Friday Box Office

lautner-tree.JPGThe Dark Knight may have had a lot of things going for it, but it didn’t have Taylor Lautner’s abs. Aided by a cuh-cuh-crazy gross from midnight shows on Thursday, The Twilight Saga: New Moon absolutely decimated the previous opening day record of $67.2 million set by The Dark Knight, banking $72.7 million from less screens and less theaters. Can it break Knight’s all-time opening weekend record, $158.4 million? To be continued…

Full figures, after the jump:

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Week in Review

And the Crowd Goes Wild!

Written by S.T. VanAirsdale | 20 Nov 2009, 5:30 PM | Comment

And so we bid farewell to another week at Movieline, where, as always, we gathered only the finest pop-cultural phenomena for your daily enjoyment. Sip a cup of our very special blend after the jump, and have a terrific weekend!

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The Last Word

Bear Eats Sides

Written by Seth Abramovitch | 20 Nov 2009, 5:00 PM | 2 comments

boybear1.jpg· How do you get noticed out of a sea of auditioning comedians to win a coveted spot in Warners’s live-action movie version of Yogi Bear? In T.J. Miller’s case (who played Hud in Cloverfield), that would be shooting his audition with an actual bear. The bear steals the show. [via FilmDrunk]

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Comments of the Week

lockphrase.jpgThe CW is desperately trying to make Heather Locklear and Melrose Place happen, and who are we to stand in the way? And so it is that the writers of our five best comments this week will receive a t-shirt featuring Locklear’s instant-classic, not-overwritten-at-all-why-would-you-say-that rejoinder, “I’m not so sure it dissipated.” Someday, when we are all 55-year-old gay men (this happens to everyone), we will pass this line down to the twinks of the future and remember a time when TV bitchery was at its most torturously composed peak. So who are our winners?

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Hostile Environments

arilloydent.jpgWell, this is upsetting. Actor Rex Lee — who plays Lloyd, Ari Gold’s long-suffering assistant on the sufferingly long-running HBO series Entourage — has revealed to TMZ that he has been the target of workplace harassment from certain members of the crew, who regularly crack jokes about his race and sexual orientation. To the rescue, then, comes series creator and showrunner Doug Ellin, who enforces a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to jokes about gays and minorities on his set. Told of the cracks, Ellin said he was “shocked and horrified,” and “will be speaking to everybody before we start filming again in March. It’s not something condoned or acceptable.”

So to be clear, if any crew member should say anything along these lines on the set on Entourage, they will be immediately fired:

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What's On

palinwalters225.jpg You weren’t going to buy your copy of Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue without heeding the lessons of Barbara Walters’ interrogation first, right? You should also refrain from buying a snowmobile, a red padded blazer, a bridge going somewhere, a flute, sports commentator skills, and a real Wasillan fingertrap until 20/20 is over too. We have a lot to learn about all of those. Who knows, maybe she’ll amp up the maverickiness and give us a heads-up on hockey gear sales at Sports Authority. I’m kind of in.

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GENERAL HOSPITAL

FrancoGH5Moments225.jpgHurricane Franco touched down in Port Charles this afternoon, kicking off the Pineapple Express actor’s surprising arc on General Hospital. As an elusive performance artist whose “canvas is murder,” Franco spent most of the episode lurking in the shadows, snacking behind dumpsters and waving into security cameras with fingerless gloves. But when Franco did escape those shadows and stare meaningfully into the distance as Adam Lambert’s “It’s A Mad World” played in the background, he was soap good.

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Ratings

irina_ratings.jpgProject Runway ended last night — and I don’t just mean its sixth season concluded. The show’s once-deafening buzz seems to be a thing of the past, and the ratings…well, there’s no easy way to say this. Despite the fact that the sixth season’s Lifetime debut in August was up 45% from the previous year’s Bravo premiere, the reality competition atrophied viewers as it continued to run, actually descending beneath its Bravo average even though Lifetime has far greater market penetration than our favorite gay-vague cable channel. How bad did things get last night?

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An Alan Smithee Column

Today, a sucker-punched nation mourns as the news that Oprah Winfrey, the closest thing we have to the Lord Himself taking daytime TV host form and spreading love and goodness through America’s broadcast airwaves, will end her syndicated, culture-changing talk show in May of 2011, giving stunned fans a mere 19 months to come to grips with this life-altering upheaval. To help those abandoned viewers better cope with this long goodbye, Movieline now dusts off its crystal ball (purchased following Oprah’s Favorite Things recommendation of 2005, during her brief, bizarre fling with gypsy mysticism) and looks at what the next year and a half will hold for the big O and her show:

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LATE NIGHT HIGHLIGHTS

There comes a time in life when we have to face our personal truths and after another dark night of the soul watching late night television, I’m ready to admit that I love Lopez Tonight. The new TBS talk show had me during Wednesday night’s Chola Makeover, but last night’s show clinched my affection when the host advised an inter-racial couple in the audience on their money disagreements, threw to “Creepy Little White Girl,” a new correspondent who delivers stale monologue jokes in zombie attire, got Ted Danson to admit that he cried while watching the Cheers pilot and then welcomed This Is It guitar goddess, Orianthi, to the stage for a solo performance. A few highlights from Lopez, and all of the other notable late night moments you missed, after the jump.

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