1. Tropic Thunder — $14.2 million

Against not-so-formidable competition, Ben Stiller's little $90 million-comedy-that-could persisted in first place for the third consecutive week. Fun fact: Thunder became only the sixth R-rated film in history to achieve such longevity, joining the seminal likes of The Whole Nine Yards, American Pie 2 and The Passion of the Christ. And a fourth win isn't out of the question this weekend if America stands up to the horror of Nicolas Cage's latest, Bangkok Dangerous. Why doesn't the Special Olympics lobby protest that degradation? Another discussion, another time.

2. Babylon A.D. — $12 million

While our generally impeccable box-office projections last Friday seem to have misapprehended Vin Diesel's lagging appeal, let's be honest: As butchered, disavowed and dumped-on-the-roadside B-pictures go, Babylon's $12 million take is in no way a reflection of the actor's animated-elephant-epic potential (or lack thereof). We're just saying.

3. The Dark Knight — $11.3 million

Three words: Fuck you, Japan. Bonus: The film's cumulative gross tipped $500 million (along with Titanic, the only film to break the barrier domestically); Warners is reportedly using at least half of the money to launch Speed Racer back to its home country in return via the internally developed Batapult™.

4. The House Bunny — $10.7 million

Discuss: Between the success of this film, its medium-budget sibling Step Brothers and its lowbrow, high-yield cousin Pineapple Express, Sony Pictures' comedy trifecta is the most underreported story of the summer.

5. Traitor — $10 million

Our underdog, all grown up. We're so proud!

WHAT'S NEW: For the second consecutive week, what isn't new? But more to the point, what's new that you actually want to see? The Summer of the R-rated Comedy tapers off with College, which will battle Disaster Movie in the lowest-common-denominator category. Hamlet 2 expands to 1,500 screens, hoping to find some traction in the mudslide that was its lackluster limited opening last Friday. Among smaller films, look for Brian Cox to avenge his murdered dog in the haunting Red, while Czech Oscar-winner Jiri Menzel returns after 20 years with I Served the King of England and the '90s art-scene aftermath gets a once-over in the doc Beautiful Losers. Finally — and somewhat amazingly — a franchise is born with Another Gay Sequel: Gays Gone Wild!.

THE BIG LOSER: Babylon A.D. may yet outmaneuver Tropic Thunder for the week's top box-office spot; it should tip $15 million for the four-day frame, probably just sneaking by Ben Stiller's comedy by less than $1 million. That's the "good news" — if underperforming by about 20% is still considered good. The failures don't stop there, however; to the extent it's remembered at all, Babylon A.D. will always have the distinction of being the film that ended loose-lipped Matthieu Kassovitz's directing career in America, sucker-punched Vin Diesel back into franchise submission and jammed a red-ink exclamation point on Fox's underachieving (if not disastrous) summer. Still, they'll always have the silver lining of ambition — this kind of implosion requires a rare chemistry you shouldn't take for granted. Just wear sunglasses and stand way, waaayyyy back.

THE UNDERDOG: The Don Cheadle/Guy Pearce political thriller Traitor got an early jump with a midweek release, decent reviews, a funny Kimmel tie-in and smart, aggressive marketing throughout the Olympics and Democratic National Convention. The upstart gang at Overture Films, which previously scored this spring with the ultimate underdog (and unlikely Oscar candidate) The Visitor, is having a nifty run we hope continues through all the ferocious scythe-swinging taking off the heads of its indie contemporaries around town.

FOR SHUT-INS: Too cheap/agoraphobic to leave the house this weekend? We're sorry to hear that; new DVDs are less than encouraging. There's always the "Extended Jackpot Edition" of What Happens in Vegas, which we hear spits quarters from your TV if you endure all 167 minutes. Uwe Boll's folly Postal appears in rated and unrated versions for the schlock completist in you, and Morgan Spurlock's here-and-gone doc Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? settles into Weinstein video oblivion. And for the mega-bored among you, full-season sets of Heroes, Entourage, Everybody Hates Chris and One Tree Hill will get you through holiday bedrest like a charm.

So seriously — is there anything here you'd spend money on this weekend? Did we miss some gem that compels a closer look? Call your shots, or better yet, call your friends — you're not really planning to hide in the dark during the last weekend of summer are you? Oh. OK, us too. Have a good one!

Boomp3.com

Find Me Guilty star Vin Diesel continued to show his support for the latest action opus Babylon A.D. despite the fact that the film's director recently disavowed it. Leaving the TRL studios, Diesel said, "Babylon A.D. isn't some red-headed stepchild that you throw out with the bath water. It's a rip roaring good time with explosions and me and some more explosions. I'm not going to disown it anytime soon. I'll be there on midnight Thursday night. " Diesel expressed a desire to record multiple commentary tracks for the DVD release and has began to brainstorm ideas for the sequel. Before hopping into his limo, Diesel confidentially stated, "I hope we can get Mathieu back for the sequel."

[Photo Credit: Getty Images]

*A Call To The Bullpen is a work of fiction. Although the pictures we use are most certainly real, Defamer does not purport that any of the incidents or quotations you see in this piece actually happened. Lighten up, people ... it's a joke.

Things quickly deteriorated from there, alas, but Kassovitz's loss is our gain today as he disowns Babylon A.D. in the most spectacular, career-immolating fashion imaginable:

"It's pure violence and stupidity," he admits. "The movie is supposed to teach us that the education of our children will mean the future of our planet. All the action scenes had a goal: They were supposed to be driven by either a metaphysical point of view or experience for the characters... instead parts of the movie are like a bad episode of 24."

The last stroke, Kassovitz says, was when Fox interfered with the editing of the film, paring it down to a confusing 93 minutes (original reports were that 70 minutes were cut from the film; Kassovitz says the number is closer to 15). ...

""I don't see how people who went through all these amazing blockbusters like The Dark Knight and Iron Man this summer will take it. ... I should have chosen a studio that has guts," he says. "Fox was just trying to get a PG-13 movie. I'm ready to go to war against them, but I can't because they don't give a s—t."

Fox was not available for comment, according to the author, but we don't mind defending the studio on the basis of its clear interest in rich "points of view" belonging to everyone from Manoj Night Shyamalan to Eddie Murphy to Space Chimps — this year alone, in fact, as evidenced by its glamorous run of greeting cards memorializing those perspectives and experiences. Furthermore, if you can't get a metaphysical hard-on watching Jack Bauer clamp jumper cables to terrorist nipples, then maybe it's your point of view that requires more worldly considerations, Matty. We're almost loath to say it, but seriously: Team Fox.

• 'Babylon A.D.' Director Mathieu Kassovitz Describes a Disastrous Production[SciFi Scanner]