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

Read more:

Weekend Box Office – Box Office Mojo

Observers of Kevin Smith might have noticed a change in his shape lately, in that he’s gone from ‘tubby’ to ‘perfectly spherical’.

Don’t think this hasn’t gone unnoticed, though – Kevin Smith himself is quite aware that he’s developing a bit of weight problem. It’s something he picked up on in the traditional way, by breaking a toilet under the weight of his own body.

According to an anecdote that he decided to tell a journalist of his own free will, Kevin Smith recently sat on a toilet only for it to fall away from the wall because of his enormous mass. At least we think Kevin Smith’s weight broke the toilet. It could have also been that Kevin Smith’s urine is high-pressured and grainy and essentially works like a manky-smelling water jet cutter. We simply don’t know.

Recently Kevin Smith has hinted that he’s got not plans to reintroduce Jay and Silent Bob to his movies, and that’s probably a good thing. If Kevin Smith continues to pack on weight at the rate he has been, Silent Bob will only be silent because he’s had a massive diabetic stroke.

Make no mistake, Kevin Smith is large. That’s no secret – those who saw Die Hard 4 last year may have been shocked by way that Kevin Smith suddenly seemed to have swollen up like an infected tropical insect bite – but now even Kevin Smith himself has decided to take action ahead of the release of Zack And Miri Make A Porno.

Weight gain, you see, can creep up on us in a number of ways. Maybe you have trouble putting on an old outfit. Maybe people accidentally think you’re pregnant. Or maybe, just maybe, you sit on a toilet and your gigantic body causes the toilet to shear off the wall completely.

As The LA Times reports, that last one was the warning buzzer for Kevin Smith:

“I’m going away for a while,” Smith, puffing a menthol cigarette on the patio of his Hollywood Hills home, “to concentrate on myself. To save my life.” … “I broke a toilet. That’s how heavy I am. I can’t take all the credit – that was an old toilet and a very waterlogged wall – but my size took that toilet down. I cannot cognitively reframe it and be like, ‘It wasn’t me – it was the toilet.’ It was definitely me. And that’s a wake-up call!”

Are you listening, Angelina Jolie? This is how you promote a movie. None of this overblown breast-feeding nonsense – you sit on a toilet, break it, possibly cover yourself in shit and then tell everyone about it. Maybe we’d go and watch The Changeling if you covered yourself in your own shit during a humiliating household accident. Remember that.

But anyway, let’s hope that Kevin Smith manages to get a handle on his weight problem, largely because it’d be quite nice if he stayed alive long enough to make his horror movie Red State. It can happen – just look at Peter Jackson. Maybe Kevin could take a leaf out of Jackson’s books and go from being a massively overweight movie director to a normal-sized movie director with so much excess skin that he ends up looking like a Pac-Man ghost.

Or if not, that’s cool too. It’d probably be quite nice to be known as the Orson Welles of films about nothing where people stand around talking about crap that isn’t important.

A week of joy and misery.

Folded:

• Zack and Miri Make a Porno redband trailer (gear up to laugh at Kevin Smith’s latest)
• Vin Diesel returns for ‘Fast and Furious’ (God help our latent excitement)
• That Kylie sounds like she’s singing ‘I’ll be leaving you’ instead of ‘I believe in you’ during her song of the same name (amazing what two hours of staring zombie-faced at 4Music can teach you)
• Step Brothers (it’s hard not to chuckle when Will Ferrell is forced to lick white dog shit)
• Want to know why Babylon A.D. sucked so many balls? (here you go…)

Creased:

• Anne Hathaway stars in the dreadful looking Passengers (why d’yah do it, Anne? Why?)
• Ginger beer (who drinks this carbonated sandpaper? It makes your throat feel like you’ve just been sick)
• Mourn the passing of movie trailer voiceover king Don LaFontaine (see the man in action)
• 4Music (so, apart from Kylie, Dr Fox and some occasional Nelly, what are we really talking about here? Friday Night Project repeats, that’s what)
• Bad lips (still, she’ll be alright if she falls in the water)