Fearless, Flawless Box Office Predictions

Get ready for fun and excitement at the box office this weekend. And by fun and excitement I mean movies involving scary, undead people and other movies that don't involve Clint Eastwood. Get it? Cause he's old. And scary. And I don't really like his movies that much. Anyway, we've got us a sequel to a horror movie, that comes the week before a sequel to a horror movie, and Matt Damon doing a Whoopie Goldberg impression (I mean talking to dead people, not storming off the set of "The View"). I'm not quite Reganing it this week like Jack on "30 Rock," but I am really being productive, so let's stop with the jibber jabber and get to some haikus.

Here's what's gonna happen, fools.

1.) Paranormal Activity 2 - $30 million

More low-budget fun,
with night vision camera work.
And zero Paris.

2.) Jackass 3D - $20 million

This will drop off big,
but it already won huge.
The rest is gravy.

3.) Red - $13 million

I hope this holds well,
because I love Miss Parker,
and violence as well.

4.) Hereafter - $12 million

More boring Eastwood.
It's full of heaven cliches
if that is your thing.

5.) The Social Network - $8 million

Still respectable,
this comes back near Oscar time.
Should win some statues.

WILDCARD - Secretariat - $7 million

Go away dumb horse.
This should not do well at all.
It is really bad.

Okay, that's it gang. Have a great weekend, see you on Monday!

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God bless JJ Abrams

I love being surprised. It doesn't happen very often with movies. Lord knows I'm one of the reasons why, as I pass on every tidbit that there is to be bitten on the tid. Still, I love it when something gets by us, or when creative types reward us for NOT knowing. What I mean is, Cloverfield was awesome.

I ranted about this briefly on my twitter/facebook page recently, but allow me to reiterate. The movie Cloverfield is good. Not just because of the surprise, although you cannot tell me that the viral marketing wasn't the best ever because it was, but because the movie itself was pretty damn fun. It was suspenseful and fast. It felt like the Godzilla movie I always wanted in the U.S. Re-watching it again after a few years the other night, I was pulled into it again. I found myself waiting to see the brief glimpses of the monster again, even though I knew what it looked like. Despite the unfair backlash and excessive use of hipsters, I really like Cloverfield.

Why am I talking about this now? Well, because Drew over at Hitflix.com just found out that JJ Abrams has a secret project that is going to have a trailer shown before Iron Man 2. Yeah, that's right. It's called Super 8, and nobody knows what it's about. That said, there is a small theory going around that it's a Cloverfield prequel/sequel. The idea being, Cloverfield was all done on camcorders...so what if Super 8 refers to the first appearance of the creature caught on Super 8 film? Probably not. In fact, my first thought is that there's no way this is what's happening. Then again, who knows. That's the fun of this: NOBODY knows. There's no leaked info AT ALL. Whatever it is, I'm going to be sooooo pumped to see this trailer, and I hope that Bad Robot's production company manages the same level of excitement (and eventual quality of film) that they achieved with Cloverfield. Most days, I kind of want to kiss JJ Abrams on the face.

Stealth moviemaking?

These days, it's damn hard to get a project even started without everybody knowing the entire ins and outs of your project prior to the first shot. So how the hell is it possible that the Wachowskis may have filmed or are filming a movie we know Jack Taco about? Yeah, you read that right...I DID say Jack Taco. Oh, and yes I did say that they may have finished the thing nearly without us knowing. This shit is off-the-rails crazy, we're talking Gary Busey-level shit here, but stay with me. Slashfilm did a piece a few months ago (as in December), a fact I emphasize to point out how far along they could be right now, about Arianna Huffington tweeting about having filmed a scene for a new Wachowski movie. This piqued everyone's curiosity because no one had heard such a thing was happening. Sure, we may have been a little dismissive after Speed Racer but nobody would have just entirely IGNORED a project from the directing duo. So we dismissed Huffington...and then she showed pics from the set...WITH the Wachowskis. Huffington noted that she was asked to ad lib stuff about the Iraq war from the perspective of the future. Smart observers quickly concluded that they were either (A) filming little bits to propose a movie, (B) doing some test work for a potential project, or (C) were ABOUT to start doing something. Turns out it may be (D): They're already filming it. Why do we think this? Well Jesse Ventura just told the world that HE filmed stuff for the Wachowskis! He was dressed in some crazy outfit (he actually referenced John Travolta in Battlefield Earth), rambled about Iraq from the future, and that's all he knows. What the hell is going on? They clearly are still working on something! They've been out of the limelight for a year or two now. I am intensely curious about this. Right now, it sounds like Southland Tales, which is the strangest bad movie I ever watched. So that's not a good thing. But these are the people who gave us The Matrix and I am willing to get excited for no good reason. If they are dreaming up something original, I'm going to be over-the-moon excited, even if the only cast members I know right now are Jesse Ventura and Ariana Huffington. Weird.