If it also had a hankering for cheese, the giant rabbit invading some English gardens would be almost too real for words, but as it is, the storyline from Wallace and Gromit's lastest movie, Curse of the Were-Rabbit, is too real for some of the English gardeners whose veggies are being nibbled by what they say is an oversized rabbit in Felton, UK. That's the gist of one of the weekend's most-cited news stories (No. 7) in the blogosphere. Demon rabbit or Easter Bunny? wonder a few LiveJournalers. An international plot or a job for MacGyver wonders a fellow LiveJournaler? Where's Anti-Pesto when you need them? asks another LiveJournaler, referring to the name of the pest control firm the two Claymation figures operated in the summertime blockbuster movie. Maybe the folks in Fenton can borrow the bunny vacuum from the movie studio?

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 11:51 AM

Personally, I think the best movie won, but lots of folks were surprised that "Crash" beat out "Brokeback Mountain" for best movie during the weekend Academy Awards ceremonies, which bloggers noted for, among other things, a nice acceptance speech by actor George Clooney. A BlogPulse Trend Graph shows how closely the two movies tracked...right up until the moment when the statuette went to the "Crash" crew:

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 10:20 AM

This is it...the weekend when Academy Award fever breaks out all over the film world. And rather than guess, or speculate, and without any attention at ALL to what anyone's wearing and which designers are hot this year and who's dating who and who just ditched her for him (and vice versa), we'll let a BlogPulse trend graph look at buzz about the men nominated for Best Actor....



And the women nominated for Best Actress...

We'll check back on Monday....when we know who the winners are.

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 12:26 PM

Can't say that I'm one to gather around the TV on Oscar night , waiting with bated breath for each painstakingly built-up-to Academy Award announcement. Frankly, sometimes the masters of ceremonies at the Oscar shows are as good as, or better than, any of the performances that occur elsewhere on stage, and this year's MC duties by "The Daily Show's" Jon Stewart might just be enough to convince me to tune in at 8 p.m. Sunday. So how many others might do the same? And how does Stewart stack up against some of this year's other leading hunks? Holding his own quite well, thank you...

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 10:28 AM

Granted, maybe bloggers don't talk about foreign films as much as they talk about bigger-name, big-screen flicks. A BlogPulse trend graph that tracks discussion about the five films nominated for this year's Best Foreign Language Film, to be decided Sunday night, shows definite spikes when nominees are announced but no clear patterns for determining which flick might win, although "Paradise Now" manages a few discussion spikes:

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 10:55 AM

In the final-week countdown to Sunday's Academy Awards ceremony, BlogPulse takes a look at building buzz around the nominess for best actor. For now, the leading contenders seem to be Ang Lee of "Brokeback Mountain" and George Clooney of "Good Night, and Good Luck." But who knows? Only Oscar knows for sure, and he's not telling until Sunday:

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 10:02 AM

One week from today, the world will be abuzz (perhaps) about which movies and personalities walked off the Academy Award stage the night before, an Oscar trophy in hand. Which movie will it be? Will "Brokeback Mountain's" sociological impact take it over the top? Will "Crash" unexpected crash the party? A BlogPulse trend graph catches up with week-before buzz about the movies nominated for best film:

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 12:57 PM

Time for quick check of "buzz" about this year's Oscar nominees for best actor and actress categories. Will Philip Seymour Hoffman win yet another award for his portrayal of Truman Capote, or will Heath Ledger take home the statue for his "Brokeback Mountain" role? And among actresses, will Reese Witherspoon continue her pre-Oscar successes for "Walk the Line," or will Keira Knightley walk off with honors for "Pride and Prejudice"? A BlogPulse trend graph tracks current buzz. First, the women:



And the men...

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 11:01 AM

Our no. 12 top link this morning needs no introduction -- it's Academy Award time, and the talents behind this year's top movies are getting ready for their magical night in Hollywood. Nominated flicks include Brokeback Mountain, of course, as well as Wallace & Gromit, and The Constant Gardener. And y'know who else is up for an Oscar? Memphis rap coterie Three-Six Mafia, one of our favorite recording groups, which heretofore had been known for its, shall we say, colorfully phrased odes to drug dealin', interactions with women, and, most recently, ridin' spinners. (In their song "Sippin' on some sizzurp," the boys boast: "We eat so many shrimp/ we got iodine poisoning.") This extraordinary nomination was made for a song they contributed to the flick " Hustle & Flow," which starred Terrence Howard as a small-time hustler who, like so many of our rap stars, saw the music of the streets as a way out of his dead-end life. The significance of the nomination was lost on many bloggers, but at least one, ProHipHop, mentioned it in a rap-related recap of the nominations. Not that they needed it, but this Oscar would help Three-Six stay fly-y-y-y-y-y until they die-ie-ie-ie-ie-ie.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:44 AM

Entire regiments of Culture Warriors have been waiting on nonstop alert for the battle to really be joined over "Brokeback Mountain," but so far, neither side has had to attack. Conservatives have carried on their business of running the country and liberals have carried on talking about how good the movie is supposed to be, what with its buzz and whatnot. The battle they've been waiting for, however, could begin now that a Utah movie theater has yanked it from its screens, as detailed in BlogPulse's No. 18 top link today. Come blood! Come iron! Sound the horns! To war! "Sometimes I'm just so proud to live in Utah. So proud I could stick a fork in my eye," writes this ashamed blogger. A more moderate, but still anti-movie-cancelleation viewpoint here: "Yeah, I think the entire concept of gay cowboys in a movie called 'Brokeback Mountain' is pretty over-the-top laughable." And the hostile rejoinders continue. This battle will continue until the Oscars are destributed -- maybe even one to "Brokeback " -- and long after. The war rages on.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:17 AM

The Meta Filter blogger sums it up quite nicely in a short, one-line post: "Mel Gibson Creeps Me Out," (BlogPulse's 29th-most-cited post today). The trailer for Gibson's Summer 2006 flick, Apocalypto, about the demise of the Mayan culture, is now out, amd speculation begins about just how strange the flick can be. Just what are Gibson's motivations are for pondering the deep, dark secrets of ancient religions? Ponders one LiveJournaler, "if Tom Cruise starred in a Mel Gibson movie....Would Hollywood implode finally?" View the teaser clip for Apocalypto now. Decide for yourself.

How does a BlogPulse trend graph rank the various big-name directors of epic movies?

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 11:41 AM

Fifty point one million, to be precise — that's how much our furry friend snatched up from moviegoers this weekend. It's a respectable opening; not a bust, but also certainly not a bonzanza. (Take a look at this weekend's movie numbers here.) Everybody seems to have liked "King Kong," or, at least, not very many people seemed to loathe it. It even moved this blogger to tears: "I liked it. I cried a little at the end, because it's sad. Not sobbing or anything, but in that kind of 'can't stop a few tears from slipping out' way. Mostly, I thought it was way too long. Most of the stuff in the middle felt gratuitous to me. It's possible I'm biased because I loathe giant bugs, and I did in fact run to the ladies' room the time the men were attacked. I also felt horrible for the brontosaurs, who were just trying to get the hell away from predators and ended up in a fifteen brontosaur pile up." We should mention here that the American Dinosaur Family Council has denounced the flick for its "gratuitous anti-dinosaur rhetoric;" one of the strongest condemnations they've made since the "Jurassic Park" movies. This Physics Geek also enjoyed the movie, particularly Kong's performance, leading us to ask whether actor Andy Serkis — who was nominated for an Oscar for his Lord of the Rings role as Gollum — could expect another chance at an Academy Award?

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:55 AM

We admit it — we didn't have the highest hopes for giant monkeys running amok in Depression-era New York. There's just something regressive about it... but as our eminent senior partner showed today, that gorilla, or King Kong, as he prefers to be known, is giving Jesus a run for his money, at least in blog currency. The comparison between the two of them is misleading, because Kong would totally smush Jesus underneath his enormous monkey foot, and if Jesus tried to run away on water to escape, Kong could easily wade through all but the deepest rivers to snatch him back. But King Kong's ability to beat up Jesus is just one of the things that make him so popular with bloggers and moviegoers these days — apparently people (and the non-people who populate the msm) like his movie. xT1 has some minor gripes, but otherwise glowed: "Maybe 10 minutes too long, but after the first fifteen minutes the story barrels along like the roller-coaster ride it is supposed to be. Kong vs the Dinosaurs is astounding, but it is annoyingly filmed in the currently-popular close-up , where a jumble of legs, teeth, arms, fists and heads blur past the camera. The odd medium shot wouldn’t have killed the mood, you know?" Noted. This Sci-Fi piece has some thoughtful remarks about how Adrien Brody's character is just like King Kong, which is all well and good, but we'd have to revise our comparison for him -- there's no way he could beat up Jesus. Check back Monday to see how much box office destruction the enormous ape ended up wreaking.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 12:23 PM

We never read Dan Brown's thunderously popular book The Da Vinci Code, but we know so many people who did, and saw so many copies of it in so many airports across this great land, that we almost feel like we know the story, too. It's about Leonardo DaVinci, evidently, and some kind of code he came up with, possibly so he could send messages to his friends about girls he liked without them finding out. For some reason this angered the ultra-secret Catholic sect Opus Dei and a couple popes, who keep issuing fatwas or bulls or whatever on the topic of this book, and now have a new challenge — as of our no. 8 top link today, the movie trailer is out. A movie about a book this popular is inevitably going to provoke some strong reactions from bloggers, and it has, as evidenced by this remark by Screenhead: "...An awful but very popular book is made into what looks like an awful movie by people who get to keep making movies despite the fact that their last movie, A Beautiful Mind, was awful but popular. If we were filmmakers or had any ambition in that direction we’d have killed ourselves with a dull-pronged spork by now. The best we can say for this is that it seems to irritate the Pope." Meanwhile, this post criticizes the advertising campaign. At least this blogger is keeping an open mind about the movie. So are we, but the flick we're most looking forward to is this one.

(If your Italian's a little rusty, you might be interested to know the title of this post is "The Pope is angry.")

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:05 AM

Good morning. Taped under the seat in front of you is a complete dossier on Subject C.; in a few minutes this train will pass through a tunnel — use the noise and darkness to retrieve the file. Have you got it? Excellent. The case is well known among operatives in our profession, and its latest chapter should not be surprising. Our intelligence indicates rumors of a new initiative in keeping with previous efforts along the same lines. Use these documents to refresh yourself on the operational situation thus far. Now, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to ensure nothing untoward takes place between now and the dispersal of this new installment. Do not permit bizarre religious cults to sidetrack Subject C. before H-Hour; do not permit Subject C. to become the subject of a nascent boycott before H-Hour; and, whatever you do, do not permit Subject C. to become the subject of a blog that started out as a joke but still persists out on the Internet. Didn't you read that this mission was going to be a lot more impossible?

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:38 AM

Well that whole Brokeback Mountain business was just a dodge... the flick opened in only a few towns this weekend and hasn't really done enough business yet to track, but we're keeping our eye on it. Meantime, this weekend's real story is The Chronicles of Narnia, which brought in $67 million and perhaps will answer a lot of criticisms of "liberal", "Jew-controlled" Hollywood, which the James Dobsons of the world seem to think has a constant political axe to grind with every movie. (Box office recap here.) But, as we've said before, the only iron rule in the movie game is that projects have to make money, and in that this filmed allegory about Christ, complete with talking beavers, has succeeded. Consider this breathless review, which describes the film as "a miracle." And its crossover appeal goes the other way, too: consider this post from GayOrbit: "For sure you can see the parallels to Christianity, but the story stands on it’s own merit, so don’t let any preconceived notions about it being Christian propoganda stop you from enjoying this wonderful film." For the record, it's interesting that the next-most successful flick this weekend was a picture called Syriana.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:32 AM

So Hollywood's got this new Western coming out, Brokeback Mountain, about two cowpokes who spend a magical summer up on the eponymous mountain and learn a lot about life, love and themselves. They have some kind of adventure, or maybe overcome some kind of adversity, and as a result ere'body and they momma is going ca-raazy about this flick. In fact, the short story that inspired it is Blogpulse's No. 20 top link today. The movie doesn't seem to be about making money — although, who knows, all the hype could translate into millions — but more about getting out there in time for Oscar consideration. And one roadblock to its success seems to have been cleared: Though it's about gay cowboys, many Christian groups say they won't protest or boycott the movie. (Though that probably doesn't mean they'll be lining up at the box office.) How will such a story play in George Bush's America? Check back on Monday for the recap.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:38 AM

Perhaps you pay attention only to "traditional" news and thought we were living in a depressing era of terror and torture. Well, you're half-right. The other half of the time, we're living in a new golden era of wintertime movie trailers — yesterday the sequel to Pirates of the Caribbean was unveiled, and today our no. 2 top link is the trailer for a little movie we like to call X-Men 3. The original director, Bryan Singer, may be gone, as well as that lovable blue German demon who charmed our hearts in the last movie ("In ze Munich sssircus I vas known as 'ze amazink Nightcrawler' "), but in his place is that beloved blue scientist known as Henry McCoy, aka Beast. Played by Kelsey Grammer, of course, he's a sublime casting choice that will shine through all that makeup and fur. Gosh, what must bloggers think about all this? Actually, they're pretty lukewarm. Twitch: "The first trailer for X3 has gone online and I have to say I was more than a little nervous going into this. I love both of Singer's X-Men films but between the last-minute director juggling, constant script revision, loss of key cast - losing Nightcrawler really hurts for me - and Halle Berry's continuous raging ego this is one that just screamed 'troubled production.' " People are also worried that Halle Berry now has short hair: "I really don't know what to think of Storm's hair. Honestly. What in the world is that? It's like she's trying to rock the black streaks in her hair that Chloe wore in "Rush". And it looked better on Chloe, I think." Picky, picky picky! Whatever, dude. This movie's gonna be sweet.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:23 AM

Gyarr, ye scurvy swabs and so forth. Our no. 18 top link today is for the just-released trailer for a little movie called Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, and it has inspired quite the tizzy among bloggers. From the trailer we can deduce the presence of chills, spills, and, theoretically, thrills. British bombshell-cum-knockout Keira Knightly reprises her role as the hot Englishwoman who keeps getting kidnapped, and Orlando Bloom will go again as the less exciting, less cool male lead, because Keira can't fall in love with someone like Capt. Jack Sparrow. What would the censors say? Well, we know what bloggers are saying: "OMG Squeeeeee!! Pirates pirates pirates! Whee! This trailer has saved me from an otherwise grim and depressing day. I wish it didn't come out in July, though. March would be better, I think. Or sooner. I love Cap'n Jack and crew, and pirate movies are a must. Eee, I want it to be summer!" Given all the snow outside our window, that's not such a bad wish.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:50 AM

Our no. 13 top link today is for the flick "Aeon Flux," which made about $13 million this weekend in a distant second to You Know Who, whose cinematic juggernuat leaves only destruction in its wake. (Gory details, as always, are here.) And, whereas we didn't see "Flux," we saw the trailer, and had some questions about it, especially the part where Charlize Theron is firing two sub-machine guns — one forwards, one backwards — and wiping out rows of henchmen on either side of her. And we thought to ourselves, y'know, couldn't the henchmen to her right, whom she hasn't yet blasted, just, kind of, bust a cap right in her dome? Anyway, we weren't the only one suspicious of the project. The msm was characteristically vicious in its reviews, and judging from a few bloggers' reactions, the movie is demonstrative of that old Tinseltown truism: Charlize Theron Flying Through the Air in a Black Catsuit Does Not a Blockbuster Make. Abo8 spells it out for us: "The biggest thing missing from this movie is a plot, which is kinda something you need in a movie. There was too much unexplainable events and too much predictable and unrealistic events. This movie was so terrible I don't even know how I am going to rate it, I started out with a D- but it slowly crept lower, and F just leaves a strange uneasiness to my stomach. So I am rating this movie an R-, cause quiet frankly it was worse than retarded." And that, children, is why you may think in your budget meetings you can skimp on the writers, but why you never, ever should.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:17 AM

As is our custom, we took a look at the stories and reports today from this past weekend at the box office, which we expected would be a little different from usual because of the holiday. Different indeed — our inescapable nemesis Lt. Col. Harold Potter, USMC, had not only been in America's top spot for two weekends in a row, he had pulled in a grand total of some $201 million. (Take a look yourself at the full report here.) Now that's, as they say, a spicy meat-a-ball-a! One thing that isn't different about this iteration of the Potter franchise is the articulate devotionals from bloggers, whose ability to annunciate their love for Harry & Co. is legendary. Here's an example: "k i dunno why every1 is sayin harry potter sucked but I THOT IT TOTALLY ROCKED!!!!! i wont give much away in case sum1 didnt watch it yet...but i thot it was awsome." Mmm. Profound. And take a look at this one, for perhaps a less nuanced but equally intent summation. And some of Harry's fans do actually come close to complete sentences... sort of. And if you've seen the latest Potter flick, you'll want to check this out, to take things to the next level.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 03:55 PM

Britain's tiny wizard stands astride the movie world like a colossus, caring neither for finglefrat or buzzlethrub nor leapsnepper. In a season when big movies seldom recoup the money it took to make them — let alone pile profit on top of that — Harry Potter's flick The Goblet of Fire made more than $100 million in its opening weekend, setting the BlogPulse record for the most rapidly lucrative film this blog has yet recorded. (Full report, as always, is here.) If this were a normal weekend, we'd be talking about Walk the Line, the new Johnny Cash biopic that pulled in $22 million, but with Harry Potter, nothing is ever normal. We shouldn't laugh, but NewsDrunk did came up with a particularly crude way of saying this: "Estimates from multiple sources indicate that Warner Bros.’ Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire not only dominated the box office this weekend, it neatly lined up all other movies and raped them one by one." Quite. But for the full gamut of reaction, all you have to do is go to our Key People and click the top name.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 09:05 AM

Few indeed are the Fridays when the weekend releases all are getting raves from the msm. Fewer still are the weekends when the adventures of our old and venerable nemesis, US Rep. Harold Potter (R — Wisc.), are comitted to celluloid and sent out to theaters for all his slavish fans to enjoy. Ah, Harry, BlogPulse's most talked-about man. Is there any critic your imaginative yet accessible adventures haven't yet charmed? Is there any pound sterling your creator hasn't yet accumulated? This Microblogger compares you to Shakespeare. People write reams and reams of fan fiction about you. What more is there to say, Harry? Perhaps only this: "HHHHHHHHHHHHH! 13 HOURS UNTIL HARRY POTTER!!!!AAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!" Or, perhaps, this: "AHHHH!!! I'm going to see Harry Potter tomorrow!!!!!!!!!" Not to be confused with: "Yay no school tomorrow! Harry Potter HAHAHA." What do you do to these people, Congressman Potter?

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:08 AM

We talked Friday about that board game-based flick Zathura and how bloggers were all over the map on it, and it made $14 million this weekend in second place at the box office. That's about right for one of these contemporary flicks, with their low-grossing openings and quick banishments to DVD. But the real story is Disney's computer-animated non-fable Chicken Little, which is in its second week of release and so far has made $80.7 million. (Full report is here.) A kid's movie about some computer-animated farm animals who evidently are invaded by those aliens from the gumball machine in Toy Story, it represents one of the most lucrative pictures we've seen since we've been doing this — all the more interesting because people don't seem to like it that much. The Circus Trilogy has the box-office-take story and reacts this way: "Well, whatever it is, it still doesn't change my impression of "Chicken Little" — rather, the title character — as being a really irritating movie. Bleah." Bleah? Devastating. But a corollary follows. This 25 year-old Ohio mother saw it with her kids and wrote, "It was very cute. The girls really enjoyed it! Me too." Ah hah! Enough American children wanted to see that bespectacled, golf ball-headed little squab that it was the top movie two weeks in a row... and they're kids too young to have blogs. (That's how it slipped under the blogdar.) But y'know, kids, you're never too young to have a blog. We can call them "klogs," for kid-blogs.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:11 AM

Americans will have the opportunity to see a peculiar movie this weekend, a flick about two bored little boys who root around in their basement and find a magical, magical board game called "Zathura" that takes them on a magical, magical adventure! The msm seems pretty satisified with another installment in the board-game-based-adventure franchise started by " Jumanji," of which this is some kind of official unofficial sequel. (Clue was not part of that franchise.) As has been the case for the past couple Fridays, it's difficult to get a bead on what bloggers think about "Zathura." The MovieBlog is hot and cold: "With the first trailer I thought Zathura looked just plain silly... but by the time the last Zathura trailer came out I found myself oddly interested in seeing it." SpankGranny could not generally be considered a fan, saying there are quite a lot of similarities to "Jumanji:" "There’s not much difference between either film, so chances are if you didn’t like the first movie, you should stop reading this right now. If you liked 'Jumanji,' however, read on to see if 'Zathura’s' worth the ten bucks." (Ultimately, according to that review, it isn't.) All this talk about game-based movies got us thinking about a screenplay we've been shopping around — hey, this blog thing is ok, but it ain't gonna put a down payment on a house in Malibu — called "Trivial Pursuits," about a group of multi-colored, anthropomorphic plastic discs trapped in a magical world where they're asked questions in order to collect pieces of pie that fit in them. The lukewarm reception to "Zathura" made us thought we might want to option a different game, so we ran the numbers... here's what the data says will test the best:

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:19 AM

We couldn't let this one slip by, so we reached backwards in time to yesterday's top links for this photograph of actor Thomas Haden Church as Sandman in the new "Spider-Man" movie. Man, he looks simultaneously cool and authentic, and promises to be a better villain in the movie than he tended to be in the comic books. We were very pleased with Alfred Molina's Dr. Octopus in the most recent "Spider-Man" installment, so we know to expect great things from this production team. Spider-Man's villains, to be perfectly frank, tend be awfully lame, including the Vulture (a bald dude with wings) Rhino (a guy in a rhino suit) Shocker (a guy who shocks you with electricity) and, our personal least favorite, Mysterio (a guy with a fishbowl for a head who somehow creates illusions). But we also weren't fans of the comic book Doc Ock, and he turned out all right in the movie, meaning Sandman's probably gonna be all right. Some bloggers agree so far. These guys are pleased as they kick around the old peanut about the Church pic, but these guys think the movie should've featured Venom. Now there, as we like to say, is a villain you can really set your watch by.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:04 AM

Every day, month after month, a certain boy wizard (who's now entered the joys of adolescence), sits atop the list of personalities most discussed by bloggers, the king of buzz. That would be Harry Potter, whose Goblets of Fire movie trailer (today's No. 10 top link) was released at a London premiere over the weekend, certain to create a continuing cauldron of crooning among loyal fans. It takes a pretty momentous event to kick Harry out of the No. 1 spot on that personality list, mostly because of blog influence of those crazy kid/teen bloggers. DeeDee from RambleOn blogged about the premiere while pining for London town and watching it via video feed; another blogger can't believe his own status as a "fanboy."

Spidey's new bad guy...
And in other news, as they say in the news biz, Thomas Haden Church (today's 5th-burstiest person) has been tapped to play villain Flink Marko (today's No. 11 most-shared link) in the next Spiderman flick. One blogger's review: "he looks amazing."

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 08:16 AM

Though it seems like the trailer has been out there for months and months, only now, this weekend, is Sam Mendes' new flick Jarhead marching into theaters. An adaptation of Anthony Swofford's memoir about being a leatherneck in that last war we fought in the desert against Saddam Hussein (you remember), the movie stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Jamie Foxx as US Marines who want nothing more than to idly kick around, get into mischief, and maybe plink some tin cans with their rifles. According to the msm, that's all they do, anyway. This movie hasn't been getting outstanding reviews, but it's got the right mix of action, star power, and violence to account for itself honorably this weekend. Blogs are mixed. Gothamist called it "the major must-see," but Cinematical links to a post criticizing it for being "the gayest war movie of all time," as in, homosexual, not, y'know, "bad." They write: "The writer here does a nice job of offering both specifics to support his/her theory and a sense of humor, which always makes readings like this much more palatable. The writer's fairly convincing conclusion is, essentially, that the film sexualizes war." Well, it wouldn't be the first time a director did that.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:18 AM

Not since he took on a murderous gang of thugs in the post-apocalyptic Australian desert, or perhaps when he began to understand what women are actually talking about, (or maybe when did a picture about you-know-who getting the you-know-what beat out of him) has Mel Gibson courted such a variety of reactions to a movie project. As reported by our no. 16 top link today, the Outrageous Aussie has got a flick going that the whole family can enjoy: Set 600 years ago in Central America, it features unknown Mexican actors speaking in the obscure Mayan dialect of Yucateco, and will be an epic action-adventure story. It occured to us that this might be worthy of a quip, or perhaps even one of our trademark japes, but then we realized its brilliance: how easy must it be to write a script in a language nobody understands? You just write the subtitles and we foolish English-speakers take for granted the characters aren't saying in each line, "Isn't Mel Gibson a genius?" "Yes, this is the greatest movie ever made." Bloggers are wary, however. "Yeah, that sounds much more fun than Jesus getting the Holy crap beaten out of Him," this one wrote. And as for Gibson's new Al Gore\Saddam Hussein-style beard, this blogger makes some photographic comparisons. We think you'll agree it's devastating. No wonder he doesn't want to be in it.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:36 AM

Pencil a big goose egg next to our name after our prediction of this past weekend's box office reusults — "Saw II," with its $30.5 million take, sliced and bled its way over "The Legend of Zorro," which brought in $16.5 million. (Full report, as always, is here.) We aren't members of the "Saw" franchise community — nor is the msm, it would appear — but many bloggers are now raving about it. Movie afficianados might be reminded of the movie " Cube" and its sequels " Cube 2: Hypercube," and " Cube Zero," about strangers who find themselves in a strange, murderous environment and must use their wits to survive. The main difference may be that there's a main serial killer in the "Saw" pictures, and the bad guy is a big cube in the "Cube" movies, but it just goes to show you that recycling premises can pay out big in Tinseltown. Though that fact is decidedly less surprising than "Saw II's" performance this weekend.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:03 AM

We're reminded this weekend of last weekend, when the motion picture industry had released several different pictures and it was up to us to use dangerously low levels of blog buzz to predict which would outperform the others. This time it's "The Legend of Zorro," up against "The Weather Man" and "Prime," all of which are recieving acceptable msm reviews, but none of which is a standout barn-burner. Still, what was useful last time applies again — a big, loud action flick set up against quieter, pathos-filled films almost always will see more box office receipts. "Zorro" is also a sequel, and after the success of the original, seems a safe bet to be the most lucrative movie. Still, all the Hollywood executives who check BlogPulse every day must remember that we haven't had one of their movie's websites in our Top Links for weeks, and searches for this week's releases don't come up with much. The summer may be over, but the long-term Tinseltown slide seems to be contnuing.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:08 AM

Who knew, after all the intervening years since the peak of it popularity as a computer game, that " Doom" could still pack 'em in? There are probably no more than a handful of "Doom"-equipped iPods out there, and dozens and dozens of newer, better, violence-based games, but still it rose, to the top spot at the weekend box office. (Full report here.) And what's this? The second most popular movie in America was "Dreamer," about a girl and a horse that nobody thought could win. Could it? Well, of course. "Stay," which was in our Friday prognostication report, doesn't even appear on this list of movies. What became of it? It couldn't stay. (Oh, yeah.)

Posted by Philip Ewing at 09:35 AM

On Fridays here at BlogPulse, we roll up our sleeves and start really tweaking our blog machine to see which movies are going to make money in the upcoming weekend. But after no end of tinkering today, the future looks kind of uncertain. What we know for sure is that the three biggest pictures are "Doom," "North Country" and "Stay," and, when the tickets sold are tallied, they probably will end up ranked in some varation on that order by Monday. "Doom" looks like the sort of big, dumb, shoot-'em-up that packs 'em in, especially since this is the era when underemployed Linux wranglers play the game on their iPods. "North Country" is all-star Oscar bait in which beautiful stars smear coal dust on their faces and talk in campy rural accents — and the last time lead actress Charlize Theron did that, she won an Academy Award. "Stay" is more difficult to gauge, because its reviews are poor but it's the kind of scary psycho-drama many moviegoers like. (Think "Saw"). So our official prediction is that "Doom" will have the biggest draw this weekend, because it's generally a safe bet that sci-fi video-game based violence is more lucrative than the bleak lives of mine workers. Also, check out this chart indicating which movie has been on the mind of most bloggers:

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:20 AM

If you were combing through our Top News Stories you surely saw no. 19, about a little-known actor by the name of Sylvester Stallone getting ready to revive a little-known movie franchise we like to call Rocky. This time it's Rocky VI, in which the old champ is living out his retirement in Philadelphia and decides to go for one... last... bout! It's a million-to-one shot? Will he make it? Will there be a training montage? Will he punch huge slabs of beef in a meat locker? Well, probably. This blogger is not enthused: "The bigger question is how will Rocky be received at the box office? My guess is that he'll be TKO'd" Zing! Or is that ding! (Y'know, like in a boxing match. Never mind.) Check out Mad Dog for some even more incisive commentary on the new Rocky movie, along with plenty more rhetorical questions. And when you're through, consider the possibilities of this Stallone project, which we stumbled on while researching this post. Aawwwwl right!

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:59 AM

If, as some critics have suggested, Elizabethtown represents the opening salvo in Hollywood's autumnal barrage of Oscar-bait pictures, the studios may want to redraw their battle plans: It was this weekend's no. 3 picture and made $11 million, opening after last week's top-grosser Wallace & Gromit and the water vapor-as-murderer-Tom Welling-career-maker The Fog. (Full report here.) It's a case for the textbooks: An advertising lead-up that went on for months before the actual movie premiered, reducing the film's novelty and desirability with each bus ad and commercial; a schlocky tv spot that made it look like the now-famous re-edit of The Shining trailer; and, may we humbly submit, little to no blog pulse. But to be fair, this isn't the first time a director has had to learn this lesson the hard way.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:46 AM

Director Cameron Crowe has a penchant for making movies so saccharine that viewers' teeth can hurt as the images flicker across the screen. When all the characters in Almost Famous started spontaneously singing "Tiny Dancer" as they rode on a band bus, for example, many viewers had to be rushed to the emergency room in diabetic shock. Now comes Elizabethtown, the director's next far-reaching meditation on people riding in cars while Tom Petty plays, or riding on planes when Nick Drake plays, or spontaneously running into the rain — even though they just came from a funeral! — and yadda yadda yadda. The msm are thusfar disatisfied, and our BlogPulse Popularity Prognostication Tools don't reveal too much hidden excitement out in the vast electric lunchroom. The movie blog Cinematical reveals after Elizabethtown was initially shown at a Chicago film festival, those who viewed it said "it just didn't come together." Blogger Melanie cites the blurbs used in the movie's ad campaign and asks: "Could it possibly be made to sound lamer?" A fair question. But FairyPrincessJenny, at least, is excited by the flick, as her post reveals. We'll see you here Monday — same Bat Time, same Bat Blog — and sort through the Elizabethtown aftermath.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:00 AM

We were skeptical the last time James Bond had business before this honorable court and, after examining today's Top Links, we remain so: Actor Daniel Craig will be playing Agent 007, as reported by our no. 38 link. His resume is here. Not too many high-powered blockbusters under his belt, nor any indication as to his ability to ski down the side of a mountain, off a precipice, and then parachute down for action. A poster here shares our concern for having a blond Bond. This blogger is even more indignant about it: "What is the world coming to?" This blogger thinks Craig looks more like one of Bond's old nemeses. Puzzled reaction by this blogger and posters. What's all this add up to? General unhappiness with the choice at this point. Naturally everyone will leave final judgment till when Casino Royale comes out, but until then, it's just difficult not to pre-judge these things, you know?

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:12 AM

An unpleasant update for a grand story that's been in the blogosphere and msm for the past couple of days —Aardman Animations, the company behind Nick Park's universally loved Wallace & Gromit cartoons, had almost all of its sets, props and other equipment destroyed in a fire. (The story is our no. 18 link today.) Park has been surprisingly sanguine about it, though, because the fire came right on the heels of the devastating Pakistan earthquake and, compared to that disaster, "isn't a big deal," he said. Bloggers are picking up on that tone, it seems. This one simultaneously admires Aardman's films and laments its recent calamity, with an approving eye towards Park's mature reaction to the fire. This Blog For All tries to inject its own levity into the situation after commenting on the fire: "Gromit's facial expressions in each of the movies convey more emotion than most actors in all of Hollywood. Of course, Gromit doesn't have to go for Botox, which would explain the stiff upper lip on most of Hollywood. Oh, and did I mention that Gromit is a dog that doesn't talk." A good point. For more on this theme look here.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:12 AM

Churlish indeed are those few grumpuses who don't love Wallace & Gromit, the hysterical British inventor and his loyal dog, who this weekend appear in their first feature-length film, "The Curse of the Were-Rabbit." They're clay characters created by Nick Park, the same brilliant animator who gave us 2000's " Chicken Run," only they're his original comedic duo, and Mel Gibson isn't involved. It's rare indeed for msm reviews to be as unanimous as these, but there doesn't seem to be a commensurate level of buzz among bloggers — especially when compared with another recent stop-motion movie — as you'll see by the graph below. Another comparison is useful, however: "Chicken Run" made more than $17 million on its opening weekend, suggesting American moviegoers love hilarious British stop-motion claymation comedies. (Indeed, more than they love American sci-fi flicks in which characters say things like "I plum reckon.") We're hesitant to put a dollar figure on it, what with the various national crises and all, but we are confident "Wallace & Gromit" will do relatively well for itself this weekend. Here is part of the reason for our hesitance. This graph demonstrates its buzz compared against its recent competitor:

width="500" height="300" alt="Corpse vs. Wallace" border="0" vpace="5">

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:19 AM

Many moons ago this blog sarcastically assessed the ferocious buzz among the self-congratulatory geekoids who'd revived (they thought) the dead TV show Firefly because so many of them bought the show's DVDs. It was being broadcast on the Sci-Fi Channel and it was being adapted into a movie (link no. 12), which lent credence to the thinking, popularized in web chatrooms, that corporations care what consumers think. If they did, they won't now, because despite good msm reviews and lots of blogttention, Serenity came in second this weekend — after Flightplan, last weekend's top movie — and made only about $10 million. See the full report here. It could be a self-fulfilling prophecy that a movie with no big stars, based on a short-lived, mis-marketed TV show, can't even sell more tickets than The Dukes of Hazzard. But, again, to hear bloggers tell it, Joss Whedon's space-western is a monumental triumph: "We need more movies like this," raves WBTG. (With these kinds of receipts, studio execs almost certainly disagree.) This h4ck3r — not to be confused with sk8er — also liked the movie, and, as a fan, expected some props for supporting it. Detailed breakdown of the flick here, though this postmortem just makes it even more difficult not to just say, "look, guys, it doesn't matter how well good you think the script is — you're still a bunch of geekoids."

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:22 AM

Maybe it was for the best that Jodie Foster didn't marry a dead man in Touchstone Pictures' "Flightplan," released this past weekend, because with a $24.6 million optning take, it did marginally better than " The Corpse Bride," which made about $4 million less. (Full numbers here.) The IMDB page for "Corpse Bride" however, is our no. 5 top link today, and "Flightplan" appears nowhere. This could be because The Sultan of Schadenfreude, Tim Burton, helmed the stop-motion gothic-lite flick, and he tends to command loyalty among moviegoers who appreciate his rococo visual excess. (Today more people are talking about him than President Bush.) Or it could be, like this girl, that they just liked it. Then again, for this blogger, not so much.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:19 AM

Could anybody else but Hollywood's Gorgon of Goulishness, Tim Burton, plausibly pitch a movie such as "Corpse Bride?" "Ok, get this, ok, this is great," he says to the studio exec through his ridiculous sunglasses, "it's about a guy who accidentally marries a dead woman. He puts a wedding ring on a skeleton's finger and her ghost is totally is all, like, whoa, ok, married now." (A premise which, despite its themes of ghosts and whatnot, is kind of legalistic, when you think about it... like a man who mistakenly files IRS form IZ-382 instead of IZ-328 and he's haunted by the ghost of former president Rutherford B Hayes.) It comes out this week and replicates the long-loved stop-motion animation that moviegoers will remember from his "Nightmare Before Christmas" — meaning early buzz for it is strong. From everyone except this guy, anyway. The hated msm is lavishing the flick with praise, and a nation eager for a respite from its hurricane-drenched woes seems like it could use a good stop-motion motion picture. This blogger certainly could.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:51 AM

Only in the 21st century could Mel Brooks make a movie about two Broadway lowlifes based on a Broadway play about two Broadway lowlifes based on another movie about two Broadway lowlifes. Yes, the trailer for the new movie version of " The Producers" — as opposed to the old movie version, y'see — is our no. 38 top link today. (Oohh, man, Uma Thurman is in it!) From all appearances, Brooks' new version of his old story will be a toe-tapping, goose-stepping good time, as the advert blurbs might say. The flick doesn't drop until December, but the feeling around the Prognostication Department is to expect a run at the box office comparable to the one the play had. Blogcitement is high, as evidenced by this poster, who is so pumped she can't even form traditional sentences: "I = quite excited." More traditional syntax and construction from this blogger, who writes, "I can now officially die, ladies and gentlemen, for life has just been made wonderful." But that ability to form words seems only localized; if you want to see some emphatic non-words, see this cat.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:44 AM

We must confess at the outset here that we're a huge fan of MI6 agent 007 and the cinematic adaptations of his exploits. Who can forget the time that James Bond was winging away in a stolen fighter jet from a burning terrorist arms bazaar that he'd single-handedly destroyed, and discovered a terrorist was in the seat behind him? (Also, another jet was chasing him.) Long story short, Bond ejects his unfortunate passenger so that the guy's seat goes right into the other plane, causing it to explode for some reason. Bond looks at the camera and says: "Backseat driver." Doesn't sound like the new Bond flick, "Casino Royale," will have any such scenes in it, but that doesn't mean anything either — as our no. 40 news story today says, penning the screenplay is the Oscar-winning writer Paul Haggis, who was behind "Million-Dollar Baby" and "Crash," two improbably fantastic recent Hollywood offerings. His script includes a "reinvention" of the Bond character and doesn't include the beloved gadgetsmith Q, two things that initially put us on our guard about the movie. (The Engadget guys went way off their beat and did a post about just that.) Like a Spensarian sonnet, Bond movies conform to a very strict formula whose repetition makes them so much fun, and injecting any new things should always be done very carefully; reaction on this Metafilter feed has been very mixed. Still, after "Crash," which we encourage all BlogPulsers to see, Haggis clearly knows how to write a movie. And it's not as if the Bond franchise hasn't taken a wrong turn before.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:14 AM

Only the most extraordinary events can keep our old foil Harold Potter from being the most blogged-about person on the Internet — Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath would seem to qualify. But Potter is nonetheless the second most blogged-about person, and as opposed to the usual chatter, today's there's actually a reason: Fans are excited about the new trailer for his movie that came out yesterday. (The link actually appears twice in our top links today.) Reactions? Here's a blogger who prefaced this passage with the phrase "OMG" and indicated she had died: "It looks...so good. And I shouldn't get my hopes up, because the last one looked good as well — but I hate hate hated it compared to the first two." That's three hates, if you're keeping score at home. Other thoughts? This blog geeks itself into a stupor dissecting each shot of that trailer; perhaps it misses the irony when it writes "...and can I just say, "CREEPY!" Oh yes. More nitpickery here, this time with respect to the (mis)pronounciation of a made-up thing, and this blog probably represents the typical response across the web. Somewhere a guy dressed up like Comdr. Riker started to feel just like The Fonz.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 01:38 PM

Heistant as we are to suggest such a pop-psychology explanation, we can only submit that Katrina weariness on the part of America's movegoers this weekend is responsible for its little spurt at the box office. "The Transporter 2" was this weekend's top movie, which was one of our Friday possibilities, and together, the top 5 movies' opening take accounted for about $64 million. (The weekend before, when "Brothers Grimm" couldn't even beat "The 40 Year-Old Virgin," which had already been out a week, the top 5 movies taken together made about $10 million less). Studio heads also are certainly paying attention to "Virgin," which has made about $72 million in its first three weeks, having made the second-most of this past weekend's releases and again beating a movie on its opening weekend. (That would be the superb "Constant Gardener," which has been getting a lot of accolades around the BlogPulse Simulated Water-Cooling Discussion Station.) Who knew a movie about Steve Carrell getting lucky for the first time would have such... ah... staying power?

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:49 AM

Director Fernando Meirelles' debut " City of God" was a masterpiece, a frenetic, vibrant underworld epic — and this weekend he's back with " The Constant Gardener," which is shaping up to be just as good. But in a world where gas costs $3.00 a gallon and the Gulf Coast lies in ruins, how well can a movie, even a well-made spy movie, do at the box office? The boys in our Prognostication Department aren't even touching this one, but consider these factors: 1. Neither the movie nor its actors are in BlogPulse's top links or key people today. 2. Msm reviews are strong. 3. It's up against a more conventional Hollywood flick, "The Transporter 2" — a sequel to boot — which in its first incarnation made about $9 million on its opening weekend in 2002. So who knows? We guessed " Brothers Grimm" would flop, but this one's a complete toss-up. Check us out next week for our standard postmortem — thanks to our contract with the United Brotherhood of Bloggers Local 136 we've got Monday and Tuesday off, so we'll see you Wednesday. Enjoy Labor Day, but with one request: use money you would've spent on beer to help out our friends down South.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 12:46 PM

Well not only did "The Brothers Grimm" not do particularly well on its opening weekend — as the BlogPulse Movie Performance Prognostication Department foresaw — it couldn't even unseat a movie that's already been out for a whole week. "Grimm" took about $15 million after its debut, whereas "The 40 Year-Old Virgin," in its second weekend, made about $16 million. Box office figures from this weekend tell the tale. You know a lot of Mylanta is being consumed this morning as Tinseltown's kulturmeisters are grappling with the most recent dispiriting evidence their skills are rusty — consider that this weekend's top two movies combined made less than half of what Tim Burton's interminable "Planet of the Apes" took after its opening weekend in 2001. Why would moviegoers back then shell out to see a dog, but pass today? That's the crucial question on which the heads of the movie biz now cogitate. Some bloggers, however, have already made up their minds about the new movie: "I want my $8 and 2 hours back. Oh yeah, and I'd like whatever IQ points I may have lost while viewing it back, too." Now that doesn't seem to require much cogitation.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:54 AM

It wasn't really that good a movie summer, was it? "Batman Begins" was unexpectedly strong, but otherwise Hollywood has tended to worsen its own predicament by making bad movies and wonder why nobody wants to see them. Which brings us to the movie website that's no. 24 in our top links today, for Terry Gilliam's "Brothers Grimm," coming out this weekend. We're taking break from trying to guess what movies will make on their opening weekends, what with high oil prices and international tensions befogging our crystal ball, but we're going to guess "Grimm" will do poorly this weekend. Reasons? Poor msm reviews, for starters, but also strong indictments from movie-watching bloggers: "As I get older... I grow somewhat tired of his excess. He really has no discipline, either in production or especially in the editing room," sighs drevilbones. This blogger acknowledges the poor advance buzz, but will stick with Gilliam anyway: "I've noticed that the more they hype a movie, the less I enjoy it. But here's hoping." Check back Monday for our movie postmortem.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:40 AM

Well we were waaaaaay off on Friday in guessing how much money "Four Brothers" would make this weekend -- though we were correct in saying it'd be the top picture. Maybe we overestimated the appeal of Marky Mark's craggy, unshaven mug, or maybe in our initial prognostigatory calculations we didn't factor in Tinseltown's summerlong skid to the bottom. (Top movies for this past weekend are here.) Has it filtered through to movie theater execs and the studio heads that Americans don't like purchasing an overpriced ticket to a movie and then seeing half an hour's worth of advertisements before the feature? That we resent how cynically they sell such ads to dollop some pure greed on top of the hard-earned dollars we're paying to see their stupid pix? Apologies for the digression. To the blogs, where the movie seems to have generally been well received: "Mark Walberg did an okay job, but I was really impressed with Andre Benjamin. Good story," wrote matrimonially regretful Jim. Deadgods only partially agreed, mentioning "strong performances" that "are undermined, however, by the final act, which feels like it borrows from every other revenge picture ever made." And a poster here wrote "Oh my god, "Four Brothers" was the sickest movie ever," but the way these kids talk today, that could mean anything.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:48 AM

Mark Wahlberg hasn't teamed up with his old krew for years -- no word on what's become of Hector the Booty Inspector -- preferring instead to assemble ad hoc units befitting various subsequent tasks at hand. He joined up with the comely Charlize Theron and super-Brit Jason Statham for this job, and this weekend he's brought together a new squad for some mother-related mayhem in "Four Brothers." Seems a shady cabal of crooked Detroit cops, city officials and gangstas has offed the woman who raised Wahlberg and three other street toughs, one of whom is played by the famed Hotlanta rapper Andre 300, and the lads have to mete out some payback, action-movie style. Our BlogPulse Movie Performance Prognostication Department is having kind of a difficult time getting a bead on this flick, because opinion is varying pretty widely out there: The Pen15 Club calls Andre 3000 "insufferable" and describes director John Singleton's choice to make this movie as indicative of "sad times indeed," but TheMovieBlog differs: "I just think the premise looks fantastic, and the trailers and commercials have a really strong and gritty feel to them that catches my attention." GearLive essentially splits the difference: "If you go to the movies to be entertained, check this movie out. If you go to see something that’s realistic and mirrors life, skip it and find something else." Fair enough. So look for "Four Brothers" to draw around $40 million this weekend, maybe a lil' more, maybe a lil' less, depending on the levels of funkiness it achieves. Check back Monday to see us crow about it or make lame excuses.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:16 AM

There is a scene about three-quarters of the way through The Dukes of Hazzard in which police are chasing Bo and Luke in the General Lee on a backwoods dirt road. The soundtrack belts out "Shoot to Thrill" by AC/DC and Luke, who has a compound bow for some reason, lights a flaming arrow and shoots it through the General's blasted-out back windshield, causing one of the pursuing cars to burst into flames. We credit this unexpectedly awesome sequence, and a scene in which Willie Nelson emerges from a barn full of suspicious smoke, for helping "Dukes" exceed our BlogPulse Opening Weekend Predictions by $2 million. The movie made about $30 million, and we predicted it would make between $25 million and $27 million. (The top ten movies for this weekend are here.) Box Office Guru had predicted $34 million for the Dukes' opening weekend, a difference we blame on Jessica Simpson's unexpectedly wretched performance and the way she's made up to look like some kind of bronzed marionette with Chiclets for teeth and a wig made from a thousand Barbie doll heads. "A department store mannequin would have been more charming," wrote Mike the conservative Christian. Cinematical -- and the rest of the blogosphere -- lamented that this is what passes for entertainment these days. And that it'll keep comin': "If stupid is what sells, you can bet Hollywood will keep giving moviegoers want they want, and then some."

A doff of the BlogPulse bowler to our alert reader who noticed Friday we'd misspelled "Hazzard." We'd have gotten an "F" for that back in J-school.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:38 AM

Our shipment of homespun, corn-pone metaphors didn't arrive this week -- we think the mailroom accidentally sent it to the BlogPulse sea war tactics-analysis department because we got a Raytheon catalog with a submarine on the cover -- so this post will be rougher than the unshaven cheek of a man from America's agricultural zone. Ugh. Anyway, to business: The Dukes of Hazard is a-comin' out this weekend, and we blog watchers have noted something about it that can only bode ill for its success: nothing. Much as nobody mentioned Michael Bay's dog The Island until the week after its debut, and then only to confirm why it flopped so profoundly, so too are people only discussing "Dukes" to say they dread it. "I won’t see it," writes a poster on this blog (the reason why may cause some readers to blush; please be warned) and then there's the critics, who're being more critical than a... urm.. angry... ah.. horse? Forget it. The point is that the movie may lead its competitors in box office grosses after this opening weekend, but we believe that sum isn't going to be that high. In fact, let's play a little game: We think, factoring in the dearth of buzz and the poor reviews -- but also Jessica Simpson's butt -- that "Dukes" will take $25-$27 million this weekend. That's not a bad haul, but for a late-summer Hollywood production in a time when movies have been tanking worse than a heavy tank might tank, it's also not going to buy too many more Beverly Hills swimming pools. Maybe we'll be wrong, but check again Monday and let's see what we see.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:30 AM

Explosions-and-gunplay auteur Michael "Hubris" Bay may have been right on the proverbial money when he complained to the LA Times about the problems he was encountering in making his recent flick The Island (BlogPulse's no 38 link today). Or he may be the victim of cosmic reciprocity for telling that newspaper that he'd "never had a flop." Well, he has one now. The movie cost some $124 million to make, and in its opening weekend brought in $12.1 million. The moviesphere blames its, ah, terribleness. "I mourn the good ideas wasted on this summer vehicle," wrote arctic1976. "The theatre was incredibly empty, and judging by estimated box office returns, the theatre I went to was not alone in this respect," quipped Spakkadi. Bloggers have said The Island is based on a movie that a long time ago was skewered on Mystery Science Theatre 3000 -- perhaps Bay's mistake was stealing that idea, and not, say, this one.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 02:07 PM

In what could be a display of the power of dedicated, web-connected geekoids -- or alternately, a display of the entertainment industry's ability to reverse itself when it discovers dough-rey-me it hasn't yet snatched up -- the long-subcutaneous excitement over the coming movie Serenity has at last appeared in BlogPulse. Today's no. 7 link is for the movie trailer. "Eeek!!!" writes mistress_lupins, one of the legions of sci-fi devotees who never tire of praising creator Joss Whedon and the show "Firefly," from which "Serenity" is spun off. Which brings us to link no. 28, a newspaper column endorsing Whedon and "Firefly," which will soon be rebroadcast on the Sci-Fi channel. From reading its fans' devotions, the show seems to rank as a creative achievement just under the invention of moveable type and far above such things as the interstate highway system or most of the contents of the Louvre.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:48 AM

Web utopianists have praised Wikipedia for being the ultimate leveler in gathering and sharing information, and in BlogPulse's no 39 link today the site reaffirms why it has that reputation. It has compiled a list of the movies that contain the most uses of a certain word -- a word you might hesitate before using in front of your mother, let's say -- and if such terms offend you, don't click this link. Containing movies that use the word more than 100 times, it's a useful list, topped by a British film but followed closely by a Scorsese picture, and then, of course, at no. 3 is Martin Lawrence. (But it's not Black Knight, thank God.) Fosfor was surprised more movies didn't use the word more than 100 times, and clickery says the list is a good reason for the web to have been invented. True, but don't forget about things like this. (No. 12)

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:52 AM