(I was trying to get a screencap of Sandra Bullock looking really retarded, but I couldn’t do any better than the actual poster)

According to a recent poll of theater owners, 2009 was the year when Sandra Bullock swooped down and stole America’s heart like an eagle stealing a BlackBerry.

In the eyes of U.S. movie theater owners, Sandra Bullock shined as 2009′s top Hollywood star at the boxoffice.  Quigley Publishing Co.’s annual list released on Thursday of top money making stars, based on a poll of hundreds of theater executives, had Bullock beating out such stars as George Clooney and Denzel Washington, on the strength of her roles in “The Proposal” and “The Blind Side.”
List does not rank stars only on how much cash their films made, but on what theater owners say about who attracts audiences on their star power alone.
For instance, “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” was the top movie at U.S. and Canada boxoffices in 2009 with more than $400 million, but many in Hollywood attribute that to the appeal of the franchise itself and the toys it’s based on.
“Public Enemies” star Johnny Depp came in at No. 2 on Quigley’s top 10 list, followed by Matt Damon, George Clooney, Robert Downey Jr., Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, Brad Pitt, Shia LaBeouf and Denzel Washington. [THR]

Sandra Bullock is so thoroughly unspectacular that you couldn’t possibly have an opinion about this.  Remember that South Park episode where the boys get diagnosed with ADHD and put on Ritalin, and the next thing you know they’re at a Phil Collins concert?  Sandra Bullock’s movies are like that.

(“They may take our lives, but they’ll never take our freedom, because this, this is our independence day, meow meow I’m king of the cat-monkeys, coo coo ka choo.”)

Over the weekend, Avatar passed Dark Knight to become the fifth movie in history to earn more than $1 billion worldwide (domestically, Dark Knight still leads by about $180m).  Number one all-time is Titanic, and now that Avatar stands at number four, James Cameron has directed two of the five (see the top five after the jump).  Sources say that upon hearing the news, he barbecued a unicorn over a slow-burning pit of $100 dollar bills, and after his personal chef finished it with a fine truffle and komodo-dragon sauce, a high-priced call girl spit it into his mouth while she pleasured herself with a gold bar.  And then the block quotes came:

“Avatar” has an advantage over those other billion-dollar movies: About 75 percent of its domestic business has come from theaters showing it in 3-D [which costs more].
[Overall] the year was strong but not a modern record-breaker for number of tickets sold. According to Hollywood.com, domestic admissions came in at 1.42 billion in 2009, the most in the last five years, though well below the modern record of 1.6 billion in 2002.
In Hollywood’s glory years of the 1930s and ’40s, before television eroded the movie audience, estimated movie attendance ran as high as 4 billion some years.
“Leave it to James Cameron to do this. To not only set the technical world on fire, the visual world on fire, but also the box-office world on fire 12 years after `Titanic,’” said Paul Dergarabedian, box-office analyst for Hollywood.com. [ABCNews]

Gee, Paul, that is some brilliant analysis.  “So you’re saying he did it by setting things on fire…” Michael Bay muttered to himself while quietly petting his cheetah.

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Pretty boring box office this weekend.  The two new big releases were Princess and the Frog and Invictus.  Princess pulled in $25 million for first place, while Clint Eastwood’s Invictus landed in third with a disappointing $9 million.  It’s just that Americans don’t understand foreign countries or foreign sports.  What’s rugby?  How do the children learn to play if Sandra Bullock doesn’t teach them?  It was all a bit confusing for old Clint, who simply blamed the gooks.

Meanwhile, The Blind Side is officially a phenomenon, landing at number two with $15.4 million and passing $150 million overall.  Four weeks in and it’s still playing, while New Moon, which opened the same weekend, has fallen to fourth. It’s even close to passing 2012 in cumulative gross.  Clearly this is a sign that President Obummer should reduce the tax burden on rich white families so that they can afford to adopt more black kids to play football for their alma mater.  What’s the problem?  Everyone wins.

Elsewhere, Old Dogs has made almost $40 million so far and holy crap who is seeing this movie. If it was any more blatantly designed for stupid people, Tom Bergeron would be narrating.  Full top ten below.

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A bye week, that’s what this week felt like.  But the weekend after Thanksgiving is always slow, and even though The Blind Side landed on top with a mediocre $20 million in its third week, business overall was up 21% over last year.  So put that on yr Power Point, Mrs. Potato Dick.

Brothers and Armored were the two new releases, and they earned a not-particularly-noteworthy $9.7 and $6.6 million, respectively.  Fantastic Mr. Fox fell all the way out of the top 10 despite being really good, and I wonder if this is partially my fault for being too lazy to finish a review.  I’m so sorry, you guys. *cutting*

Finally, the other new release this weekend, Transylmania, set a record for the lowest gross ever for a film opening on more than 1,000 screens, earning just $272,000 at 1,002 theaters.

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If you pay any attention to the world of film critics, and I hope to God you don’t, you’ve probably already heard of Pete Hammond, who’s sort of notorious for being a whore.  Fittingly, he now works for the LA Times. His latest column, despite predicting an Oscar nomination for Sandra Bullock (…no comment), has a headline with perhaps easily the best thing he’s ever written. He calls The Blind Side a “Number two with a Bullock!”

Yes, a steamy, robust number two with a healthy loaf of Bullock pinched off in it.  And a play on words, it works on so many levels!  Finally, a Pete Hammond poster quote I can trust!  And you better believe I used Comic Sans.  Comic Sans and Pete Hammond’s writing were meant for each other.