This week, the Love Guru took in a measly US$14 million, putting it in fourth place -- not that I think Get Smart, which grossed about $39 million, is the next Citizen Kane.

I would have said, based on the above facts, that the cinematic world is becoming a better, smarter place -- but then I checked, and You Don't Mess With The Zohan pulled in US$40 million two weeks ago.

But it then plunged to US$16.4 million two weekends ago, and pulled in the relative pocket change of $7.2 million this past weekend.

Crap will always sell, but whenever there's the tiniest bit of evidence that it's selling less, I feel more optimistic that human evolution process may not have stalled out or regressed.

In that case, even false positives are accepted.

There's one sequence in The Parallax View, which I mention below, where muckraking journalist Joe Frady (Warren Beatty) is trying to get a job with the shadowy Parallax Corporation. To do so, he fakes being a psychopath.

Watching this montage is part of the hiring process, and it's a stunning bit of filmmaking! Check it out:

The Parallax View is a 1974 film starring Warren Beatty as Joe Frady, a hard-living, truth-seeking reporter who discovers a whopper of a conspiracy and strives to unravel it (while it may seem like fiction, such reporters did exist in another era).

Here's one encounter between Frady and his editor Bill Rintels (Hume Cronyn):

The critics are not being kind to the Love Guru, Mike Myers' new vehicle. Can't say I'm surprised.

From the Globe and Mail:

"Over the years, people have urged me to remaster The Last Pogo, but it is what it is," filmmaker Colin Brunton says, talking on his cellphone from Canadian Tire. "When the sound falls apart at the end, that's exactly what happened at the show - it was chaos."

It has been three decades since Brunton made The Last Pogo as a 25-minute film document of Toronto's vibrant punk scene - begging for leftover film stock, borrowing film students and gear and persuading arts councils to give him grants to complete it. And now, the film is being dusted off (literally) for a screening at North by Northeast's music-themed film festival this weekend.

During the q-and-a session after a screening of the documentary Global Metal at the Royal, a young Iranian woman tried to choke out her thoughts between sobs.

She was just so grateful to see some Iranian metal musicians featured in the film, considering that when she goes to metal shows here, "I'm the only one who's not white."

Welcome to the new, expanded tribe.

Check this out:

I saw it at the Revue last night (they've been making some good programming picks with respects to vintage films). I got the teensiest bit of motion sickness in the scenes where you get an windshield-eye view as the cars are literally flying down the streets of San Fran (about 3:35 in on the above YouTube video).

I also want to acknowledge the nice little touch where the driver of the bad guy's car buckles up right before the fun really starts. :)

No CGI action sequence compares.

Afterthought

I stand corrected. I saw The Matrix: Reloaded in Imax. The opening scene where Trinity swoops down on her motorcycle almost did me in. :) And of course, the freeway sequence in Reloaded is sublime.