Look, if you didn't see it last week and you don't know what I am talking about, let's just say there's a certain sectionalization of the weekly published movie box office returns on behalf of the movie studios in the hopes, I guess, that if we blink we'll miss it. This No1 Action Comedy compartmentalization means week in week out each major studio can have the number 1 movie of some sort or other.
This week then, Four Brothers, starring Andree 3000 and Mark Wahlberg clawed its way to the top of the heap. True it bested all other films with a box office bonanza beaucoup crop of dollars... $20 million - the TV ads alone must have cost more.
By way of comparison, a year ago to the week(end) "Alien vs. Predator" grossed up $38 million. Saw it recently on cable. Liked the dreadlocked monster a little bit.
Not to knock 4Bro's director John Singleton at all in the slightest, I mean, that he has been able to get two movies into theatres this summer and not one of them a sequel, in general, Boyz n the Hood 2 in particular - is quite a feat. And the Billings Outpost, Montana's Christopher Abel writes of Four Brothers "the implausible movie succeeds despite its weak plot." And now it's The Number One Interracial Action Drama Comedy in North America. Well, I thought parts of it laughable, at least.
Is Christopher Abel real? I don't know, maybe, maybe so, after all a judge just approved a $1.5 million settlement against Sony Pictures for using quotes from fictitious film critic Dave Manning of the Ridgefield Press, to scare up audiences a couple of years back. (Where was outsideleft when Sony needed us - get us a Culver city office, a small, off the books stipend and we'll say anything you like...) Anyway, line up for your $5.00 refunds from Sony now...
But wait, before we're done and dusted, what about the all important per screen averages... Well, more like the unimportant per screen averages for all but the pseudo-art-circuit fixated. That seems to be showing Bill Murray's starring role in 'Broken Flowers' as a top earner at $14,000 per... March of the Penguins continues to do well too, its taken more than twice as many dollars as 4b.
Still, all of this is not about that, and its not to say that Sony
has anything to do with Viacom who released The Four Brothers. This is
about Mark Wahlberg and the UK's Catholic intellectual periodical the
Tablet, and well, actually, not even the Tablet, more about an
American, less intellectual
version of the Tablet , that I once wrote to. Not even that especially.
Simply that seeing Mark Wahlberg back on top reminded me that the
Catholic church needs people in the pews, always. And Wahlberg is
reportedly a practicing catholic. A couple of years ago, I recommended
in an effort to raise attendances particularly on LA's west side, our
Archbishop Mahoney should encourage parishes to publicize the
identities of their celebrity parishioners. And mentioned Wahlberg as
an example of a person of someone I'd go to church to see. Am still
waiting for a response to my letter to whichever Tablet equivalent I
wrote to.
It's important, for Mahoney to let the world know, after all, with celebs like Madonna and Julia Sweeney jumping ship, that its perfectly okay to be famous and catholic. It's a competitive world out there when it comes to pulling in parshioners and there's a new cathedral and now an inauguration of a pope to pay for.
info: gleaned from the internet, maybe from you.
