1. "Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs" ($24.6 million)
2. "Surrogates" ($15 million)
3. "Fame" ($10 million)
4. "The Informant!" ($6.9 million)
5. "I Can Do Bad All By Myself" ($4.7 million)

Moviegoers on the American east coast woke up to both a literal downpour of rain as well as an irrefutable onslaught of oh-so-delicious "Meatballs." The Sony Pictures Animation film easily won the box office for its second weekend in a row with a $24.6 million intake, resulting in a total of $60 million since its debut last weekend. Read more...

1. "Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs" ($5.6 million)
2. "Surrogates" ($5 million)
3. "Fame" ($3.5 million)
4. "The Informant!" ($2 million)
5. "Pandorum" ($1.6 million)

If the Bruce Willis-starring comic book movie "Surrogates" had one obstacle to overcome this weekend, it was "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs," the Sony Pictures Animation film that reigned supreme over last weekend's box office. Truly, it's a difficult decision for moviegoers -- experience a world filled with robotic analogues that can do and see anything you wish them to, or behold the spectacle of delectable food products raining gloriously upon your face. In the end, it looks like taste buds just barely won the battle. Read more...

1. "Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs" ($30.1 million)
2. "The Informant!" ($10.5 million)
3. "I Can Do Bad All By Myself" ($10 million)
4. "Love Happens" ($8.4 million)
5. "Jennifer's Body" ($6.8 million)

Unsurprisingly -- particularly given its $8 million intake on Friday -- "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" is the clear-cut winner at the box office this weekend. After outgrossing the competition by almost $5 million on Friday, the Bill Hader-starring "Meatballs" went on to sweep the weekend with a healthy $30.1 million serving. Deadline Hollywood Daily reports that the animated family film's final box office intake is greater than initially forecasted at the weekend's outset thanks largely to families churning out for Saturday matinees. Read more...

1. "Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs" ($8 million)
2. "The Informant!" ($3.7 million)
3. "Love Happens" ($3.2 million)
4. "I Can Do Bad All By Myself" ($3 million)
5. "Jennifer's Body" ($2.7 million)

What do Bill Hader, Matt Damon, Jennifer Aniston and Megan Fox all have in common? No, they're not signing up for an ensemble dramedy, though that would be nice -- instead, all four actors are duking it out at the box office this weekend with their respective debuting films "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs," "The Informant!," "Love Happens" and "Jennifer's Body." Read more...

FROM MTV.COM: It's October of 1992, and Mark Whitacre (Matt Damon), a hotshot executive at Archer Daniels Midland, the giant agricultural conglomerate, is going about his job. He has a full plate at the moment — some mysterious virus is screwing up the company's corn-syrup operation. Did you know there's corn syrup in everything — orange juice, maple syrup? It's true.

So Mark has a lot on his mind. Or at least that part of his mind that's not buzzing with a whole other swarm of odd fixations. Like ... sushi. "I wonder who went first on that one?" Mark wonders. "The guy without the grill?" There's also the threat of poison-winged butterflies. And ... polar bears! Do you realize that polar bears would be impossible to spot in their snowy Arctic habitat if it weren't for their black noses? It's true. Do you think a polar bear ever peered at his reflection in the water surrounding his ice floe and thought, "Without that nose, I'd be invisible"? Maybe. On the other hand, as Mark concludes, "That's a lot of thinking for a bear."

Continue reading 'The Informant!': Liars, Inc., By Kurt Loder

"It would be sexual harassment in any other business." That's what Matt Damon had to say about Michael Douglas's "chapstick" comment, a reference to the Liberace biopic the two will star in. Douglas will play the famous singer/showman and Damon, his gay lover. The duo will be under the direction of Steven Soderbergh, whose Damon-starring quirky comedy "The Informant!" hits theaters today.

In the video below you can hear Damon talking about his work with Soderbergh at last week's Toronto International Film Festival, where MTV's Josh Horowitz got to sit with him. Beware listeners: there are some sizable "Informant" spoilers in the latter half of the video, so hit stop at around 1:00/1:10 if you want to remain pure.

We don’t like intellectuals. You, the person reading this right now, and me, the dude writing, might have a fondness for them. But we, the lot of us living in North America, don’t have a whole lot of time for intellectuals. This is by no means a modern development. More of an essential American personality quirk going back a few hundred years. We like smart people, no doubt. Admirers and detractors alike in this country have always celebrated brilliant satirists and social commentators, from Mark Twain all the way up to Jon Stewart.

They make us laugh though, so they’re disqualified. Comedy often helps us forgive, and sometimes negate, intellectualism. Without it, though, we view dispassionate reason in matters of politics and ethics as weaknesses or haughtiness. This is especially true of liberal-minded entertainers. An actor and filmmaker doesn’t understand the common man’s values, the naysayers contend, so their intellectual approach to moral or political issues is invalid. Not with Ronald Reagan, though! But Reagan was no intellectual. There’s the catch. And that's why Matt Damon interests me. Read more...

I saw "The Informant!" last night. It was quite good. Matt Damon has really distinguished himself as an actor who inhabits the roles that he plays; his pudgy corporate whistle-blower Mark Whitacre is only the latest in a long line.

When MTV's Josh Horowitz spoke with Damon last week at the Toronto International Film Festival, he asked the actor about how he prepared for his meaty role. As in how he gained all that weight; no fat suits for this guy. Said Damon, "it was really, really... really fun" to put on that weight. I'll bet. Hear the actor run through his "Informant!" diet in the Rough Cut clip below.

Read more...

One of the big releases this week, something I'm very much looking forward to seeing later today, is Steven Soderbergh's "The Informant!" Star Matt Damon was at the Toronto International Film Festival last week promoting the flick, and MTV's Josh Horowitz got a chance to sit down and talk to him. While the Soderbergh flick was obviously the topic of the day, Josh got to squeeze in a little bit about Damon's involvement in the next "Bourne" movie.

There are apparently no concrete plans in place just yet, but Damon did say that he'll be meeting with "Bourne Ultimatum" director Paul Greengrass and series producer Frank Marshall in New York City next month to talk about what's next for the super-spy. As Damon tells Josh in the video below, "we'd love to do it... but we've got to do it right."

Read more...

Before diving in with the coming week's releases, let's take a quick look at last week's. I think the poll results usually paint a pretty telling picture of who is reading this blog. The weekend's big box office winner, Tyler Perry's "I Can Do Bad All By Myself," failed to pick up a single vote in the poll. "Sorority Row" took top spot in the poll (70% of your votes), followed in a distant second by "Whiteout" and "9," which were basically tied, at 15% and 13% respectively.

My takeaway is that you readers are on the younger side -- ie below 30, or at least not yet parents -- and that you prefer spectacle to schmaltz. That's definitely an overly broad generalization, but I do find the fact the weekend's biggest earner, by quite a wide margin I might add, didn't even pick up one vote in last week's poll. Now, let's take a look at what's in store this week... Read more...