<![CDATA[Gawker: defamer, bolt]]> http://tags.gawker.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/gawker.com.png <![CDATA[Gawker: defamer, bolt]]> http://gawker.com/tag/defamer/bolt http://gawker.com/tag/defamer/bolt <![CDATA[America Surrenders to New, Walletsucking Vampire Breed]]> It was the weekend that moviegoers gave blood whether they wanted to or not; take a moment, relax and recover with us as we comb through the Monday Morning Box Office:

1. Twilight - $70.6 million
Multiplex chains were forced to summon crisis counselors after Twilight's $33 million opening day, the screeching tween torment of which rang in shellshocked staffers' ears even as grosses slowed into the weekend. Meanwhile at Summit Entertainment — the indie that bankrolled the the teen-vampire-romance phenomenon — execs are assembling one of the nicest fruit baskets ever to send to Warner Bros., whose bumping of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince from Nov. 21 to next summer gave Twilight a green light to plunder at will.

2. Quantum of Solace - $27.4 million
The 007 thriller plunged 60% from its record-breaking opening a week ago, once again triggering Broody Bond's thirst for revenge that will be explored in the series' stake-wielding 2011 installment, Message For Twilight.

3. Bolt - $27 million
Disney's 3-D canine pseudohero took a massive dump on its owner's carpet over the weekend, underperforming by at least $10 million below expectations. After a stern talking to, the pooch is expected to behave a little better for the studio's Thankgsiving guests; another mess like this and it's straight to the shelter.

4. Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa - $16 million
On the other hand, runaway zoo animals never require discipline from their masters at DreamWorks Animation, though Madagascar's own 54% drop was unusual for a famliy film, even one featuring the giraffe-voicing talents of David Schwimmer.

5. Role Models - $7.2 million
David Wain's bid for mainstream success has apparently been accepted by, well, the mainstream, with his R-rated mentoring comedy grossing $48 million to date. Congratulations, David!

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<![CDATA[Heroic Dog Fends Off Vampires in Deadly All-Ages Box-Office Duel]]> Welcome back to Defamer Attractions, your weekly guide to everything new, noteworthy and otherwise avoidable at the movies. Today offers a little more variety than last week's Bond! Bond! Bond! World Tour, but only a little — a total of two major new offerings are crashing the multiplex this week, with a scrappy smattering of indies and upstarts shuffling onto screens behind them. And if that's not doing it for you, there are always a few thrilling DVD's to pick up the slack. As always, our opinions are our own, but you'll never see them schlepping off to Washington for a bailout. Invest wisely after the jump!

WHAT'S NEW: Hopefully you enjoyed your mildly adult pleasures last week while you could, because it's an all-puberty weekend this go-around. Twilight finally crashes theaters after a hormonal, high-pitched tidal wave of anticipation, packing tween girls (and not just a few of their mothers) into as much as $70 million worth of sold-out shows. We don't have much to say about the vampire swoonathon that we haven't thrown your way already, but we will go ahead and call it for a $68.8 million gross, 237 fainting spells and a record 455 million shrieks drowning out the dialogue.

Disney will represent as well with its 3-D canine superhero opus Bolt, voiced by John Travolta and Miley Cyrus among others. Tracking is close to $40 million, but with reviews well-above average and the imprimatur of ex-Pixar chief John Lasseter, we could see it overlapping quadrants a bit and maybe peaking around $45 million.

Also opening: Actor Robert Davi's doo-wop/heist-flick directorial debut The Dukes; the imploding Irish marriage drama Eden; and the ethnically-charged lesbian love story I Can't Think Straight.

THE BIG LOSER: For the second consecutive week, the box-office is America's last remaining growth sector. No losers to speak of here, though talk to us next week about Australia.

THE UNDERDOG: The documentary Toots first premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2006; in the two-and-a-half intervening years, director Kristi Jacobson's paean to the legendary NYC saloonkeeper (and her grandfather) Toots Shor has only appreciated in its bittersweet regard for the lost high-class, hard-drinking cafe society of 1950s Manhattan. Less a hagiography than a delayed, definitive act of posterity, Toots nevertheless glows with anecdotes from Mike Wallace, Yogi Berra, Walter Cronkite and a bounty of archival footage showcasing the gregarious subject himself. It's nostalgia worth bingeing on, and it won't leave you with a headache the morning after.

FOR SHUT-INS: New DVD's this week include three different versions of WALL-E, two versions of Tropic Thunder, a single version of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, the complete series set of The Odd Couple, and just in time for the holidays and/or a 100-foot-tall bonfire, Hannah Montana: The Complete First Season.

So are you braving the Twilight tide this weekend? Does Bolt have street cred worth your dime? Are we missing something, anything to help bulk up this flimsy week? Enlighten us! Please!

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<![CDATA[BREAKING: Miley Cyrus Not Dead, Says Miley Cyrus]]> Miley Cyrus hackers continue to represent one of the fastest-growing segments of the American tech sector, returning to haunt the Disney superstar once again over the weekend. This time around, however, the ambitious intruder bypassed Miley's generically scandalous shirt-chomping escapades in favor of spreading the much more dire gossip that she was dead. Spoiler alert: She's not! But that doesn't mean she won't seek vengeance anyway.

E! saw through the stunt, blowing a golden opportunity to welcome Miley's ghost to last night's Daily 10. Instead, host Michael Yo gave the whole game away from the start, prompting a gaping incredulity that Miley's BFF Mandy soon mitigated with her urgent MySpace update: "MILEY IS OK!! Some1 hacked our youtube account." Miley is naturally shocked, and the search is on to track down the culprit, despite investigators' lengthening list of suspects with both opportunity and motive. We'd look closely at Disney ourselves; Bolt can't rocket to number one this weekend on John Travolta's goateed charm alone.

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<![CDATA[Miley Cyrus Turns Into Monster When Fed After Midnight]]> Life is getting harder and harder for 'Bolt' star Miley Cyrus in her 16th year, faced with so many of the crises that make our mid-teens such a dramatically turbulent era. Like the driving instructor taking less than kindly to her defiance behind the wheel ("I don't wanna turn left, I wanna turn right!"), all those cheapskate hangers-on who won't buy tickets to her shows, and the father whom the young phenom reduced to a punchline last Friday while in late-night conversation with Jay Leno. It must have been 'Miley Day' again; these rituals just get more and more painful for poor Billy Ray. [The Tonight Show]

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