ENGAGING CULTURE

Well, last week Sex and the City did extremely well at the box office raking in nearly 57 million, easily overtaking the geriatric Dr. Jones who had a weak showing of only 46 million. The big winner of the weekend was the summer horror flick, The Strangers, it surprised most by having a 21 million dollar debut. The entire reported budget for the movie was only 9 million. This makes it clear to me why so many horror movies get made.

This week will be a tough call. If you are looking for family fare, may I suggest Kung Fu Panda, it looks as though it will be humorous and heartwarming, probably with a semi-eastern transcendental lesson. If you haven’t heard of it yet, Jack Black voices a Panda who is approached by a group of Kung Fu Masters who think that he is a “chosen one” of some kind. But he doesn’t know Kung Fu, he is lazy and likes to eat, a lot. But with training and determination he comes to develop his skills in the ancient arts. And Jack Black is only one of a who’s who of Hollywood list that turned out to lend their voices to this cast. There’s also Dustin Hoffman, Angelina Jolie, Ian McShane, Jackie Chan, Seth Rogen, Lucy Liu, David Cross, and Michael Clarke Duncan, heavy hitters one and all. This probably the most hyped animated movie of the year, possibly tied with Wall-E. I expect good things, just check out this clip.

If animated animals honed in the martial arts isn’t your thing, then perhaps a black-ops soldier from the Israeli army coming to America to fulfill his dream of cutting and styling hair would be more suited for your taste. Of course I am talking about Adam Sandler’s latest film: You Don’t Mess with the Zohan. This one looks pretty funny, it’s definitely not a concept we’ve seen before, but I don’t know if I can handle Sandler’s over the top accent for 2 hours. Also, it looks pretty raunchy, it seems that Sandler is being delusional about his sex appeal once again and in some of the previews he is wearing shorts that are far too tight and too short for anyone, much less the Sandman, to be wearing. I also hope all of the funny stuff didn’t end up on the trailer. I love the scene where he’s telling the kid to stop moving and the kid starts wailing so he performs what looks like the Vulcan death grip on the poor kid to the shock of the bystanders, and even though it is a bit over the top I love the street confrontation scene below.

Who will win this weekend? I’ll have to say that the summer crowd will flock to Kung Fu Panda and give it a good opening weekend of 50+ million while others will see Zohan and give it a respectable 35+ million. I hope you like what you see.