In the middle of the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression, American handed over $35.3 million worthof its unemployment payments to Vaughn, Favreau and the gang. And honestly, its not for us we grieve; its for the children, who the reckless audiences of this weekend have thus doomed to approximately 27 more Vaughn films featuring him being hectored by a dismally joyless spouse who forces him to go somewhere uptight and boring, disrupting his playtime with even more hapless sidekick who is being driven close to suicide by his even more dismally joyless spouse. The children of tomorrow, when they reach PG-13 eligibility, will look back on the decisions America made today and curse our spirits, willing us to wander the earth unburied and unmourned for all eternity.

In their write-ups, the box office pundits are all but dying to avert their eyes from the Vaureau nightmare and talk about the far more trendworthy story of Paranormal Activity's viral driven success. Playing in college towns on a mere 160 screens (compared to Couples Retreat's 3000), the low-budget horror film raked in 7.1 million dollars, a number that Box Office Mojo's Brandon Gray says,

broke the minor record for highest-grossing weekend ever for a movie playing at less than 200 theaters, exceeding Platoon's $3.7 million at 174 sites (which would be on par adjusted for ticket-price inflation).

There's nothing the showbiz press likes better than a marketing phenomenon. It's been a decade since Blair Witch came along and turned the dominant paradigm on its head and changed showbiz forever, kinda. I mean, it was huge, right?...And three years since Snakes on a Plane reset..since Snakes on a Plane....Well, anyway.

Also astounding on the weekend chart is the number of recently mega-hyped films that seem miles away from catching fire. Bruce Willis' big-budget Surrogates is fading away in the 30 million range, likely a fraction of the total cost. Miles of ink and solid word of mouth don't seem to be able to propel Whip It over the ten million line, Fame is sputtering away at 20. And the latest Michael Moore is losing steam at 9 million; swell for a doc but less than a tenth his Fahrenheit heights.

Moore's press train began last week on Good Morning America, when he took some time to rail against the show's use of "permalancers," a group that's basically permanent, but don't get the benefits and, therefore, count as the underdog. It was all very amusing and true, and provided Moore with a great excuse when CBS "canceled" his appearance on tomorrow's Early Show. From a tweet Moore posted Sunday morning:

Backlash Begins: CBS has cancelled [sic] me on its Mon. morning show. After I criticized ABC/Disney on GMA, they didn't want me to do same to CBS.

While that could be true, CBS bookers tell media scallywag Rachel Sklar that they never booked him. Moore's people, though, tell a different story: they were negotiating a firm date with CBS, but then CBS got all diva about getting the sit-down after GMA already landed Moore:

I can accurately say that the bookers who book the show have definitely been in discussion with us to have him on the show. When we attempted to confirm the booking they said they didn't want to follow GMA.

Hmmm. So, Moore, we're assuming, knew CBS had said they didn't want to follow GMA, but tweeted that the network was scared of his inflammatory nature. Why are we not surprised?

Anyway, Moore's assertion, however valid, only brings the spotlight back to him, which is good when you're promoting a movie. And the movie's doing well, by the way: it opened with about $306,000 on four screens. That's the higher per-theater average for the year. Love him or hate him, Moore's a hit machine.

Did CBS Cancel Michael Moore? [Mediaite]

Pandorum
The Story: Two astronauts wake up on a space ship to find they can not remember why they are there. And a monster is attacking them.
The Pitch: Alien meets Momento
Who It's For: Screamers; people with other things they can do during the movie.
Cause for Hope: Remarkably, stars Dennis Quaid; films set on a space ship get an automatic gentleman's C.
Cause for Concern: Produced by Paul WS Resident Evil Anderson.
Residual Cause for Hope: Produced by not directed by Anderson
Gawker Enthusio-Meter: 2

SURROGATES trailer in HD

Surrogates
The Story: In the future, people live life through robot versions of themselves. But when someone starts killing the robots, future cop Bruce Willis must investigate.
The Pitch Westworld meets Streets of San Francisco
Who It's For: Nerds who like to dream about having sex with robots.
Cause for Hope: Director Jonathan Mostow helmed that better-than-expected Terminator 3.
Cause for Concern: You've probably seen every single frame of this film in four to twelve other movies.
Gawker Enthusio-Meter: 3

Fame
The Story: The kids of Performing Arts High dare to dream.
The Pitch: Fame meets High School Musical
Who It's For: Every aspiring dance crew in America.
Cause for Hope: Stars So You Think You Can Dance's Kherington Payne.
Cause for Concern: The sound of Bruno Martelli and Alan Parkers' ghosts crying out in agony will haunt your dreams forever.
Gawker Enthusio-Meter: 7 (It's the song. We can't help ourselves.)

Capitalism: A Love Story
The Story: That lovable cut-up Michael Moore is back, this time poking fun at everyone's favorite economic paradigm: capitalism.
The Pitch::Michael Moore meets Michael Moore with a bit of Michael Moore thrown in for good measure.
Who It's For: The already converted.
Cause for Hope: If this is your cup of tea, your cup will runneth over.
Cause for Concern: The hammer fell off the sledgehammer Moore uses to write his jokes.
Gawker Enthusio-Meter: 5

Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
The Story: A researcher decides to study mens' desires in a series of taped interviews.
The Pitch: My Dinner With Andre meets High Fidelity
Who It's For: People who like to be seen thinking big thoughts.
Cause for Hope: It can't actually last forever.
Cause for Concern: David Foster Wallace, the big screen version! The Office's Jim trying to outrun his day job. Did he mention he went to Brown?
Gawker Enthusio-Meter: 2

Coco Before Chanel
The Story: Headstrong young Coco dreams of shaking up fashion.
The Pitch:: La Vie en Rose meets Devil Wears Prada
Who It's For: Those who like to swoon to period design.
Cause for Hope: Looks harmlessly charmante.
Cause for Concern: Isn't this why God invented made for cable movies?
Gawker Enthusio-Meter: 5

I Hope The Serve Beer in Hell
The Story: The adventures of internet cretin Tucker Max
The Pitch:: Porkys meetsa snuff film purchased for three dollars out of a box on the sidewalk in the East Village
Who It's For: The aspiring date rapist next door.
Cause for Hope: This will almost certainly be the end of Tucker Max's film career.
Cause for Concern: You will still share a Universe with him.
Gawker Enthusio-Meter: 0

With the premiere of his new film, Capitalism: A Love Story, looming on September 16th at the Toronto Film Festival, normally you'd expect to find Moore filling up every inch of media, shocking the bourgeiouse with his trademark Angry Guy Banging on the Palace Walls shtick, providing Matt Drudge with a new outrageous quote every news cycle.

But Moore has been strangely silent in this run-up and the LA Times' Patrick Goldstein has learned that he plans to keep a lid on it for weeks to come no less.

When Goldstein called Overture Films, Moore's distributor to arrange an interview, he was told that the filmmaker would sit for interviews after the premiere, but the pieces would all be embargoed Sept. 23rd, the day the film opens in New York and Los Angeles.

Why? Because Moore is doing a sit-down interview with Oprah Winfrey, which won't air until Sept. 22. And if Oprah wants an exclusive, she gets it, since when it comes to books, movies or music, no one offers a better promotional platform than La Winfrey.

There is perhaps no bigger winner here than Barack Obama, who is trying to persuade America that his health care package is not a socialist takeover of their lives. He will get a precious few weeks wherein Michael Moore is not clogging up the airwaves with his caricature of Middle American GOP fears. A conspiratorial mind might even wonder of Miss Winfrey is slyly doing her old pal on Pennsylvania Ave. a solid.

But for Moore himself, it turns out, even when you are peddling an attack on the entire economic underpinnings of our civilization, there is no place to get that message out like the couch of the Grande Dame of the Midwest, Our Oprah.

• The 66th Venice Film Festival kicks off today. Variety says guests are in store for "a daring and diverse selection that comprises more countries, more newcomers, more Americans, more genre pics and what the fest boasts will be more 3-D on display than at any other nonspecialized event." Among the most anticipated US representatives are the festival's day of celebration of Disney and Pixar, the Weinstein Company's adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's The Road and Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story. Spoiler spies who have sneaked peeks at the Moore film inform us it is their guess that the title in fact may be just a tiny bit ironic. Who woulda guessed? [Var]

• Director Paul W.S. Anderson of Resident Evil honors has signed on to shoot a 3-D version of The Three Musketeers. Anderson says he will create a contemporary feel for the classic tale while retaining its period setting. Just picture Too Fast, Too Furious with funny feathered hats and perhaps a pie fight or two. [THR]

• HBO has ordered 11 episodes of the Martin Scorsese produced 1920's gangster series Broadwalk Empire. [The Wrap]

• Jerry Springer has singed a deal to host a live Vegas stage version of America's Got Talent at the Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino. Nick Cannon, you may relax now. [Var]

• Iron Man BFF's Jon Favreau and Robert Downey Jr. are reuniting for Cowboys and Aliens, a sci-fi Western. The Dreamworks project will be Favreau's first directing gig after he finished Iron Man 2. [THR]

• Doug Wright is turning his acclaimed 1987 documentary Hands on a Hardbody into a stage musical at the La Jolla Playhouse. [Var]

It looks to us like the most simplistic left-wing cant that Moore could muster to explain the bailouts: The banks bought Congress, and Congress gave the banks billions of dollars, and some nice gun-toting people in the midwest got laid off.

We've been excited to see the movie, which opens on October 2, but there's something about it that looks depressing: A Michael Moore movie tends to put a cap on whatever outrage he's addressing. Roger & Me meant that by the time you're seeing this movie, Flint, Mich., is fucked. Bowling for Columbine: A bunch of kids are already dead because we already lost the battle on guns. Fahrenheit 9/11: A look back at how we got screwed into the Iraq war. Sicko is an exception in a way, but only because it came out too soon. His collection of health care nightmares showed how "death panels" already exist in America (they're called "insurance claims adjusters") wcame out during the Bush years and not when, you know, health care reform might be on the top of the political agenda.

Now with Capitalism: A Love Story, we can look back in anger at another horrible thing that has already been done to us, and listen to a real-American-looking type say, "There's gotta be some kind of rebellion between the people who have nothing and the people who've got it all." Good luck with that.

It probably has the benefit of being true. But when is Michael Moore going to drop the fat-guy-in-the-lobby routine? Or the fat-guy-yelling-at-a-corporate-office-through-a-bullhorn routine, for that matter?

Also: How do you finance films without banks? Just wondering.

Quiet indie actor Will Smith will reteam with his I Am Legend director Francis Lawrence for a movie about this: "a father and daughter living on opposite sides of the ocean whose love is so strong that it causes Manhattan to split off and float across the Atlantic." Which, I'm sorry, sounds so fucking lame I want to scream. [Variety]

New Line, long the house that murderous dream janitors and questing lover trolls built, is now Febrezing out its delicates and pushing the pizza boxes under the sofa and becoming a lady-friendly zone. After the success of He's Just Not That Into Horrible People Who Screech and Worry All The Time, Please for the Love of God Just Be a Person, the studio has been ushering in a new host of girl movies, like What Was I Thinking with Leslie Mann and Elizabeth Banks and Valemtimes Day, a movie about Jennifer Aniston being lonely again. [THR]

Want to watch a romantic comedy starring brothers? Oh, you nasty. No they're not in love with each other! They play friends and stuff. Oh, the brothers are Chris and Danny Masterson, one of whom is from Malcolm in the Yelling and the other from That 70s Shit. The movie is called Made for Each Other. [Variety]

Stalwart theatre guy Terry Kinney (he's the dude what had been Julia Stiles' dad in Save the Last Dance) has landed a plum role on popular sophomore drama The Mentalist. He'll play a cop who seems dumb but really isn't! [THR]

Michael Moore has announced the title of his new movie. It's a study of the economy and how it fell down the stairs that one time, and it'll be called Capitalism: A Love Story. I hope he's paying Isaac Bashevis Singer some royalties or some shizz. [Variety]

The new season of Project Runway will feature guest spots by Lindsay Lohan and Christina Aguilera. So, it's 2003 again! Also, four of the contestants are weirdo foreigners. Plus the season's in LA. And it's on Lifetime. Who, exactly, is going to watch this show in August? [THR]

Warner Brothers has picked up the rights to an Argentinian movie comedy called A Boyfriend for My Wife, about a dude who tries to get his wife to fall for someone else so he can dump her and not feel bad about it. Which sounds cute! It will be less cute when it's in English and stars Vince Vaughn and Katherine Heigl. [Variety]

After the jump: Which new dad is going to wish they never even heard the name David O. Russell in a matter of months?

· ABC won the night with the Three Hours of Country Music Industry Auto-Fellation You'll Never Get Back Again Awards. [Variety]
· Matthew McConaughey's life is about to be made a living hell by director David O. Russell in The Grackle, about a "barroom fighter in New Orleans who hires himself out for $250 to settle disputes." He then dispatches a couple of walleyed Malibu surfers to beat the shit out of the warring parties. [Variety]

Send a note to contests@gawker.com with "Mike's Election Guide 2008" in the title and enter to win a copy of the book. The usual rules apply.

Chapter 1 of Mike's Election Guide 2008:

As egregious and anti-funny as nearly every beat in the trailer is (we were especially partial to Gary Coleman's slave-talkin'), they all pale in comparison to this scene, teased by Reason:

In a clip we saw, Washington takes Malone to St. Paul's Cathedral to lecture him on freedom of religion and "freedom of speech, which you abuse." Malone is grossed out by dust in the priest's box, so the doors open onto the smoldering ruins of the World Trade Center. "This is the dust of 3000 innocent human beings!" bellows Washington. Malone whimpers that he's just making movies. Washington won't have it. "Is that what you plan to say on Judgment Day?"

As enticing as that scene sounds, we can't wait for Zucker's own Judgment Day explanation of My Boss's Daughter and BASEketball. Forced to plead his case after a spiritual journey led by Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow, will Zucker see the light?

• "This is the Dust of 3000 Innocent Human Beings!" [Reason]

"I got some great news today because I was trying to figure out how I was going to get Castro into the Oscars and for me he resigns today so he can come to L.A. and go as my guest and perhaps give the acceptance speech."

Unfortunately, when the other actors heard about this, they didn't realize Moore was kidding. Soon enough, Marion Cotillard's publicist was on the phone with Hugo Chavez begging him to be her date. Jamie Foxx called Kim Jong Il personally and said he wanted to "roll up" with him. Not to be outdone, Jessica Alba told Cash Warren that his escort services were no longer needed and that instead she would be digging up the rotting corpse of Adolph Hitler, stuffing him into a Dolce & Gabbana tux and heading to the ceremony. Anything to stay relevant in Hollywood!

• Michael Moore: Bring Fidel to the Oscars [AP]

Cohen told Moore he had drawn inspiration from the filmmaker's documentaries, in which Moore doggedly pursues corporate and political bosses and puts himself into uncomfortable situations.

"I said to him, `But yeah, I've never done anything like wrestle naked with another guy on the floor of an insurance-brokers or mortgage-brokers convention," Moore told The Associated Press. "So after I saw `Borat,' if he says I was an inspiration for those things, I now have to up the ante for him. So we sailed into the mined waters of Guantanamo Bay with sick 9/11 workers and a bullhorn."

Not only did Cohen inspire Moore to attempt larger-scale and ballsier stunts than ever before, but his faux-Kazakh counterpart's misadventures also provided some highly effective field tactics, ultimately resulting in securing Moore's ill 9/11 workers the medical attention they so desperately needed after the Sicko director won a nude wrestling match with a wiry guard by suffocating him with his anus.

• Moore: Borat steeled him for Guantanamo [Yahoo News]

· Say what you will about yesterday's ottoman-humping clip, but at least no one got hurt.
· Fred Thompson is ducking Michael Moore's debate challenge, but at least he's doing it in style.
· Tinky-Winky victorious.
· The supposedly yanked Kim Kardashian sex tape is still for sale? Get yours now before she's no longer marginally famous.
· And finally: dumb cop brownies. [via Queerty]

According to court papers, Judge Douglas Woodlock of U.S. District Court in Massachusetts dismissed the suit on Wednesday. It had sought $35 million in damages from Moore, as well as Miramax, which is owned by Walt Disney Co. and several other film companies.

The film showed Iraq war veteran Sgt. Peter Damon, who had lost his right arm near the shoulder and much of his left arm, lying in a hospital gurney at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Maryland, saying that he feels pain but that pain-killers given him "take a lot of the edge" off of it.

The judge's rejection of the suit's claims that Damon's brief appearance somehow resulted in "defamation and infliction of emotional distress" in a way helps to further Moore's credentials as a legitimate documentarian—i.e. the repurposed clip remained news, not anti-military propaganda. We only hope the outspoken filmmaker doesn't grow drunk off the power of this one legal victory, however, and choose now to people Sicko, his searing indictment of the U.S. healthcare industry, with a series of interviews with morgue corpses asked to share their thoughts on how their HMOs have been working out for them.

• Judge dismisses suit against Michael Moore [Reuters]

The suit, which claims "defamation and infliction of emotional distress," also names film executives, distributors and the NBC television network, which shot the original footage Moore used in his film. The suit seeks $175 million in damages. [...]

While he was being treated at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., he was asked to do an interview with Brian Williams of "NBC Nightly News."

The footage was subsequently licensed to Moore's film, which the complaint states "denounces the United States military action in Iraq" by attacking President Bush.

Whether or not NBC was in their legal rights to "license" (i.e. sell) the interview to Moore for the purposes of furthering his politically-motivated documentary, this lawsuit isn't the kind of publicity they need right now. We'd encourage the fourth-place peacock network to settle as quietly and fairly as possibly, rather than attempt to capitalize on any additional ratings it could bring in by having the entire trial filmed before a live studio audience, with Justice Howie Mandel having Damon choose his settlement from an array of numbered suitcases.

• Michael Moore, NBC sued for $175M [CNN.com]