Box Office Breakdown

Tropic Thunder takes the lead again last weekend at the movies.

1. Tropic Thunder - $16.5 M

Tropic Thunder continues to prove its worth as a pretty good comedy that can beat a movie that's been out for over a month and a couple movies that might not even be worth rentals.

2. The House Bunny - $15.1 M

It amazes me that this even made what it did. Maybe movie-goers thought they'd be seeing actual playmates prancing around in the buff or something. At least, I hope that's why they went to see this.

3. Death Race - $12.2 M

I'm also suprised that this didn't do better. Considering what sort of movie this is, you'd think it would've done better in its inaugural weekend and beat a second rate comedy. Apparently not. Next week doesn't look any brighter, because movies like this tend to have an even shorter shelf-life than aforementioned second rate comedies.

4. The Dark Knight - $10.3 M

Batman is still hanging in there with his grappling hook firmly planted in the theaters. It's not surprise that this is still up here. What's even less of a surprise is that it should have surpassed $500 M in the next two weeks.

5. Star Wars: The Clone Wars - $5.66 M

This may be somewhat surprising. A Star Wars film performed as horribly as this did in its opening weekend, and then it dropped off this sharply? Surely a sign of the end-times. I may not have seen The House Bunny, but I'd wager this was better. You'd certainly think it would've made more than it in its first weekend, at least.

6. Pineapple Express - $4.8 M

I usually don't go down to #6, but the funniest movie of the year(thus far) warrants it.

Box office stats courtesy of Rope of Silicon.

Rick Rape sets the record straight on Game

What do you get when you combine Death Race, the Running Man, and fecal matter? The answer might just be this movie.

The game in “Game” — from “Crank” and “Pathology” creators Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor — is a futuristic multiplayer in which you can control other people. Gerard Butler’s, John Leguizamo’s, and Ventimiglia’s characters are forced to play first person games, and are considered just Sim-like avatars by the people who play them, and control their actions remotely, much like you would on a Wii.

The game is watched by millions online, and the players are pop culture heroes. But in the real world, the players are death row prisoners, who hope that playing the game will set them free. If you win 30 games, you’re out (hey, it’s one way to alleviate an overburdened prison system). Butler’s character, John Tillman — who plays under the handle Kable — is the first person to ever get close to that number.

While Butler’s Kable — who may have been falsely imprisoned — is forced to kill in the game called “Slayerz”, what Ventimiglia’s character does is “a little more disturbing,” as you might guess from his name — Rick Rape. “He’s a very misunderstood character,” Ventimiglia said. “He’s kind of loose and slippery and he doesn’t operate like a regular human being.”

Visually, he should be disturbing as well, Ventimiglia said, since the character wears a latex outfit that makes him look like “a bumblee f—ed a black widow and acts like a snake.” Quite an image.

I was okay with the premise, however absurd and cliche. I was okay with the columnist's obvious classic, non-gamer approach to 'video games', but when an actor descrives his character as “a bumblee f—ed a black widow and acts like a snake,” it's time to realize that there's no hope for the movie. Also, the nick name obviously wasn't doing the movie any service.

MTV