This weekend in terrible movies

Thanks to the pathetic single bookworms of the world, Twilight reigns supreme at the box office, taking in 42 million over the weekend. This basically ensures that guys around the country are now going to need a pale complexion and fangs in order to get laid. Crap...
 
The Box-Office Top Five
#1 "The Twilight Saga: New Moon" ($42.5 million)
#2 "The Blind Side" ($40.1 million)
#3 "2012" ($18 million)
#4 "Old Dogs" ($16.8 million)
#5 "A Christmas Carol" ($16 million)

2012 made just $18 million and after having a $200 million budget and pulling in $65 million during their opening weekend. Looks like they're not recouping their costs in that actual disaster.

The pleasant surprise is "The Blind Side", which gave Twilight a run for its money. This football movie shows that maybe some people out there have a brain, or aren't hopelessly single.

They might have to make movie theater seats bigger

No seriously, really, really big. All that popcorn and other wonderful menu items are so packed with calories, you'll have to spend a couple days at the gym just to work it off. Eww.

The real drama in movie theaters these days isn’t happening on screen.

It’s at the concession stand.

When moviegoers plunk down the bucks for snacks at the nation’s theaters they may be putting themselves at greater risk than any character in the flick.

ABCNews.com reports that, according to a new study by the consumer group Center for Science in the Public Interest, the offerings at concession stands contain an alarming amount of sugar fat, and calories. Even the smallest bag of popcorn has 700 calories and three days' worth of saturated fat.

The CSPI report studied concessions sold at the nation’s top three movie theater chains: Regal Entertainment Group, AMC Theaters and Cinemark.

“A combo at Regal (meaning a medium popcorn and medium soda) has 1,610 calories,” wrote the study’s authors. “That’s like eating six scrambled eggs with chedder cheese, four bacon strips, and four sausage links before the lights come up.”

Sixteen hundred Calories? That makes McDonalds look like weight watcher. Looks like if I'm going on a diet I won't be watching movies anytime soon...

Will Ferrell is an overpaid hack

Has Will Ferrell followed the steps of Adam Sandler as being one the most famous people ever, and then crashing back to earth with an incredible flop? You can't really argue with that considering his latest movies which have received critical pans and bombed at the box office. Now Forbes has named him the most overpaid actor in show business.

Looks like "Land of the Lost" has earned star Will Ferrell the dubious distinction of being the most overpaid actor in show business, according to the list makers at Forbes magazine.

Forbes looked at 100 top actors based on their widely released films over the past five years. It factored in the production costs of those movies against how much boxoffice, DVD and other revenue they generated in order to come up with an operating income for each film, which it then compared with the salaries the stars earned.

In Ferrell's case, the actor's films earned just $3.29 for every dollar he was paid. That's a pretty poor contrast to the $160 that Shia LaBeouf's movies returned to the studios for every buck he earned.

That figure, by the way, put LaBeouf -- who starred in "Transformers" in 2007 and "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" in 2008 -- at the top of Forbes list of Best Actors for the Buck. Also included on that list were Robert Downey Jr., Christian Bale and Dennis Quaid.

"Land of the Lost," a boxoffice dud starring Ferrell as an offbeat scientist, racked up about $100 million in production costs, not including marketing, but only returned $65 million at the worldwide boxoffice. His movie "Semi-Pro," which earned $44 million at the worldwide boxoffice, has also dragged down Ferrell's return-on-investment performance lately.

This has always struck me as odd considering that Ferrell himself is still a pretty funny dude, but it just seems like the crap he gets himself into is his downfall. He was also overexposed to the point where you couldn't go to the grocery store without being thrown some sort of Ferrell-ism. That kind of stuff causes your shtick to get old quick, and in the world of comedy, your lifespan in terms of popularity can be pretty dawn short.

But hey, that doesn't mean he's poor or anything...

Why Vampires Suck... annoying movie posters

Just a question... why does every Twilight poster make the actors look like their deathly ill. I know that vampires are supposed to be some sort of nocturnal creatures of the night, but seriously, Edward looks like Sammy Sosa after a bad skin-bleaching accident.

2012 hauls in $65 million

Apparently people are in love with another "end of the world" movie despite terrible reviews and one of the most ridiculous movie trailers everywhere. The American public is totally cool with suspending belief and buying into the joke that a limousine could outrun and 156.0 magnitude earthquake.

World-ending scenarios are certainly cause for concern in reality, but moviegoers couldn't resist dabbling in doomsday this weekend with the release of Sony's "2012." Director Roland Emmerich, already known for disaster epics such as "Independence Day" and "The Day After Tomorrow," set the box office on fire once again with a $65 million weekend debut domestically and an additional $160 million overseas, resulting in a $225 million worldwide intake.

World-ending scenarios are certainly cause for concern in reality, but moviegoers couldn't resist dabbling in doomsday this weekend with the release of Sony's "2012." Director Roland Emmerich, already known for disaster epics such as "Independence Day" and "The Day After Tomorrow," set the box office on fire once again with a $65 million weekend debut domestically and an additional $160 million overseas, resulting in a $225 million worldwide intake. 

So I watched "The Day After Tomorrow" last night and despite it actually being completely ridiculous, it was still pretty entertaining. I'm assuming the same is for "2012" but just with different actors - don't fix it if it's not broken. 

News Corp. looking to block its content from Google News

Just to show you how stupid the news business is, I'd like to present to you the case of Rupert Murdoch, who built himself quite the empire in information. Fox News, a plethora of newspapers (including the Wall Street Journal) and MySpace. In other words, he's probably burning actual stacks of money to keep his mansion warm. Anyways, seeing Google News (which it is not) as a stealer of information, Murdoch is now contemplating blocking his newspapers from Google News and similar features from Bing and Ask.

Google has argued that its news aggregator simply points users to content online and actually helps drive traffic to news sites. Murdoch was not impressed by Internet traffic and said he was more interested in finding loyal readers.

"What's the point of having someone ... who likes a headline they see in Google, come to us?" he asked. "The fact is, there's not enough advertising in the world to go around to make all the Web sites profitable. We'd rather have fewer people coming to our Web site but paying."

At this point, users can see the first paragraph of most articles in the Wall Street Journal, but to read the rest of the story online, they must sign up for a subscription. Murdoch was not sure that that is the approach he'll take with all his publications.

One thing Murdoch is touting is the subscription-based service as opposed to an ad service for the money-making model on his newspapers websites. Problem is, with the subscription-based service, any schmuck can come along with a subscription and then post it for free online and then people will go and read that instead of your actual newspaper site. At least Google drives traffic to your site, as opposed to just copying and ignoring the source altogether.

If Murdoch blocks his newspapers, something tells me Google News will just go to other places.

"Fourth Kind" as painful as an actual alien abduction

After seeing the initial creepy trailer for the fourth kind, I thought "The Fourth Kind" might has some potential as the continuation of the "Blair With"-type movies but with aliens. But apparently it gets run into the ground by showing actual real footage... not sure how they screwed that up.

The new sci-fi abduction thriller The Fourth Kind should really be called 'The Fourth Wall', because right from the start the film consciously makes the choice to break that wall and have the actors talk directly to the audience as themselves. As the camera annoyingly spins around her, star Milla Jovovich walks right up to the lens and tells us that she will be playing a real life person, psychiatrist Abbey Tyler, who you’ll sometimes see on screen in purportedly “real video footage” of the incidents portrayed. Jovovich then warns us that what we’ll see is deeply disturbing, but the ultimate effect of all this explanation isn’t disturbance, it’s just distraction.

Writer/director Olatunde Osunsanmi tries to convince us that the story is true by constantly using a split screen of the “real footage” next to his actors’ word for word reenactments. Unfortunately instead of making the film more chilling and unsettling, that technique just makes the whole thing obvious and theatrical: you’re always aware you’re watching a movie with actors and are never drawn into the mythology of the story.

The movie operates under dual assumption that you’ve either never seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind or The X Files, or that you’ll buy into this as an unofficial sequel to both. But the sad fact is that The Fourth Kind plays more like one of those cheesy alien documentaries you see on Discovery Channel, complete with low budget abduction vignettes intercut with the real victims interviews about what you’ve just seen. 

So basically I'm going to see middle-aged housewives complain about alien abductions? Forget about it, I'll just watch "Unsolved Mysteries."

Sports journalists have unoriginal headlines

Seriously? Do I need to explain this one?

Couple steals 1,000 bags from airport

This is a weird story and should be posted somewhere in the dumb criminals section. Get this... over 1,000 stolen suitcases were stolen from the Sky Harbor Airport by this couple to your left. Wow, and what was even more entertaining than the complete lack of security in an area of supposed alertness was how simple and stupid the plan to steal these bags was.

Keith King, 61, and Stacy King, 38, were arrested at their home in Waddell Friday for allegedly stealing the luggage from Sky Harbor Airport, MyFoxPhoenix.com reported. They were charged with burglary and tampering with evidence.

Police say the Kings are suspected in an alleged scam involving at least 1,000 stolen suitcases and maybe even thousands of pieces of luggage.

A Sky Harbor Airport officer grew suspicious when he witnessed Keith King allegedly walking out with a bag a few weeks ago. Investigators say King visited the airport more than 60 times recently without ever boarding a plane, MyFoxPhoenix.com reported.

They apparently would ship it in a horse trailer even though they never had horses at their house. They would also have yard sales on a frequent basis to sell the bags. Hmmmm, any cop worth their bacon would be able to see somebody driving on a regular basis to the airport with a horse trailer (horses don't fly often) and then neighbors saw this suspicious selling activity outside their house. Put two and two together and you have some pretty dumb criminals. Du-oh!

Leno would go back to "Tonight" if asked

Perhaps you've heard about what a dumpster fire this whole "two late night show" schedule thingy that NBC has been doing. Some people don't like Conan (even though I think he's the funniest guy on TV) and Leno is drawing some pretty terrible ratings.

Now Leno has come out and said that he'd do "The Tonight Show" again if asked, although he heaped the praise on Conan. Personally I think that NBC might want to wait this one out and see what happens in the ratings six months down the road.

Oh and Leno talks about Letterman too.

NEW YORK (AP) - Prime-time newcomer Jay Leno says he would have rather stayed put at "The Tonight Show"—and if NBC offered him that job again, he'd take it.

In an interview with Broadcasting & Cable magazine published online Monday, Leno hastily added that such a decision isn't his to make.

Conan O'Brien, his successor as "Tonight" host after 17 years, is "doing fine," Leno said.

"Conan is in the same position I was in when I took over. It takes a while. Some will like it; some will leave forever and not come back."

Leno said he doesn't think the recent controversy surrounding his former late-night rival David Letterman "will have a big effect at all."

Referring to Letterman's acknowledged sexual affairs with female members of his staff, Leno said, "If it were me, it would kill me. I'm the guy who's been married 29 years. But Dave has never pretended to be Mr. Moral America, he's never set himself up that way. He's not a hypocrite."

I can't tell if this is a back-handed comment or not but whatev, he's Jay Leno, he can do what he wants. He's been on Home Improvement.