The Weekend Cleanup

I don my Pauline Kael hat again, which matches per­fectly with my Gene Shalit socks. But good­ness me, I only wish I could match all this with the dork­face of A.O. Scott. Here goes kids.Boffo for the MoffoThat’s right kids, our good friends over at Camp Apatow have struck again with a win for the week­end. The R-rated laf­fer took home the golden snitch (snatch?) again, beat­ing the com­petish at the B.O. What’s so fas­ci­nat­ing this week­end is that the top 3 spots were all filled by holdovers: “Superbad”, “Bourne”. and “Douche Hour 3″. Coming in fourth, or first among new releases, was, sur­pris­ingly, Rowan Atkinson’s played-out addi­tion to his self-made fran­chise, “Mr. Bean’s Holiday”. After that was the Jet Li, Jason Statham star­rer, “War”. While the two remain inter­na­tional action heroes in dreams and in dol­lars, per­haps our hum­ble lit­tle coun­try would rather laugh than go see some­thing we embar­rass­ingly see on the news daily. Pooping out the bot­tom of the new­bies was Chick-lit adap­ta­tion “The Nanny Diaries”, which even it’s Woody Allen cer­ti­fied next-big-thing couldn’t seem to save from the bot­tom of the bar­rel. Another week­end, another cleanup. My work may never be done.Let’s Record our LoveThe piece of dia­logue that makes this piece’s head­line was stole from Ron Howard’s “Parenthood” and spo­ken by the one and only Keanu Reeves. The teen star/joke made head­lines recently once he was announced as heir to an infa­mous Hollywood role. Later in 2008, Ted Logan him­self will take the reigns as Klaatu in a remake of “The Day the Earth Stood Still”. Now a nos­tal­ghia for both this film and this genre force me to believe that this for­ray will be a dis­as­ter for all par­ties involved, but per­haps it is also due to the fact that helmer Scott Derrickson has only directed “The Exorcism of Emily Rose” for major release, with the script com­ing from a man with a sin­gle credit to his name, 2001’s “The Last Castle”. In any event, we lack a fear of com­mu­nism which the orig­i­nal banked on. Our fear of ter­ror­ism is so far to our sur­face (ter­ror­ist spys? come ooon) that it’s hard to con­sider infil­tra­tion. In any event, look for this one at your video stores sooner than the the­aters.Listen to Your Friend Billy Zane, DerekLooks like still under­rated comic genius Owen Wilson made an attempt at his own life this week­end. This really isn’t a laugh­ing mat­ter, as the dude swal­lowed some pills and made some nasty chops at his left wrist. I may be jump­ing to some tabloid con­clu­sions here, so take it with a grain of salt. In any event, Mr. Wilson, while you may have per­formed some incred­i­bly hilar­i­ous roles both on screen and dur­ing the cos­tume awards pre­sen­ta­tion at the Academy Awards, we all believe that you are yet to per­form your finest role. In fact, I don’t doubt you will even­tu­ally take up the reigns as direc­tor, if not write again with­out Wes Anderson. Take care of your­self, son. Have some strong tea.