Weekend Box Office Report: Happy Receipts

Casino Royale was fun. It was a little slow at parts, but I really enjoyed it. It's a good restart. I bet the next one will be great and I'm looking forward to it.

MINOR SPOILER ALERT - The bad guy at the beginning was so totally on wires that it looked to fake for me, but who cares, It's a Bond movie, right?

An animal CGI filmed got 42 million?!?! I thought kids were sick of that crap by now after all those %$#@ movies about CGi animals this year!

I loved this movie...it was good to see Bond as sociopathic killer...thats what he is suppose to be...not some playboy who spies once ina while...and it was nice to see *spoiler* how shuts it off ,hides behind his armour and his lesson learned...as if M set him up to learn it and to not trust anyone....I really enjoyed this film and its the 1st since Golden Eye and that was mainly due to 006, Sean Bean...IMHO it was great...it had witty british humor on it, kind of like PBS!!! but I loved it...cant wait to see his next one

"Never underestimate an audiences need for good, quality entertainment." That's what was said on Stargate this past summer, and it sticks. Happy Feet represents creativity at its finest. The only thing is, it doesn't use people. Kids are eternally fascinated by animals, so for now and the not too distant future, we'll be seeing smart and funny animals of all kinds at the top. I saw Casino Royale on opening night, and all I have to say is... Well, I wrote a review actually, but right here, I have to say that it was the best since... Damn, what was the last one Sean Connery did?

I haven't seen Happy Feet yet, but I think there's some differences between it and the other animal movies from this year. Most of the other CGI animal movies were some sort of variation of animals conflicting with the human world (Over the Hedge, The Wild, Open Season, Barnyard, The Ant Bully) which I think got a bit too repetitive, if not for the kids then for the adults who buy the tickets. Happy Feet (at least judging by the trailers) appears to be a significant departure from these other animal movies. There's also the welcome addition of musical numbers, something we haven't seen much of since even Disney appears to have put their musical cartoons on the backburner in recent years. Happy Feet had the third biggest opening weekend for an animated movie (after Cars and Ice Age 2) and should do quite well in coming weeks (I'll probably be seeing it on Thanksgiving).

Casino Royale was fantastic, the best Bond I've seen since watching a Connery re-run. I had enjoyed the Dalton Bond films because I thought Dalton made Bond a little more dangerous, especially in the second film. But, there was still a little too much Roger Moore in his performance. The new Bond is what I always imagine he would be like; to quote an album from the 80s... "mad, bad and dangerous to know." This was bad-ass Bond at his best. Great re-launch of the franchise. I may see it again this weekend. Happy Feet was, for my money, the same as the rest of the myriad of animal movies that are hitting the screens these days. The graphics were great, there were some laughs and the musical numbers were cute. All that really matters though is that the kids loved it.

I saw the new Bond movie this weekend, I liked it quite a bit. I'm not quite willing to say it's among the best of the Bonds, but I do like the grittier, less over-the-top approach. Daniel Craig is terrific in the role and I look forward to seeing him in future installments. Definitely better than MI3 from earlier this year, as far as spy flicks go.

I also took in Saw 3 (making up for lost time after being too sick to go to the movies last weekend). It was good, though not as good as the first (few horror franchises stack up to the impact of the first in their series). I'd definitely say it was easily the best of this year's Halloween season horror movies. Speaking of horror movies, I'm surprised Karl didn't make special note of Horror Fest coming in at number 10, especially given all the advertising they've done on this site. I don't think it was offered in my area, but that's a pretty good showing for a very small release of indy horror films.

On the flip side of horror movie box office, I noticed the new Sarah Michelle Gellar horror movie has completely dropped out of the top 10 in its second week. Looks like it won't even be making back its relatively low budget production costs during its first run. As much as a like SMG as Buffy, I can't say that her film roles have been terribly interesting.

Someone may have pointed this out, but I'm avoiding reading the above comments due to spoiler fear -- haven't seen Casino Royale yet. Anyway, if I'm reading the string of numbers right, 007 seems to have scored a higher per-screen average than Happy Feet -- $11,822 vs. $11,125. Meanwhile, what the heck is Babel?

Bond got Taken out by a bunch of Penguins. That is embarressing to be beaten by birds who can't even fly lol. If they only left in the hotel shower scene when Borat jumps Bond and submits him in his famous 69 submition move Bond would have been number one.

#8 - jarodimus, "Babel" is the Brad Pitt/Kate Blanchett movie which (from what I've heard) follows a number of storylines and has something to do with being unable to communicate due to differences in languages (hence the Tower of Babel reference in the title). From what I've heard, it sounds like it's trying to be this year's "Crash."