The world used to love Daniel Radcliffe.  For he was Harry Potter. From when he was just a sperm to when he sprouted his first pube Radcliffe made a spectacular living from swanning about shouting dodgy Latin while pointing a twig at things.  And we gobbled it up like the suckers we are.

But no more!

The world has got together and decided to take a giant steaming dump of rejection on Radcliffe’s snowy white shag-pile carpet of self worth.  WE DON’T LOVE YOU ANY MORE MR WIZARD!

Radcliffe’s latest post-Potter attempt at earning our esteem and the attentions of some of the dodgiest erotic literature ever to grace the Internet is The Woman In Black.  Which American box office figures have announced is not quite as good as some film called Chronicle, which is some sort of home movie made by three teenage boys who call each other ‘dude’ a lot.

Chronicle, which may or may not include teenagers with special abilities beyond the grasp of the rest of the muggle population or whatever, has soundly beaten The Woman in Black to the tune of $1 million dollars in both films’ opening weekend.  Which at current cinema ticket prices means that four more people went to a film that can levitate cars but not keep the camera level for more than one dramatic pause.

Which seems like a real shame, because Radcliffe looks very pale and skinny in the images we’ve seen of The Woman in Black.  We’ve not really read much about the film but looking at the pictures we’d guess Radcliffe is playing a hepatitis riddled Victorian opium addict and judging by his facial expressions… sorry, expression the young opium addict is required to complete complicated mathematical equations which are being held up on cards just to the left of the camera.  All while standing on a misty, cold moor in some geographically ambiguous part of Olde England.

A million dollars is a lot of rejection after you’ve sunk yourself into a role like that.  Opium isn’t cheap these days and can anyone really do quadratic equations while ankle deep in mud and horse shit?  When you are Harry Potter, you are the original face of teen-angst-meets-supernatural-powers-meets-a-fight-against-the-inherent-evil-of-the-human-condition.  That’s got to sting the ego.

But it could be worse, at least Radcliffe is still the star of his own films.  Emma ‘Hermione’ Watson is named on the posters for My Week With Marilyn but nobody seems to know if she’s been allowed to do any acting.  Rupert ‘The Ginger One’ Grint’s biggest role so far is still Thunderpants.

So Daniel, even if there’s shit on the carpet, you’re still the most famous of your friends.  And no, we don’t have any spare change, you’ll only spend it on drugs.

Britain’s had a rum old time when it comes to fictional alien invasions. They started early, with steampunk martians getting all up in our Victorian grills before idiotically sneezing themselves to their constituent pieces in War Of The Worlds.

We had a bit of respite in the ’50s as the fashion in the alien travel supplements was to take in the fabulous corn-filled vistas of mid-west America, do some light abducting, maybe probe a farmhand anus or two.

But then that Doctor fellow with the ever-changing, always-irritating face and voice and body and talking popped onto Saturday teatimes and suddenly Britain can’t move for psychopathic pepper grinders and shaggable supermodel siren doctorbots.

But what if the space-nasties happened upon the gritty urban underbelly of South London? When the monsters attack, who would you really want on humanity’s side; a clay-faced bowtied fop, stuffing 100 words into the time taken by 10, flailing his arms and legs around like a Thom Yorke marionette, or a gang of estate yoofs patrolling their block, never further than a text away from being seriously tooled up?

The answer, as explored in “Adam and” Joe Cornish’s enjoyable debut film Attack The Block, is most definitely and utterly the second one. Even if, in the case of nurse Sam, played with admirable swearing bile by Jodie Whittaker, the alien invasion interrupted them giving you a good solid urban mugging.

The potential saviours of the block are a gang of masked reprobates, led by blank-faced anti-hero Moses (John Boyega). It was a risky move by Cornish to introduce his main characters by having them robbing a lone woman, five against one, then spend the rest of the film expressing scant remorse, stealing police vans and pounding every alien intruder in sight. But then Attack The Block isn’t a gritty social commentary; in fact, the attempts to engineer empathy with the gang give the film its few bum notes. They’re little shits you’d tremble to be stuck on a night bus with, but in the end, if it’s them or the loping mess of hairy limbs and florescent teeth falling out of the sky and ripping people’s throats out, you’re going to side with the awful youth.

Where the film really excels is as a satisfying slice of horror adventure. The aliens themselves are subtly realised, menacing without being CGIsores, and Cornish proves his directing chops with some really suspenseful moments – ever thought about using smoke-creating fireworks as a weapon in a gloomy tower block corridor? After watching this, you’ll think twice now, you lunatic.

And there are a couple of laughs as well; the kids, all fantastically portrayed by unknowns, raise a few smiles with their mocking of each other’s gangster stylings and their processing of the alien threat through popular culture (“They’re like Gangs Of War shit!” “It’s raining Gollums!”) Luke Treadaway’s deck-shoed posh-boy stoner gets caught up in the block’s defence, and his attempts to get down with the kids will bring a familiar shameful shudder to anyone who’s ever tried to casually drop an “innit” in a conversation with incredulous 16-year-old.

And Nick Frost turns up briefly and does his amiable Nick Frost schtick as the block’s resident weed supplier. But despite his presence, and Edgar Wright being an executive producer, those expecting the next Shaun Of The Dead will be disappointed – this is not a chock full of belly-laughs film, it’s a running around with a baseball bat being chased by a load of screaming “bear wolf motherfuckers” film. And that’s no bad thing.

So a solidly entertaining first effort from Joe Cornish, even if it’s not what the most ardent Adam and Joe nutjobs will be expecting (though let’s face it, they wouldn’t be happy unless it was a full-length shot-for-shot stuffed-toy remake of The Phantom Menace). Maybe with a little less trying to make us cry rivers of tears for the poor deprived kids, and a little more letting them just be gits who saved the world, it could’ve been almost perfect. But still, an alien incursion with not a bastard bowtie or twattish tweed jacket in sight. Let’s just be thankful for that.

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2012 is the top movie at the weekend box office. And you don’t have to be a genius to work out why.

Two hours of John Cusack almost being smashed to death by falling rocks? Who wouldn’t want to pay good money to see that! Oh, we’re just kidding – 2012 is top of the weekend box office because it deals with the growing worry that the Mayan calendar was right and that the world will end in 2012.

And it probably will. After all, the Mayans were right about men originally evolving from mud, weren’t they? And about rain being a giant flying snake’s dribble. Nice one Mayans, you dead idiots.

Last week, the weekend box office success of A Christmas Carol demonstrated that cinema is now firmly getting ready for the festive season. And that’s been proven by the new weekend box office number one – 2012, the film about all of humanity perishing in a fiery rampage of harrowing devastation. Merry Christmas, everybody! Here’s the US weekend box office top five…

1 – 2012 (Now that he’s had Earth destroyed by aliens, destroyed by a giant lizard, destroyed by bad weather and now destroyed by an ancient prophesy, what’s Roland Emmerich going to do next? If he’s reading, we’d like to direct him to our as-yet unmade screenplay, The Day The Earth Was Destroyed By A Little Boy What Done A Massive Trump. You’re welcome, Emmerich) $65,000,000

2 - A Christmas Carol (Suffering a noticeably large drop-off in takings compared to last week. Why is this? Because there’s four times more Jim Carrey in this than in any other film ever made? Oh. Yes, that’s probably why) $22,325,000

3 - The Men Who Stare At Goats (If you liked The Men Who Stare At Goats, you’re just going to love its highly anticipated sequel, The Men Who Peek At Ocelots) $6,200,000

4 - Precious (A story about a fat woman who’s sad because she’s fat. It will win Oscars because it’s sad and it’s got a fat woman in it) $6,090,000

5 - Michael Jackson’s This Is It (This is the third week in a row where This Is It has been in the weekend box office top five. Since we heard that it was only going to be in cinemas for a fortnight, we’re sorry to say that we’ve run out of Michael Jackson jokes. Just kidding – we’ll never ever run out of Michael Jackson jokes. But we can’t be bothered to think of one right now. Sorry) $5,100,000

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Today’s edition of the weekend box office countdown is brought to you with a side helping of tremendous bitterness.

You see, the number one movie at the US weekend box office this week is Where The Wild Things Are – one of the films that we’ve been most excited about this year. And yet we can’t see it until almost Christmas. Because it’s not being released over here until December. Stupid Britain.

So no Where The Wild Things Are spoilers please. Especially no spoilers about the temperature of the soup at the end of the film. We mean it.

So Where The Wild Things Are is top of the weekend box office this week. And that’s definitely a good thing. Because it has once and for all proved that children’s movies can be slightly dark and ambiguous and leftfield, and still be commercially successful. So here’s looking forward to that Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs remake where the entire second act involves Andy Samburg having a confused existential meltdown and despairingly shouting the word “WHY?” at the palm of his hands over and over again in a rainstorm for 45 minutes.

Here’s the weekend box office top five…

1 – Where The Wild Things Are (Gee, now Spike Jonze has turned Where The Wild Things Are into such a weekend box office success, maybe we’ll see more arthouse directors take on children’s films like this. Personally we can’t wait for Vincent Gallo to adapt The Very Hungry Caterpillar, but only because he’ll probably make it about blowjobs) $32,470,000

2 - Law Abiding Citizen (So we have to wait until December to see Where The Wild Things Are, but Law Abiding Citizen is released here a full month earlier? Thanks a lot, God. You bastard) $21,250,000

3 - Paranormal Activity (When Steven Spielberg watched Paranormal Activity, he became so convinced that his DVD was haunted that he’d only carry it around if it was tied up inside a binbag. In other news, Steven Spielberg is a twunt) $20,163,000

4 - Couples Retreat (Just two exclamation marks stop this film’s title from being a fairly accurate review for any married people who are planning to go and see it) $17,949,000

5 - The Stepfather (Locke from Lost was in the original version of The Stepfather, you know. That’s the only thing we know about it. No joke here, sorry) $12,300,000

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Watchmen is the frenziedly-anticipated, two decades in the making movie adaptation of an alarmingly revered comic book.

So you’ll never guess what. Watchmen is the top weekend box office movie, outperforming all the other new movies like, um, oh. Watchmen was the only new movie in the US weekend box office this week.

Of course, Watchmen’s weekend box office success was probably down to Zack Snyder, who the Watchmen posters describe as being a ‘visionary director’. Proof then that you’re a visionary if you can film lots of angry people doing crap in slow motion. Better luck next time, Pythagoras.

It’s been a long time coming, and subject to all kinds of lawsuits and creative cul-de-sacs, but finally the Watchmen movie is here, and it’s number one at the weekend box office. Is this because Warner Bros successfully managed to galvanise the comicbook aficionados into thinking that Watchmen was a movie they couldn’t live without seeing? No, it’s because Watchmen has a big blue cock in it, and all comicbook aficionados are perverts.

Still, because of Watchmen’s success, several other beloved comicbooks from 25 years ago are also being rushed into production. Personally, the one we’re most looking forward to seeing is the adaptation of The Whizzer And Chips 1983 Christmas Annual. We hear that Sean Penn’s attached to star as Sid’s Snake. Exciting. Here’s the weekend box office top five…

1 - Watchmen (Watchmen is now officially the best-performing movie about a blue penis since that movie where Paul Walker got trapped in the snow with some dogs) $55,655,000

2 - Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes To Jail (Since prison-set movies are obviously doing well for him at the moment, Tyler Perry has just announced that his next movie will be a remake of Chained Heat, starring only adult men in aged female fatsuits. Sexy!) $8,800,000

3 - Taken (Do you love films where nothing happens for ages then a woman gets kidnapped and Liam Neeson goes to get her with almost no complications and then the film finishes? Then you’ll LOVE Taken) $7,450,000

4 - Slumdog Millionaire (If you had to make a porno spin-off of Slumdog Millionaire, what would you call it? Bumdog Millionaire? Slumdogging Millionaire? Slumdog Jizz In Your Hair? We need to know. Um, for a friend) $6,925,000

5 - Paul Blart: Mall Cop (We think we speak for every one here when we say “Blart? Blart? BLAAAAAART!” Again, we don’t know if that line is in the movie. We just know that it should be) $4,200,000

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As well as it being Halloween, this weekend saw the release of all manner of hot Oscar contenders and hugely-hyped comedies.

So what’s number one at the US weekend box office today? A highbrow critical darling? A well-received edgy comedy? Any of the new horror movies? No. It’s sodding High School Musical 3, isn’t it. Again.

That means that the stars of High School Musical 3 are officially bigger than Seth Rogen and Angelina Jolie combined. Perhaps to reassert their popularity, in their next movies Seth Rogen will sing a number of songs about believing in yourself and Angelina Jolie will take a naked picture of herself and post it on the internet. But not the other way round, though – that would be horrible. Angelina Jolie really can’t sing.

High School Musical 3 is the number one movie at the weekend box office for the second week running, proving that if there’s one thing that children like more than dressing up as mutilated corpses and threatening to deface strangers’ property unless they’re given confectionery, it’s watching Zac Efron sing uplifting songs about the power of friendship. No wonder this planet’s so messed up.

This last week has seen some of the hardest-fought movie promotion we think we’ve ever seen. But how effective has it been? Let’s find out with the US weekend box office top five…

1 - High School Musical 3 (Level of weekend box office movie promotion: we don’t care. High School Musical 3‘s continued box office success has dramatically slumped in the weekend box office has probably pushed the cast’s acceptance of direct-to-DVD erotic thrillers as a primary source of income back by about five years. That means that we’ll have to put up with the inevitable Moderately Risky Side-Boob era, but that seems to be working out OK for Jessica Alba, doesn’t it) $15,035,000

2 - Zack And Miri Make A Porno (Level of weekend box office movie promotion: that one time that Kevin Smith told everyone that he broke a toilet with his bottom recently. That’s literally all we have to say on the matter) $10,682,000

3 - Saw V (Level of weekend box office movie promotion: none. Saw V‘s continued success proves that you don’t need a controversial title or a frighteningly ubiquitous media presence to make a movie a success – you just need a couple of scenes of people cutting off their own hands in horrifically graphic detail. Listen and learn, God And Gays: Bridging The Gap) $10,110,000

4 - Changeling (Level of weekend box office movie promotion: frightening. To make Changeling a success, Angelina Jolie has done everything from rub her boob on a baby’s face to arming her children with daggers. Sad to say, the plan wasn’t a complete success, and Changeling‘s lack of a weekend box office number one title can probably be put down to the three whole seconds that Angelina Jolie’s smug face wasn’t plastered all over every single newspaper, TV show and magazine in the world two weeks ago on Tuesday. Whoops) $9,407,000

5 - The Haunting Of Molly Hartley (Level of weekend box office movie promotion: Since we’ve never heard of The Haunting Of Molly Hartley, we’ll say zero. Now, if the movie’s star Haley Bennett had got fat and destroyed a bathroom while breastfeeding a baby whose hands she’d just chopped off, it’d be a different matter entirely. Haley Bennett is an idiot) $6,009,000

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Weekend Box Office – Box Office Mojo

The Dark Knight had better watch out – come Oscar time the whole world’s going to be in a randy froth about Burn After Reading.

No wonder Burn After Reading is top of the weekend box office today – just look at the pedigree. An Oscar-winning actor, an Oscar-winning actress and the world’s biggest celebrity starring in a movie by the most recent winners of the Best Director and Best Picture Oscars. In fact, never mind the weekend box office – Burn After Reading should be gold-plated and put on God’s mantlepiece forever.

It probably won’t be, because in fact Burn After Reading looks like the sort of self-consciously wacky nonsense that’d go straight to DVD if the Coen Brothers didn’t direct it. But, hey, you can’t argue with a number one spot at the US weekend box office – that’s the Bangkok Dangerous spot, after all.

We’ve always thought of the Coen Brothers as the Box Of Chocolates Described By Forrest Gump’s Mother Of Movie Directors (or BOCDBFGMOMD for short). Basically, you never know what you’re going to get with them. No Country For Old Men won every single award going, but their film before it was The Ladykillers – a movie that could only have been worse if they’d let The Cheeky Girls do the soundtrack.

But Burn After Reading, the follow-up to No Country For Old Men, is the number one movie at this week’s weekend box office, so it must be equally as good as Meet The Spartans. And, apparently it is. Equally as good as Meet The Spartans. Hooray for the Coen Brothers. Here’s this week’s weekend box office top five…

1 - Burn After Reading (Want to know why so many people have gone to see Burn After Reading? It’s because it’s officially the only time that people can drool over Brad Pitt and George Clooney for ab hour and a half without them either droning on about Darfur or bitching about the paparazzi. Score!) $19,404,000

2 - Tyler Perry’s The Family That Preys (We don’t know what this movie’s about, but we’re guessing it’s about a family of black people who reunite before having deep heartfelt tragicomic conversations about themselves in a gushy self-help style that nobody can really say they enjoy. We’ll just watch the trailer to see how right we were… ach, close enough) $18,020,000

3 - Righteous Kill (Remember when a movie starring Robert De Niro and Al Pacino would have been exciting rather than third at the weekend box office tedious? No, us neither. We’re only young) $16,500,000

4 - The Women (A film about some women. That’s literally everything you need to know) $10,088,000

5 – The House Bunny (Know what this means? It means that The House Bunny is more popular than The Dark Knight. Eat that, The Dark Knight. Obviously, the superiority of The House Bunny over The Dark Knight won’t be made official until it’s made another $475,000,000 and caught up financially, but that’s only going to be a matter of days away) $4,300,000

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Weekend Box Office – Box Office Mojo

Nicolas Cage apparently lives in Bath, but everyone knows that his real home is the top of the weekend box office. Or a wig shop. Who knows?

Anyway, We’re only telling you this because Nicolas Cage’s new film Bangkok Dangerous is number one at the US weekend box office this week, taking in a mighty seven million dollars. Look, that figure might be 22 times less than The Dark Knight took on its opening weekend, but did The Dark Knight feature a skinny man in a funny wig shooting people in a boat? No, no it didn’t. Point proved.

Bangkok Dangerous‘ weekend box office success makes us think that all Asian movies would do well if they were remade starring Nicolas Cage. Imagine Nicolas Cage eating a live octopus in an Old Boy remake. Or Nicolas Cage kicking over cities in a Godzilla remake. Or a remake of The Ring where Nicolas Cage crawls out of a TV and scares Nicolas Cage to death and Nicolas Cage has to investigate it. Yes!

Bangkok Dangerous is the top movie at the weekend box office – and it’s not particularly surprising, given moviegoers’ love for horrible wigs, violent assassinations, generic action thrills and Nicolas Cage patronising the Asians. Maybe if Babylon AD had got Vin Diesel to overpronounce the word ‘holiday’ to a confused elderly man from South-East Asia, that would topped the weekend box office too. Here’s the US weekend box office top five:

1 – Bangkok Dangerous (Another reason why Bangkok Dangerous succeeded was because of the ‘location description’ formula of its title. Bangkok really is dangerous, you see. It’s not a formula that would work in this country, though – would you go and watch Sutton Coldfield Underwhelming? Of course you wouldn’t. Not even if it had Nicolas Cage with a girl’s haircut in it) $7,800,000

2 - Tropic Thunder (Thank goodness Tropic Thunder‘s still doing the weekend box office business, because otherwise Steve Coogan would have only had Hamlet 2 to rely on, and that died a death. Oh Steve Coogan, whyever did you stop making geographical action movies with Jackie Chan?) $7,500,000

3 - The House Bunny (Wow, that’s three for three gormless comedies so far in the weekend box office. America must really love to laugh at the momen… what? Bangkok Dangerous isn’t a comedy? Really? That’s a serious haircut, then? Crikey) $5,900,000

4 – The Dark Knight (Since casting rumours for The Dark Knight‘s sequel have now officially gone berserk, let’s throw this one in here – in the next movie, Nicolas Cage is actually going to be playing Batman. And Alfred. And The Penguin. And Catwoman. Blimey, this cough medicine really is quite strong, you know) $5,715,000

5 - Traitor (We could be wrong, but Traitor sounds like it’s basically the flashback story of Sayid from Lost, except without the sneaking suspicion that the invention of Google Earth has rendered the whole fucking thing completely pointless) $4,660,00

Read more:

Weekend Box office – Box Office Mojo

Well it certainly took long enough but The Dark Knight has finally fallen, to the might of Tropic Thunder and its wall of controversy.

While we all thought we would have to live in a world where no other films would ever get anywhere near The Dark Knight – a world where daily recitals of The Joker’s best speeches were made to be recited every morning in our schools, where every car is replaced with a Batmobile and where Morgan Freeman is elected King of Everything (with Christian Bale as his alleged muscle, obviously) – we have been proven wrong.

We worried for a while, but fortunately the ‘Greatest Film of All Time(tm)’ has been dethroned by Ben Stiller, Jack Black and a blacked-up Robert Downey Jr. And it’s sure to make the latter quite happy about it.

It would appear that controversy and notoriety really does help the fortunes of a cinema release these days – there were the obvious little numbers coming about before and after the release of The Dark Knight. It can’t be denied that the often-mentioned death, car crashes and alleged assaults had a positive effect on the fortunes of Nolan’s Batmasterpiece, and Tropic Thunder seems to have used the same technique to dethrone the four-week king.

Yes, there has been a lot of hoo-ha in recent weeks about the usage of the word ‘retard’ in Stiller and the gang’s Vietnam-movie comedy movie. Movie. Some people don’t like the word, and it’s apparently used quite liberally through the film.

But, of course, instead of looking into it and forming some kind of reasoned argument or debate about the issue, people just went and picketed screenings of the film, thus bringing it far more press coverage than it would have got without protests. And it would have got a lot of coverage without them anyway.

Throw on top of the pile the fact that one actor plays a blacked-up white man and you have another pile of outrage for the public to jump on. Shockingly though, this fell by the wayside with only a handful of comments being raised about the questionable portrayal. Possibly because they realised there was some satire at work there.

Either that or the blacked-up protesters couldn’t be heard over the legions of retard protesters. That’s as in protesting the use of the word, of course – we’re not calling them retarded for protesting the use of a word in a movie that is meant as a light-hearted comedy and a satire of the world of movies we are surrounded by today. Oh no. Not us.

Anyway – regardless of the retarded, blacked-up reasons that can be thrown around the fact remains – Tropic Thunder has dethroned The Dark Knight at the box office, raking in $37 million to the Baler and company’s $16.7 million.

If Tropic manages to gross more overall than Batman and chums then… well, frankly we’ll eat four gallons of testicle juice. Because that isn’t going to happen, even with all the controversy in the world.

The Dark Knight has only ruddy well gone and done it again.

No, not struck down another member of the cast or crew with the ‘curse’, which is apparently floating around these days. The film has gone and broken the record for the fastest $400 million in box office history, making the money in a frankly ridiculous 18 days.

Imagine making four hundred million dollars in 18 days. How many tricks you’d have to pull to draw in that amount… it’s hard to take in. Though it would also be hard to take in if you pulled $400 million-worth of tricks, let’s be honest here.

But at least it shows that maybe, just maybe, Christopher Nolan‘s film is living up to its reputation, even with the extra bits of accidental hype popping up here and there.

The previous record time in which the fabled $400 million mark was crossed – as you should all know too well – was a pathetic 43 days by Shrek 2. More than four hundred million for doing a crap Scottish accent? Ruddy hell.

But in less than half the time it took for a CG ogre voiced by an irritating comedy hack to reach the milestone – just over two weeks – The Dark Knight has taken its place in box office history, climbing up the highest US earners top 10 as fast as it’s cast can make headlines through their exploits, incidents and accidents.

Surely this means Hollywood will adopt the same technique for every new major movie release, pushing their leading stars into compromising positions for the sake of a few extra headlines. It worked very well here, and the world of film is surely cynical enough to see it as a viable strategy to affect the home lives of its stars.

Unless we’re being unnecessarily harsh here. Which we aren’t.

If the movie fatcats aren’t quite that cynical, they’ll probably just adopt a new film-making strategy to rake in the speedy $400 million. Said strategy will probably involve making every single big budget summer movie the most depressing, dark and downright unsettling thing known to man, while at the same time putting a welsh bloke in a weird costume and making him speak in a frankly ridiculous manner when wearing said costume.

It’s a definite recipe for success, if you simply follow the trail of facts staring you in the face.

We do have one real hope from all of this though, and that is to see The Dark Knight overtake Titanic as the highest grossing movie of all time. Meaning whenever we hear about the film that brought home the most clams we won’t have to be reminded of the time James Cameron went mad and made one of the worst films ever. Starring a sprout.

First the bad news – The Dark Knight lost over half of its audience at the weekend box office compared to last week.

Now the slightly better news – that still meant that The Dark Knight pulled in $75 million in sales this weekend, over $45 million more than its next best rival. Clearly, The Dark Knight is something of a weekend box office phenomenon.

So what can a forthcoming film – say, Vicky Christina Barcelona – do to match The Dark Knight‘s weekend box office success? Easy – have Penelope Cruz killed by an accidental overdose and then convince Woody Allen to beat up his own mother a day after it opens. Also, if they could make the film inordinately long and so morally heavyhanded that it may as well be delivered by a wild-eyed redneck preacher, that’d be great too.

Well well, it looks like The Dark Knight has set some more records. By taking $75 million at the US weekend box office this week, it’s become the movie with the best-ever second weekend gross, beating Shrek 2 by a handful of million dollars.

Added to The Dark Knight‘s other records – like biggest opening day, biggest opening week, biggest opening weekend, fastest movie to $200 million, most depressing mainstream film ever, film most benefited by a case of alleged mother-abuse, most successful movie about an oddly-dressed man standing on top of a series of skyscrapers in a ridiculously serious way – then it’s clear that The Dark Knight is, um, popular. Or something.

Here’s this week’s US weekend box office top five…

1 - The Dark Knight (Fed up of all the Batman 3 speculation already? Wondering if it’ll be Catwoman or The Penguin who’ll square off against Batman? Well worry no more, because we know who the Batman 3 villain will be – Batman’s arch enemy The Part Time Old Lady Clown Who Batman Is Related To. Fear her, Batman!) $75,630,000

2 - Step Brothers (Well who’d have thought it? The Dark Knight – the film that’s got halfway to Titantic‘s all-time box office figure in just two weekends and is apparently one of the best movies ever is more popular at the weekend box office than Will Ferrell being the exact same character he is in everything he ever does for the 60th time) $30,000,000

3 - Mamma Mia! (Mamma Mia is, of course, the traditional Italian expression of surprise or anguish. However, in an ironic twist not a single Italian said “Mamma mia,” when they heard Pierce Brosnan slaughter SOS in the movie Mamma Mia. That’s because they were all too busy screaming “Ouch, il mio cazzo orecchie! Penso che il mio cervello è stato permanentemente danneggiato, è pelosa vecchio bastardo!”) $17,865,000

4 - The X-Files: I Want To Believe (Warning: unwanted sequel to a movie of a TV show that hasn’t been popular for a decade and a half in ‘underwhelming weekend box office’ shock. Still, Christopher Nolan must be thrilled that he left the scene of Billy Connolly staggering around with blood dripping from his eyes out of The Dark Knight. That’s clearly box office poison) $10,200,000

5 - Journey To The Centre Of The Earth (So what’s at the centre of the Earth? Dinosaurs and massive fish, apparently. Eat it, magma scientists) $9,415,000

Read more:

Weekend Box Office – Box Office Mojo

Here’s some hardly very surprising news – The Dark Knight is the number one movie at the weekend box office this week.

More than that, though, The Dark Knight is the biggest-ever movie at the number one box office – to the tune of $155 million. That’s even more than Spider-Man 3 managed. The Dark Knight better than a film about Kirsten Dunst doing a dance about some eggs? Wow, that is good.

What’s more impressive is that The Dark Knight managed to be the best ever movie at the US weekend box office even though it’s an overlong pitch-black morality tale made notorious by the death of one of its stars. That means that The Dark Knight is also the most depressing box office megahit since at least Big Momma’s House 2 came out.

Looking at the list of all the other movies that have at one point had the biggest-ever weekend box office grosses, there are some pretty big names on the list. Spider-Man, Pirates Of The Caribbean – but now The Dark Knight has topped the lot of them. That’s right – the death of Heath Ledger is the new Johnny Depp‘s funny run, or something.

The runaway weekend box office success of The Dark Knight just goes to show that movie audiences are sophisticated enough to enjoy complex, endlessly deep meditations on the similarity between good and evil after all.

And, given Hollywood’s love of ripping off other successful ideas, we’re now looking forward to seeing the upcoming reinvention of Digby The Biggest Dog In The World, which will now be four hours long, shot entirely at night and have a profound philosophical core based on Eliezer Yudkowsky‘s principles of Singularitarianism.

Here’s this week’s US weekend box office top five…

1 - The Dark Knight (As exciting as it is, The Dark Knight might just go down in history as the most depressing movie to be crowned biggest-ever film at the weekend box office. And now the focus will turn to how Christopher Nolan plans to top The Dark Knight – we’d imagine that it’ll involve a noose being given away with each movie ticket in case the audience feels like hanging themselves at the futility of it all by the halfway point) $155,304,000

2 - Mamma Mia! (Forget the deformed face of Harvey Dent, the unexplained motives of The Joker or the constant reminders of Heath Ledger’s untimely death – by far the scariest thing about this week’s weekend box office is the sound of Pierce Brosnan caterwauling his way through SOS like Lee Marvin in Paint Your Wagon repeatedly stubbing his toe on a breezeblock made of stinging nettles in Mamma Mia!) $27,605,000

3 - Hancock (Number three? That’s rubbish! Perhaps Hancock would have fared better if it had taken a leaf out of the number one and number two movies at the weekend box office, and either starred a dead bloke or featured a song and dance number performed by a man who sounds like a wounded dog drowning at the bottom of an abandoned well. Next time, Will Smith. Next time) $14,000,000

4 - Journey To The Centre Of The Earth (Forget Journey To The Centre Of The Earth, we want to know why Space Chimps only got to number seven at the weekend box office. Sure, The Dark Knight probably stole some of its audience away but, come on, Space Chimps? It’s called Space Chimps, for crying out loud. You’ve disappointed us, America) $11,910,000

5 - Hellboy II: The Golden Army (Hellboy II managed to lose 70% of its opening weekend audience in the space of seven days. Meanwhile, Meet Dave only lost 68.9%. Suck it, Hellboy II: The Golden Army!) $9,813,000

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Weekend Box Office – Box Office Mojo

Films about scaly, bright-red, middle-aged, barely-human creatures have been huge this year – just look at Sex And The City.

And now, adding to the list, is Hellboy II: The Golden Army – this week’s number one weekend box office movie. And Hellboy II should be proud of its achievements, too, because it managed to out-box office that film about lots of little Eddie Murphys living inside a big Eddie Murphy head. That’s impressive!

Actually, we’ll come clean and admit that we don’t know why so many people went to see Hellboy II: The Golden Army. We’re guessing that it’s because one of Bros is in it. Bros are still big, right?

Feeling beaten over the head by this summer’s never-ending onslaught of superhero movies yet? You are? Well tough shit, because Hellboy II: The Golden Army is top of the US weekend box office chart and there’s dick-all you can do about it.

Perhaps one of the reasons why Hellboy II has succeeded at the weekend box office is because of its director Guillermo del Toro. After all, Guillermo del Toro’s last film Pan’s Labyrinth was a critical smash, winning all sorts of awards like Scariest Monster To Have Eyes On Its Hands And Stuff when it was released. Is Hellboy II likely to repeat that success? Well, it has managed to make Ron Perlman look less weird, so maybe there’s a visual effect award or two in there somewhere.

Here’s the US weekend box office top five…

1 - Hellboy II: The Golden Army (One of the reasons we’re not convinced by Hellboy II: The Golden Army is that gold is a notoriously soft metal. You could probably see off a golden army with a decent carbide tungsten spanner, in fact. What’s the point of making a film about that?) $35,885,000

2 - Hancock (You know what we like? Films that have endings which bear no relation to any of the rest of the film. We love Hancock, in that case) $33,000,000

3 - Journey To The Centre Of The Earth 3D (The centre of the earth? Pah – if you want to see a movie that’s exciting and scary you should hang around for our new movie, Journey To The Centre Of London On A Replacement Bus Service Due To Unplanned Engineering Works. You’ll never be the same again) $20,580,000

4 - Wall-E (Wall-E is into its third week in the weekend box office top five, unlike Eddie Murphy’s Meet Dave, which couldn’t even get a top five spot in its first week. Somewhere in a parallel universe, maybe Wall-E got a Spice Girl pregnant and fucked up his career, too) $18,509,000

5 - Wanted (Sadly Wanted has now been overshadowed by the birth of Angelina Jolie‘s twins. But it still managed to beat Meet Dave. Somewhere in a parallel universe, maybe Eddie Murphy isn’t an unpleasant wanker) $11,586,000

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Weekend box office – Boxofficemojo

Will Smith just can't do anything wrong, can he? People always see his movies, even when they're critically-mauled, about boozed-up supermen and have silly endings.

Exhibit A: Hancock is number one in the US weekend box office. And, considering that Hancock's a movie which contains a scene about one man physically pushing another man's head into a third man's rectum, that's actually quite impressive.

Hancock's weekend box office success just furthers his incredible run of movies that are wildly popular despite not being especially great - I Am Legend, The Pursuit Of Happyness, Hitch, I, Robot, Men in Black II, Bad Boys II. A couple more of these babies under his belt and he might even beat the record currently held by Adam Sandler.

This summer is clearly the summer of being clobbered over the head with superhero movies until we're all lying semi-conscious in a pool of our own blood pleading with Hollywood to stop. Iron Man, Batman, The Incredible Hulk – even noted superhuman crimefighters Abba have a movie out this summer. And now even Will Smith's got in on the act with Hancock.

And you have to admit that Hancock getting to be number one at the weekend box office is more down to Will Smith's charisma as an actor than anything else. It's mildly staggering to think that a dark comedy about a world-hating superhero of no fixed abode could be so successful, but imagine if it was a dark comedy about a world-hating superhero of no fixed abode starring Nicolas Cage. It wouldn't stand a bloody chance, would it? Here's this week's US weekend box office top five…

1 - Hancock (After denying that the acts of handing out free Scientology personality test vouchers to the Hancock crew and opening a school where Scientologist teachers teach a Scientologist curriculum make him a Scientologist, Will Smith faces another rough ride when his next movie Will Smith Stares Into A Camera And Repeats The Phrase 'I Am A Scientologist' For Two Hours is released later in the year) $66,000,000

2 - Wall-E (Wall-E's continued box office success now makes him the second most excitement-provoking robot of all time, after that time our entire family walked in on us humping our Roomba) $33,417,000

3 - Wanted (For a film about physics-defying ultra-assassins, Wanted's got a bit of a crap name, hasn't it? According to IMDb it's actually the 19th film to be named Wanted, and none of the other 18 sound particularly thrilling. Let's hope that nobody in the future confuses this Wanted with the 13-minute German Wanted or the 1983 Bollywood Wanted. It's easily done, you know) $20,607,000

4 - Get Smart (Get Smart has now utterly outclassed The Love Guru in the lame summer comedy movie stakes, with the latter still only halfway to making its money back. If only Mike Myers had made a spy spoof first) $11,125,000

5 - Kung Fu Panda (A computer animated movie about funny animals starring famous actors? What a great idea – why didn't anyone think of this first?) $7,500,000

Read more:

Weekend Box Office – Box Office Mojo

In Korea the panda is a symbol of hope, able-bodiedness and freedom. They often grace the minds of children as they drift to sleep, and inspire all others to live, to love, and to perhaps one day become a zookeeper for the sake of proximity to them or something.

Keep in mind none of this applies if the specific panda is still a communist. If it’s a communist panda the people generally consider it an idiot.

But perhaps this panda-love is the reason Kung Fu Panda just shattered Korean box office records. We think the previous record holder was their version of Lonesome Dove, which was similar to the better known 1989 mini-series except their dove actually had quite a few close friends.

Chances are right now that Jack Black is sizing up his suitcase set and considering a move to Korea – we hear that country has even offered him an apartment. It’s above a butcher, and is quite peaceful except on Monday afternoons when the chickens have to die.

His movie Kung Fu Panda just broke records as ‘the fastest moving animated movie in Korean box office history,’ 908,368 people apparently payed several shiny, polished stones to see it in it’s second weekend alone. This lifted it’s total gross to a nice $15.4 million. Sure it made a boat-load elsewhere too, but this is Korea we’re talking about!

Variety has a few more details:

“The pic passed 2 million ticket sales landmark Saturday, its tenth day of release. That is some four days quicker than “Shrek 2,” which in 2004 went on to garner 3.3 million admissions.

“Another green monster also showed impressive performances at No.2 in the Korean chart. “Incredible Hulk” opened on 529 screens and grossed $2.8 million from 455,588 admissions during the weekend. Helmer M. Night Shyamalan’s mystery “The Happening” also debuted at No.3 with a $1.2 million cume from 200,576 admissions during the weekend.”

We’d imagine with tremendous success like this sequel discussions are underway. Might we suggest the incorporation of a Korean water-buffalo as a possible sidekick, a North Korean water-buffalo as a possible nemesis, and perhaps John Belushi as a dead guy that really likes the blues.

We’ve got the script half-written.

Read more on Variety’s Website.