Spider-Man 3 dropped off 60% at the box office this weekend but still grossed $60 million dollars and made about $50 million more than it's closest competition, 28 Weeks Later.
Yawn.
Talk to me on Monday after Shrek the Third actually offers Sony some kind of challenge.
(and then, of course, Pirates 3 is just around the corner...)
It's a little disappointing that Hollywood is releasing all of its heavy-hitters in the earlier part of summer. Don't get me wrong, I'm stupidly excited about Harry Potter (both the movie and the final book), but is there any real reason to cram three of the four biggest movies of the summer into its first month (if we can even call May summer)? Can I possibly use the word "summer" any more in this paragraph? No.
In other news NBC has released its Fall lineup, with few surprises. Friday Night Lights is coming back, but into a dreaded Friday night time slot (kiss of death, anyone?). Studio 60 is gone, and The Office is taking over the holy grail of comedy television: Thursday at 9. In its old spot will be 30 Rock. After Sunday Night Football ends in January, some show called Lipstick Jungle will air Sundays at 10, and based on nothing but the title, let's just pencil that in to be gone by March.
I'm more curious to see what ABC looks like next season, specifically when they're going to start the criminally short 16-episode season of Lost.
***
I was in one hell of a funk last week, watching some of my better friends go through graduation, something I did 2 years ago. While I can logically talk myself down from the ledge, the immediate feeling was something along the lines of "holy crap what have I accomplished?" If that's not bad enough, I turn 25 in December. I don't think I've written a more frightening sentence.
In an attempt to snap myself out of it and get some work done, I dove head-first into a collaboration with a friend of mine from my glory days at NYU. Up to this point, we were both feeling uneasy about the beginning of the script, particularly that our protagonist wasn't pursuing anything. It's a recipe for disaster if your first act consists of a character sitting around, waiting for an inciting incident, and at least it's clear now that he's doing something. Perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, the relationships between he and his wife and kids has become a lot more three dimensional, if only because his concern over his goal is causing everything else to unravel.
Meanwhile, I've been thinking about writing a play about a man who kidnaps a fitness celebrity, which gets more interesting to me the more I see those godawful Fitness Made Simple commercials on ESPN. John Basedow even has a Myspace page. Isn't that music great?!
Here's John Basedow
He's gonna show you how
To meet your potential
And turn your whole life arouuuuuuuund, yeah!
It's Fitness Made Simple!
Made for real people!
It's Fitness Made Simple!
It's changing real lives!
He's really just asking for it. I mean, look at this guy:
Consider your life changed!***
Anyway, Zach hit the nail on the head: writing is for writers what heroin is for junkies. Sometimes a fix is all you need.
(so he didn't word it like that, but still....)
Write on...
