"Burlesque" is so bad that calling it an Awesomely Bad movie is an overstatement.

So what happens when you take an Oscar winner, Oscar nominee and a soon-to-be has-been and throw them on the same set and put up a nearly $60 million budget? You get "Burlesque": a sad and dreary entry into the musical genre of films that fails to give any depth in either its characters or subject matter. Cher certainly could have picked a better vehicle than this piece of trash to make a come back with, and Stanli Tucci, it's amazing to see how quickly an Oscar nomination can be replaced by a Razzie nomination. As for the screen writing, Diablo Cody, I think the Oscar for "Juno" cursed you, "Jennifer's Body" signaled the end for me. But in reality, there are so many things wrong with "Burlesque" that I kind of don't know where to start. It really was like "Showgirls" with out the nudity.

First, why is it that Cher would agree to do a musical that only included her in two of the ten musical scenes? Second, if it was so important to emphasize that Cher and Christina Aguilera were the only two performers not lip syncing, then why was there not a single microphone during either of their performances? Third, why is it that none of the dialogue was spoken through song? This could have possibly given some redemption to the many flaws of the movie, and I stress the many flaws. Fourth, why did this movie have to follow the same Hollywood formula: girl from the wrong side of the tracks who dreams of making it big, then finally becomes successful and saves the day in the end by defeating the antagonist. But here lies the fifth major problem: no real villain. The two bad people in the movie were hardly bad. Eric Dane, I mean it was Tess' (Cher) fault for defaulting on her mortgage. Who cares if his character wanted to buy her out? And Kristin Bell, what did she do to make think of her as such as a monster? Oh wait, she lies about sleeping with Tess' ex-husband to make her mad for firing her, but Tess bashes her car window with a crow bar, so maybe Cher is the villain. And the last major problem with the movie is the total lack of chemistry between Cam Gigandet and Christina Aguilera. It was kind of like watching two statues trying to make love, it was really ridiculous.

I don't know, after about an hour I started to wish it would just end. This is a prime example of a terminal film, being that it causes severe and sometimes irreparable damage to the careers of the actors who are in the film. I will admit that I liked some of the musical sequences but I can get that kind of entertainment on YOUTUBE. Cher will be going back to Vegas, Stanli Tucci will most likely be playing the "gay guy" for the rest of his career and Chritina Aguilera might show up to accept her Razzie next year. As for me, I think I'll go have a drink, I certainly earned that right after sitting through this poor excuse for a movie.

The weekend at the box office, does it ever get any better?

So this weekend (October 1-3) at the box office not really a big improvement from last week. "The Social Network" came in at the number one spot and brought in around $23 million. "Legend of the Guardians" took the number two spot, bringing in $10,855,000 beating "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" by a whopping $755,000, big deal. "The Town" and "Easy A" both stayed put in the fourth and fifth place, with $10 million and the latter film bringing in $7 million. Two horror movies that were released this weekend, both were huge disappointments. "Case 39" and "Let Me In" both failed to attract a mass audience with "Case 39" coming in sixth place with $5.5 million and "Let Me In" coming in 7Th with $5.3 million. "Case 39" was panned by critics and "Let Me In" was actually met with favorable reviews. In 9Th and and 10Th place were the very forgettable "Devil" and "Alpha and Omega" with box office figures that I don't really care about reciting. "Resident Evil" got knocked out of the top ten list bringing in around $2.8 million and "Inception" only raked in $870,000 and for the first time, was not in the top ten either. When a movie doesn't clear $1 million at the box office it's time to pack up the bags and start thinking about the Red Box. But Christopher Nolan doesn't have anything to be ashamed of. "Inception" opened with $62.7 million and world wide raked in over $774 million, and since Mr. Nolan was snubbed an Oscar nomination for "The Dark Knight" it doesn't take a rocket scientist to determine who is getting a nomination this year.

So why was it kind of disappointing at the box office? Well, first the top five movies combined made almost $10 million less than last week's top five. "The Social Network" which is probably one of the most anticipated movies of the year, only raked in $23 million. Audience surveys showed that it was nearly a split ratio of men and women and most people liked what they saw. Alot of people are talking about "The Social Network" being a top contender at the Oscars next year. I don't know, I thought it was a really good movie and I think that it has enough of what I call "social relevance", but I think it's too soon to make that type of assumption just yet. Anytime a movie's subject matter relates to any type of current issue in society, you can pretty much give it the Oscar. "There Will Be Blood", "Slum Dog Millionaire" and "The Hurt Locker" all kind of support my theory in some ways. There are a number of things that you have to consider when you think about a movie winning the Best Picture or Best Director award. Box office performance and the reputation of the producers and director can have a great influence on whether the movie will win or not. David Fincher was nominated for Best Director for "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" so he does that in his favor, but if you want my opinion, at this point in the year I think Christopher Nolan is the top contender for either award. But December is the time when alot of the other contenders for the Oscars really start to show their faces so, I guess we will just have to wait and see.

So far "The Social Network" raked in about $23 million, so if the producers of this movie are rooting for a Best Picture nomination then they are really going to have to step up their game with marketing to attract more people to see it. I think that it should have been distributed in limited release during its opening weekend, to see how attendance would be, then eventually open it in wide release. It's better for box office revenue to be consistent as opposed to kind of just slowly tapering off when a movie does not make the kind of money that producers had originally anticipated; Especially if you are a producer looking for an Oscar nomination. At the same time, audiences might get interested later and start seeing "The Social Network" keeping the revenue flowing, but October is obviously the month when horror movies peak at the box office, so it could go either way for "The Social Network"

A movie can do average or poorly at the box office and still win the Oscar, look at "The Hurt Locker" last year and "Crash" in 2005. But both of those movies were kind of the under dog and had what I also like to call the "circumstantial win". If "The Hurt Locker" was not directed by Katherine Bigelow and if "Crash" didn't have a production budget of $6.5 million then I don't think either would have even been nominated. But you know what they say "The Oscar loves a come back." look at who won the Best Actress award last year.

So in summary, "The Social Network" did not take in the figures that alot of people expected and "Case 39" and "Let Me In" were total let downs at the box office. Let's wait to see what happens with "The Social Network" over the next couple weeks before we start spitting out Oscar possibilities and Wes Craven's new movie "My Soul To Take" comes out this Friday. Yeah! Wes is usually pretty good about getting people to come out to the movies so hopefully he can work his magic. Hopefully.

This weekend at the box office.

This weekend was a serious bummer at the box office if you ask me. Critics and audiences across the board were not so thrilled with either movies in the number one or two spot. "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" and "Legend of the Guardians" both failed miserably at breaking any opening night or weekend records. "Legend of the Guardians" really has to work to try and recoup the estimated $165 million it racked up in production costs. World wide it barely cleared $20 million over the weekend. Michael Douglas' ex-wife really won't have much to put in the bank because "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" took in a measly $19 million domestically and $8 million in the foreign market bringing its total revenue to just about $27 million. "The Town" and "Easy A" held their grounds in the number three and four spots with "The Town" raking in a little over $16 million and "Easy A" just over $10 million. In the fifth spot is the forgettable "You Again" which raked in $8 million over the weekend and ten dollars of that revenue I would gladly appreciate being refunded to my credit card. Even Bette White could not save this tepid, useless, humorless piece of trash project that had me glimpsing at my cell phone nearly every ten minutes to see how much more I had to endure. This is a great example of using an icon of the big screen to salvage one of the most flawed movie productions ever made. Alan Fickman should have left poor Bette out of that movie and maybe included Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson again, atleast then we would have expected a terrible movie.

So that's the review of this weekend at the movies, hopefully we'll have something better to look forward to next weekend, we can hope.