Weekend Box Office: Those Rich 'Basterds"

Quentin Tarantino landed his biggest opening to date this weekend with his World War II tale "Inglourious Basterds", which hauled in a massive (for August) $37.6 million. As reported yesterday, the film pulled in a terrific $14.4 million gross on Friday, but it was uncertain as to how the 2 1/2 hour, R-rated epic would play the rest of the weekend. The film did drop on Saturday, but the descent was minimal (8%), which indicates that the positive reviews and favorable word-of-mouth is paying off. If the film holds up over the next couple of weeks, Tarantino might be looking at his first $100 million hit since "Pulp Fiction" was released 15 years ago (overseas, the film did roughly $28 million).

Second place went to last week's champ, the critically-acclaimed sci-fi drama "District 9", which was off roughly 49% to gross an estimated $18.9 million. In 10 days, the film has taken in $73 million and has a really good shot at hitting $100 mil before all is said and done. Not bad for a $30 million South African film with no big stars. I would say that Universal might now reconsider letting Neill Blomkamp and Peter Jackson make "Halo", but it looks like James Cameron is making that film in the form of "Avatar" .

Third place went to the PG-13 explosions and effects demo "G.I. Joe" with an estimated $12.5 mil, bringing its total to $120 million. I haven't seen the film yet, so I can't really say whether it's any good or not. But it was "directed" by Stephen Sommers, who made the terrible trio of "The Mummy", "The Mummy Returns" and "Van Helsing", so I'm pretty sure that I would want to rip my eyeballs out and stomp on them if I sat down to watch "Joe". But hey, apparently one man's trash is another's $175 million epic. Sigh.

Slots four and five went to two alternates to the current glut of multiplex guts, gore and explosions: "The Time Travelers Wife" ($10 mil est.) and "Julie and Julia" ($9.5 est). Since I was informed that Rachel McAdams does not appear in her birthday suit, I find no reason to sit through "Time Traveler". "Julie and Julia", however, I did see and was surprised, shocked actually, that the film was entertaining. It was written and directed by Nora Ephron, a filmmaker that over the years has given us such torture tests as "Bewitched", "Hanging Up", "Mixed Nuts", "Lucky Numbers" and "Michael" among others. It's not her writing or directing that made "Julie" worth seeing though. It's the performances by Meryl Streep, Stanley Tucci and Amy Adams that make it worth the price of admission (or better yet, a DVD rental this fall).

The Labor Day dregs begin to get trotted out next weekend with "Halloween II" and "The Final Destination". One possible sign of quality may lie in the other release next week: the comedy "Taking Woodstock", directed by Ang Lee.