Aug 17 2009 Weekend Box Office Report: Everything with the Word 'District' in the Title Did Great

Sci-fi social commentary faced off against sci-fi marriage last weekend, and it's now clear we're far more likely to see a District 10 than we are a Time Traveler Jr.'s Wife:

1. District 9 - $37 million. That already makes back the $30 million budget, so now they can just waste the rest on snacks.

2. G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra - $22.5 million. Down almost 60% from opening weekend to be beaten by a film with 1/6th the budget? Maybe the inevitable G.I. Joe sequel can learn a lesson from this and be twice as loud next time.

3. The Time Traveler's Wife - $19.2 million. Really should have just focused on the time traveler himself; I would argue his ability to time travel makes him more interesting than the wife, in a way.

4. Julie & Julia - $12.4 million. Probably could have made twice as much if they'd done it like Kill Bill and released Julie as one movie and Julia a few months later.

5. G-Force - $6.9 million. Shouldn't this movie be screaming for me to buy it on Disney DVD and Blu-ray by now?

Weekend Box Office Results [Box Office Mojo]

Aug 11 2009 'G.I. Joe' Still Really Popular Even When It Scarcely Resembles Its Original Form

Sorry, guys, Daddy had a doctor's appointment this morning and it took much longer than expected to get the news I'm not entirely dying. Anyway, let's get the weekend's box office numbers out of the way:

1. G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra - $54.7 million, thanks to Transformers paving the way for basically anything with a lot of action and an '80s toyline to make a ton of money.

2. Julie & Julia - $20 million, though if the film encouraged just one person to go home and cook a nice meal, that's worth more in a way. In a really stupid way, where a night of pork chops is worth over $20 million.

3. G-Force - $9.9 million. I liked how the guinea pigs talked.

4. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - $8.9 million. Clearly our most profitable magic user.

5. Funny People - $8 million, narrowly beating Standard People.

Weekend Box Office Results [Box Office Mojo]

Aug 4 2009 'Funny People' Beat the Potter

Your weekend box office results. Sorry they're a day later than usual, but the delay does mean these are the final tallies, rather than the estimates. Feel confident transcribing them in permanent ink:

1. Funny People - $22.7 million. Sad when you realize that any of Funny People's intentionally-idiotic Sandler parody films--Astro-Not and Re-Do (above), for example--would have opened to twice that. People just love babies with man-heads so much.

2. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - $17.9 million, barely edging past G-Force--probably because it's based on an insanely popular book series instead of the concept of talking guinea pigs as spies.

3. G-Force - $17.5 million. It's probably not doing as well as an Alvin and Chipmunks because of the lack of high-pitched singing. Gotta put some sauce on that pizza or it's just cheese bread; know what I'm sayin'?

4. The Ugly Truth - $13.2 million. Haha! Men have penises and girls have vaginas and they typically behave differently! Haha!

5. Aliens in the Attic - $8 million. Aliens and attics: not a successful combination, it turns out. Ridley Scott is going to have to rethink some things for his Alien prequel.

Weekend Box Office Results [Box Office Mojo]

Jul 27 2009 Talking Guinea Pigs Last Weekend's Most Popular Film Subject

Here's last weekend's box office top five. Rattle these numbers off at your next party to show your guests you assign some of your memory to remembering how well The Ugly Truth performed financially.

1. G-Force - $32.2 million. The CGI rodent + speech formula continues to work disgustingly well.

2. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - $30 million. The star that has all its fan see it opening night burns fastest, Harry.

3. The Ugly Truth - $27 million. Now we can stop those commercials where the characters' actions are arbitrarily assigned gender points? How does Gerard Butler winking earn a point for men?

4. Orphan - $12.8 million. I didn't see this, but I heard about the ending, and it's simultaneously both more out-there and more grounded than I ever would have thought.

5. Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs - $8.2 million. It seems unfair Orphan got flack for discouraging adoption but Ice Age didn't. Think about if you adopted a kid and had to take them to see Ray Ramano as a mammoth.

Weekend Box Office Results [Box Office Mojo]

Jul 23 2009 It's Coming Attractions Time!

What film will you see with your significant other this weekend, prolonging your dying relationship with two more hours of mutual silence? Here are some options:

G-Force
Director: Hoyt Yeatman
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Steve Buscemi, Zach Galifianakis, Tracy Morgan, Will Arnett, Bill Nighy, Sam Rockwell--in other words, people who, besides Nic Cage, you'd wish better for.
Good if you want to see: talking guinea pigs as spies, for whatever reason.

Orphan
Director: Jaume Collet-Sera
Starring: Vera Farmiga, Peter Sarsgaard, and introducing Isabelle Fuhrman as Orphan
Good if you want to see: a convoluted argument against adoption; an ending that, from what I've heard, will leave you somewhat confused and unfulfilled

The Ugly Truth
Director: Robert Luketic
Starring: Gerard Butler, Katherine Heigl
Good if you want to see: Romance! Comedy! Misogyny!

Answer Man
Director: John Hindman
Starring: Jeff Daniels, Lauren Graham
Good if you want to see: Romance! Comedy! Jeff Daniels as the eponymous answerer who actually doesn't have all the answers!

In the Loop
Director: Armando Iannucci
Starring: Peter Capaldi, Tom Hollander, Gina McKee, James Gandolfini, Anna "MY GIRL Chlumsky
Good if you want to see: a Middle East war comedy of errors, of sorts.

Apr 30 2009 They're Hairy, and Somehow Similar to the Presidential Airplane, So...

There's something just slightly disconcerting about seeing a fairly realistic guinea pig forced into a thin-waisted, womanly figure. Maybe it's just me, but I need a lady-rodent to also be wearing lipstick, exaggerated eyelashes, and preferably a large bow before I'll feel comfortable with her sexuality.

This guy in the front though, with the sunglasses: he is awesome.

Feb 23 2009 A Few Seconds of a Bunch of Upcoming Movies

If you made it to the end of the Oscars--or more likely, if you dozed off and were awakened by the credit sequence's jamming guitar--the night's reward was a three-minute movie preview sequence. For some of the films (Public Enemies, Whatever Works), it was a first look at scenes from highly-anticipated projects. For others (Old Dogs!), it was the warning: oh god, Robin Williams and John Travolta made some kind of boot camp comedy, and it's called Old Dogs. Here it is:

Continue Reading " A Few Seconds of a Bunch of Upcoming Movies "

Dec 31 2008 'G-Force' Trailer: Talking Guinea Pigs This Time

So many great people in this--Will Arnett, Zach Galifianakis, Tracy Morgan, Sam Rockwell, Bill Nighy, Steve Buscemi--yet it still comes off as a poor attempt at Alvin and the Chipmunks-izing Disney's Rescue Rangers. Every day for like two years, some guy went home to his wife every night and gave her news like, "I got the Nicolas Cage mole's mouth to move more in sync today," and, "I've almost tweaked the Penelope Cruz guinea pig to look oddly sexual when she sashays, even though she still has the body of a guinea pig," just so we could have this:

Continue Reading " 'G-Force' Trailer: Talking Guinea Pigs This Time "

Dec 23 2008 Talking Animals Wearing Spy Gear

Christmas has come early, and at USA Today you can see even more photos from G-Force--of talking guinea pigs wearing espionage equipment, of course. The article also contains this quote:

The fate of the free world rests on [Darwin the guinea pig's] tiny shoulders? [Producer Jerry] Bruckheimer says: Why not?

Yeah, why not anything, right?

Jan 21 2008 Some Other Crap That Happened...

- Penelope Cruz will lend her voice to G-Force, playing an animated, super-intelligent guinea pig named Juarez. If they base the character's look on her, Juarez has the potential to replace both Minnie Mouse and Jerry in Drag as my top animated rodent crush. [Hollywood Reporter]

- Ryan Gosling is reportedly playing the role of Jack Ryan--the Tom Clancy-created character portrayed famously by Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford, and later by Ben Affleck--in an upcoming film, but it won't be based on one of Clancy's novels. How is the Clancipedia supposed to put together a legitimate canon if Hollywood is going to keep throwing out this kind of bullshit? [Moviehole]

- It sounds like Josh Brolin will be playing George W. in the aptly-titled Bush, Oliver Stone's planned biopic on the president. After all the times he corrected Mikey, it will be good to hear Brand making some verbal faux pas for once. [Variety]

- The Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull trailer will air on Entertainment Tonight on Valentine's Day, giving us dweebs our only shot at any gratification for the holiday. [CHUD]

Nov 5 2007 Some Other Crap That Happened...

- Comedian Zach Galifianakis has nabbed roles as Ashton Kutcher's best friend in What Happens in Vegas... and as a government scientist in charge of a guinea pig commando program in G-Force. This gives me an excuse to post one of my favorite things ever. [Hollywood Reporter]

- Sylvester Stallone is in talks to direct and star as a man turned vigilante after his family is attacked in a remake of Death Wish, a title begging for jokes about his age. [Variety]

- Jake Gyllenhaal and Jessica Biel have joined David O. Russell's political satire about a woman shot in the head with a nailgun, giving her wild sexual urges, and the immoral congressman who takes advantage. Is it wrong that I'm most excited at the possibility of more videos of Russell freaking out on people? [Hollywood Reporter]

- Hayden Christensen will star in Beast of Bataan, playing the attorney to Masaharu Homma, the Japanese general implicated in the Bataan Death March. How tasteless will it be when they play Beast of Burden in the trailer? [Hollywood Reporter]