Magnificent Seven (or not)...

Weekend Openers
Your mission: Predict the opening weekend (Fri-Sun) totals for this week's releases. The deadline is Friday night at Midnight EST.


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Due to fact that we have SEVEN freaking movies this weekend, my previews will be short and to the point. (I hope.)

Fresh off starring in 2007's hit Juno, Michael Cera stars as a high school student (surprise!) in Nick & Nora's Infinite Playlist. A member of the high school band The JerkOffs, Cera meets up with Kat Jennings, a college bound girl who asks him to be her boyfriend for five minutes. Just more proof the nerds get all of the hot chicks. POWER TO THE POCKET PROTECTOR!!

Due to the fact we haven't had a good western in awhile - and nothing says western like Renee Zellweger and Viggo Mortensen, we are given the Ed Harris directed Appaloosa. Two friends hired to police a small town suffering under the rule of a rancher find their job complicated by the arrival of a young widow. Harris delivers every time he is on screen and with Jeremy Irons also in the cast, this has possibilities. Renee, you had me at "Howdy..."

Simon Pegg has his fans and I must admit - I greatly enjoyed Shawn Of The Dead back in 2004, but I have not went out of my way to catch any of his recent work, aside from his scene stealing in Mission: Impossible III. I know - shame on me. This being said, in How To Lose Friends & Alienate People, Pegg stars as a British writer struggling to fit in at a high-profile magazine in New York. I'm not sure this will be a break out movie for Pegg - but with each movie he is in, his efforts keep improving.

The cast listing of Beverly Hills Chihuahua should make you want to see the movie. Drew Barrymore, Andy Garcia, Cheech Marin, George Lopez, Edward James Olmos - doggone it, couldn't they have pulled their efforts into something useful? The great folks at Disney brings us the story of Chloe, a ritzy Beverly Hills Chihuahua who finds herself lost while on vacation in Mexico and needs assistance in order to get back home. Anyone smell a Benji rehash with famous people as talking pooches? Me too.

A doctor's wife becomes the only person with the ability to see in a town where everyone is struck with a case of instant blindness in the appropriately titles Blindness. Julianne Moore stars as the wife who keeps her ability to see a secret from those around her as the town crumbles around her. Mark Ruffalo and Danny Glover also star in this film that has me morbidly curious.

Should I be scared that they are making a film making fun of Michael Moore? Have we seriously run out of things to make fun of? Oy. Trace Adkins as the freaking Angel of Death? Wha? Actually, that might just be the funniest thing about An American Carol where an anti-American filmmaker who is out to abolish the Fourth of July holiday and is visited by three ghosts who try to change his perception of the country. Enough with the spoofs for crying out loud - give some movies I WANT to see!

If anyone could star in a movie about windshield wipers and make it remotely interesting - Greg Kinnear could do it. In the movie Flash of Genius, Kinnear takes on Detroit automakers who he claims stole his idea for the intermittent windshield wiper - no matter what the costs. So the next it rains just hard enough that you need your wipers, but light enough you don't need them all of the time - take a moment a think Mr. Kinnear.