The Dumb Are Mostly Intrigued By The Drum

The Nic Cage action-thriller remake 'Bangkok Dangerous' led the box office this weekend with a measly $7.8 million, making this the slowest weekend for movies in five years. The top five was rounded out by 'Tropic Thunder' $7.5, 'The House Bunny', 'The Dark Knight', and 'Traitor'.

September is generally a slow month for movies. It's that weird transitional period when the summer box office is dying down and studios are gearing up to release their big Oscar contenders. Meanwhile, the television networks are all preparing to debut their big new shows for the fall season. But this does mark the seventh week this year that earnings have fallen behind compared to last year. Studio analysts are blaming this on the state of the economy, high gas prices, and the recent storms on the gulf coast. However I blame this on such craptastical releases as 'Bangkok Dangerous', 'Disaster Movie', 'Babylon A.D.', 'Death Race', 'The Longshots', 'The House Bunny', etc.

We'll find out next weekend when Focus Features rolls out the Coen brother's comedy 'Burn After Reading' and Overture Films releases the De Niro/Pacino team-up 'Righteous Kill'.

Even though Clint Mansell's Requiem score can make any film look ten times better than it actually is, it wasn't enough to save this little abomination. It seems like Fox came in and took over for the director Mathieu Kassovitz when he couldn't deliver a PG-13 rating and edited the crap out of the film and essentially turned into a turd (although who knows if it was already a shit film before). So continues the tyranny of Fox Studios and their reign of terror (unless they're looking to hire me, then they're all good in my book!). Check out the full details over here at Slash Film, including the secret connection between Vin Desiel and Osama Bin Laden. Interesting stuff....

Another film that has been put on the back burner for a long time (which is never a positive sign) has finally dropped a trailer, Babylon A.D. Good ol' Vinny is back just in time (cause we can never have enough of actors who name themselves after trucks, right?) to try to save his career but it probably won't be enough....that is until Fast & Furious comes out and he wins that Oscar. And the trailer comes in as the first one of the summer to use the Lux Aeterna music from Requiem For A Dream (and that makes 2 films with Michelle Yeoh in it). Awesome:( Check out the HD version over here at IGN.