So we met the news of Disaster Movie’s release with a kind of grim stoicism. Yes, Disaster Movie would be an awful hodge-podge of cackhanded spoofs so hopelessly broad that only the very worst kind of dribbling crosseyed halfwit would enjoy, but it’d end up as number one in the weekend box office and our burgeoning misanthropy would get another power-boost.

But no – Disaster Movie isn’t top of the US weekend box office. Disaster Movie isn’t even in the weekend box office top five. Tropic Thunder’s still number one. Thanks, humanity! A bit!

A quick plea: if anyone wants us to write a Disaster Movie-style film, we’d be more than happy to. We’ve got the formula down already – 1) Watch the trailers to all the summer’s big movies, 2) copy some of the trailer’s key scenes exactly, 3) change it so that the characters hit their head on something. And that’s how you get to the top of the weekend box office.

Except you don’t, because Disaster Movie – the movie where Hancock hits his head on a lamppost, Iron Man hits his head on a cow and Sarah Jessica Parker hits his head on the foot of an unborn baby – could only stagger to number seven in the weekend box office. And that means we’re not even going to talk about it today. Instead, here’s the US weekend box office top five…

1 - Tropic Thunder (As a successful movie, it’s only natural that Tropic Thunder will end up being spoofed in whatever the sequel to Disaster Movie is. We especially can’t wait for the scene where Ben Stiller runs across a bridge getting stabbed in the neck by a toddler… and then hits his head on a metal girder. Classic stuff) $11,500,000

2 - Babylon A.D (Babylon A.D must be an excellent film, because it’s managed to get to number two in the weekend box office even though reviewers hate it so much that it only has a 5% Rottentomatoes score and the film’s own director has described it as “like a really bad episode of 24″. Seriously, Babylon AD must be the best film ever!) $9,700,000

3 - The Dark Knight (Dunno what this is. Sounds like it’s about swords and wizards and shit like that) $8,750,000

4 – The House Bunny (Wouldn’t it be funny if a sexy Playboy bunny went to school? No? Actually that sounds like a fairly positive and constructive thing to do if you’re a Playboy bunny or anyone else who trades off nothing more than their finite youthful good looks for their living? Oh. Oh well in that case we’re sorry) $8,300,000

5 - Traitor (Uh-oh, look at this – Traitor is number five in the weekend box office and Disaster Movie is only number seven. The work on next year’s Somber Absorbing And Only Moderately Preposterous FBI Movie starts tomorrow, chaps) $7,900,000

Read more:

Weekend Box Office – Box Office Mojo

She did manage to escape to the other side of the US ‘to be in a Broadway show’, as the official story put it – we know that was just a cover, and we urged Katie to run for her Creeking life. But it would seem her cover of ‘I have a job over there’ didn’t hold water with hubby Tom Cruise, and the fat bald one from Tropic Thunder has re-stamped his authority on Katie Holmes.

We tried to save her, we really did, but for some people there’s just no way around it. She’s consigned herself to a lifetime of being lead around by a dwarf, as she allowed the Cruiser to fly all the way across the country just to walk her to work.

Why didn’t you run, Katie? Why?

Aside from the initial escape to New York City, Holmes got all of our hopes up by not turning up at the Scientology Celebrity Centre’s 39th Anniversary Gala in a move of what looked to be defiance. This turned out to be a letdown, as she then went on to walk arm in arm with Cruise at the premiere of Tropic Thunder, thus quashing our hopes that she was hiding from the tiny Sleeper-Scientology man.

Maybe she still is – maybe she sent a robot out to pose with him. It’s not like she needs it to look as if it has life behind those robo-eyes now, is it? Katie Holmes doesn’t exactly forge herself a career of public appearances looking happy and alive – more fearful and machine-like. In fact, we’ve just figured it out, right this very second: she’s a robot! We, hecklerspray, are excellent detectives.

But the plan seems to have backfired, and the Katiebot was such a perfect copy that Tom Cruise now feels the need to follow it all over the country, thus putting the real Katie Holmes‘ hiding place in jeopardy. You should have run away when we told you to – really, you should.

While walking robo-Katie to ‘work’, as she called it, Cruise was apparently accosted by some builders. While the official story is that they tried to ask for autographs, we find that hard to believe. Nevertheless, OK! magazine reported:

“Some construction workers asked for a picture, but Tom politely said, ‘Sorry guys, I can’t stop. I’m walking my wife to work. She’s got rehearsals to get to.’”

Rehearsals – or a recharge point?!

Maybe we have stretched the analogy/accusation a little bit too far now, but the fact remains that Katie Holmes – robot or no – failed to escape from Tom Cruise properly. She had the chance to leg it and she failed, allowing Tom to take a late night flight across the country to walk her to work/make sure she isn’t walking around wearing a sandwich board that says ‘Scientology Is For Tiny Idiots’.

She’s losing the game, frankly.

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.

Well, wish no more! Paramount Pictures is introducing a new, cherry-licious drink called Booty Sweat. The drink comes from the upcoming Ben Stiller fiasco, Tropic Thunder, and is being marketed in conjunction with the film.   

And for the calorie-conscious, like ourselves who strive to keep our girlish figure for our lovely readers, we’re anxiously hoping for Diet Booty Sweat. Same great taste, new fruit flavor, but lower in Back Sauce! 

A new trend is emerging in Hollywood. It's called: invent a product with a funny name, put it in a movie, and then market said product along with the movie so people will buy the product because of the silly name and watch the movie, too. 

Okay, that might not be the official name of the trend, but Paramount Pictures believe this product will long outlive the movie on the shelves of Hot Topic stores, and probably at midnight revivals of Shaft throughout the world.  

And since the shelf life of an opened can of carbonated beverage is at least an hour or so, it will probably outlive the movie by an easy 45 minutes.  

The drink will have two versions with different labels for urban and rural marketing. The urban label is as follows:  

“delicious and bump up struttin' energy drink that will pump up a brotha's ass right-pronto. This swill will crank yo' metabolism up skippin' right over jiggy to straight G-pimp level, word to your mutha. Brothas will be layin' down the 2-3 on the wiggy jig focusing the energy flow into cold-face benjamins that will fill yo' pimp pockets to burstin'. Damn straight! Booty Sweat will keep a brotha pitchin' straight game all night to the baby-dolls."  

The rural can is described as follows:

“Rural stores will get a can that simply has the Booty Sweat moniker, but no street slang.” 

Oooh, thrillling rural packaging!

 Anyway, look for the appearance of products from movies being placed in stores more frequently in the future. Or don’t look.

We don’t care, but if you do look you’ll see stuff like Sex Panther cologne, as seen in the movie Anchorman, in stores this September.

That’s right. It will no longer be illegal in nine countries. You’ll just wish it were.