WHAT'S NEW: There's no wanting for prestige or variety this weekend, with Fox's remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still leading a saturated box-office charge on 3,600 screens. This time around, Keanu Reeves arrives from space to portend our imminent doom, evincing a timely environmental-awareness message with the aid of Jennifer Connelly and fitfully clusmy CGI. And if there's anything holiday moviegoers love, it's a Keanu apocalypse; expect Earth to pull around $38.3 million.

The next biggest opening is something called Delgo, the sci-fi quasi-Romeo & Juliet rendered with discarded Pixar 2.0 software and the budget voice talent of Freddie Prinze Jr., Jennifer Love Hewitt, Malcolm McDowell and Burt Reynolds, among others. We like this one for about $3.2 million en route to Flopz™, neck-and-neck with the Latino ensemble (plus Debra Messing for gringa kicks) laffer Nothing Like the Holidays at around $3.3 million.

Doubt, meanwhile, opens small this week against fellow Oscar groveler The Reader; the former is faring far better with critics than the latter (unfairly, we might add), but the Kate Winslet lookie-loo factor won't disappoint the Weinstein Company when the numbers come in Sunday night, probably around $41,000 per screen. Also, if you've got four and a half hours and a seat cushion to spare, pack a lunch and check out Che in its one-week-only Academy qualifying run. It's the kind of thing you can tell your grandkids about years from now when they tug on your sleeve and ask you to regale them with stories of cinema's good old bloated days.

A few stars are actually smattered elsewhere in the mire: Ethan Hawke and Mark Ruffalo's Beantown gang drama What Doesn't Kill You opens on three screens, while Michelle Williams's spare girl-loses-dog indie Wendy and Lucy arrives on two. Also opening: The noirish Dark Streets; the animated fantasy Dragon Hunters; the stop-motion Oscar hopeful $9.99; the Chinese vanity project Waiting in Beijing; the Kim Basinger revenge flick While She Was Out; and the polish Holiday tale Hania. Whew.

THE BIG LOSER: Not so much a "loser" as an example of what we wish there was less of in the world, Timecrimes is an acclaimed Spanish thriller that nevertheless orbits around the genre conventions of time travel. Not to be arbitrary about it, but dear film industry: Please let the time-travel movie die. They're ultimately the same hoary stunt performed again and again, illogically at worst (Primer) and amusingly at best (Back to the Future), and almost always forgettably. Let Timecrimes end it. Please.

THE UNDERDOG: Speaking of going out gracefully, Clint Eastwood says his performance in Gran Torino is his last. And why not? Eastwood's late-career revisionist streak has knocked off its last myth: The vigilante hero, a man who'd sooner revolt in Dirty Harry than keep pace with the degradation of social order. Torino's grizzled Korean War vet still takes the same vengeance on Hmong gangs and black thugs overtaking his Detroit suburb, but essentially in the service of a multiethnic utopia perceivable just over the horizon. (He even gives his Silver Star and titular vehicle to the tormented young man he's taken under his wing, a little more optimistic bellwether than Harry Callahan's climactic badge-tossing in 1971.) As a straight drama, Gran Torino isn't especially good — sort of a violent, profane revenge epic crossbred with an afterschool special — but! Viewed in context with the last four decades of Eastwood's mercury, it's a strikingly rich, funny, elegant and utterly fascinating valedictory.

FOR SHUT-INS: New DVD's this week include The Dark Knight, the thrilling, Oscar-chasing doc Man on Wire, the first four seasons of Happy Days, and holiday-ready complete-series box sets of The Wire, Get Smart and Deadwood.

Boomp3.com

A London woman attempted to take advantage of a “hall pass” given to her by her husband and tried to put the moves on The Day The Earth Stood Still star Keanu Reeves. Reeves was rather high up on the woman’s list of male celebrities she’s allowed to sleep with with total immunity. The woman propositioned Reeves, but the actor politely declined despite being extremely flattered.

[Photo Credit: Bauer-Griffin]

*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.

Boomp3.com

The Day The Earth Stood Still star Keanu Reeves prepared himself for a taste explosions before enjoying a sandwich from a popular Los Angeles eatery. Reeves decided to wear a helmet since the last time he ate a sandwich from the restaurant knocked him directly on the floor. Reeves said, “It’s cliché to say it, but it was like whoa after that first bite. And the second bite knocked me directly off my seat. I bruised my back. So, I’m ready this around.” Reeves then tapped on his helmet.

[Photo Credit: X17]

*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.

Apparently unconcerned with the prospects of inconveniencing his lunching companions at Orso, The Day The Earth Stood Still star Keanu Reeves took a phone call when the waiter was about to take everyone's order. Reeves told his friend on the other line that he was free to talk and talked for a couple of minutes in a fairly calm voice. One of his tablemates rolled their eyes as Reeves carried on his conversation, then whispered to the rest of the table, "I don't really mind him talking. I just wish it was something interesting, you know? So, I could have something to send into a cool blog or TMZ. You know, I want to be the cool person on the internet for a change." At which point one of the other leaned across the table, grabbed their hands and whispered, "One day, you will. Just not today. Now, could you please pass the olive oil?"

[Photo Credit: INF Daily]

*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.