One of the most recent victims of my new philosophy was The Love Guru. And I couldn’t even give that pile until the first act. By the time it got to the hockey rink, I was through with it. In those few minutes it was annoying, stupid, idiotic, moronic, asinine, unfunny, kind of insulting, and devoid of any compelling reason to continue watching. I mean I just sat through Step Brothers, so it’s not like I give up that easily, but Guru opens with multiple dick jokes. If it starts off that low, I don’t want to find out what quasi comedic depths it’s going to plumb. I inadvertently learned it ends with elephants boning, so I think I was justified in my assessment.

Now that “worst movie” lists are coming out, I think cutting bait on The Love Guru was a prudent decision. It is popping up on all kinds of those lists. You can see examples here and here and here and here and here and here and here. The other movie that is ubiquitous to most lists is Disaster Movie, but no one involved with that movie gave a crap about it. Except Carmen Electra. Her boobs and these stupid spoof movies are all she has going for her.

But people expect more out of Mike Meyers. He’s had a successful track record of turning laughs into money. Guru proved that his mojo is gone, but I could see this coming for a while. Specifically while I was siting in a tiny theater watching Austin Powers in Goldmember.

Have you ever seen the Simpson’s episode HOMR? During the episode, it’s discovered that Homer has a crayon lodged in his brain. He gets it removed because, in a classic Homer misunderstanding, he thinks it will increase his killing power. Instead it just increases his intelligence- from village idiot to learned scholar. Homer’s newfound intelligence causes the usual calamities, but the major problem doesn’t occur until Homer goes to see the latest romantic comedy. The movie is full of cliches and catchphrases and all the usual crap, but everybody in the theater thinks it’s a riot. Well, everyone but Homer. He just can’t find a single damn thing funny about it.

I’m not trying to boast about my intellect, but while I sat in that theater watching Goldmember, I was the only one not laughing. I laughed at the jokes in International Man of Mystery and I chortled at them in The Spy Who Shagged Me, but by the third time they just weren’t funny. It was a pattern of going back to the well that, for me anyway, had gone totally stale. And now, it looks like most other people are starting to feel the same way.

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Yes Man won the weekend with an $18 million haul. It wasn’t spectacular, but it was enough. It was well short of my $28 million prediction. Part of my misfire was due to producer David Heyman’s last four movies averaging between $17,000 and $26,000 per screen. When Yes Man manages $5,000 per screen, those big numbers throw off the calculation. Strangely enough, when I used Jim Carrey’s average for his last four movies times the number of theaters, the result is only off Yes Man’s total by $700,000. I think that lends some credence to the idea that this was a Jim Carrey movie and that Jim Carrey doesn’t have quite the pull he once had.

The Tale of Despereaux ended up with $10 million over the weekend. I predicted $16 million, with the caveat that it was probably too high. Although it is adapted from an award-winning book, Despereaux didn’t get any favors from the mixed reviews or half-hearted marketing.

Seven Pounds ended up at number two. The $14.8 million opening is the smallest for Will Smith since Ali. Unfortunately I don’t think he’s going to be nominated for Best Actor this time.

Four Christmases eclipsed the $100 million mark. Hooray. The Day the Earth Stood Still fell off a whopping 68% from the previous week. That’s good because it’s crappy. And pulling in at number 20 for the weekend was the Bollywood romantic comedy (featuring what else- dancing!) Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi.

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Instead of Santa and Rudolph, I’ll take Murtaugh and Riggs. From Jingle Bell Rock leading from the opening credits to a mostly naked woman committing suicide to a drug bust in a Christmas tree lot to Riggs giving Murtaugh a Christmas present of the bullet he’d been saving to kill himself, it’s a Christmas classic. Writer Shane Black created the perfect buddy cop movie- two men forced to work together against their will. One a cranky old buttoned-down type and the other a suicidal Veteran who is constantly hounded by the department psychiatrist. Producer Joel Silver used all his power to keep the action at a fervent pitch. No one has been able to top the mount of drugs or torture in a Christmas movie. It’s violent, cynical, and funny- just like Christmas at my house.

Has there been a more odd Christmas movie than Edward Scissorhands? I mean it’s like Frankenstein meets Freddy Kruger meets Mumford set in some cartoony neo-’50s town. It’s got giant topiaries, Vincent Price, and a mob of angry villagers. All that and Anthony Michael Hall delivers the greatest line he’s ever uttered- “I’d give my left nut to see that again.” This was the first pairing of Tim Burton and Johnny Depp and they were maybe the only two that could have pulled it off with such magnificence. They’ve both been good separately, but they have this ‘off’ quality about them that creates an incredible synergy when they team up. They’re like the circus sideshow version of Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro.

Bruce Willis? Terrorists? Smartass quips? It must be Christmas! Die Hard is the ultimate Christmas movie. On it’s surface, it’s a story about a large-scale heist and the wacky cop trying to stop it. But underneath that runs all the themes of the great Christmas movies- hope (that there’s a desperado in our midst to save us), joy (in the ability of that desperado to kill the terrorists), brotherhood (the relationship between total opposites John McClane and Sergeant Powell), charity (in the selfless manner that McClane attacks the terrorists), and family (the reunion of McClane and his wife). Die Hard’s combination of action, humor, and colossal scale forever changed the action genre and made Christmas way more exciting.

Most people will probably say Dumb and Dumber has nothing to do with Christmas, but that’s just not true. This movie is all about Christmas- Lloyd Christmas. Lloyd and his partner in crime Harry are truly dumb, but like most dumb people in movies, they manage to find a way to save the day. After Lloyd decides that the most recent passenger in his limo is the love of his life, he decides to return the briefcase she left behind so she’ll fall in love with him. Lloyd doesn’t realize it was a ransom drop and absurdity ensues as Harry and Lloyd trek across the country to return the briefcase, first in a car made up like a dog and later on a mini-bike. While it’s not exactly the same as The Twelve Days of Christmas, the movie does have two dead bird jokes.

2003 brought a new staple to my Christmas viewing- Bad Santa. I’m not sure if it’s because the movie eschews most Christmas movie traditions or just that Billy Bob Thornton is such an incredible actor, but I’d could watch this movie a lot before I ever get tired of it. Willie is the opposite of everything you know about Santa- he’s mean, swears, drinks, hates kids, beats up kids, occasionally pees his pants, and has a penchant for taking large women from behind. And this is one of the few movies to embrace the Christmas pickle tradition- a blood-stained wooden pickle is the catalyst that begins melting the icy casing around Willie’s heart, transforming him from a Grinch into not so much of a Grinch.

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Nearly everything about the movie is bad. Odd story, bad acting, worse costumes, absent production values, and uncomfortable scenes between Santa and the kids. The only thing that could draw any compliments would be the inclusion of some stock footage. It doesn’t make the movie any better, but it doesn’t make it worse, either.

The children of Mars are looking for something to relieve the boredom of Martian life, where all the knowledge they’ll ever need is fed into their heads and they have no individuality. But parents notice the kids love watching Earth TV, where they are exposed to Santa Claus. To inject a little fun into Martian children’s lives, the adults decide they need a Santa of their own, so they go to Earth to kidnap him. The movie goes on to hit all the Christmas high points- joy, marry-making, and terrorist plots.

If you’re going to see one Martian Christmas movie this year, why not make it this one?

Grab yourself up a copy at the Internet Archive before they’re all gone!

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Snatch up a copy of my spreadsheet before they’re all gone.

The biggest release this weekend is Yes Man, in 3,434 theaters. It looks to be Jim Carrey’s return to inane comedy. He hasn’t gotten to run around flapping his arms and making faces much since Bruce Almighty. You could argue that Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who and Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events were big successes for Carrey, but seeing as how there’s someone else’s name in titles, it might not have really mattered who was in his role. When Carrey has been the sole big name in a movie where he gets to run around and act like an eight-year old, the results have always been good. That bodes well for Yes Man. My calculated prediction came out to $37,906,043, which, unless I’m totally crazy, is pretty high. Based on the per screen average for Carrey’s last four movies, the total for Yes Man would be $18,959,011. I averaged those two together to get a prediction of $28,432,528. That sounds a little more reasonable.

In 3,104 theaters, The Tale of Despereaux is the second biggest new release this weekend. Based on the Newberry Award-winning book about a mouse that is different-from-everyone-else-and-gets-ridiculed-but-is-really-a-hero-in-waiting probably would pull in some decent money if it had a bigger marketing campaign. But it didn’t, so it’ll have to wait for the DVD until it makes any money. The total calculated out to $30,929,392- way too high. It was due that pesky Emma Watson. She’s only been in Harry Potter movies, so her per screen average was $23,076 while all the rest are between $5,000 and $9,000. So what I did, I multiplied the total by the percentage of the total box office in the formula of Watson ($30,929,392 * ($361,839,230/$758,697,111)) and subtracted that from the total. That gave me a total of $16,176,739. Probably too high, but I’ll let it ride.

It could turn out that Will Smith’s Seven Pounds could be the number one movie this weekend. The smallest opening he’s had since 2001 was $26.5 million with The Pursuit of Happyness. That movie is a decent analog for Seven Pounds since they’re both mildly hyped dramas. It could end up squeaking by Yes Man.

It should be a fairly low-key weekend leading into the five-day holiday featuring five new movies in 2,400+ theaters.

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I personally consider Luhrmann to be the Tobe Hooper of romance- if it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing. Even though he doesn’t really do subtlety, Luhrmann has been able to embrace his cinematic flamboyance to great success. Who knows how it would have turned out, but I still wonder what he would’ve done with Alexander the Great. It couldn’t have been worse than what Oliver Stone came up with.

Image courtesy jeroen020 via Flicker

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First, the birthdays:

Milla Jovovich, the first lady of zombie movies, was born in Kiev, Ukraine in 1975

Giovanni Ribisi, whose father’s name is Gay, was born in 1974

Writer/director/producer/editor/cinematographer Gregg Araki was born in 1959

Rhode Island-obsessed director Peter Farrelly was born in 1956

Penthouse magazine founder Bob Guccione was born in 1930

Prolific supporting-actor Ernie Hudson was born in 1945

Cherokee actor Wes Studi was born in 1947

Bill Pullman, who is somehow often confused with Bill Paxton, was born in 1953

There were a slew of older movies released on this date that have especially dirty sounding names: The Taint (rereleased 1916); Making a Man (1922); When an Old Maid Gets Busy (1912); Liquid Love (1923); How to Dance the Shag (1937); and No Ifs, Ands or Butts (1954).

While those just sound dirty, there was one actual dirty movie released in 1972- Behind the Green Door. It was the first time a hardcore pornographic movie got a wide release in the US and kicked off the “Golden Age of Porn.” Emilio Estevez directed a movie about the movie’s producers Jim and Artie Mitchell, titled Rated X. Estevez and Charlie Sheen played the infamous Mitchell Brothers, a role for which Sheen had been preparing his whole life.

An adaptation of Harriet Beacher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin was released in 1913. It was the seventh adaptation of the novel since 1903.

Disney’s always been keen on the whole money making thing and has never shied away from pimping out their old successes. Disney had rereleases of Fantasia (1969), Lady and the Tramp (1971), and Peter Pan (1982) hit theaters on December 17^th.

Diamonds are Forever (James Bond #7) was released in 1971. It was a box office success and features one of the greatest exchanges of dialog in movie history:

Plenty O’Toole: Hi, I’m Plenty.
James Bond: But of course you are.
Plenty O’Toole: Plenty O’Toole.
James Bond: Named after your father perhaps.

Legendary director John Huston had two movies released on this date: the classic adventure The Man Who Would Be King and his final movie, The Dead.

1982 saw the release of the greatest Muppet movie of all time- The Dark Crystal.

It’s been five years since The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King was released.

And on a final note, we’ll slip into the future. The Smurfs will finally hit the big screen with a release date of December 17^th, 2010 already carved out. Apparently it’s the first of an epic Smurf trilogy. I loved the hell out of the Smurfs when I was a kid and still have 50 or 60 of the little figures packed in a box somewhere. I’m just hoping they don’t smurf it up with toilet humor and pop culture crap.

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Mamma Mia! has passed Titanic as the highest-grossing movie to be released in the U.K. It has eclipsed Titanic’s 69 million pound mark (for now) by 100,000 pounds. The total equates to about $106 million.

It’s probably due to the perfect storm of ABBA’s popularity and a pretty decent movie (it snagged two Golden Globe nominations). I’m not entirely sure about the U.K., but their cousin Australia can’t get enough ABBA. Australia is home to the most popular ABBA cover band (Bjorn Again) and had a couple popular movies prominently feature ABBA on the soundtrack (The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert; Muriel’s Wedding).

It looked kind of funny that the biggest movie in the U.K. only brought in $100 million, where as Titanic brought in $600 million in the U.S. Is it just that Americans got to the movies more? Not really. When you compare the populations, the U.K. has about 61 million people and the U.S. about 306 million. So if you factor in that the U.K. has one-fifth the population, that’s a $500+ million in the U.S., pretty much in line with the biggest ever.

Image courtesy Nick Grabowski

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TDTESS didn’t do as well as some of the recent sci-fi remakes, but it should do alright. $30 million against the $80 million budget isn’t a great number, but TDTESS has been pretty popular oversees and should turn a nice profit once the worldwide totals are tallied.

Delgo, on the other hand, boy I feel sorry for everyone involved with it. The project started in 1999 and someone obviously thought there was something to it if they managed to finagle it into 2,160 theaters. I figured my prediction of $3,097,698 was high, but going lower than that starts to get into historically bad performance, so I left it there. But historically bad was what it was. Delgo lied, cheated, and stole it’s way to a $511,920 weekend. That’s an unreal $237 average per theater, under three people per showing. Wall-E averaged more per screen and it’s been out 25 weeks and seen the DVD released. There must have been a ton of happy theater employees that ended up not having to clean up after a kid’s movie. And that $511,920, that’s the lowest opening ever for a movie debuting on 2,000 or more screens. On Sunday the distributor estimated $900,000 for the weekend, which would have also made it the smallest opening ever. The phrase ‘epic fail’ has never been more appropriate.

Bolt managed to pull in $7.4 million- a 24% decrease from last week. Drops of 40-60% are the norm, so Bolt is doing very well for it’s third week. Four Christmases was second at $13 million, losing only 22% form last week. By week’s end it’ll probably be over $90 million total. It should easily top $100 million before it’s gone. I hope you like that kind of movie because you’ll be getting more of it.

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Lee’s death cast a pall over The Crow that only intensified the brooding, melancholy tone and Gothic imagery. It’s generally well regarded and has a league of devoted fans. It made nearly $100 million at the box office and spawned four sequels.

So what does that mean? Well, it’s time for a do-over, of course. Stephen Norrington (Blade, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) has signed on to write and direct a “reinvention” of The Crow. He intends to increase the realism and give it a documentary look. It will presumably be Norrington’s big return to directing, which ended with Gentlemen in 2003.

Have all the comic books been snatched up already? Is there really nothing left? I know all the studios currently have a hard-on for anything spawned from a comic book, but it would seem that this would be yet another story that doesn’t need to be revisited. There wasn’t anything so flawed about The Crow that it requires a reboot. It was a niche comic adapted into a niche movie that was able to connect with viewers beyond it’s niche. Not only is it a repugnant idea, but disrespectful to the memory of Brandon Lee.

Image courtesy Emuishere Peliculas via Flickr

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