Here’s your box office wipe-up for the weekend of October 2-4.  Now with helpful section headings.

Zombieland kicked ass
Buoyed by strong word-of-mouth that I thought it didn’t fully deserve, it more than tripled the next-highest new release (and no, I don’t consider a re-release of Toy Story in 3D a new release).  That said, it did have its moments.  It’s at least a triumph of solid execution, if not of creative thinking.  …Or perhaps you prefer your box office roundups with more truthy pop-psychology?

Horror comedy struggles with general audiences because of its awkward thematic and tonal clash: comedy is generally benevolent while horror is inherently malevolent, rendering horror comedy too funny to be scary and too scary to be funny. Zombieland skirted this issue by falling squarely on the side of action comedy in its marketing campaign. [BoxOfficeMojo]

Good point.  But on the other hand, go f’ck yourself.

Invention of Lying… not so much.
I wanted to see this more than Zombieland, but ended up seen Zombieland to see what the fuss was about.  Perhaps that was Invention‘s problem.  For a movie you’d expect to have good buzz (who doesn’t like Ricky Gervais?), it didn’t have very good buzz.  But you know what does have good buzz?  A bee drinking martinis.  Remember I said that.

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Here’s Louis C.K. on the Tonight Show last night doing some bits you’ve probably already heard and enjoy (I can tell you’re all hip because of the scarves), but more importantly, at the 4:30 mark the interview starts, and he tells a story from the set of The Invention of Lying with Ricky Gervais.  It’s about how he was doing a scene with John Hodgman and he thought of a really hilarious Hodgman burn an so he told everyone about it, but then… well, let’s just say it doesn’t go well.  It’s strange, because usually Jewish comedians are so full of social grace and devil-may-care charm.  Anyway, after that he shows a clip from the movie, and it looks pretty good, and Philip Seymour Hoffman kindareminds me of Eyebrow Kitty.  Haha, good story, Vince.

(sorry, foreigners, if you can find the clip anywhere else besides Hulu, please send it).