Fearless, Flawless Box Office Predictions

Gee, I wonder what will win this week? It's like Hollywood isn't even trying, which is par for the course actually. Now that Avatar has all the records it can get, I wonder if we'll finally tire of hearing about its box office rampage. I know I'm tired of it, but I'm a cynical bastard. The new movies this week are feeble and stupid. They will not mount a challenge. Enough pussyfooting around, let's just get this over with.

Here's how I see the weekend box office, haiku style:

1.) Avatar - $27 million

It sunk Titanic
It now holds the global crown.
Can it PLEASE stop now?

2.) Dear John - $17 million

Dear Nicholas Sparks,
why are you still relevant?
Your ideas suck.

3.) From Paris with Love - $15 million

Just ridiculous.
That's how John Travolta looks.
Bald AND a goatee?!

4.) Edge of Darkness - $8 million

This one is a dud.
Not a good comeback for Mel.
Karma is a bitch.

5.) When in Rome - $7 million

Very generic
and very forgettable.
We'll purge this one soon.

WILDCARD - The Tooth Fairy - $6.5 million

The Rock sold his pride
and the movie was a flop.
What a tragic tale.

Okay, that's it gang. It's nasty outside, so be careful.

Ryan's Junk Drawer

Wow, is it Thursday already? You'll have to forgive me, as here in Omaha we are buried in what can only be described as a shitload of winter. Oh, that's not meant to be offensive, that's the actual meteorological term for what happens when you get a cumulative 30 inches in about 4 weeks combined with temperatures hovering near absolute zero. It was warmer this morning in Raykevek, Iceland than here in Nebraska. That's hella stupid. Anyway, the usual spiel: My junk drawer is a collection of tiny movie tidbits that don't warrant their own individual post. I have named it such so I can make jokes about people checking out my junk. I have the maturity of a 12 year old, but I'm too cold today to care. Also, see that image above that looks like it came from "Mr. Creepy's Creepy Pictures," it's from "Highlights Magazine...FOR KIDS" (in this case, it sounds like the "for kids" part is a threat). Each week I make up a new thing that is in the image below for fun. This week's item is the tiny handle. Hoping to catch the tiny people who live in his house inside their secret lair, Harry quietly slid open what he believed to be their hideout and was saddened to find only lube. Foiled again by the shrunken-down misfits who live in his house, Harry sulked.

Okay, now on to our weekly dose of tiny news nuggets:

1.) Cue obligatory vengeance jokes - I liked Chan-Wook Park's Oldboy a lot, even if it made me take enough showers in a row to shrivel parts of me into prunes that remain intensely wrinkled. I didn't need an Americanized remake (especially one that had Will Smith in the lead and Steven Spielberg behind him...hehe..."behind him"). I wasn't all "I'm going to take up arms against my oppressor!" but I didn't care for the idea. Well, it was later squashed and replaced by a new rumor. Supposedly, Park's Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance is about to be remade, American style. It's about a deaf-mute who wants a kidney for his dying sister (SPOILER ALERT: He does not get a new one at Costco). Part of what makes Park's films (like Hunger) so effective is that they are difficult to pigeonhole into one genre. Here in the US of A, we don't have that problem. We will turn this into a straight-up creeper revenge film. Casting suggest: Crispin Glover. That would make me interested.

2.) Avatar is coming for us all - Your daily "OHMYGODJAMESCAMERONISTOOPOWERFUL" update: Avatar is now the second highest grossing film of all time in the world. For real. It took 20 days. Un-flippin-real. It still has more than $700 million to go before it catches Titanic, and it likely won't, but wow...just...wow. Less awe-inspiring but more hilarious is this video from a very funny girl who actually got me to laugh loudly several times while watching her video below. Laughing out loud...you know, there should be some kind of shortened version for that.



3.) I am a-Muse-d - Upon hearing news from the UK music mag NME that the rock band Muse would be scoring Clash of the Titans, Devin from Chud described the band the best way I've ever heard. "Imagine Radiohead, but not as good." Yep, that's about it. Devin points out that it is unclear whether the score will be rock-heavy (like Flash Gordon...damn, that is like the third FG reference in a month, we've got to put a moratorium on that one) or more avant garde like the score for There Will Be Blood. Personally, I'm stoked as shit to see the remake of Clash, and I kind of hope that Muse goes for epic butt-rockery, as that's what seems to fit best. I think they got the gig solely on the inexplicably huge success of this song (which does rock...so maybe it's not inexplicable).



4.) Hanna the barbarian - Saoirse Ronan, whose name cannot be pronounced by humans with only one tongue, is currently starring in the underperforming The Lovely Bones and is now angry enough to kick ass. Okay, that may be a misrepresentation, but she is set to star in Hanna, a film about a 14-year old girl who uses crazy-action survival skillz (with a z) to reunite with her father after she's stranded in the wilderness and hunted by intelligence agents. I have no idea how this will work, it sounds weird. The film is directed by Joe Wright, who only makes boring movies. Seriously, the closest he's come to action is the verbal fighting in Pride and Prejudice. By the way, Ronan is an alien. I'm 90% sure now that I've put her name together with pictures of her. See:

Seriously, if she's mid-interview one day and rips her face off, I'm not going to be surprised. Kimmel might, but I won't be.

5.) Trailers parked - This week in movie trailers isn't particularly exciting (go figure). First up is John Travolta looking like a thicker, gayer Telly Savalas in From Paris With Love, which is apparently written by someone who stopped maturing in 1989. I'm all for throwback action, but how did this movie get shot when Travolta showed up on set looking like that? I'd be laughing too hard to keep the camera straight. Here's the trailer.



Also dropping this week was the domestic trailer for Fish Tank, a really well-received Brit flick. It looks a lot like the US film 13, but also looks fairly riveting. It focuses on a young teenager's brutal coming of age. If "Hannah Montana" takes a turn into this territory, I'm down.



That's it gang. I'll be back later to pester you for money for the speech team...