Top Shelf at the Box Office!

So yeah, this is the time of year when most of us are just starting to get into the swing of Thanksgiving right around the corner. When we're trying to decide who's gonna do the turkey this year and whether or not your sister-in-law is bringing that disgusting canned cranberry sauce, Hollywood is already way of us and well into Christmas time. Then again these are the same people who begin their summer movie season at the end of April. Time tends to get a little skewed out there on the left coast.

1. A Christmas Carol- $31M

While not the start the studio was hoping for, let's look back only a few years and look at what The Polar Express did. It started out even worse than this, opening at $23M and was deemed a huge disaster. But it's staying power was phenomenal, staying on charts for months and actually improving each week, til it finally ended up at roughly $180M domestic. Now that's not to say that A Christmas Carol will do the same, but what I do know is that Christmas films tend to have a long shelf life, which is part of the reason why they release so early. People tend to not get into the spirit until closer to the big holiday, and that spurs families to see anything related to it. I expect that this will still end up being a hit. Maybe not on the same level as Polar Express, but certainly not like Zemeckis's last film, Beowulf.

2. Michael Jackson's This Is It- $14M/$57.9M

Only dropping 40% in it's 2nd week, the decision's been made to extend Michael Jackson's farwell to his fans another week. Although I expect that it will keep being extended as long as it continues to put up numbers like this, and then we'll get the DVD...then the Special Edition DVD with even more found footage....then the Ultimate Edition DVD with a newly released track from Jermaine and Tito...and then...

3. The Men Who Stare at Goats- $13.3M

I felt from the start that this off-brand comedy had the smell of 2002's Welcome to Collinwood all over it. That is a Coen Brothers-esque comedy with an amazing cast that will fail in every respect. While it's debut weekend isn't exactly a disaster, it's certainly not worthy of the star-studded performers involved, and considering the generally negative buzz I don't expect it'll last much longer.

4. The Fourth Kind- $12.5M

Perhaps stealing a bit of Paranormal Activity's heat, Milla Jojovich's latest "real event" thriller got off to a respectable start, especially since there seemed to be a last minute effort to debunk every one of the film's claims right before it's release. The audience ain't stupid. We already know it's a total crock. Doesn't mean the film ain't worth checkin' out.

5. Paranormal Activity- $8.6M/$97.4M

Closing in on $100M...

6. The Box- $7.86M

Let's face it, Richard Kelly is not a mainstream creator and his films will never be hits. That said, this is still pretty subpar, especially for a movie with Cameron Diaz as a lead draw. I think the marketing should've focused more on the decision the box represented, and less on the supernatural crap that followed. It should've been pushed as a new type of Indecent Proposal: Would you Kill for a Million Dollars? That type of thing.

7. Couples Retreat- $6.43M/$96M

Only dropped like 1% from last week! This one ain't goin' nowhere anytime soon.

8. Law Abiding Citizen- $6.17M/$60.9M

Another one that ain't goin' nowhere. People love to see two big name actors square off like this, and for the most part they get everything they were looking for. Plus there really isn't any other movie out there that's quite like this one.

9. Where the Wild Things Are- $4.22M/$69.3M

10. Astro Boy- $2.59M/$15.1M

Also...

Frankly I'm a little tired of hearing about Precious: Based on the novel "Push" by Sapphire. It's been all over the place, and if one more person asks me about it I'll scream. But there is an undeniable buzz surrounding the film, and in it's debut in limited release it certainly reaped the benefits of that. Precious raked in an estimated $1.8M at only 18 sites! That's an average of $100,000 per site. Remarkable. Because of that the film is being fast tracked for expansion, and will now see a marked increase in theatres beginning on November 20th, so mark your calandars!