^{Meanwhile, in Paraguay, “Humping Pig” was still playing to sell-out crowds.}

Despite near universal bad reviews, Max Payne won the top spot (full top ten after the jump) with an $18 million gross, just below studio predictions.  To whoever keeps seeing these: …Stop.  Video game adaptations are never good.  It won’t be different this time, I promise. Your child-like optimism is just encouraging them. Okay, rant over, you can go back to watching wrestling now.  Via Nikki Finke:

“It’s a good start,” one analyst told me [of Max Payne]. “But this is a film that will drop like a lead balloon. Is Fox going to be happy with a $38 mil domestic box office on this film?” [Estimated budget: $35 million]

Elsewhere, W grabbed the number four spot behind The Secret Life of Bees, with both performing about as well as expected.  Sex Drive turned out to be the big disappointment:

The sex comedy opened the weekend to just $3.5M from 2,421 dates for 9th place. ”It’s a huge disaster,” one film financing source told me. “They spent close to $25 mil and the film won’t break $7.5 million box office when all is said and done. And given its subject matter, I’m sure they did not sell this well overseas. So this has to be a major, major writedown for Summit.”

Anyway, so that’s the news.  Would it be more interesting if I wore this novelty top hat?  How bout if I drink my coffee from a twisty straw?  What if I cut off my own thumb?  Now it’s on again.  Now it’s off.  Now it’s on.  How do I do that!

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Here’s the part where I tell you what’s opening tonight. Click on the titles for trailers.

Max Payne - I’ll say this for it, the action scenes look pretty cool. You can really see the difference when you compare it to, say, Punisher. But all the critics hate it and it looks like it’s trying really really hard to be dark and disturbing even though it’s PG-13. Has there ever been a good movie based on a video game? Why the f-ck do they keep making these? Say hi to your mother for me. IN HELL.

Sex Drive – About a guy who goes on a drive in order to get laid. Get it? A sex drive. He’s going on a drive, for sex, and it’s also his desire for sex which drives him. Should I start over? Anyway, the Big Mexican Won’t Go Down scene was kinda funny.

W – Oliver Stone is the white Spike Lee. Even when I’m entertained by his movies I feel like I need a shower afterward. Everything you need to know is perfectly summed up by the plane scene in Any Given Sunday: Coach Pacino sits next to his young black quarterback Jamie Foxx in a desperate attempt to relate. PACINO: Whatcha listenin’ to? JAMIE FOXX: **takes out headphones** Trick Daddy. PACINO: Huh, I don’t know him. I really like jazz. Ya ever listen to jazz? JAMIE FOXX: **Shakes head** Rap. PACINO: What about Miles Davis? You ever listen to Miles Davis? JAMIE FOXX: **Shakes head** PACINO: Well, maybe I’ll make you a tape some time. JAMIE FOXX: **holds up CD and taps it** CDs. PACINO: **nods sadly, stares off in space – the generation gap is too wide!**

The Secret Life of Bees – Dear Diary: Today I flew around gathering the shit out of some pollen. I tell ya, we’re gonna be dick deep in some motherf-ckin honey this year. But no matter how hard I work, it’s never enough for the queen. I don’t know where she gets off. She doesn’t even have wings or a stinger like other queens, she’s just some matronly black chick. And she’s always spouting some corny southern “wisdom”. God she gets on my nerves. I mean, can’t she play any other role?

What Just Happened – This is supposed to be a Hollywood satire, and yet Sean Penn’s in it. Now, Sean Penn is a great actor, but he couldn’t even handle it when Chris Rock made a that-guy’s-in-every-movie joke about Jude Law at the Oscars. Says Roger Ebert: “This isn’t a Hollywood satire, it’s a sitcom. The flywheels of the plot machine keep it churning around, but it chugs off onto the back lot and doesn’t hit anybody in management.” Oh boy, Entourage the movie. I say rent see Tropic Thunder instead.

Either Hollywood Reporter is wrong or there’s some weirdness going on with Max Payne‘s rating.  Last week I reported on director John Moore’s bitching about trying to get a PG-13 and subsequent flip flop.  Today, Payne’s official website went live with “This film is not yet rated” on the main page and PG-13 listed in the About section.  Meanwhile, THR‘s ratings from last week list it as R, while the MPAA still has it as PG-13.

I’m still waiting to hear back from them, but my sense is that THR made a mistake.  Keep in mind that the studio behind Max Payne is Fox, and Fox is retarded.  It would be just like the company behind Babylon A.D. to figure a movie with R-rated appeal like Max Payne could reach a wider audience if they just took out half the stuff people liked in the first place.  “If you love titties, you’ll tolerate chicks in bikinis!”

Fox: Retarded like a fox.  That should be their slogan.  Also note: anything with “Babylon” in the title becomes 1000% cooler when you change it to “Baby Lawn”.

UPDATE:  Got confirmation from Hollywood Reporter that they made a mistake.  Though the real mistake was making a Max Payne movie PG-13.

The first of these two latest clips from Max Payne (via LatinoReview) starring Mark Wahlberg illustrates one of my favorite Hollywood movie clichés: A gang of ethnically diverse thugs menaces the protagonist.  Run for your lives, it’s Hootie and the Blowfish! Let’s see… black dude in a do rag, pasty whiteboy with a hipster mustache – hmm, do we have time for a Sikh who helps his Eskimo buddy in a wheelchair up the stairs?

The second clip is an extended version of the shot in the trailer where the crazy winged-demon thing drags the dude out the window.  The slo-mo effect is pretty GD cool looking, but if the creature turns out to be a figment of someone’s imagination I’m going to throw my own poop at the screen like a monkey.  Hi winged demon thing, you’ve got claws on your feet, what’s that like? I was in The Happening, do you remember that movie?  Say hi to your mother for me.
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About a month ago, Max Payne received an R-rating from the MPAA (which makes sense, considering it’s based on a shoot-em-up video game about whores and Satanists.  Back then, director John Moore had this to say:

[Getting a PG-13 rating] continues to be a challenge. We’re right in the middle of it now. We’re suffering from what I call Batman blowback. The Motion Picture Association of America gave The Dark Knight a PG-13 rating and basically sucked Warner Bros. cock. I have a serious amount of issues with the MPAA. Did you know it was made up of volunteers? As if that somehow excludes them from some type of wrongdoing. You can’t serve on it if you’re a homosexual or if you didn’t grow up in a shared parenthood home. Go to their website and read their charter about what gives a fair and balanced view for typical parents [Editor’s Note: All the MPAA’s website says is that Board members must be parents themselves and have “a shared parenthood experience”.  Doesn’t say anything about homosexuals one way or the other.]. We’re still strangled by an association that’s straight out of the House Un-American Activities Committee.

But now that it’s received a PG-13, he had this to say:

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