Fox’s family-friendly sobfest, Marley and Me, sat obediently at the top of the box office chart for its second weekend win and an estimated $24.1 million take.

The Jennifer Aniston and Owen Wilson drama passed the $100 million mark to officially become a blockbuster (current total $106 mil).  It also bounded past previous 2008 canine sensation, Beverly Hills Chihuahua (a movie little Rowdy the dog hated), which enjoyed repeat top finishes just two months earlier.  And while we’re comparing it to other dog movies, Marley’s total is just below that of animated pet movie Bolt.  Three dog movies…

With the help of the successful film, the wildly popular 2005 novel by John Grogan returned to the top of the New York Times best-seller list.  Grogan also has another book, A Very Marley Christmas, at #2 on the children’s list.

The movie has inspired me to get a dog of my own, if only so I can wear accessories like the PuppyPurse (pictured right).  I’m picking up one of those babies today.  And by babies, I mean the girl wearing her dog.

The rest of the rankings look almost identical to last week.  Adam Sandler’s Disney comedy is still in second.  Ben Button is in third despite an almost three hour run time.  Tom Cruise as a Nazi still works.  Jim Carrey is still wacky to round out the top five.  Oscar hopeful Doubt moved into eighth place with $5 million and knocked down early December abomination The Day the Earth Stood Still.  Finally, my favorite film of 2008, Slumdog Millionaire hopped back into the top ten where it belongs with $4.8 million.

The only new opener was Defiance in only 2 theaters and an impressive $60.5k per theater average.

3-Day weekend estimates:
1. Marley and Me $24.1 million
2. Bedtime Stories $20.3 million
3. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button $18.4 million
4. Valkyrie $14 million
5. Yes Man $13.9 million
6. Seven Pounds $10 million
7. The Tale of Despereaux $7 million
8. Doubt $5 million
9. The Day the Earth Stood Still $4.9 million
10. Slumdog Millionaire $4.8 million

However… like many bad movies… this money made a lot of money, virtually ensuring that a sequel would indeed be on the way. And sure enough, it is. The abomination even has a director attached now. Betty Thomas, who has directed such classics as “John Tucker Must Die”, “28 Days”, “I Spy” and “Doctor Dolittle”. I can smell Oscar already.

Oh, and to make things even better (for those of you who can’t tell… that’s sarcastic… this news makes it worse) they’re going to be brining in the Chipettes (the female versions of the Chipmunks). I hate life sometimes.

Algren’s unsuccessful association with the film was a personal catastrophe that, according to his biographer, Bettina Drew, “marked a turning point in Algren’s life.” For Algren, Preminger would become an obsession, a symbol of the crass arrogance of power, an enemy with whom he would grapple again and again in his writing and his reminiscences. Oblivious to Algren's enmity, Preminger merely said, “He was an amusing, intelligent man but he couldn’t write dialogue or visualize scenes.” Algren countered: "The book dealt with life at the bottom. Otto has never, not for so much as a single day, had any experience except that of life at the top.

Newman … said, “I worked very hard to use as much of the book as I could, as many of the people, as much of the dialogue, as many of the incidents as I could—except that I turned them upside down.”

Newman enjoyed working with Preminger: “I found him to be endlessly patient, always courteous.” After about a month of research and another month of writing, Newman gave Preminger his first 50 pages of script. After reading them, Preminger called Newman and said, “I’m delighted,” which Newman considered “extraordinary behavior for a director or a producer. Almost all of them, at this point, would have begun the conversation by saying, without even a hello, ‘On page eleven there’s a misplaced comma—on page fourteen I don’t understand the motivation’—and so on and so on. This is Standard Operating Procedure and it’s meant to put the screenplay writer in his place—in other words, to put him down.”

And given the overall quality of the enterprise, perhaps he is. One cannot help but compare Norton's sleepy performance in The Incredible Hulk with Robert Downey's kinetic, vibrant Iron Man performance. Different characters, of course, but Norton's Banner comes off as a cipher. Bill Bixby was never a cipher...

The Incredible Hulk actually begins promisingly, with a well-paced, interesting sequence set in Brazil. It's 158 days since Bruce Banner's (Edward Norton's) last hulk-out, and he's busy trying to discover a cure for his Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde syndrome.

Simultaneously, Banner is participating in meditation and breathing exercises to help control his anger, the very trigger that spurs the transformation into the not-very-jolly green giant. Meanwhile, our hero wastes his brilliant mind toiling away in a local bottling factory. But one day there's an accident in the factory, and Banner's blood is spilled...

Before long, General Ross (William Hurt) and his minions -- among them Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth) -- trace Banner to Brazil and attempt to catch him there. There's an exciting chase.

Banner transforms into the Hulk and evades his hunters for good (brushing off bullets like they're mosquitoes...). Banner then returns to the United States, to Culver University in Virginia, and encounters the love of his life, Dr. Betty Ross (Liv Tyler). Naturally, she still loves him, and wants to help him. There's a droll scene here in which the long-suffering, long-separated couple almost makes love, but Banner fears a premature...transformation...and begs off. I guess it happens to the best of us...

Meanwhile, the dogged but unrealistically-reckless General Ross realizes he requires a super soldier to capture the Hulk, and begins injecting Blonsky with a dangerous serum that will improve the aging grunt's speed, dexterity and strength. There's a battle on campus, but the Hulk escapes. Again.

Afterwards, Bruce and Betty race for New York City, where the mysterious Dr. Sterns (Tim Blake Nelson) might have a cure.

But then General Ross tries to capture Banner again (see a trend developing here?) Then -- injected with Hulk blood -- Blonsky transforms into the monstrous Abomination and inexplicably starts attacking his former brethren in the Army. And, well, it takes a monster to beat a monster. So Banner is dropped (literally...) into the battle zone. Cue the special effects...

And, well, that's it. That's everything. The Incredible Hulk is structured as a series of increasingly witless chases and escapes leading up to a rather underwhelming final battle. Chase. Attack. Escape. Rinse and repeat.

Director Louis Leterrier has apparently studied the contemporary superhero movie playbook, and he adheres closely to it here, with precious little deviation or ingenuity. So we get the touching-if-stale doomed love affair scenario (Banner and Ross), familiar to us from Spider-Man (2002), Batman Begins (2005) and every other superhero movie since the dawn of time. Here, there are also echoes of the King Kong, beauty-and-the- beast syndrome (evident as well in Hellboy).

We also get the ubiquitous Stan Lee cameo (see: Iron Man, Fantastic Four, The Hulk, etc.). There's even the familiar villain who wants to utilize the hero (or his technology) as a devastating weapon (see: Iron Man).

There's even the by-now de rigueur "Superhero Triumphant" shot which virtually closes out film. You know how the Dark Knight struts like a gargoyle atop Gotham's noir-ish skyscrapers? Or how Spider-Man swings through Manhattan's glass and steel valleys? Or how Superman orbits the Earth after a day's work? Well here, The Incredible Hulk lumbers from NYC rooftop to rooftop, until the picture fades out into glorious sunlight.

Yawn. When the film was finally over, I agreed with The Abomination, who -- during the final battle -- asked the Incredible Hulk a pertinent question. "Is that all you've got?"

Movie, is that all you've got?

But I suppose this brand of faux-angsty, solemn phantasmagoria is precisely what the majority of franchise fans desire. A superhero movie that plays it relentlessly safe and doesn't rock the boat or reach for artistic heights. What seems obvious here is that producers Hurd and Arad learned their lesson from Ang Lee's ambitious failure and learned it hard. They decided not to commit one daring or original idea to celluloid in this sequel. Better to make a movie of extended chases and monster wrestling matches than something interesting about the human condition, about the "rage" we all control. Underneath everything else in this movie is the barely audible, frightened whisper:

Don't make fanboys angry. You wouldn't like your box office receipts when they're angry...

So what you get in The Incredible Hulk is a reflexive pandering to the base demographic so obvious and desperate it would make even a serial panderer like Sarah Palin blush with embarrassment. Thus we get endless in-jokes and references to the comic-book and TV show. Look, there's Bill Bixby (in footage from The Courtship of Eddie's Father)! Look, there's Lou Ferrigno! Listen, they just mentioned reporter Jack McGee! Why, we even get a franchise cross-over scene with Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) and General Ross that forecasts an Avengers movie! One meant, no doubt, to cause spontaneous fan orgasms. Man, this movie is such a bad-ass mo fo! Isn't it cool that the whole Marvel movie universe is connected?

Sure. But it would have been cooler if The Incredible Hulk was...good.

To my shock, film critics largely praised this sub-par effort. In doing so, they failed to mention the egregious lapses in tone, particularly during the cringe-inducing moment wherein Banner and Ross arrive in NYC. They promptly and ridiculously term the Big Apple "the most aggressive" city on Earth (Gimme a break! They should see the Wal-Mart in Monroe on a Saturday night...). They then take an exaggerated and dangerous ride in a cab. Betty gets mad and screams at the negligent cab driver, prompting an embarrassed-looking Norton to note that he knows some techniques for anger management. This scene is so ridiculous, so campy, so piped-in from another planet, that you just wince with discomfort. It's so bad you can't believe your eyes and ears.

Soon after, it's the audience's anger-management that's tested as Tim Blake Nelson (Samuel Stern) delivers one of the worst supporting performances I've seen in a superhero film since Lambert Wilson in Catwoman (2004). He plays Stern like a crazy, hyper-active clown. Maybe he was inspired by the 1960s Batman, but regardless his performance sticks out like a sore thumb. Every trace of believability seeps out of the picture when he's on-screen mugging.

Also, if you delve at all into the details of The Incredible Hulk, the story doesn't make any sense. For one thing, General Ross appears to be the highest ranking, most powerful general in the United States, because he launches full-scale attacks (replete with roaring gunships and sonic cannons...) on an American college campus with no blow-back either from the Army or the President himself. The attack makes the nightly news (and the Hulk is even recorded on a civilian phone camera). But nobody in the U.S. government seems to take notice. Nobody panics. Nobody makes a statement. General Ross apparently just has carte blanche to do whatever the hell he wants, including the conspicuous war waging on American soil.

And why does Blonsky immediately turn against his former allies in Armed Forces once he becomes the Abomination? The movie establishes that as the Hulk, Banner remains true, at least somewhat, to his human character. He remembers Betty and is gentle with her; protective. So a career army officer like Blonsky -- one who has fought with these men in the trenches literally all his life -- becomes a hulkish monster and turns instantly on them? That one's never explained either.

But more to the point, the film's narrative largely invalidates Banner's point of view. He is on the run (and in hiding) because he doesn't want the American military to create a league of super soldiers. Well, first off, Ross already has a different (non Hulk variety...) super soldier serum. It works, and he uses it on Blonsky.

And secondly, when the Abomination runs wild, Banner is dropped into the fight essentially as -- yep -- a super soldier, to defeat him; thus proving the validity of the program. The whole "creating super soldier" thing is out of the bag, whether Banner is a conscientious objecter or not. If Banner is willing to transform into the Hulk to fight a monster in New York (the most aggressive city on Earth!), isn't it kind of selfish that he wouldn't let the American military develop a Hulk in the event that -- for example -- Iran developed an Islamic Hulk and went nuts with it on the streets of Baghdad?

Yep, this Bruce Banner is a flip-flopper. He was against super-soldiers before he was for them.

I find it highly ironic that the most popular screen version of the Hulk remains the Bixby/Ferrigno TV series, which ran on American television for four years (from 1978-1982). That 30-year old Kenneth Johnson series had little money and no computer technology, but the stories had one crucial element: heart.

They concerned things like loss, obsession, redemption and shame, and Banner -- despite his curse -- made a difference in the life of ordinary people. that's what the show as about, The Hulk coming to the rescue of the little guy; the exploited, the weak, the poor, even the abused.

Today, The Hulk (2003) and The Incredible Hulk (2008) boast big stars and big special effects, yet concern nothing human. They are monstrous in the worst sense of the word, obsessed with big digital juggernauts duking it out. Our emotions are never engaged, and therefore watching this film's, finale is a bit like watching someone else play a video game while you wait your turn at the joystick.

Every once and while, there's a fancy move that earns your admiration, but otherwise, you're not really involved.

After 30-plus years of reading SF and attending conventions, there are whole areas of fandom I do not understand: anime-based LRPGs; amateur neo-pagan Tolkien scholars; the three Fs of Filking, Furries, and Fanfic. But at least I can, in some bizarre way, comprehend what the attraction to these strange pursuits might be, regardless of there place on the geek hierarchy.

Then there is the incomprehensible. The truly alien.

I speak of the unceasing cute-ification of action figures.

A while back our esteemed hosts here at SF Signal posted an image of an My Little Cthulhu. I chuckled at it in an ironic way, not knowing the horror that awaited. In the past few years the market for little stylized figures has exploded. Minimates, Kubricks, and Mighty Muggs, all seemingly descended from Fisher Price ancestors, fill the toystores and specialty shops. The monthly Diamond Catalog is rife with them. This plague has infected science fiction. The genre's finest heroes, monsters, and villains are reduced to the status of horrible two-inch tall eyesores.

I'm known for my contempt of all things cute. I laughed when Sheridan purged the teddy bears from Babylon 5, the Klingon slaughter of the Tribbles makes my heart sing, and I think the Society for the Exterminaton of Ewoks is among the noblest, most heroic organizations in existence.

To see the memorable characters of Star Trek, Galactica, and Aliens suffer this fate is an atrocity. The sight of time-traveling apes, Latverian super-despots, and gloriously-weaponed killing machines like Wolverine or the Predator rendered as such makes me weep. I don't know if I want to live in a world where such planet-slaying horrors as Cthulhu and Galactus are subjected to this unspeakable state.

What unholy brain fever or imbalance of bodily humors stirs the desire to transform a skilled and vengeful Sith assassin into a freakish bulb-headed abomination?

And now we see this repugnant trend spreading to other media.

It amounts to nothing less than a net reduction in sense of wonder.

It diminishes us as a species.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna curl up with my plush Rodan and read a book.

Details have been unveiled about director Guy Ritchie's new Sherlock Holmes film. Robert Downey Jr. will play the famed detective and Jude Law will be Dr. Watson. Downey met with Ritchie and the female leads at a press call in London to announce some details of the film project. Despite the off-beat casting, Ritchie says he is determined to bring back major elements of the original Arthur Conan Doyle stories, though the familiar site of Holmes in a deerstalker hat will be absent. The most enduring image of Holmes and Watson is based on the 1940s series of films starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. Purists have long grumbled that these films, mostly set in contemporary times, were an abomination of the books, particularly Bruce's bumbling version of Watson. However, they have continued to resonate with movie fans over the decades. Ritchie says he is an avid reader of the books and intends to do justice to Doyle's work. For more click here