This weekend’s box office results proved once again the simple economic principle of supply and demand. Animated pic Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs topped the movie charts with a strong $30 million debut, quenching the drought of kids fare in the marketplace. In contrast, not even the purported female dream team of Megan Fox and writer Diablo Cody could save Jennifer’s Body from a glut of horror movies in theaters, grossing only $6.8 million, a tad better then last weekend’s disappointing $5 million opener of Sorority Row. The performances of the other two new wide releases The Informant! and Love Happens supported the current hypothesis floating around Hollywood, that movie stars no longer matter. Not Matt Damon nor Jennifer Aniston could do much to propel their movies into box office hits. The Informant! from director Steven Soderbergh grossed an estimated $10.5 million for a second place opening while Love Happens, co-starring Aaron Eckhart, bowed in fourth place with $8.4 million. Rounding out the top five was Tyler Perry’s I Can Do Bad All By Myself. In its second weekend of release, the film starring Taraji P. Henson dropped an estimated 57% to gross another $10 million for a third place finish.
The bulk of Cloudy’s grosses came from its 3-D runs, boosting the film and the total box office up significantly from last year at this time. According to the studio, the film earned between $17.5-$18 million from the advanced technology while another $2.45 million was attributed to its 127 IMAX runs. The movie from first-time animation directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller marks Sony Pictures Animation’s highest opening gross for its animated films. Next up for the studio is Hotel Transylvania, centering on a young monster hunter who falls in love with Dracula’s daughter.
In other box office news, the limited release of Jane Campion’s festival fave Bright Star scored decently on its 19 screens for a $190,000 opening. The film has grossed $207,000 since opening on Wednesday.
The most ravishing shot I saw in any movie at Toronto this year occurs midway through A Single Man. The year is 1962, and we’re in Los Angeles, where George Falconer (Colin Firth), a 52-year-old college professor from London who teaches English at what looks like it might be UCLA, has stopped at a liquor store. There, a hustler tries to pick him up. George is homosexual, and very much in the closet (in 1962, there’s not really such thing as out of the closet), and as the two drift into the parking lot, the sunset glows with a purplish-pink, nearly unearthly beauty. What makes it so splendid? “It’s the smog,” says the hustler, who’s coiffed like a barrio James Dean, and sure enough there has never been a sunset that looks like this outside of L.A. It’s the weirdest thing: Suddenly, a movie is making you wistful for the dawn of the age of air pollution.
At last, young kids have had a reason to go to the movies. (July’s G-Force was the most recent opportunity and some parents are still reeling from the experience.) Sony Pictures’ PG-rated Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs will open this weekend in 2-D, 3-D and IMAX and is destined to lock into the number one spot over three other new films: Love Happens, The Informant!, and Jennifer’s Body. How will those movies open? Now that’s where it gets interesting. Megan Fox — the controversial ‘It’ girl of summer – is exploiting her assets in the Karyn Kusama-directed, Diablo Cody-scripted horror film Jennifer’s Body while Aaron Eckhart chases Jennifer Aniston’s body in the romantic drama Love Happens. And Matt Damon dons a mustache and glasses for his Ocean’s director Steven Soderbergh in the R-rated comedy The Informant!
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A bluntly unassuming and rather plain-looking man in his late fifties, Ruppert sits in what looks like a brick bunker and talks about where he thinks the United States is now headed. It is not a pretty picture, but it’s not a naive one, either. Ruppert has more than a perception — he has a welter of facts, a restless and skeptical intelligence, a grasp of history that is professorial in the best sense, and an ability to slice and dice the platitudes of mainstream media. He’s like Noam Chomsky as a gripping pundit of doom. The drama of the movie, and it’s intense, is that even if you want to argue with him (and you will, since he’s predicting very bad things), you can’t dismiss what he’s saying. 
