Nothing came out, nothing really happened, and Other Potential Excuses to Not Do This Self-Indulgent Writing Exercise.

…oh.  Err, hi.  You’re here.  I’m, err, not sure why.  You do know that this was the post-Thanksgiving weekend, yeah?  Just like Labor Day weekend, absolutely nothing happens in the first weekend of December for – as tradition proves – sod all gets released.  The calendar splooges itself on releases in time for Thanksgiving weekend, then dribbles incontinently for a couple of weeks with nothing-films, before one last big Holiday push, followed by the January dry spell.  And, right now, we’re in that embarrassing trickle spell that makes you wonder why they’re even trying.  So, like I said, I’m not sure why you’re here, cos nobody else is.

…you’re not leaving until I give you something, are you?  …siiiiiigh.  Well, I better put on some trousers, in that case.  Let’s get this all over with.

Since moviegoers the nation over weren’t given any fresh new alternatives – or, indeed, anything in the way of alternatives – the top of the chart looks much the same as last week.  Disney’s Moana continued conquering all in its path with a 50% drop to effortlessly hold onto the top of the chart, despite that being way steeper than one might’ve expected given that Zootopia only dropped 32% between its weekends.  Then next on the docket, again cos it’s not like anything else stepped up to fill its place, was Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, which plummeted 59% but still held onto second place and is still the 12^th highest-grossing film of the year so far worldwide because people are goddamn idiots and you can do a lot with completely empty release schedules.

As for the new releases, there was one that went Wide – the Blumhouse cheapo horror-thriller of questionable quality, which could describe basically any Blumhouse production come to think of it, Incarnate – in roughly 1,700 theatres and, wouldn’t you just know it, it bombed straight out of the gates, slotting into ninth place, because that’s what happens to new releases in the first week of December.  There was also a faith-based drama, the imaginatively-titled Believe, dumped into 639 theatres because there clearly haven’t already been enough faith-based dramas released this year, and that also completely bombed, banking just $602,519 and failing totally to break the chart.  Whilst in non-La La Land Limited Release News, cos we can’t even get the properly interesting Limited Releases this week, Jackie got off to a pretty darn great start with $275,000 from 5 screens for a $55,000 per-screen average, and if you think I’m about to make tasteless Kennedy jokes in relation to this film, then you’re severely overestimating the amount of effort I’m willing to put into a week where nothing happened.

Look, I wasn’t exaggerating.  Nothing came out, and nothing of interest happened.  How am I supposed to make with the funny if I’ve got no material to work with?  I’m not a magician, or a professional comedian, which are both things you can plainly figure out from reading two paragraphs of my work.  I’m not even half-naked like I pretended to be at the beginning of this piece!  I’m not slobbish like that!  Can’t do it!  I remain fully-clothed for as long as possible and now am just babbling random words and nonsense in order to fill up an arbitrary word count that’s entirely unnecessary because it’s totally unrelated to the stuff you’re actually here for!  Run-on sentences!  Exclamation marks!  Excessively dense and obfuscated verbiage!

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Right, let’s just do the Full List, since we’re all still here and I can at least plug some of the other stuff I’ve written over the past week.  Not a total waste of time!

US Box Office Results: Friday 2nd December 2016 – Sunday 4th December 2016

1] Moana

$28,373,000 / $119,888,330

So it didn’t make the initial Wednesday deadline, but I did get my Moana review penned and posted in time for Saturday, and you can read it here!  What’s better, I bashed it out in one uninterrupted four-hour go, and I’m super happy with how it turned out too!  That’s a good sign for future productivity on here, so let’s allow ourselves a small measure of hope about this place for once, eh?  Oh, and I had to postpone seconds of this for next week due to scheduling issues.  But, again, I will be going back for seconds and I did genuinely enjoy this, despite how I may sometimes come across in the review.

2] Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

$18,545,000 / $183,507,403

Got a piece coming through this week where I’ll finally publicly discuss the reasons as to why I put myself through films I can already tell I’m going to hate, so you can know why I do this to myself!  Unless you count the three paragraphs from an article last year where I talked about how Inside Out helped me come to terms with my depression.  Actually, forget I just said that and pretend it’s a whole new original idea with brand new revelatory insights you’ve never heard before when it drops later this week.  Cough.

3] Arrival

$7,300,000 / $73,078,514

Was hoping to do a third screening of this yesterday, but I also didn’t really want to stay up until midnight.  Arrival deserves my full attention and enjoyment, and also not being viewed through tired yawns.  This has also crossed $100 mil worldwide because maybe, just maybe, if you put out quality films at mid-range budgets and with a decent marketing push, then the people will come.  It’s a wild concept, I know, but I think I’m on to something here.

4] Allied

$7,050,000 / $28,927,432

I haven’t pimped this one as much as I should have, but I did also review Allied this past week.  Short and sweet, but it’s a good read if you’ve yet to!  I’m also going to take full responsibility for this film’s above-average hold, this past weekend, even if that means relatively little given that it opened to basically nothing in the first place.

5] Doctor Strange

$6,486,000 / $215,309,177

Speaking of films I was hoping to see again but haven’t had the chance to.  That’s extra irritating for me, given that I saw Civil War at the cinemas twice and that’s a film that continues to vex me greatly to this day, so you’d think I’d actively make the time to go back for the Marvel film I actually really liked.

6] Trolls

$4,600,000 / $141,371,445

Time magazine have named “Can’t Stop the Feeling!” as the Worst Song of 2016 which, yeah, no.  Just no.  Especially since their sole reasons for claiming that it’s the worst song of the year – ahead of new Meghan Trainor and goddamn Lukas Graham – are that it’s catchy and that it was everywhere.  Yeah, unsurprisingly, the guy who wrote three-part series of their favourite songs of 2015 and declaring them to be stuff you absolutely must listen to has strong, defensive opinions about the music he likes.

7] Hacksaw Ridge

$3,400,000 / $57,264,956

Silence looks pretty damn great.  Controversial opinion, I know.

8] Bad Santa 2

$3,288,699 / $14,289,743

Look, I know that it’s basically guaranteed to not be good by any definition of the term, but I would at least like for Office Christmas Party to be funny.  Like, actually properly funny.  It’s the least that that insane cast list deserves.

9] Incarnate

$2,659,000 / NEW

So I saw Aaron Eckhart in two films this weekend, Bleed for This where he plays Miles Teller’s alcoholic trainer and Sully where he does nothing except wear a stupid moustache, and I’m honestly starting to think that maybe Aaron Eckhart was never actually better than stuff like this.  That, or his years of being stuck in crap like this has worn him down so much that he’s physically incapable of rising above crap like this even when he’s in something halfway ok.  Neither explanation brings me much joy.

10] Almost Christmas

$2,500,350 / $38,147,500

It seems this curse can, in fact, be lifted.

Dropped Out: The Edge of Seventeen (this movie is outstanding and it’s being left to die, goddammit, people, why won’t you go see the great films, COME ON)

Callie Petch won’t play games with your affection.