Paul Blurgh Cleveland Steams the Box Office Again
The Weekly Box-Office Round-Up / Dustin Rowles
Box Office Round-Ups | January 26, 2009 | Comments (52)
5. Slumdog Millionaire ($10.5 million; $56 million): Hey! Lookie there, folks. In all the confusion over the Academy voter’s brain-addled decision to give Benjamin Button 13 nominations and shut The Dark Knight out of the Best Picture and Best Director categories, a lot of people forgot about Slumdog Millionaire, which actually deserved the nominations it received and, arguably, might have merited Best Picture over The Dark Knight anyhow. With that said, Slumdog debuts in the top 5 for the first time, after 11 weeks of release, bringing its overall total to a tidy $56 million. And if you can believe it, that’s Danny Boyle’s biggest grosser to date. Silver linings, folks.
4. Hotel for Dogs: ($12.3 million; $37 million): What was this movie about again? A luxury spa for pooches? Ran by orphans? Do the dogs even talk? No? Eff that. If the dogs don’t talk, if “Who Let the Dogs Out” doesn’t play at least 17 times, and if some washed-up starletard doesn’t sponge herself down at a Charity Dog Bath event, then I don’t anything to do with it. Don Cheadle is in this? Pffft. What a bunch of pretentious horseshit. They get that Score-swayze fella to direct it, too? Goddamn kids and their high-fallutin’-ness. When I was a kid, we watched real kid’s flicks with clowns. Like, Shakes the Clown and Quick Change and Poltergeist. That’s what I’m talking about!
3. Gran Torino: ($16 million; $97 million)): Curious about Eastwood’s next project? He’s directing Hereafter, about how Nelson Mandela managed to pull off hosting the 1995 Rugby World Cup post apartheid. Morgan Freeman will play Mandela, while Matt Damon will play Francois Pienaar, who led the South African Rugby team to its miraculous victory. Note: Eastwood is old.
2. Underworld: Rise of the Lycans ($20.7 million): Not only did I not realize until several minutes into the film that the Lycan leader, Lucian, was played by Michael Sheen (otherwise known as the fictional David Frost and Tony Blair), but AlabamaPink also noted that Sheen and Kate Beckinsale have a child together. That’s weird — wouldn’t that make their child, like, the most powerful Lycan/Vampire hybrid ever? It’s also weird that Sheen and Beckinsale broke up on the set of Underworld, which is where she also met, fell in love with, and eventually married the film’s director, Len Wiseman. I’d have imagined that it made filming awfully tense/awkward, but then I remembered that both Sheen and Beckinsale are British, and the Brits — if L.A. Story is to be beleived — have a very strange relationship with regard to their exes. Here in America, we take half our exes book collections and throw rocks at them until they go away. Over in England, the exes come over for dinner with the new husbands. I like our system better.
1. Paul Blart: Mall Cop ($21.5 million; $65 million): “It’s just a very funny film,” said Rory Bruer, president of worldwide distribution for Sony. “It’s not only a great family film, it really is a film that everyone loves.”
Not everyone, twatwaffle. Although, it is fun to read the comments from folks who come to the site late, via Google search. Randal Stevens, for instance, was quite the fan: “Of all the movies I get dragged to by my 6 year-old, this may have been the best. I laughed so much, my sides hurt, and I may even see it again. So there. As for Chris Farley, if you want to miss a funny fat guy, watch the 3 Stooges. Curly was a genius, Farley is a painful ripoff.”
Doughnut gives super star ratings: “this movie would also work if he was a security cop at a zoo and he would need the animals help to beat the bad guys. overall this movie was real good the story line had lot of punch and the actors was doing a really good job making me believe they were really acting. i give this movie 23 out of 30 super stars.”
Doughnut, I give you 26 super stars!
And then there is Jay (not, not that Jay): “this review is shit, it’s a great movie. it’s a good comedy and it’s great entertainment. i’m sympathetic towards people with diabetes and other blood sugar problems, but it was a good move. and hitch, you’ve got to be joking.”
There you go, folks. At Pajiba, we present a variety of opinions. Feel free to take your pick.
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Comments
Posted by: Cindy at January 26, 2009 9:54 AM
...and, arguably, might have merited Best Picture over The Dark Knight anyhow.
It's a belated Christmas miracle people - or we have a Dustin impersonator writing the column today. Oh, and holy run-on sentence Batman.