I’m not going to pretend I’m qualified to name this year’s best movies (more qualified than most who make these lists, but still) or that I saw every movie, but people on the internet love lists, and I love money.  I find that the strippers object when you try to stuff post-it notes in their vaginas.  On that note, here are the 10 movies of 2009 that I would stuff in my vagina like a $1,000 dollar bill.  KNIVES OUT!

1. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
I need to see this again to truly understand what I experienced, but if I’m honest, it was probably the most fun I had in a theater this year. (I should’ve gone with Alanis Morissette *frownie*) Was it fun because it was really good, or just really crazy and weird?  I don’t really know.  But isn’t it a little unfair to make that distinction?

2.  The Hurt Locker
Definitely the most well-made movie this year.  It was a simple, straightforward plot, but it was well-acted, perfectly shot, and as tense as waiting for your STD-test results.  It really took you to another place, and that’s what it’s all about, right?  (other than being able to sit on your ass and eat nachos).  Every director should study the way this was storyboarded and edited. Especially Brett Ratner, that guy sucks.

3. Anvil! The Story of Anvil
What can I say, there’s just something about middle-aged men trying to live out their childhood dreams while repeatedly getting kicked in the face that does it for me.  It kept making me teary-eyed without feeling like it was trying really hard to do so (like Up). Damn you, you lovable Canadians.

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For one week only, you’ll be able to see Zack Snyder’s director’s cut of Watchmen in theaters, provided you live in L.A., New York, Minneapolis, or Dallas (whose D did Minneapolis suck for that? that’s still in Minnesota, right?).

The cut, which will have an additional 25 minutes of footage including the death of a supporting character [Hollis Mason, the original Nite Owl], will screen in Los Angeles, New York, Minneapolis and Dallas before the movie is released on Blu-ray and DVD on July 21.
The rollout will culminate with a special screening July 25 at Comic-Con that is designed to act as a BD-Live event, a Blu-ray feature that will allow any viewer in North America to watch the movie simultaneously as the audience at Comic-Con, see and hear Snyder comment on the movie, and even ask questions. The screening will then be archived and will be able to be accessed for future viewings. [THR]

Hopefully the extra 25 minutes will be mostly gratuitous, slow-motion violence.  I’d be disappointed if it tried to explain some of the random stuff (like the bat-liger cameo) at the end of the film, which I found sort of delightfully inexplicable.  I’ve heard the DVD also has a special function where you can make The Comedian murder a pregnant chick whenever things get boring, so that’s nice.

Here’s a sad story: Watchmen, which may not have been perfect but was still a fine attempt at the rare, ballsy superhero movie, looks like it’s going to be outgrossed by 1997′s Batman & Robin - pretty much the gold standard in horrible horrible filmmaking (see video evidence below).

Seven weeks after its release, Watchmen’s legs have all but buckled. For the weekend just gone, the film brought home $199,114. That makes for a total take of $106,848,750 in America. It’s the 358th most successful film of all time in the US, and in 357th is Batman & Robin.

Overseas, things haven’t been as bright as hoped for either. The current international take for the film currently sits at $74,207,581, for a total worldwide gross of $181,103,123. For the sake of comparison, Batman & Robin drew over $130m overseas, for a total of $238m. We estimated, and we thought conservatively, that Watchmen would get to around $150m in the US, but it seems fairly clear now that it won’t even make it to $110m.

Out of Watchmen’s receipts has to come the exhibitors’ revenues, marketing costs, distribution expenses and such like. And then there’s the film’s budget, with the most conservative suggesting that it cost $120m to bring the film to the screen in the first place.

Off the back of box office returns such as Watchmen’s, it’s perhaps unsurprising that we’re not going to be seeing a mass market R-rated comic book movie for a long time to come. [DenofGeek via fark]

Sad.  But maybe the execs will be circumspect, and realize it wasn’t the tone or the rating that was to blame, maybe it was just unrealistic to think a cult graphic novel would compete with a movie about comic-book superheroes that have been around for 50 years.  Ha, just kidding. Of course they won’t.  They’ll just think “See? I told you we should’ve cast a Black-Eyed Pea.”
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I never said Watchmen was the best film ever made.  But I did say everyone should see it, because if it doesn’t do well, studios will never make another adult-oriented comic book movie again.  Well guess what, it looks like that’s what’s happening. IESB claims a source at Warner is saying they’re unlikely to do another R-rated “tentpole” movie – and keep in mind they have Terminator Salvation coming out this summer and it’s still unrated. IESB says…

How much of the movie going market – specifically those that go to see superhero/genre films – is cut out by rating a film R versus a PG-13? Warner Bros. thinks too much and is said to be focusing solely on PG-13 rated superhero/tentpole films only, definitely harder than the “family friendly” superhero films of Fantastic Four but not in the R rated range. Think about it, the movie going audience is “huge”, now the genre/superhero movie going audience is a portion of that “huge” and the R rated/genre/superhero movie going audience is an even smaller portion of that “huge.”  [Oh my gosh, that required "huge" thinking!]
I liked Watchmen and thought it was a fantastic piece of filmmaking, but it’s definitely for adults only. And no kids will be asking mommy to buy them shirts or Rorschach masks from this one.

Oh yeah? I know at least one kid who will. The problem is, finance guys run movie studios, and finance guys’ jobs consist mainly of pretending they know something you don’t.  So instead of taking all factors into account and admitting that this stuff is near impossible to predict,  they just mash everything into some retarded business-school equation.  You can bet that if Rorschach had worn a red shirt for the entire movie, there’d be a no-more-characters-in-red-shirts memo going around WB this week.

Pulling off a huge upset, Nic Cage’s Knowing easily took number one at the box office, taking in $24.8 million to second-place I Love You, Man‘s $18. Elsewhere, number five Watchmen‘s total climbed to $98.1 million, which is only slightly ahead of number nine Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Jail (with $87 million total so far).  Yikes.  But perhaps the biggest surprise?  Someone liked Knowing.  And not just Pete Hammond.  Ebert says..

“Knowing” is among the best science-fiction films I’ve seen — frightening, suspenseful, intelligent and, when it needs to be, rather awesome.

…Really?  What does it all mean?  Will I have to go back to living in a world where Nic Cage is a respected actor rather than a guy who wears a bear suit and has ridiculous hair?  Because I won’t do it. WHY ISN’T HE BURNED? WHYISN’THEBURNEDWHYISN’THEBURNED??  …What’s that?  Okay, maybe Ebert’s just smoking dope on this one.  Phew.

(full top ten after jump)

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