Welcome to today’s box office wipe up, now consisting almost solely of movies I don’t care about.  Robert Zemeckis 3D motion-capture thingie A Christmas Carol was number one with $31 million, though the studio was hoping for more like $35 or $40.  It remains to be seen whether this is a harbinger of an eventual stinker or whether it will continue to play through the holidays. It’s pretty ballsy to expect people to be thinking about Christmas before Thanksgiving, and I’m just waiting patiently until this whole stupid mo-cap experiment is over.

This is It landed at number two and everyone says it’s great and blah blah blah I’m never going to stop hearing about this am I.  Men Who Stare at Goats opened decently at $13 million, which is more than half its estimated budget.  I actually want to see it I just haven’t gotten around to seeing it yet, in case you wanted to know.  I’m very busy you see.

The Fourth Kind beat Paranormal Activity for the four spot, but while Paranormal is close to the $100 million mark, The Fourth Kind will be lucky to make $30 mil.  The Box, from Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly, basically bombed at $8 million.  Something about it makes me not care. On the indie front, Precious opened big, earning $100,000 per location.  I heard Robin Quivers talking about it on Howard Stern this morning and she said it was “torture” and “why don’t they just take the audience out behind the barn and shoot us.”  The gist was, “I don’t have to watch this torturous movie to know some peoples’ lives are horrible”.  That was basically my impression from the trailer, but now you’ve heard it from someone who’s actually seen it, and a famous African-American radio personality at that.  Join me next week for a box office wipe up post that might actually be funny.  No promises.

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(The Men Who Stare at Goatse)

Opening this weekend (click titles for reviews, trailer after the jump)

The Box
Frank Langella has a box and if you press the button you get some money, but someone in the world also dies.  So what’s the catch again?  And how much are we talking, like a twenty spot, or less?

A Christmas Carol
A digital Jim Carrey stars in Robert Zemeckis’ latest attempt to make motion-capture happen.  Dude, just film the damn actors, this computer crap looks stupid.

The Fourth Kind
Milla Jovovich and, uh, alien possession or something.  I’m a little disappointing with the trailer because I know the first kind is golden showers, the second kind is poo play, and I was kind of intrigued to find out what the fourth kind was.  Had my fingers crossed for some sort of shomit bukkake.

Men Who Stare at Goats
George Clooney, The Dude, Ewan Macgregor, goats — what’s not to like?  I had high hopes, but the reviews haven’t been too good so far.   And now I definitely won’t see it because I trust those fat, disgusting, know-it-all shut-ins like they were my brothers.

Precious
An inner-city girl goes on a quest for the magic ring that turned her fat so she can throw it off a mountain.  Just kidding, of course, except the part about her being really fat.  Supposed to be good, but then Oprah and Tyler Perry are involved and screw them.

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This is the first trailer for Donnie Darko/Southland Tales director Richard Kelly’s The Box.  It’s based on a Richard Matheson short story called “Button, Button,” which was also made into a Twilight Zone episode.  The premise is that a mysterious stranger (Frank Langella) gives a couple (Cameron Diaz and James Marsden) a box with a button.  He tells them if they press the button, they get a million dollars, but someone they don’t know will die.  I guess back in the 70s this was considered a moral dilemma.  If it happened today, my only question would be, “So if I press it twice, do I get two million dollars?”

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When you call your movie “The Box” (though it used to be called “Button, Button,” which isn’t much better), put Cameron Diaz on the poster, and put a big red slit down her face, it sends a pretty strong subliminal message.  And that message is, “THIS MOVIE IS ABOUT PERIODS AND VAGINAS.  IF YOU COME SEE THIS, CAMERON DIAZ IS GOING TO HAVE HER PERIOD ALL OVER YOUR FACE.”

I’m not sure that’s a selling point, but hey man, don’t shoot the messenger.

Veteran creepy dude Frank Langella has signed on for The Box, with Cameron Diaz and (director) Richard Kelly, in yet another movie that could be its own porn remake. 

Provided his Donnie Darko follow up Southland Tales  (starring The Rock, Stifler, Mandy Moore, Justin Timberlake, Bai Ling, Vizzini from The Princess Bride, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Janeane Garofalo, Kevin Smith, John Larroquette and others) doesn’t somehow forever alter the space-time continuum as we know it, Richard Kelly’s The Box will feature Langella as a stranger who presents a mysterious box to a woman. When presented with mysterious box, I usually just yell "zoinks!" and hit it with a shovel.  Chicks love that.

The Box is "based on an old Richard Matheson story called Button, Button. (The basic premise is this: You’re given a magical box and if you press the button, you become rich — but a total stranger will die.)"  Just before all the possible vagina jokes short-circuited my brain, I wondered what the fuck kind of box has buttons on it.   Most of my boxes are made of cardboard.  Did they let Diaz name this box?  I mean, are we sure it’s actually a box and not, like, a shirt, or a television remote? Because she’s really bad with household objects.  One time I asked her to pass the salt and she handed me a tube of shaving cream. Who even has that at the dinner table?