(Kelly Brook and Riley Steele on the set of Piranha 3D; source = WWTDD)

Sometimes we forget that the victims of this financial crisis aren’t all Best Buy clerks who can no longer afford the mortgage payments on their $600,000 house, or Wall Street execs who couldn’t buy new ponies for their daughter’s yacht this Christmas.  Some of the victims are just regular, hard-working films like Piranha 3D.

The Weinstein Company has fallen on hard times. Nine is a financial disaster, despite its Golden Globe nominations. And their 2009 genre box office was gloomy.
Tonight, the company has announced Piranha 3D has been pushed out of April into an undetermined August slot. David Glaser, a senior Weinstein Co. executive, tells the L.A. Times that the decision was not motivated by finances.
Sources tell us that when the film does arrives in August, it will not be in 3D. [Shocktillyoudrop]

Poor Piranha 3D. It’s sad when you can’t even afford the thing that’s in the title.  But I think we all know who’s to blame for this:  Kate Hudson.  That’s right, Kate Hudson.  Kate Hudson was in Nine, and they even let her sing a damned song in the trailer, despite the fact that she hasn’t been in a movie that’s scored over 50% on RottenTomatoes in ten years.  Her last four scored 12%, 15%, 10%, and 21%, respectively (full numbers after the jump).  Kate Hudson is to movies what Chinese milk is to baby food, and not only do they not take her out, they keep putting her name on the box.  Bottom line, this is all her fault, and the sooner she pays us back the TARP money, the sooner we can all get on with our lives.

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Everybody keeps sending me this Nic Cage as Everyone site so I assumed everyone had already seen it.  But new is a little slow today, so here you go.  The Tommy Boy picture is my favorite.  Other headlines:

National Society of Film Critics names Hurt Locker best movie – which may mean its Oscar chances are cursed, as 7 of their last 11 choices failed to even get an Oscar nomination. We might as well chuck The Hurt Locker onto that non-Oscar-winning scrapheap with forgotten turds like Pulp Fiction.   I mean who even remembers that? [Cinematical]

Peter Jackson has been knighted in his native New Zealand.  New Zealand’s only been a colony since 1840, so I’m not sure why they’d even have knights, but I hear the ceremony involves shearing a sheep while being presented with a ceremonial salami. Congrats, Pete. (Also, how many dudes named “Pete” were involved in that ceremony?  I’d bet at least five.) [THR]

Weinstein says they’re staying the course with Nine, contrary to previous reports.  Which is great news for the Golden Globes’ credibility. Hey, films tracking 37% on rottentomatoes always get nominated for best picture awards, right? [THR]

Here are some of the songs for The Goonies musical that Rob Dean and Keith Doughty have been trying to make happen for the past eight years.  See “Sloth’s Song” after the jump. In related news, I sang Billy Joel using only mouthfarts once.  [playlist here, with lyrics over at /Film]

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As a whole, Christmas weekend be breakin’ box office records, son:

• Biggest Friday through Sunday gross ever
• Biggest Christmas box office ever
• Most tickets ever sold in a three-day period (37.3 million)
• First weekend that three separate movies grossed more than $50 million each.

Sadly, one of those three movies was Alvin & the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel.   Nonetheless, Hollywood studio execs are calling this windfall the best Christmas present ever, despite them all of them being Jews.  Other facty things:

• Avatar fell only 2.6% from its opening weekend, which is impressive considering a 40-60% drop is standard for Blockbusters these days (though it should be noted that three other movies did more business than last week)
• Sherlock Holmes set a record for a Christmas-Day opening with $24.9 million
• Alvin & the Chipmunks audiences were mostly families and “heavily Latino.”  I thought that was kind of funny because I didn’t know they even kept track of that stuff.  They don’t ask when you buy a ticket, do they?  Maybe they just take the number of stabbings and extrapolate.  *whacks piñata*
• Nine bombed.  It earned about $5.5 million in almost 1500 theaters.  Weinstein is pulling it from the Midwest to focus advertising on the coasts.  The Weinstein Company was already in financial trouble and Nine cost them $64 million.  Which is a lot to pay for what appears to be the world’s longest perfume commercial.  Toldja, dudes, next time go with the hooker yacht.  If there’s better investment than a hooker yacht, I don’t know what it is.

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Do you know what today is, folks? It’s Golden Globe nomination day, that time of year when we pretend the Golden Globes are somehow relevant, even though they’re decided by the “Hollywood Foreign Press Association,” a shady group made up of press from publications no one reads who studios can basically buy off with a nice enough gift bag. Yay, here are their nominations! Most of which are from movies you couldn’t have seen because they aren’t out yet! Hooray, the HFPA is so much cooler than us!  (see also: their TV nominees at Warmingglow)

Best Drama
Avatar
Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
Precious
Up in the Air

Best Comedy or Musical
(500) Days of Summer
The Hangover
It’s Complicated
Julie & Julia
Nine

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Nine times out of ten when a person is offended by something, it’s because he or she is an idiot.  Moral outrage = not enough oxygen in the womb.  Sorry, folks, it’s just science.  But then this poster for Rob Marshall’s Nine came out, and I thought hey, why should stupid people have all the fun?  I want to be the aggrieved party for once.  So, as an Italian-American, I’d like to formally express my moral outrage at having Nine use the tagline “Be Italian.”  What is that supposed to mean?  Is this how you see us?  What an unfair stereotype.  You think we all just run around singing cheesy-ass songs and shooting movies that make perfume ads look subtle by comparison?  Screw you, buddy, you can’t just go around making sweeping generalizations like that, this isn’t Mexico.

I went ahead and made a poster that better reflects the diverse nature of real Italians.  I used an ancient symbol of national pride, Italian Anteater.

[via Cinematical, Yahoo]