Box Office Results: Congrats, America. Now we get Resident Evil 5

Milla Jovovich, who is too pretty and interesting to spend her life torturing us like this, has confirmed that after this week's bonanza at the box office, we can look forward to a fifth Resident Evil! YAAAAAY for crap! Maybe the next one will be in 4D, the dimension in which we are actually inside Milla Jovovich's head!!! Also, some people are still watching Takers. Stop that.

Here's how the weekend went, haiku style:

1.) Resident Evil Afterlife - $28 million (Accuracy of prediction - 94.5%)

Dear Miss Jovovich,
you sure are very pretty
but I fear that's all.

2.) Takers - $6 million (Accuracy of prediction - 86%)

They sure are taking,
they now have all your moneys,
and they have my soul.

3.) The American - $6 million (Accuracy of prediction - 86%)

George Clooney is rad
but this slow movie is not.
Sorry to Ebert.

4.) Machete - $4 million (Accuracy of prediction - 90.5%)

Who would have thought it?
Co-stars Lohan and Seagal
are not guarantees.

5.) Going the Distance - $3.5 million (Accuracy of prediction - 100%)

Uh oh, don't look now.
Barrymore is bad again.
Letterman flash time!!!

Overall accuracy of prediction - 91.5%

Much like the Bears game,
I don't like how this ended,
but I will TAKE IT!!!

Okay, that's it, happy Monday to ya. Now go to work.

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Fearless, Flawless Box Office Predictions

Thoughts:

1.) Some NFL guys are predicting games in Haiku form. I am now going to have to enlist my brother-in-law to sue them.

2.) People will apparently see movies whether or not I write poems about what is coming out that week. I just hope they enjoyed them less.

3.) September is reserved for football to the degree that they may as well not release ANYTHING in the theaters. It's scary out there.

4.) I can't believe how much Roger Ebert liked/is defending The American. He is actually insisting that people who don't like it (A) are idiots not used to seeing intelligent films and (B) are disparaging it because it was slow. I'll give him B, but A is just wrong. I think that Ebert got duped by the film, which was made to emulate something more compelling. A wafer-thin character with stereotypical "assassin baggage" of "I feel bad about the bad things I done" who falls for a hooker with a heart of gold while slowly putting together a rifle is not compelling. You don't have to have compelling plot twists (it doesn't), but you DO have to make me care about something in the film. I could go on and on, but the point is this: If I were to review it again, I'd actually give it a LOWER score, and not because it's slow, but because it's not very good.

5.) I'm ready to make my predictions.

Here is how I see the box office, Haiku style:

1.) Resident Evil: Afterlife - $25 million

Zombie heads go boom.
Now in all three dimensions!
So, you know, there's that.

2.) The American - $6.5 million

No, Roger Ebert,
this is not a good movie.
I love you, but no.

3.) Takers - $5.5 million

This is still out there?
I can't still talk about this!
PLEASE! It stars Chris Brown!!!

4.) Machete - $5 million

Lindsay Lohan's boobs
and copious violence
still can't save this one.

5.) The Expendables - $4.5 million

Stallone is back, folks.
Whether we like it or not.
I am thinking not.

WILDCARD - Going the Distance - $3.5 million

It's not the distance
I'd worry about going,
it's the direction.

Okay, that's it. Have a great weekend! See you Monday!

GO BEARS!!!!

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Status report and a movie review of Machete

Hey y'all. I'm going to keep this somewhat brief because it's not quite right to be spilling personal business all over the Internets like the contents of a pop can you left on the dryer, but the gist of it is this: My wife's uncle, to whom she was very close, passed away this weekend at the same time one of the students on our speech team lost her father out-of-the-blue. I was set to be incommunicado over the weekend for a vacation, but it quickly became out-of-touch due to mourning. Both Abbie (my wife) and Steph (the girl who lost her dad) are among the brightest, lightest, most wonderful people you ever could meet. Seeing either of them sad hurts like a steel-toed kick to the face, but watching both forced to suffer is downright torture. If you know them, love them extra hard right now. If you don't, send prayers and positive thoughts there way anyway. Either way, please understand if I'm a bit down and short this week.

I have two reviews I could have run with this preamble. One is a somber, serious character sketch that pontificates on death.
The other is Machete. Here's a review of Machete from Justin Senkbile.

Killer Kitsch
Machete takes a stab at immigration reform
Justin Senkbile

Director Robert Rodriguez’s latest film, Machete, is terrible…but I’m guessing you already knew that. Terrible—the right kind of terrible—is what they’re going for, and fans of this sporadic neo-exploitation genre (think Snakes on a Plane and everything Quentin Tarantino has ever done) will likely find their appetites thoroughly satisfied.

Machete (Danny Trejo) used to be the best Federale in Mexico, until his renegade instincts and incorruptible sense of do-goodery put him on the wrong side of powerful drug lord Torrez (Steven Seagal). We find him living, undocumented, in Texas, finding odd jobs and the occasional street fight. When he takes up an offer to assassinate the violently anti-immigrant state Senator McLaughlin (Robert DeNiro) and things go awry, Machete finds himself again on the wrong side of those in power.

Also present are Jessica Alba as a steely immigration officer and Michelle Rodriguez as a taco truck owner and sometime freedom fighter. Cheech Marin is the most memorable of the cast, playing Machete’s brother, a priest. Lindsay Lohan’s turn as a drug-addled crazy is just as memorable, but only in that it’s so uncomfortable to watch.

Machete began as one of the fake trailers created to run during Grindhouse, 2007’s Rodriguez/Tarantino double-bill experiment. Grindhouse is interesting in that it was immensely fun but only worked in the context of being an “event.” The films themselves (Planet Terror and Death Proof) don’t hold up too well on their own, and such is Machete. Without the Grindhouse atmosphere (fake trailers and assorted vintage ads) it seems particularly silly watching a high-priority, A-grade movie pretend as a B-level cheapie.

Blood, sex, politics and race relations are such things as Machete is made of, and Rodriguez dumbs all ingredients down to such a giddily mindless level that at times it almost feels like you’re watching some new kind of extremely liberated cinema. It’s easy and surprisingly fun to have immigration presented as a totally cut and dry issue, with white, drawling Texans as the villains and a ragtag bunch of down-and-out immigrants on the side of right.

Of course such simplification is wrong, but this sort of dialed-down intellectual approach is an essential part of exploitation cinema; perhaps the reason for the apparently timeless appeal of the genre lies more in the convenience of easy morality than in the sex and violence or even the “so-bad-it’s-good” factor.

Although movies like Machete seem to be, and insist upon, being too goofy to be taken seriously, their mass appeal is reason enough for thoughtful pause. Is Machete brilliantly subversive or just a careless exercise in style? Why can a movie get away with stereotypes and generalizations we’d never tolerate from a TV sitcom or an advertisement?

One thing is for sure: Machete has some fun moments, but not nearly enough to justify its stupidity.

Grade: C-

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Machete cast represents an accurate summary of my nightmares

If you were to get drunk on sake, huff a few canisters of Krylon, and fall asleep reading Perez Hilton while watching Spy Kids, you'd have a shot at coming up with the current cast of Machete, which everyone on the Internet says Variety confirmed but I can't find the confirmation anywhere (even though it's supposedly shooting). Why do I assume that there was some sort of hallucinatory bender involved with this film's conception? Well, visuals are the only way to convey what is happening.

Here's the (reportedly verified) cast in all their glory (horror):



and



and



and



and



and



It is as if Satan vomited and director Robert Rodriguez and Danny Trejo (not pictured because I kind of like him) finger painted with the barf. I can hardly believe that this is real, but many, many people (including Lindsey Lohan on her own Twitter) confirmed that this is very, very real. It's not often that I give this warning but, boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen, this is a class 9 emergency clusterf**k. You are going to want to grab your loved ones and head for the hills as fast as you possibly can. Machete is real, and it's coming for you.