Arts & Entertainment
 

'50 Monday, February 16, 2004s' turns top 10 upside-down

'Served' goes down while 'Mystic River,' 'Cold Mountain' refuse to let go

Box Office Report

John Gray

Happy Post-Valentine's Day! Yesterday was your chance to make up for all of last year's bone-headed mistakes by simply purchasing something shiny for your loved one, so you'd better have taken advantage of it. After all, the DeBeers family can't be expected to suppress market competition and enslave half of the Third World all by themselves, now can they? 

This week, the top 10 will be in reverse order, starting with: 10th place and Best Picture nominee Mystic River! It just won't die, folks.

Next, in ninth place and snubbed for a Best Picture nomination: Cold Mountain, which may be No. 9 on the box office list, but is probably No. 1 on the list of movies people "just haven't gotten a chance to see yet." 

In eighth place is The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Isn't there some kind of award it could be given for resurrecting the childhood of millions of dorks all over the world? No, but a $357 million domestic gross is a pretty good consolation prize. 

Hitchcockian suspense epic Catch That Kid is in seventh place, a true box office giant and critical darling ... in an alternate universe. 

Along Came Polly continues its descent into obscurity in sixth place, which also marks the number of times Ben Stiller nervously twitches in the movie, multiplied by 20,000. 

You Got Served is dropping quickly, already in fifth place, flabbergasting those who expected a breakdancing movie with a former member of B2K to have far more staying power.

Ashton Kutcher's star turn The Butterfly Effect is still going remarkably strong in fourth place. In case you don't know, "the butterfly effect" refers to the theory that states if a butterfly halfway across the world flaps its wings, then the molecule in the box is said to be simultaneously stable and unstable, which makes the cat both alive and dead at the same time, resulting in a "big bang" which created the universe. Science! 

The Mighty Ducks are all grown up and finishing in third place in Miracle. Seriously, Kurt Russell owes all of his tough-but-caring hockey team coach skills to Emilio Estevez's example. 

Barbershop 2: Back in Business is in the No. 2 spot, doing for barbershops what Top Gun did for air force pilots. No, not pitting them against communists in a high-stakes dogfight. Just forget it. 

And No. 1 this romantic Valentine's Day weekend: 50 First Monday, February 16, 2004s, featuring Adam Sandler and the always adorable Drew Barrymore. You ladies out there can reverse the cast members in that previous sentence if you wish. Really, go ahead. No one's stopping you. 

Here's to hoping you had a great Valentine's Day. And for those of you out there who are over 21 and acted on your secret crushes, I hope you were happy making an idiot of yourself and consuming a fifth of Jack Daniels in order to get as smashed as your heart did that day. Spend the day eating Combos and listening to Dashboard Confessional while crying. Go on, you've earned it.
 

 Send comments to dcshobiz@mail.uh.edu