This was a good weekend to catch up on better movies that opened earlier in the summer—Patricia and I did this with Will Ferrell's "The Other Guys," which is pretty damned funny (review up tomorrow)—and while it can be argued that most of us did do this, since the five new releases finished second, fourth, and six through eight, still, this weekend, nearly $50 million was spent on them, with the best-reviewed of the lot, "Nanny McPhee Returns," doing worst, and the worst-reviewed of the lot, "Vampires Suck," a parody of the "Twilight" movies, doing best: $12.2 million, good enough for second place. Sad. That $50 million works out to about 6.2 million people who couldn't figure out better ways to spend their money and time. BTW: There's always an uproar when some critic doesn't like a popular movie and ruins its 100% Rotten Tomatoes rating (see: Armond White and "Toy Story 3"), but what about when a critic likes a crap movie and ruins its 0% rating? Michael Ordona, I'm looking at you and "Vampires Suck."

Everyone will say that "The Expendables" rocked this weekend (or "muscled out the competition," or "pumped itself up to no. 1"), but its numbers still fell off by 52.6%, which is the biggest fall-off of any movie that didn't lose theaters this weekend. "Scott Pilgrim," meanwhile, gained two theaters but still fell off 52.6%. Girly man.

The wide-release movie that fell off the least? "Inception," which dropped 719 screens yet dropped only 32%. It has now grossed $261m domestic, $315m abroad.

Complete weekend box office estimates here.

There are still good movies to see, people. "Restrepo" is still playing in 44 theaters, and two new docs, "The Tillman Story" and "A Film Unfinished," just opened in NY and LA. One hopes they go wider.

Meanwhile, spurred by Uncle Vinny's post, I went to see "Two in the Wave" ("Deux de la vague"), a French doc about Truffaut and Godard, which is playing at Northwest Film Forum on Capitol Hill in Seattle. It doesn't go as deeply into their films as I would like, but it does go into their history: their initial friendship and rivalry, and what broke them up in 1973: Of all things, Truffaut's "Day for Night," which I love and Godard couldn't stand. But then I can't stomach Godard after '65. Seattlities, it's playing all week. Go see it some American night.

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