The "Ant Bully" has a "Vice" against "John Tucker"

Welcome back to The Weekend Preview, a weekly reminder that the weekend is coming. Hang in there, the work weeks is almost done! (To the work week's credit, it did feel like it just started.) In all honestly, this feature is nothing more than one big advertisement for The Weekend Update, yet we feel strangely compelled to treat it like it is it's own entity nonetheless. The same rules for the Update applies to the Preview: Stocks first, movies second.

So far this week, the stock market has been doing fairly well, surprisingly enough. It's almost like optimism is starting to seep back in or something. No, it's probably that something. The stocks were up on Monday and Tuesday and closed just below flat on Wednesday. On Wednesday, the Fed's Beige Book showed that 6 of the Fed's 12 districts were pointing to evidence that the pace of growth has slowed, meaning that the tightening of monetary funds have worked, and furthering speculation that the Fed will not raise the interest rate on it's next meeting on August 8th.

At the end of Wednesday's session, the Dow closed at 11,102.51 points. The NASDAQ closed at 2,070.46 points, while the S&P 500 ended the session at 1,268.40 points.

There. You're smarter. You can talk to your friends about monetary funds and how the economy has stalled, August 18th, yadayada. Want to talk about movies now? Same here. Here's what's opening this weekend:

The Ant Bully - Okay, so here's the plot: Boy hates ants. Ants shrink boy. Boy likes ants now. (Surprise.) And according to the official movie description, the ants "sentence him to live like an ant in their colony." Sentence? What is this, Law & Order: Ant Edition? *sigh* Then an exterminator appears and the boy has to help save the colony from death. And he learns lessons of courage and friendship in the process. Starring the voices of Julia Roberts, Paul Giamatti, Cheri Oteri, Nicholas Cage, Meryl Streep... You get the idea. Rated "PG for some mild rude humor and action".

John Tucker Must Die - So there's this jerk called John Tucker. And then there are a bunch of clueless blondes. These girls, all from different high school cliques, discover that they've all been dating the school stud, John Tucker. They don't break up with him and call him "LOSER!", like most people would. They want revenge. They then find a new girl in town and use her as a puppet to destroy John Tucker's reputation and to break his heart. Starring Ashanti, Britany Snow, Sophia Bush and Jesse Metcalfe as some of the oldest actors to play teenagers to-date.

Miami Vice - Based on the old TV show. There's this guy called Ricardo Tubbs who is "urbane and dead smart", and a guy called "Sonny Crockett" who is charismatic and flirtatious. And they work together. Hi-larrious! Okay, so the "plot" of the movie has to do with Crokett being undercover with some drug suppliers when he gets "romantically entangled" with the wife of an arms and drugs trafficker. Yadayada, cops are pushed to the edge, and ACTION! The film stars Jamie Foxx and Colin Farrell, so I guess we don't need more of a description, that what we have should be good enough... ? Whatever. This film doesn't even use the theme music from the old series. Losers.

So here's what we think will go down this weekend:

1. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest - $35-40 million. Sure, it's a month old now. But would you rather see Colin Farrell as a gritty cop, or Johnny Depp as Capitan Jack Sparrow? Really? You'd rather see Miami Vice? Huh. Interesting.

2. Miami Vice - $25-30 million. Let's face it: this weekend won't be a stellar one at the box office. No new release screams "BLOCKBUSTER!" anymore. This film is marketed as very dark, gritty, and, uh, starring Jamie Foxx and Colin Farrell. Is Farrell even the "It guy" anymore? Anyways, we don't think that it'll what it takes to be number one.

3. John Tucker Must Die - $25-30 million. Please, just release the film. I'm sick of the advertisements! Anyways, I think the pre-teen's will help propel this movie into third place. Because who doesn't want to see a bunch of grown women try to demoralize a cheater? That's right, teeny-boppers! And feminist. And lesbians. Fine, maybe it'll be number two for those last reasons. But we think it'll be no. 3. Call it a hunch.

4. Monster House - $20-25 million. It's different from The Ant Bully, in so much that it doesn't revolve around animals. Parents will find that refreshing. Very refreshing. Plus, it looks like a better film, in my humble opinion.
5. The Ant Bully - $20-25 million. These are the kids who can "bully" their parents into seeing yet another computer-animated animal film. Poor, poor parents.

Total Box Office Intake: $125-133 million.

Will I be right? Never! Will I be close on the mark about something? Maybe! When can you find out? This weekend! Where? Right here! Will we stop shouting questions? Sure! Stay tuned to this newsblog this weekend for The Weekend Update, our weekly recap of the economy and the box office!