Filed by Richard on Sunday, December 30, 2007 at 9:44 pm

National Lampoon: Book of Secrets again top the box office this weekend. A giant fissure did not open up in the Midwest, so apparently this wasn’t a sign of the Apocalypse. Whew.

And holy crapola, Alvin and the Chipmunks pulls in 30 million for a total of 142 million over three weeks. This thing is on the way to making a quarter BILLION dollars in the US alone. In my mind I imagine that high pitch sound Alvin and his fellow chipmunk friends are making is from my strangling them slowly. We all have our dreams.

Oh, and Juno looks to be kicking some butt, bringing in 10 million bucks after going into wide release. This is definitely the sweetest, funniest, most moving little film of the year, a sentiment on my behalf that would ring more true if I’d actually seen Juno.

Full Weekend Box Office for December 28-30 [Box Office Mojo}

Filed by Richard on Sunday, December 30, 2007 at 7:30 pm

Yo, yo, dig dis: stodgy, venerable basic cable channel Court TV has decided to get dirty and hip and rebranded themselves as truTV. You know that they’re edgy because they don’t have time for any ‘e,’ and they sho don’t have time to capitalize no ‘t.’

RIP to Court TV; hello to TruTV {Seattle Times}

Filed by matt on Sunday, December 30, 2007 at 4:54 pm

Richard wanted a test post.

Filed by Richard on Saturday, December 29, 2007 at 4:40 am

The Discovery Channel offered a sneak preview of their new seres “Smashlab” this week. It is just terrible. Awful. It’s just so smug and full of itself. Designed in the mould of “Mythbusters,” it’s fairly clear that the producers thought “let’s just reduce Mythbuster’s to its component parts and make everything bigger.”

If anything, this show proves that what makes Mythbusters successful is the real personalities of hosts Adam and Jamie; something that can’t be manufactured. In Smashlab, they have four hosts, each with a specific role: “the designer, the engineer, the ideas guy, and the scientist.” Ugg. Of course one is “the hot chick.” They’re all straight of of central casting and their chemistry is about as organic as a bowl of wax fruit.

I don’t know if it’s the oh-so-2004 technique of super-speeded up tracking shots between scenes (that same crap that is in every single action movie trailer of the last 4 years), or just the lingering sense that the producers have utter contempt for me, but I could not get past the first seven minutes of Smashlab. Maybe it got better, but I’ll never know; I deleted it from my Tivo and hit the thumbs down button three times.

Smashlab on Discovery.com [discovery.com]

Filed by Richard on Friday, December 28, 2007 at 11:18 pm

David Letterman has a struck a deal with the WGA to resume his show starting next wednesday (as well as Craig Ferguson’s show that follows his). What’s in this for the WGA? No word yet on who Letterman’s first guest will be, but they had been negotiating with Howard Stern prior to Christmas.

Letterman makes deal with striking writers [New York Times]

Filed by Richard on Friday, December 28, 2007 at 10:03 pm

National Lampoon’s Book of Secrets topped the holiday box office with a 44 million dollar haul, and Charlie Wilson’s War somewhat tanked. Of course the big story is Jessica Simpson’s Blonde Ambition pulling in $1,322 in EIGHT theaters, for a total of $165 per theater for the weekend, or about $55 a night for each screen. Every once in while when I get to a theater early, I think, “This will be the night that I have the theater to myself”… and then two or three other people show up at the last minute. I guess I should have gone to Blonde Ambition…

Weekend Box Office [Box Office Mojo]

Filed by Richard on Friday, December 28, 2007 at 3:19 am

Could the writers’ strike have come at any worse of a time for John Stewart and particularly Stephen Colbert? Sure North Carolina shut down his nascent presidential bid, but he would have still milked the “controversy for all it’s worth. But leading up into Iowa next week, it’s not hard to think that both Stewart and Colbert would have been pretty significant forces in the primary races over the last month. They have one of the few daily national shows for a politician to visit; it’s easy to imagine that we’d have never even heard of Huckabee if it weren’t for his prominent visits to both Stewart and Colbert…

Oh well, they both appear to be coming back, sans their writers, next week:

Colbert and Stewart to return [New York Times]

Filed by Richard on Friday, December 28, 2007 at 3:03 am

An Oregon woman was arrested with a .55 blood alcohol level. Doesn’t your entire nervous system shut down above .4? How the hell did she swallow?

Woman booked with .55 blood alcohol level [Seattle Times]

Filed by Richard on Friday, December 28, 2007 at 1:00 am

Apple posted the trailer for the the Tracy Morgan vehicle “First Sunday.” Typically you’d just scoot right on by crap like this on your way to the trailers for PTA, Fincher, and the rest of the boys… but you’d be missing out. While it lasts, check out a trailer where the incidental music has been left out of the trailer (presumably by accident): First Sunday
It’s equal parts uncomfortable and funny (but not for the right reasons).