The Screengrab : Prince Caspian

Screengrab Predicts: The Top 5 Hits of Summer 2009 (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 21:00:00 GMT

Yes, it’s that magical time of year once more...as my late lamented Grampa Joe would say, quoting his favorite Brooklyn poet: “Spring is sprung, the grass is riz, I wonder where the flowers iz? All the boids is the on the wing...isn’t that absoid? I thought the wing was on the boid!”

All of which is neither here nor there...but the real point is we’re just days away from the start of the Summer Blockbuster Season (which, like the Christmas season, keeps starting earlier and earlier each year, what with the upcoming May 1 release of Wolverine, the May 8 release of Star Trek...heck, even Vin Diesel’s already had a summer blockbuster, and we’re barely into baseball season!

And, since Hollywood now refuses to wait until Memorial Day Weekend to start firing off its big guns, your pals here at the Screengrab have no choice but to launch into the fray with our second annual attempt to prognosticate the Top 5 Biggest Hits & Bombs of 2009!

Now, for those of you playing along at home, the rules are simple: the following “HIT” and “BOMB” predictions aren’t necessarily based on the sheer volume of money we think the following films will amass, but rather how their performance will ultimately be perceived by the Suits in Hollywood and the public at large. So, for example, last year we predicted Prince Caspian would be a hit...but it cost more and took in less than The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe, so it was ultimately considered a disappointment. Meanwhile, Sex & The City, which...ahem...some Screengrabbers thought would bomb took in about the same amount of money as Caspian and was ultimately considered a hit because all the wimmenfolk liked it so much (and also because it didn’t cost a zillion dollars to produce, despite all the CGI required to bring the eerie Kim Cattrall character to life).

And so, without further ado...our picks for THE TOP FIVE HITS OF SUMMER 2009!

5. UP (May 29)

Paul:
There were several strong possibilities for the #5 spot, but in the end I kept coming back to Pixar, who has managed to balance high-quality output with great box office better than just about anyone else in Hollywood. Consider that all but one of their summer releases has finished among that summer’s top five, and that the one that didn’t -- 2007’s Ratatouille, probably the least kid-friendly Pixar production to date -- landed at #6. So yeah, they’re a pretty good bet, and this family-oriented film should continue their hot streak. The opening weekend for Up could be tight, considering that it’s competing with the second weekend of Night at the Museum 2, but it ought to prevail in the long run given the thin June slate and the expected strong reviews.

Andrew:
This one didn’t make my list because it's got a meh title, I can’t figure out what the movie’s supposed to be about, and I don’t sense a lot of Up excitement in the ether...but then again, I thought Wall-E would tank, too, so what the hell do I know?

Scott:
The pundits are fretting that the new Pixar movie will turn off the kiddies because it’s about an old person. (shudder) How are they going to sell Old Guy action figures? Well, I seem to recall these same pundits wringing their hands over the nearly-silent first half of Wall-E, too, so I’m sticking with the assumption that Pixar knows what they’re doing.

4. ANGELS & DEMONS (May 15)

Paul:
Here’s where things get a little more iffy. A big-budget, star-studded adaptation of a Dan Brown bestseller would seem to be a can’t-lose proposition, especially given the blockbuster grosses of The Da Vinci Code in 2006. Yet so far, the buzz on this one has been surprisingly muted, perhaps because it’s hard to imagine too many people getting worked up over a follow-up to its ponderous predecessor. Nonetheless, expect advertising for this to ramp up over the next month, leading to a big opening weekend followed by strong grosses over Memorial Day, as people line up for this almost out of obligation.

Andrew:
Considering people keep going to see those fake Nicolas Cage Da Vinci Code knock-offs, I expect there’s gonna be an audience for the genuine article. Plus, I’m told everyone and their mother (especially their mother) digs Tom Hanks, and devout filmgoers and atheists alike can all get behind a conspiracy thriller about all the creepy, weird stuff going on behind closed doors at the Vatican, right?

Click Here For The Hits (Part Two), The Bombs (Part Three), The Toss-Ups (Part Four) and The Honorable Mentions (Parts Five & Six)

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Scott Von Doviak, Paul Clark

DVD Digest for December 2, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 15:00:00 GMT

This week, the big studios continue to roll out their summer releases, and the holiday DVD cash grab continues.

DVD of the Week: While it certainly isn’t the most revered movie getting a DVD release this week, I’d say that the new Criterion Collection edition of Sam Fuller’s White Dog is almost certainly the biggest DVD news. A controversial indictment of violence and racism, Fuller’s adaptation of Romain Gary’s story was withheld from theatrical release in 1982 due to its subject matter and violence, which essentially killed Fuller’s career in the U.S. Now, after more than a quarter of a century, White Dog is finally getting a home video release for the first time, in Fuller’s original “uncut” version. Criterion has included a handful of special features on this DVD, but really- isn’t the fact that the film is out there for everyone to see enough?

This week’s recent releases coming to DVD include: The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (Disney, also Blu-Ray), the second installment of the C.S. Lewis-penned fantasy series; James McAvoy and Angelina Jolie in Wanted (Universal, also Blu-Ray); Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly’s sibling rivalry writ large in Step Brothers (Sony, also Blu-Ray); Mulder and Scully’s return to the big screen in The X-Files: I Want to Believe (Fox, also Blu-Ray); Ice Cube in The Longshots (Weinstein Company), a film by Fred Durst; and Bam Margera Presents: Where the #$&% Is Santa? (Warner, also Blu-Ray), a title I’d say speaks for itself.

Aside from White Dog, the highlights of the week’s classics on DVD are: The Day The Earth Stood Still Special Edition (Fox, also Blu-Ray), a tie-in with the upcoming remake, featuring numerous new extras; and Casablanca Ultimate Collector’s Edition (Warner, also Blu-Ray), which is basically the same old edition in a snazzy new package.

Only one major TV on DVD release, but it’s a doozy: Saturday Night Live: The Complete Fourth Season (Universal).

Finally, plenty of Blu-Ray only releases this week. There’s Mike Myers telling the same half dozen jokes again and again in Austin Powers Collection (Warner)! The Christmas mayhem double feature of Home Alone (Fox) and Jingle All the Way (Fox)! A double dose of Luc Besson with La Femme Nikita (Sony) and Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (Sony)! The first installment of the would-be X-Files movie franchise, The X-Files: Fight the Future (Fox), coincidentally released the same day as the DVD of the second movie! And finally, the perennial IMDb favorite and TNT standby, The Shawshank Redemption (Sony)!

2008: Second Quarter Wrap-Up

Andrew Osborne — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 18:00:00 GMT

So, by the end of First Quarter 2008, I'd seen a lot of mediocrity and just one truly memorable movie (Full Battle Rattle), but I'm happy to report there's been a sharp uptick in the bottom line of my filmgoing enjoyment in the Second Quarter of the year, with an additional five flicks now vying for year-end Top Ten consideration.

Leading the pack by several furlongs is Young@Heart, an emotional loop-de-loop coaster about a chorus of feisty oldsters from Northampton, Massachusetts who tour the world delighting audiences with age-inappropriate selections like the Ramones' "I Wanna Be Sedated" and Sonic Youth's "Schizophrenia." Old people singing rock songs is a funny concept (and the choristers are a delight), but as the movie goes along and mortality slowly eats away at the group, you come to appreciate the simple heroism of the people on screen, singing in the face of death as they squeeze every last drop of life from their remaining time on Earth. In general, I try not to judge people too harshly based on their personal tastes when it comes to movies, figuring everyone’s entitled to their own opinion, but if you don’t get choked up at least once during Young@Heart (the tough young prisoners moved to tears by one jailhouse concert? the gut-wrenching performance of Coldplay’s “Fix You” punctuated by the rasp and click of the soloist’s respirator?) then I’m afraid it’s very possible you simply have no soul.

Less moving but a helluva lot more fun was Iron Man, that rarest of Hollywood beasts: a tent-pole summer blockbuster where the director (Jon Favreau) actually seemed to care about the script and performances more than the promotional tie-ins and CGI. Robert Downey, Jr. was always an actor more famous for his wasted potential than his screen performances, but now in his clean and sober middle age, he’s finally developed into the edgy, funny leading man he’d always threatened to be (plus Jeff Bridges + shaved head = awesome).

Other would-be and actual blockbusters I’ve seen thus far in Spring/Summer ‘08 were fair to middling (Prince Caspian, Sex & The City, Indiana Jones and the Embarrassingly Fake-Looking Monkeys), so the rest of my current Top Ten contenders have been either festival fare (The Wackness and Turn the River, reviewed in earlier posts) or lingered around the local art house long enough for me to finally catch up with them, as was the case with the great, greatly underrated gangster flick In Bruges, starring an incredibly likeable, charismatic actor I’ve never seen before named Colin Farrell (who has the misfortune of sharing a name and face with that obnoxious, sulky “bad boy” from S.W.A.T. and Miami Vice).

As for Third Quarter prospects, I have seven words for you: Journey to the Center of the Earth.

Related stories: 2008: First Quarter Wrap-Up, SXSW Review: Full Battle Rattle, Boston Independent Film Festival Review: Turn the River, Provincetown Film Festival Review: The Wackness

Screengrab Underestimates Ladies, Overestimates Christians

Andrew Osborne — Sat, 31 May 2008 13:30:00 GMT

Uh-oh...a New England Patriots-style cloud of doubt has formed over Screengrab’s ‘til now perfect record of summer box office predictions. While our prognostications were right on the money for Iron Man, Speed Racer and Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (hit, miss, hit, respectively), the $100 million-budgeted Prince Caspian (which seemed like a surefire box office lion thanks to its successful predecessor, kid-friendly CGI and built-in Christian fanbase) will probably wind up in the “disappointment” column by the end of the season, earning less to date than The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe did in a similar period, and unlikely to gain momentum as multiplexes grow ever more crowded with fresh titles in the coming weeks. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Disney CEO Robert Iger blames the goofy fantasy flick’s underperforming box office mojo on competition from other, more successful movies. Well, duh.

Meanwhile, our testosterone-addled prediction that nobody still cares about Sex and the City may have been a little...uh...premature. (But it’s not a “problem,” we swear!) Thanks in part to the kind of massive, all-consuming marketing campaign usually reserved for returning messiahs, Reuters is reporting brisk sales of tix for the chix flick across America, with opening weekend box office estimated between 25 and 40 million dollars. Considering the production’s relatively low budget (somewhere in the vicinity of $65 million dollar’s worth of Manolos), the film could turn out to be hugely profitable for the fashionista posse.

My own observations last night at AMC’s Boston Common theater (where I was seeing the awesome, uber-dudely Iron Man) would seem to confirm the hype. In a scene reminiscent of Hitchcock’s The Birds, I found myself in the midst of a frankly unnerving swarm of cell-phone toting ladies, many costumed in Sex-y fashions like an XX-chromosome version of the standard Wookies-and-Jawas Star Wars crowd. It was the most women I’ve ever seen in a movie theater (or anywhere, really, outside of Filene’s Basement), and surely bodes well for the future of women-centric films starring actresses over forty.

Or maybe I’ve just had one too many Cosmos.

The Screengrab Highlight Reel: May 17-23, 2008

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 23 May 2008 22:05:00 GMT

Here we are on the verge of a three-day weekend – the perfect opportunity to catch up with the week in Screengrabbin’. Take that laptop out to the beach and dig in to one of our finest weeks ever in film-related snarkery:

All the Cannes news you can eat, including review roundups for Steven Soderbergh’s Che and Clint Eastwood's Changeling.

Speaking of Eastwood, Spike Lee has some words for him.

Something you may not know about Prince Caspian: It’s Some Goofy-Ass Shit.

Those guys in the raincoats in the back row of the theater? That’s us taking in The Sweet 16 Jailbait Movies.

Flashbacks to summers past: Yesterday’s Hits looks at Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Summerfest ’08 launches with A Summer Place, and Summer of ’78 kicks off with Thank God It’s Friday.

Our Unwatchable journey through the IMDb Bottom 100 continues with the Aussie werewolves of Howling III, the strangely middle-aged juvenile delinquent of I Accuse My Parents, and the horny bikini babes of Horrors of Spider Island.

Grumpy Old Actresses square off in a 90-year feud.

Which giant ape movie is truly the King of Kong?

That sound you hear isn’t fingernails on a chalkboard – it’s OST: There Will Be Blood.

What’s Three More Terminator Movies between friends?

Whatever happened to Better Off Dead auteur Savage Steve Holland?

And finally, forget Uwe Boll – the worst filmmaker of our time is Albert Pyun.

Prince Caspian: Now That's Some Goofy-Ass Shit

Andrew Osborne — Sat, 17 May 2008 22:56:00 GMT

So as I write this (on Saturday), Variety is reporting The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian “will easily take the weekend crown, and its B.O. will only gain momentum from Saturday and Sunday family matinees,” although the pic’s “opening day haul came in slightly lower than industry expectations” and behind its predecessor, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. Nevertheless, we here at Screengrab feel confident this weekend now puts us three-for-three in our summer box office predictions! Woo-hoo!!!!

As for the actual quality of said movie...well, let me put it this way: I started reading The Chronic- (wha?)-cles of Narnia way back when I was a mere yoot, and I vividly recall The Lion, The Witch and Etc., but I petered out somewhere between Prince Caspian and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, remembering no details about them except (spoiler alert!)...

...well, actually, I hate those spoiler alerts where they say “spoiler alert!”, like, two words before the spoiler, after you've already seen it in your peripheral vision, so let's just say I didn’t really remember very much at all about the actual plot going into Disney's film version of Prince Caspian.

The one thing I did know (aside from the afore-un-mentioned spoiler) was that, like The Lion, etc., Prince Caspian was (A) produced by (allegedly) Christian-ish Walden Media because (B) C.S. Lewis included certain overt Christian allegories in the Narnia books, meaning (C) the Narnia films are the summer blockbusters of choice for all the good, upstanding Christian families out there who don’t want to risk eternal damnation by supporting Harry Potter and his evil pagan agenda.

The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe featured a simple good versus evil story, complete with temptation, redemption and the sacrifice and resurrection of Christ-like super-lion, Aslan...none of which struck me as particularly dogmatic or objectionable. I mean, despite our many, many differences as a species, I'm pretty sure, at the very least, that Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Wiccans, pagans, atheists, Unitarians and pretty much everyone else (except maybe those pesky Satanists) can agree that good people are better than bad people, too much Turkish delight is unhealthy and being enslaved by an evil witch is a relatively bad form of government.

That said, the religious message in Prince Caspian seems noticeably more pronounced while at the same time, far less cohesive. Whether this is due to bad scripting or my own personal issues with certain aspects of Christian doctrine (or both) is unclear. The story, set hundreds of years after the first installment, takes place in a world where the happy, magic creatures of Narnia have been mostly wiped out by nasty humans called Telmarines. Aslan, the protector of goodness and niceness, has gone mysteriously and conspicuously AWOL in the interim, and it’s up to the young heroes of the first tale (siblings Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy) to join forces with the exiled Telmarine Prince Caspian and the myriad talking badgers, dwarves, centaurs and whatnot of Narnia to restore freedom and equality to the kingdom.

So far so good...but underlying all the swords-and-sorcery swashbuckling is the question of whether or not Aslan will finally show up and help our heroes defeat the forces of evil. Again, without (ahem) giving anything away, the agnostic in me couldn’t help but think, well, wait a minute...sure, it’s an allegory for having faith and whatnot, but does the message really work if it defies storytelling logic? In the movie’s rigged deck, all the Narnians who’ve suffered terribly for hundreds of years because Aslan inexplicably vamoosed on them are implicated as somehow spiritually inferior to pure, faithful Lucy, who pops into Narnia out of the blue, hasn’t suffered at all and has visions of Aslan nobody else gets to see. In other words, the non-believers have lost their faith because they have no proof of Aslan’s existence, while Lucy says they should have faith, even though her faith is based on the very proof the others don’t have...and let’s just say the internal logic doesn’t exactly resolve itself in the film’s overlong CGI finale.

Another curious aspect of the Narnia films, given the recent national panty-twist about Miley Cyrus’ naked back in Vanity Fair, is the way nobody in the world seems to care about all the people getting shot by arrows, hacked with swords and otherwise, y’know, killed dead dead dead by the teenage Pevensie children (and, yes, I know they're supposed to be hundreds of years old in the story, etc., etc., but work with me here). In The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe, the kids pretty much just killed beasties, but this time around, they're wasting flesh-and-blood humans...BAD, freedom-hating, kinda shifty, olive-skinned foreign-looking humans, sure...and I know America loves violence and hates sex and whatnot...but I do find it curious that most of America seems to go completely bug-eyed, batshit crazy at the mere idea of teenagers as sexual beings (despite, y’know, all the heavy petting and whatnot America did in high school) and yet America's totally cool with the concept of teenagers killing people as long as it's in a family film and not one of the Grand Theft Auto cities. ‘Cuz, y’know, that shit leads to Columbine.

All the too-much-thinking aside, though, Prince Caspian was relatively exciting and plenty entertaining enough for a Saturday afternoon, allowing Peter Dinklage to somehow maintain his dignity as a soulful, cranky dwarf warrior called Trumpkin.

Bring the whole family!

Thursday Morning Poll for May 15, 2008

Paul Clark — Thu, 15 May 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Last week, we attempted to decide once and for all the ongoing battle between the fans of Paul Thomas Anderson and the Wes Anderson lovers of the world. The resultant poll yielded victory for P.T. (who benefited at least in part from his most recent film being better-received than Wes’), who got 55% of the vote to Wes’ 36%. Finishing a distant third was Sweden’s Roy Andersson, not a bad figure under the circumstances, especially considering he’s one of the few world-class directors who’s actually made fewer films than either PT or Wes. As expected, our attempts to turn Brad and Paul W.S. into the Ralph Nader and Lyndon LaRouche of the Anderson poll bore no fruit.

With Prince Caspian coming out this weekend, I took some time to think of other “Prince”-titled movies in film history, and I came to the conclusion that there really aren’t that many good ones. I suppose that makes a certain amount of sense- most movies are made by men, most men would rather be a king than a prince, “prince” sounds kind of childish and wussy, and so on. However, there have been at least a handful of memorable ones, some due to quality, others for simply being so damned ubiquitous on their original release that we couldn’t possibly forget them. So for this week’s pool- from this admittedly limited selection of “Prince”-ly movies, select your favorite.

As always, if you feel like we’ve left out something important (and I’m sure we have) or you just want to share your love for American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince or The Prince & Me, the comments are open.

Screengrab Predicts: The Top 5 Hits of Summer 2008

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 01 May 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Studio executives, like TV weathermen, can be wrong half the time and still make a pretty fine living. One major difference, of course, is “The Suits” in Hollywood spend zillions on publicity and advertising campaigns to attempt to make their forecasts come true...and even then, they’re only right about half the time when it comes to cinematic hits and misses.

We here at the Screengrab will take that action. With the 2008 Blockbuster Season bearing down on us LIKE A RADIOACTIVE SPACE BUS THAT TRANSFORMS INTO A GIANT ROBOT LOADED WITH EXPLOSIVES, we hereby offer our predictions for the summer’s Top 5 Hits and Misses, in hopes of scoring ourselves sweet development deals based on our uncanny pop culture pulse-fingering prognostication abilities.

For the purposes of this experiment, “HIT” and “MISS” will refer not to the critical reception or cinematic quality of the films in question (because, really, who cares about that stuff?). Instead, we’ll calculate the accuracy of our predictions based on each film’s domestic box office gross in relation to its marketing/production budget and the hype/expectation surrounding it.

Want to play along at home? Let us know your Top 5 picks for upcoming Summer Hits, and compare them to our collective and individual predictions. Whoever scores the most correct answers WINS A BRAND NEW IMAGINARY CAR!

And now, our picks for the Top 5 HITS of Summer 2008:

5. KUNG FU PANDA

This one's pretty easy to explain: (1) Kung fu. (2) Pandas. It's got something for everyone! (LP)

Plurality Opinion: Dreamworks' annual summer animated movie doesn't have the built-in audience of the Shrek franchise, but it should still do good family business for the three weeks before Wall*E hits screens. (PC)

Memorandum Opinion: I haven’t seen that Panda on any big plastic soda cups yet, but maybe I haven’t been hanging out in the right fast food restaurants or convenience stores. This movie just squeaked onto our list as a result of numerous split votes elsewhere...but who knows? Maybe panda is the new penguin! (AO)

4. IRON MAN

Another gamble here, but one worth betting on due to it being the first high-profile summer release. Iron Man isn't an icon like Batman or Spider-Man, but Paramount has done a bang-up job promoting the film, and the re-emergence of Robert Downey Jr. as a high-profile leading man is the kind of story that can do wonders for a movie's public awareness. (PC)

3. INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL

Come on, like it could possibly be anything else. Indiana Jones is one of the iconic characters in cinema. Who's not looking forward to this? Add to that the fact that the film's got next to no competition for the month or so after it's released and this is the one to beat. Here's hoping it's actually good. (PC)

Memorandum Opinion: I'm going to call this as a slight box office disappointment that nevertheless cracks the top five. Indy's heyday was a long time ago, and even Lucas and Spielberg seem to be trying to downplay expectations. (SV)

Dissenting Opinion: First of all, that title is just way too long. Titles more than 20 letters long are for artsy foreign movies. Second, is there really that big an audience for this outside of hardcore geek circles? The key demographic for summer action flicks wasn't even born when the LAST Indiana Jones movie came out. (LP)

2. THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: PRINCE CASPIAN

Advance word is that the second in the Narnia series outdoes the first in terms of pacing, script, and special effects, but my guess is that it'll succeed because conservatives bitched so much about the previous movie not getting enough attention that America will guiltily drag themselves to see it just to shut them up. (LP)

Dissenting Opinion: The last installment in the Narnia franchise was a blockbuster, but that was released in December. In a more competitive summer season, it should have a solid opening weekend before getting trounced by Indiana Jones. (PC)

1. THE DARK KNIGHT

There's pretty much no way this thing will bomb. Even if it had a bad director, a crummy script, an unpopular main character, and a poorly-designed set, geeks would flock to it in droves. But it doesn't have any of those things, AND one of its stars died mysteriously during filming! That's money in the bank, people. (LP)

Let's see: blockbuster sequel, over a solid year's worth of hype, extensive viral marketing campaign, hugely popular hero and villain, and to top it off, a much-buzzed final complete performance by Heath Ledger. Even non-Batfans are going to want to get a load of his Joker, which should push The Dark Knight to the top of the heap. (SV)

Batman is back in the public's good graces after the awesomeness of Batman Begins, and this one's got the most popular of Bat-villains, The Joker. And sad to say, but the hype around the late Mr. Ledger's performance will only help the movie's chances at the box office. (PC)

HONORABLE MENTION:

HANCOCK:

Will Smith. July 4. Action, comedy, superheroes, you name it. It's got practically everything one could ask for from a midsummer release. (PC)

WALL*E

Here's where things get a little less certain. Sure, WALL-E is a Disney/Pixar release, with all the family cachet that implies. However, it may not be as cuddly as some of the family favorites Pixar has made in the past. Still, this is the highest-profile family-friendly release of the summer, so this is the one to beat. Besides, if Pixar can strike box-office gold with rats in a kitchen... (PC)

TROPIC THUNDER

Historically, August is the time when comedy re-emerges as box-office gold. After months of blockbuster bloat, audiences will want to laugh again, and this movie- starring Ben Stiller and newly-hot Robert Downey Jr.- looks to have the most potential for success. (PC)

AMERICAN TEEN

An instant America’s sweetheart cuddly “rebel” poster girl and a trailer that’s so John Hughes accessible that megaplex audiences may not realize it’s a documentary until it’s too late to get their money back may turn this Sundance fave into an indie hit (at the very least) and maybe even a real live mainstream smash. (AO)

PINEAPPLE EXPRESS

If the rabid anticipation of this flick by the teenage dudes at my last family gathering bears any relation to the feelings of teenage dudes across the nation, this could be a sleeper hit. Plus: Apatow. (AO)

WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS

With a combination of everyone's favorite annoying jackass, Ashton Kutcher, and a title drawn from an ad campaign predicated on date rape, fatal drug overdoses, and dead hookers, how can it miss? (LP)

***

The above list reflects the combined, weighted picks of four of our resident Screengrab know-it-alls. Below, our original ballots:

Leonard Pierce

1. The Dark Knight

2. Kung Fu Panda

3. Speed Racer

4. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

5. What Happens In Vegas

Scott Von Doviak

1. The Dark Knight

2. Iron Man

3. Hancock

4. Prince Caspian

5. Indiana Jones

Paul Clark

1. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

2. Hancock

3. The Dark Knight

4. Wall*E

5. Iron Man

Andrew Osborne

1. Indiana Jones

2. The Dark Knight

3. Prince Caspian

4. The Pineapple Express

5. American Teen

-- Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Paul Clark, Scott Von Doviak, Leonard Pierce