he gets free passes to Disneyland for all this work? Nah, me neither. Those Disney bastards are so cheap I doubt even Tom Hanks get free passes.

BLOOD MONEY

Finally, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse closes out the top ten at number ten and has made almost ten times its cost worldwide and that actually this makes it the least successful installment of the franchise. Can you fucking believe that!?! The first one made more than ten times its $37M cost and the second made fourteen times its $50M budget. No wonder everyone and his mother is trying to duplicate it. It’s also why I’m developing my story of teenage Creatures From The Black Lagoon…

IF MUSIC IS THE FOOD OF LIFE, I’M WEARING EARMUFFS

Okay, so I owe Sandra Bullock an apology. When The Proposal came out I mocked her for talking about how she got into shape for her first big semi-nude scene when instead of looking all taut and toned, she looked, well, normal and soft. See, she’s in her 40’s and basically there’s only so fit you can look unless you’re already unnaturally thin. I know this now having dropped about ten pounds since June thanks to my new unnatural lifestyle and still looking essentially like a wax statue someone left next to a radiator. There’s less of me, yes, but it’s far from rock hard. My man boobies and gut have made it clear they aren’t going anywhere but I hate lifting weight and doing ab exercises, so I’ve just learned to make my peace with that. Sadly, the key was food. Back when I was doing three-hour kung-fu classes three times a week and riding my bike I didn’t see much change because I’d go home and eat a pound of cheese then follow it with ice cream (ah, those were the days). Today can’t even remember the last time I had ice cream and essentially had no cheese for the month of June. I also gave up all the fun snacking at work. I used to have a bag of Reisen in my desk at all times. I had to stop when I got my temporary crown in for obvious reasons, and told myself I was being healthier when I was eating straight chocolate candy instead. Now they’re both gone. My only snack now is a freaking apple. I eat grilled chicken five days a week, twice a fucking day for lunch and dinner. And when it’s not that, it’s fucking turkey. So much fucking turkey. My breakfast is turkey bacon and smoothie made from strawberries, bananas, lo-fat yogurt, 2% milk and orange juice. The remaining half of the smoothie is my dessert. And when I do eat outside of that (weekends are for cheating) there’s something horrible called portion control, which means not eating until your stomach hurts, no matter how good it tastes. Yes, it’s a hellish existence, but I was bordering on having to buy new clothes and I refused to go up another size or be a fucking crazy person and do one of those cleanses. Also, I could not bear the thought of Bobby Brown weighing less than me. Yeah, he was on a TV show with personal trainers and everything, but still, it’s Bobby Brown! You should never lose to Bobby Brown! On the upside, I’ve gained back some clothes, most notably my linen pants, which was perfect timing given we had a heat wave. But I’ve been cracking recently. Cookies are making a small return to my life and I went through a weeklong obsession with donut holes, but honestly it passed after eating them a few times and if you know anything about me, you know my food phases usually go on for weeks, not days. Even when I went by a place that was giving them away at the end of the night, I only took a few and threw half away. Recently, I wanted some of the chocolate fudge brownies I used to make, but in a distinct Freudian turn I “accidentally” overcooked it and wound up throwing most of it out. And worst of all, I start to get anxious when I deviate from the plan. Yeah, I’m becoming one of those people and it’s easy to see how it becomes obsessive, because when you make a small gain, you start thinking, “Well, if I do a bit more, I’ll get a bit more” which is how I went from cranking out 30 laps in the pool in 30 minutes to 40 laps in thirty minutes and I kicked up my bike riding. But what I like most about it is that I’ll probably be at my healthiest at the end of the summer, when it’s time to put the clothes back on. All, delicious irony. The one thing I can still eat limitless portions of.

OH, SPEED

Death came for the 70’s recently with not only the death of Vonetta McGee, she of Blacula fame and pretty much every black TV show you’ve seen over the last thirty years. Also, James Gammon died, best known to you as the crusty coach from Major League. And finally, a personal geek loss Peter Fernandez who was the voice of Speed Racer died.

THE JOLIE IDENTITY

1. Inception/Warner Wknd/$ 43.5 Total/$ 143.7

2. Salt/Sony Wknd/$ 36.5 Total/$ 36.5

3. Despicable Me/Universal Wknd/$ 24.1 Total/$ 161.7

4. Sorcerer’s Apprentice/Disney Wknd/$ 9.7 Total/$ 42.6

5. Toy Story 3/Disney Wknd/$ 9.0 Total/$ 379.5

6. Ramona & Beezus/Fox Wknd/$ 8.0 Total/$ 8.0

7. Grown Ups/Sony Wknd/$ 7.6 Total/$ 142.4

8. Eclipse/Summit Wknd/$ 7.0 Total/$ 279.7

9. The Last Airbender/Paramount Wknd/$ 4.2 Total/$ 123.3

10. Predators/Fox Wknd/$ 2.9 Total/$ 46.6

HOLY BAD DECISIONS!

Inception holds at number one and clearly Christopher Nolan has a stable of actors he enjoys working with and Michael Caine sits at the top of that list, appearing here as the father-in-law of Leonardo DiCaprio after also being in the Batman films and The Prestige. Also on this list are Cillian Murphy who was the Scarecrow in Batman films and Ken Wantanabe who was also in Batman Begins. Both are here. You have to wonder if Leonardo DiCaprio was even the first choice and only got this because Christian Bale was too busy wasting his time on Terminator: Salvation. Man, would that would really go down in the recent history of bad career choices. Granted, they’re going to reunite for the third Batman movie, but it would explain his rage on the set of Terminator if suddenly he realized midway through filming that he’d passed on working on something good to work on an unbelievable piece of crap for a hack.

NOW SEE, SCARLET JOHANSSON, THIS IS HOW YOU DO A RUSSIAN SUPER AGENT

Salt opens at number two or as I like to call it, “The Salt Identity” because that’s pretty much what it is. Angelina Jolie is a super-agent who spends the entire movie running and beating the living shit out of everyone she crosses, from CIA agents to cops to Secret Sleeper Russian Agents just like Jason Bourne. And yes, it’s utterly ridiculous that someone with her pipe-cleaner arms is beating the shit out of dudes six feet tall and two hundred pounds (not to mention snatching someone off a moving Ducati). As someone who studied martial arts, I’m well aware that there are five-foot-nothing, ninety-pound Asian men who could beat the crap out just about anyone, but they don’t fight toe-to-toe. They can’t do that. But here we have Jolie exchanging punch for punch from guys who should knock her out with one solid shot. It’s not giving anything away to say she dukes it out with 6’4” Liev Schreiber at one point and the last time we saw him fighting he was taking on Hugh Jackman in Wolverine, so you get some idea of how it looks in comparison. It’s not Bruce Lee taking on Kareem Abdul-Jabbar by any stretch of the imagination. In this respect the poorly shot and poorly edited fight scenes work for her because they hide the stunt people doing most of the work. Nonetheless, I enjoyed all 99 minutes of it, despite some preposterous plot twist and holes you could push all three Bourne movies through. This is why short running times work for action movies, because you’re already in a death duel in a White House bunker before you realize how dumb that church bomb sequence was back in NYC after that insane jumping from movie trucks on different levels of a major highway was. And considering it just opened better than the first Bourne movie, you can expect a sequel with equal amounts of silliness.

NICE GEEK IS A BORDERLINE OXYMORON

Despicable Me is down to number three, followed by The Sorcerer’s Apprentice at number four and here as the apprentice is Jay Baruchel, who is the answer to the question, “What if Shia Lebouf were a cute dweeb instead of being utterly obnoxious and annoying?” This is why he was the star of She’s Out of My League from a few months ago. He’s actually from the Judd Apatow group, being the star of the underrated and totally abused, Undeclared and was one of the disgusting roommates in Knocked Up. They also cast his love interest better, going with an actress who is very attractive, but in normal manner rather than the over-the-top looks of Megan Fox, who wouldn’t know someone like Shia Lebouf without getting a check for it. You can actually believe he’d date this girl.

BACK WHEN GENDER ROLES MEANT SOMETHING, GODDAMNIT!

Toy Story 3 holds at number five followed by Ramona and Beezus at number six and I didn’t get why this was the obsession of every woman I know for the past few weeks until I realized this was Ramona from “Ramona The Brave” and that series of books. See, only girls read those books back when girls and boys were seriously separated, so I, as a boy, never read them. Now, her epic work on The Mouse & The Motorcycle, however…

WHAT DO YOU MEAN HALLE BERRY WAS BUSY!?!

Grown Ups is down to number seven and also here keeping the premise borderline science fiction of Adam Sandler being married to Salma Hayek is Maria Bello as the wife of Kevin James. As if we didn’t get enough of this crap after an eternity of King of Queens. You have to wonder if Chris Rock had any say in who played his wife given he got talent over looks in Maya Rudolph or if his wife told him she’d better not see Paula Patton next to him onscreen.

THE LANGUAGE OF NUUUU YAWK

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse is down to number eight and I recently had dinner with a friend who is a frustrated writer and after a few drinks she treated me to a ruthless critical analysis of the entire series, which I’m sure was much more entertaining than the books themselves. I doubt any of the extremely devoted fanbase ever considered Edward the vampire “A cunt-tease.” Never really heard that expression before, but this is what makes the people of Queens unique. Their way with words.

FES ON A STICK

The Last Airbender is down to number nine followed by Predators closing out the top ten at number ten and what’s happened to America? Once upon a time this would have been a huge summer hit, but now it was lucky to break even. But it’s up to $95M worldwide and will undoubted do well on video, so there will probably be more. And is anyone aware that Topher Grace is here? Yes, Eric from That 70’s Show is one of those being hunted. Now there’s a movie. The entire cast of That’s 70’s Show vs The Predators. I’m sure no shortage of people would like to see Ashton Kutcher and Wilmer Valderrama skewered and skinned.

NO, THEY DON’T PLAY THE WHO SONG

No longer in the top ten is The Kids Are All Right and it’s embarrassing it took me this long to see it, given it’s from my beloved Lisa Cholodenko, who wrote and directed the note-perfect High Art. Now when you do something that great straight out the box you continually live in its shadow and while The Kids Are All Right is very good thanks to strong performances and an uncompromising script, it’s not perfect. If it were perfect the story of two lesbians who use one man’s sperm to create their son and daughter being forced to connect with him because of those kids would have had at least a token mention of grandparents. It does not, so it’s not perfect. Yeah, that’s my only complaint. Outside of that it’s wonderful. Warm and funny but not in that annoying Hollywood clichéd way where you know the mean boss will either get a comeuppance or soften by the end, which never, ever happens in real life. Here, a source of humor are two lesbian mothers awkwardly explaining to their teenage son why they watch gay male porn to get hot rather than gay female porn. Also, the very things that are virtues are very often the source of great flaws, such as Mark Ruffalo’s “everything’s cool dude” personality. It’s lead to him having a pretty nice life with his own restaurant and very nice social life and initially is what draws the kids to him, is the same thing that ultimately causes problem in with the kids and their mothers who begrudgingly accept him when he begins an affair with Julianne Moore. Between the food and the sex he’s clearly a sensualist, doing what feels good first and thinking it through later and thinking is not what he does best. Similarly, the driving, exacting personality of Annette Benning, which is clearly what led to her being a successful doctor, is ultimately what drives Julianne Moore into his arms. Julianne Moore’s personality is more intellectual the Ruffalo’s, but equally easygoing which makes her likable, but has her still looking for purpose in middle age and leads her to Ruffalo who is the first customer of her new business, which Benning is critical of. The ending is still happy, but happy in a way keeping with the characters. No one makes a 180-degree turn to make it happen.

NEW MUSIC FOR OLD PEOPLE

Because I’m old and slow, I had no idea Chris Isaak released an album last year. It’s not as good as the previous album from 2003, especially given the time he had. Seven years should produce a definitive masterpiece. Also, I just discovered Motorcycle’s “As The Rush Comes” and Kaskade’s “Move For Me” which are at a minimum two years old if not more. They’re very electronic dance and the irony of this is, all this stuff sounds the same to me, but I ultimately like very little of it. Also new to me, The Bird and The Bee and their song “Love Letter to Japan.”

TOTALL RECALL OF MY DREAMSCAPE EXISTENZ

1. Inception/Warner Wknd/$ 60.4 Total/$ 60.4

2. Despicable Me/Universal Wknd/$ 32.7 Total/$ 118.4

3. Sorcerer’s Apprentice/Disney Wknd/$ 17.4 Total/$ 24.5

4. Eclipse/Summit Wknd/$ 13.5 Total/$ 264.9

5. Toy Story 3/Disney Wknd/$ 11.7 Total/$ 362.7

6. Grown Ups/Sony Wknd/$ 10.0 Total/$ 129.3

7. The Last Airbender/Paramount Wknd/$ 7.5 Total/$ 114.8

8. Predators/Fox Wknd/$ 6.8 Total/$ 40.1

9. Knight & Day/Fox Wknd/$ 3.7 Total/$ 69.2

10. The Kung Fu Kid/Sony Wknd/$ 2.2 Total/$ 169.2

WHENEVER I WANT YOU, ALL I HAVE TO DO IS DREAM…

Inception opens at number one and there’s a lot of loose praise being thrown around about this, but that’s only compared to most of the crap you’ve seen this summer like Iron Man 2 and Knight & Day. If you’ve seen Dreamscape or even Total Recall, then this isn’t as original as some would like to think. It is, however, very good. It’s one of those “a week from now” type of science fiction movies where something incredible is just treated as a normal every day event. In this case it’s the ability to enter into and manipulate someone’s dreams as both a tool of business and war. After failing one assignment of corporate espionage for a client, which puts him literally on their hit list, Leonardo DiCaprio has to go to work for the person he was trying to steal from (Ken Watanabe) and go after yet someone else, which in this case is to place an idea into someone’s mind rather than steal one. That process is called “inception” where the movie gets its less-than-exciting name. This leads to an Ocean’s 11 moment where Leo now assembles his crack team of dream thieves including Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Ellen Page. So yeah, basically this is a heist movie. Oh, it’s layered in all kinds of interesting time-jumping storytelling, a ton of special effects and some James Bond level action sequences, but it’s a heist movie and it’s a good thing I deliberately avoided reading anything about it because I fucking hate heist movies and you’d need interesting time-jumping, a ton of special effects and a James Bond level action sequence to make me sit through one. There’s also a touch of the neo-noir that Chris Nolan so enjoys pertaining to a mystery in Leonardo DiCaprio’s past that anyone familiar with noir knows in the first five minutes of the movie. Like I said, there’s absolutely nothing new here. It’s just really, really, really well done and probably the best “big summer movie” of the year.

BITCHES, MAN.

Despicable Me is down to number two and this movie is almost a minor addition to the Judd Apatow group as its cast of voices include Steve Carell, Russell Brand and Jason Segel. Even the fact that mom is a bitch (as well as the woman who runs the girls’ orphanage) figures into the Apatow formula. The fact that it’s Julie Andrews be damned! Amirite, fellas!?!

IT WAS NO “WHAT’S OPERA, DOC” IS ALL I’M SAYIN’.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice opens at number three and yes, this is based in part on that sequence from Fantasia, the most overrated animated film ever. You remember that sequence the most because a) it had Mickey Mouse in it and b) it wasn’t as boring as hell. That scene is in this movie, but clearly they missed the point of it was fun and it comes off more as something obligatory they had to do than a highlight sequence of the power of an apprentice run amuck. The story here is simple and classic: a child predestined to fight evil with great power is found and mentored. It’s one of the classic heroic archetypes, most notably Arthur and Merlin, which is fitting because this story starts with Merlin. Nicholas Cage is actually one of his apprentices. When Merlin is killed by Morgana le Fay, Nicholas Cage imprisons her but doesn’t have the power to destroy her. Only Merlin’s successor can do that and Nicholas Cage spends the next thousand years looking for that successor and fighting those trying to free Morgana and in one of the films more interesting concepts, imprisoning them on top of her in one of those dolls that you open and find another doll inside and so on. Now, the set up isn’t bad and neither is the execution. The problem is it’s all rushed. Everything happens in the space of two days. The film would have been much better served to have Nicholas Cage find his apprentice and train him over a period of months, not 24 hours. Also, there are no less than four villains for them to fight and the two most interesting are given the short shrift (though as he did in Prince of Persia, Alfred Molina makes the most of what he’s given), especially the Salem Witch Girl. You can’t create a better character with a better look and she’s onscreen for literally five freaking minutes. But I will admit a weakness for this for two reasons. One, It’s clearly filmed totally in NYC, making the city a character from Nicholas cage riding one of the eagles from the Chrysler Building to the bull on Wall Street coming to life. I’ve a weakness for NYC films to the point it can be blamed for me actually living here. The other is the use of New York University, my alma mater. The apprentice (Jay Baruchel, the answer to the question “What if Shia Lebeouf wasn’t so fucking annoying?”) is a science major at NYU and while they fail to make the most of his science knowledge in conjunction with magic (which could have, should have been incredibly interesting) it does get used.

BOOKS WITHOUT PITCHERS!

Twilight: Eclipse is down to number four, followed by Toy Story 3 at number five and Grown Ups at number six and I recently read the book Live From New York which is an oral history of SNL with seriously candid interviews with just about everyone save Eddie Murphy---who is famous for being the only person from never to go back for any reason---or Dennis Miller which just seems odd given he’s got nothing better to do. But in the book Chris Rock talks about it as being a bit of a fraternity and when he had a tiny part in the Sgt. Bilko movie with Dan Akroyd, when Akroyd left for the day, he gave Chris Rock, whom he didn’t really know that well, use of his trailer, because they were both in the fraternity. Oh, and Chevy Chase is a dick, but you knew that already.

OR OUTER LIMITS. I’M NOT PICKY.

The Last Airbender is down to number seven and still hasn’t made budget even with overseas kicking in. May this be one step closer to sending M. Night Shaymalan to TV to do the Twilight Zone relaunch he was always meant to.

WHO WOULDN’T LOVE TO SEE SEGAL GET SKINNED ALIVE!?!

Predators is down to number eight and this would have done better to fill itself with more B and C-list stars to help bolster Adrien Brody and Lawrence Fishburne. You know, like imagine if that Expendables movie had them all fighting Predators. Now that would be an awesome, awesome film. I mean, how busy are Jean Claude Van Damme and Steven Segal that they couldn’t be cannon fodder for this movie?

BIG TALENT, TINY PACKAGE…LIKE MY DICK. YES, I’M DRINKING.

Knight & Day is down to number seven and also in this for some odd “I’ve-got-a-kid-now-and-accompanying-bills” is Peter Sarsgaard. Yeah, I don’t get it either. But Tom Cruise has a history of putting good actors in his films so long as they’re very short. Think Colin Farrell showing up in Minority Report. So now I’m thinking Peter Sarsgaard has got to be about 5’6” on a good day.

NOT AS IF THE BRUTHAS HAVEN’T BEEN SELLING IT FOR MONTHS…

Finally, The Kung Fu Kid closes out the top ten at number ten and not surprisingly this film has done the best overseas in the Asian countries like Indonesia, Korea and The Philippines. This also means you can probably find the best bootlegs in Chinatown right about now. But not as good as a week after it opens in China.

BASICALLY, I LIKE HOT WOMEN KICKING ASS

In times of strife and uncertainty (which is always) people love things that represent stability and normalcy. This is why crime procedure dramas do so well and why CSI, Law & Order and NCIS have spin-offs. I have to admit, I’ve weakness for these types of shows as well. Not just any, mind you. I cannot stand CSI or NCIS and walked away from Law & Order seven hot Assistant DAs ago. I prefer the USA Network model of the very smart, slightly unconventional character, which is why I tuned in to Rizzoli and Isles and The Glades. Rizzoli & Isles is apparently based on a series of books, which is a good start, but so was the underrated Women’s Murder Club, which was Angie Harmon’s last venture. In fact it was a little too much like it, given there was a serial killer she had a history with and a hot FBI Agent. But you know what? I like hot chicks fighting crime, so I’m down with this for awhile. The Glades was probably rejected by USA, because it’s very much like their shows of smart people doing their jobs well and forgoing the usual idiocy of dumb bosses or co-workers (Royal Pains doesn’t which is why it’s the worst show they have). On The Glades, when our wacky, unconventional cop says he’ll wait for back-up, he actually does, putting it light years ahead of your average cop show. And while we’re still not to the point where a Latino can be the best cop in Florida, his love interest is Latin as is his unofficial partner the coroner and his boss is a Black woman. Diversity…if you like clichés. Not a police procedural, but it might as well be is Covert Affairs from Doug Liman who brought us The Bourne Identity and Mr. & Mrs. Smith (he also brought the world Jumper, but we’re not going to dwell on it). Piper Perabo, whose career was both launched and killed by Coyote Ugly, is the CIA rookie pulled from training like Jodie Foster in Silence of the Lambs, and for similar less-than-impressive reasons: they need someone to pretend to be a hooker, but apparently despite the list of gorgeous young women who apparently work at the CIA, only a skinny blonde was right for the job. I won’t even get into the inordinate amount of high heels and skin being displayed by the women working at Langley, on top of the saddest of all adventure show tropes: everyone around having to be an idiot so the main character can look smart. What makes this especially sad is after whole sequences showing how smart everyone is. But I like hot women kicking butt and I’ve always liked the pouty-lipped Piper Perabo, so I’ll be with this one awhile too. It’s only a summer show, so it doesn’t require too much commitment.

VS. THE INCREDIBLES

1. Despicable Me/Universal Wknd/$ 60.1 Total/$ 60.1

2. Eclipse/Summit Wknd/$ 33.4 Total/$ 237.0

3. Predators/Fox Wknd/$ 25.3 Total/$ 25.3

4. Toy Story 3/Disney Wknd/$ 22.0 Total/$ 340.2

5. The Last Airbender/Paramount Wknd/$ 17.5 Total/$ 100.2

6. Grown Ups/Sony Wknd/$ 16.4 Total/$ 111.3

7. Knight & Day/Fox Wknd/$ 7.9 Total/$ 61.9

8. The Kung Fu Kid/Sony Wknd/$ 5.7 Total/$ 164.6

9. The A-Team/Fox Wknd/$ 1.8 Total/$ 74.0

10.Cyrus/Fox Searchlight Wknd/$ 1.4 Total/$ 3.5

PREDICTABLE ME

Despicable Me opens at number one and I won’t lie: I laughed, but at the same time, I forgot it as soon as I left the theater. Like most cheap sweet treats, it just goes right through you, as opposed to something well-made that has resonance. It’s the difference between a Twinkie and a cake made from scratch by your mom. None of the laughs or heart-tugging goes beyond the basic set-up. Comically cruel mother, goofy yellow lab minions, partially deaf chief scientists, three cute orphan girls…what you see is what you get. They know it’s enough and they don’t try for more, which makes you wonder why even bother hiring someone like Steve Carrel who is capable of it. The difference between this and what Pixar does is that Pixar would have gone for more. There would have been more than a one-note joke about Gru's less-than-loving mother. There would have been more to the relationship between Gru and his partially deaf chief scientist. There would have been more personality to the girls beyond being very cute. There would have been more…well, there’s not much more you can do with a lab minion and they do their part of effectively stealing the movie every chance they get. But there isn’t more because the creators were more than content with just being good enough and given the box office there’s no motivation to try harder. Only the art design and soundtrack are above-average. The former looking very much like the superior The Incredibles (indeed, Gru could be one of their villains) and the latter simply (from Pharrell) by being new, rather than using a bunch of old pop hits to convey emotions. It made me want to buy the soundtrack and go home and watch a better animated movie.

TOO OLD, TOO STRAIGHT, TOO LITERATE

Eclipse is down to number two and I really don’t care.

IF IT MAKES MONEY, YOU CAN NEVER KILL IT

Predators opens at number three and I never really cared for the first Predator movie. Seriously. Watching a superior creature pick off inferior creatures one by one was boring. It was only when Arnold was fighting it in the last 20 minutes that it was any fun. Same with the underrated second film whose 20-minute citywide battle with Danny Glover and The Predator was damn near awesome. Finally someone realized this and decided the entire movie should be a fight, not a slaughter, so rather than a rescue team or cops or scientists and civilians like the Aliens Vs Predator movies, they’ve gone with soldiers and murders, people who aren’t just going to lay back and die. Or, as a character points out, people who are “Predators” themselves (get it? the title has two meanings). Clearly being on another planet doesn’t allow for the very dull “Oh, my god! What is it!?!” portion that has bogged down every Predator movie. As hunters themselves, they size up very quickly what’s being done to them and decide to fight back rather than simply be prey. And here are four words I never thought I’d say: Adrien Brody, action star. Like Matt Damon before him, an unlikely paring, but it’s easier to train an actor to fight than it is a wrestler to act. An actor can build muscles sooner than muscles can build talent. And talent does build muscles in this case. In a direct homage to the original Predator, a ripped and stripped Adrien Brody covers himself with mud before going mano a mano with the Predator. But this isn’t a reboot the way some have mistakenly mentioned. It’s a direct sequel as the first film is actually cited. Sorry, Danny Glover. No mention for you.

IT’S MY CURSE ON YOU FOR BATMAN, BITCH!

Toy Story 3 is down to number four and no one got luckier with this than Michael Keaton who needed a guaranteed win in a big way. He voices Ken, the clear breakout star of this installment, who insists over and over than he’s not a girl’s toy---right after mentioning “Ken’s Dreamhouse.” He generates more laughs by himself than entire other computer animated movies. And despite initially getting jokes for his vanity and self-denial, Ken is also given a layer of loneliness and compassion. Again, why Pixar almost always does it better. Sorry, Cars, but an animated remake of Doc Hollywood is not what the world needed. Nor did it want cooking rats, Ratatouille.

SO MANY REASONS TO HATE, SO LITTLE TIME.

The Last Airbender is down to number five and I never watched this show, so I was going in remarkably free of my usual righteous geek anger in such matters. I was, however going in with my opinion that M. Night Shyamalan is a one trick pony who got lucky with The Sixth Sense and has been stinking up movie theaters with his out-of-control, ego-driven, intelligence insulting Twilight Zone episode rip-offs. A preset story would hopefully limit that, but his style is clearly only conducive to movies where people stand still and talk for extended periods of time. If they’ve got to move around and fight, he hasn’t got a clue, not to mention realizing that special effects laden action scenes really don’t work at night. And he seriously fails in terms of writing. Granted, condensing a years long storyline into a first installment cannot be easy, but that’s why you hire professional writers rather than think you can do it yourself. Of course you have realize you’re a shit writer and have been for almost your entire career, but it’s clear from Signs he is nowhere near that level of self-awareness (seriously, aliens who can’t bear water attack a planet that’s 75% water!?!). The problem the Airbender fans have and have has since day one is that the characters of the story are clearly prominently Asian and multi-ethnic at the very least, while the casting was seriously whitewashed. Another wise corporate decision to ignore the bird-in-the-hand fans who made the show successful in favor of the two-in-the-bush who have never heard of it and clearly don’t give a shit. What’s worse is this coming from a minority director himself. Though I guess we’re lucky that in a movie filled with East Indian actors, he didn’t cast himself in a major role, thus completing the hat trick of failure. Again.

IT’S THE TRADE OFF FOR MONEY AND POWER

Grown Ups is down to number six and if you don’t believe that “Black don’t crack” look at Chris Rock in comparison to the other cast members all the same age. They should be grateful SNL clearly never thought anyone Asian was funny because then they’d look positively geriatric.

NOTICE WE’RE NOT HAVING THIS CONVERSATION ABOUT DENZEL AND HALLE

Knight & Day is down to number seven and is it a requirement that Cameron Diaz put on a bikini or prance around in underwear in every movie she makes regardless of the plot? It can’t be easy to do it after all this time, and time is the problem because she’s done it so much, you can honestly remember it looking better. Same for him in the same beach scene. I mean, if you think aging is hard on you or me, imagine what it must be like for people like this, who at any moment can turn on the TV and see Top Gun or There’s Something About Mary and see their bodies untouched by the ravages of time. I’d have an eating disorder or a drug problem or both. You can almost understand why actors go under the knife when they’re constantly being reminded what’s been lost. Personally, I don’t think Cameron Diaz has ever looked as good as when she actually did have curves in The Mask. Those ten pounds of baby fat made all the difference in the world. Tom Cruise is showing his age here too but it seems worse because he keeps trying to look young, doing the same things he was doing ten years ago for the Mission Impossible movies, rather than playing a more mature character. No 40-something guy is jumping off rooftops like this. And yes, the fact that they both earn millions of dollars a year makes it okay for us to judge them like this.

AND IF WILL SMITH HAS A DAUGHTER, YOU KNOW WHAT THE THIRD FILM WILL BE

The Kung Fu Kid is down to number eight and at $165 million from a $40M budget you can say, yes, it’s been mildly successful. And there’s another $40M overseas, so the only question is how lame will the sequel be and how awful will the song be, because Peter Cetera’s “Glow of Love” from Karate Kid 2 was truly a plague on mankind.

IT’S LIKE PORN IN THIS WAY

The A-Team is down to number nine, followed by Cyrus entering the top ten at number ten and with John C. Reilly and Jonah Hill in the cast, Marisa Tomei must have felt like the most beautiful woman in the world on-set. But it may be some karmic payback for having won her undeserved Oscar playing the love interest for Joe Pesci, that she keeps having kiss ugly men for the rest of her career. I mean, did you see that love scene with Phillips Seymour Hoffman? That’s when you know acting is a job. Plus, Mickey Rourke 20 years after he destroyed his looks with plastic surgery. The Matt Dillons and Mel Gibsons (before everyone knew he was crazy) are few and far between. More often than naught, it’s Adam Sandler.

NO SLEEP IN BROOKLYN

I know I said I’d never go back to Brooklyn but I was made unto a liar when some of the inner circle of Jezebel A had an impromptu get-together and I somehow made the guest list. One good thing about the summer is that the city is relatively empty and places that are usually packed on a Friday night Peculiar Pub on Bleecker were still busy but with seats to be found. They were already three pitchers of sangria in from dinner by the time they remembered to tell me where they were---not that it stopped email and texts asking where the hell I was. Upon my arrival I was then forced to drink four shots of tequila in rapid succession. Ouch. I would pay for that, but it’s only the four shots that had me agreeing to go to Brooklyn with them. Well, that and a lot of cleavage. They were very proud of the cleavage. It was in fact a selling point to get me to come out. They hopped in one of the honest cabs who wouldn’t take five and since I was not going to pay $20 for a cab to Brooklyn alone, I hopped on the train, which seemed to move quickly, but took me half a friggin’ hour due to track work which skipped my stop forcing me to double back. Byt the time I’d arrived, they’d stopped drinking and continued the cannabis from earlier when they’d all disappear outside for a few minutes. I was grateful given the tequila shots I was still dealing with. From what I remember of the conversation it was much ribbing of the Canadian woman in denial about her accent. Well, that and learning th proper ethnic slur for French Canadians. Because everyone was over 30, we crashed around 2:00 am. Well, they crashed. The fact someone forgot to close the window making the air conditioning in the basement somewhat ineffectual left me sweaty, drunk, tossing and turning most of the night until I finally settled into some seriously weird, yet coherent dream where my family owned some giant gothic hotel and I was now assuming the reins, only to discover my grandmother kept her secret deformed children in the basement. Stranger still, rather than hang out when we woke up the next morning I saw the overcast skies and decided I needed to go if I were going to catch a bike ride before the rain fell (of course it never rained, but the threat of it kept the paths wonderfully free). Yeah, I can’t figure it out either. I even went for a swim before joining them for drinks. When did I become this person!?!