Quick clips for Monday August 11

Win some, lose some, lose some more

Despite the value of proximity being limited to horeshoes (which is fun) and hand grenades (a game I admittedly haven't tried yet), I'll go ahead and take the results of this week's predictions as a step in the right direction. I correctly predicted the triumph of the Bat (again), overestimated the power of the pants (easy to do when Alexis Bliedel is in them), and assumed y'all would figure out Step Brothers isn't funny. Oh well, c'est la vie, which I believe is French for "pass the wine." Here are the results:

1.) The Dark Knight - $26 million

I was dang close on this one. Much like the rest of the country, I'm running out of steam on figuring out more things to say about this movie, so I'm going to just give you a haiku.

The bat rakes in cash
while I am still a poor man
some superhero

2.) Pineapple Express - $22 million

Again, very close on this one. I had a feeling it would tail off as the weekend wore on. The thing you have to respect about these Apatow-produced flicks is that they cost like a buck fifty to make, so they pretty much start earning money after the first ticket is sold. Mazeltov boys, but next time make a more cohesive good movie, mmmkay?

3.) The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor - $16 million

Ouch. A 60% drop from last week...I honestly expected even worse, but apparently some of you didn't get the memo. I may have missed the degree of failure, but fail it did.

4.) Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants 2 - $10 million

A pretty feeble return for a sequel, but then again, it did cost $27 million to make and has already earned $19 million total, plus it will bank on DVD, where it will be rented by teens, pre-teens, tweens, and creepy Uncle Larry.

5.) Step Brothers - $9 million

Taking all of the joy and accuracy from my predictions, this turd edged out Mamma Mia! (which still crossed the $100 million mark and will be the top-grossing movie musical by mid week). I don't know what to say to those people who are assuring me this is a funny movie. This movie is so bad it makes you re-evaluate friendships with those who like it.

Well, it does have a gay hutt

Without getting too much into the review of Star Wars: Clone Wars, which you can read for yourself on Thursday, I wanted to give you some first impressions. First off, it was so disheartening to attend this screening for so many different reasons. Sure, it was at 10 am on a Saturday, but the theater was, at best, three quarters full...for a Star Wars movie! Nobody dressed up, and only two guys brought lightsabers (and I'm pretty sure they carry those to everywhere). Also, the surreal sight of seeing the Warner Bros logo (and not the 20th Century Fox fanfare) before the "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away" text was trippy...but not as trippy as the lack of John Williams fanfare and the absence of the opening yellow crawl. I know, I know, this is an animated film that is little more than a glorified pilot for an upcoming TV show. Still, would it have killed them to try? My guess is, this is intended for younger audiences...which is unfortunate, because it is full of war sequences that are pretty adult. Then again, the writing is so juvenile and stupid, adults will loathe every spoken word, and the voice acting is beyond wretched. So what you're left with is the latest movie in a series that lives on nostalgia and yet forgoes the traditional elements; a movie that targets kids but is too thematically dark for them; a movie that has its origins in the 1970s but is too inept in writing and dialogue to please anyone born before 2000; a movie that is pretty...and stupid. Happy Monday.

Oh, a little update. One of the characters in it is a gay hutt who sounds like Truman Capote and looks like this:



Continue to enjoy your day.

I will never, ever "go full retard"

One of the things I love about this country is our ability to protest anything, anytime, anywhere that we want. I just wish we would choose better things, times, and places than we usually do. Case in point, Timothy Shriver (chairman of the Special Olympics) is calling for a boycott of Tropic Thunder because a film-within-a-film sees Ben Stiller character attempting to earn a Oscar by starring in Simple Jack, in which he plays a mentally disabled individual. The problem is that, when he doesn't win an Oscar, the advice he was given was "Never go full retard." The clever marketing campaign had a full Web site and fake posters (with the tag line "Once upon a time, there was a retard"). The boycott is apparently serious, as The Arc of the United States, The National Down Syndrome Congress, the American Association of People With Disabilities and others are organizing a real protest of the film. This sucks.

The reason this sucks is two-fold: (1) Getting upset at a comedy is always a pointless endeavor. Get mad at Lifetime TV movies and awful dramas that attempt to turn the real struggles of these people into easily digested and wretched stereotypes (which, you know, is the actual joke that's being made with the "never go full retard" comment, as the statement is pointing out the hipocracy of Hollywood for not showing the reality of the subject). (2) This is the kind of "distraction protests" that make a lot of noise but really don't accomplish anything. This is a movie that has Robert Downey Jr undergoing a procedure to turn black. I'm guessing we understand this isn't reality. I totally understand standing up against overt and subtle bigoted behaviors, but there's something about having a sense of humor that makes it all easier to bear. I'm just saying, I think there are probably better ways to show your anger.