Sports movies remain "Invincible" at the box office

Not even the Box Office is Invincible from low ticket sales. Welcome, everybody, to this special edition of the Weekend Recap. Not only do we find out this week if anybody likes to watch kids eating Fried Worms, we also get to take a sneak peak at the least-anticipated Hollywood awards show, the Emmy's! Plus, our weekly fact vs. fiction column and a recap on "real world stuff," the stock market. It's disjointed, disorganized and disillussioned. It's the Weekend Recap and it begins right now.

Worries about what might-be kept the financial markets from having a second week in the positive category, with all three major players on Wall Street taking loses for the week. And computer giants Dell and Apple didn't exactly help matters, either. Both companies recalled lithium-ion batteries made by a Sony Corp. subsidiary, which were compromised during production and could short circuit, or, catch on fire.

All together, about five million batteries are being recalled. Sony is also making investors jittery after reports came out that they have yet to begin to manufacture the PlayStation 3, which is due to hit store shelves in November. The fear is that there will be a shortage which will result in Microsoft's XBOX 360 and Nintendo's Wii to get ahead in the market this holiday season.

Finally, America is eating more Spam. Hormel Foods Corp, the makers of Spam canned meat and Jennie-O Turkey announced that their fiscal third-quarter earnings rose 15%. The net income for the three months ending July 30 was $59.6 million, up from $51.8 million during the same period last year.

Notice something differnent? This week, we embedded the weekly stock report in the post, instead of having it as the final part of the financial recap. Did it make the whole experiance better for you? Or was it really a cruddy idea to begin with? Let me know in the comments, because embedding the stock report inside the text is something that I may continue to do in the future.

Now we move on to Act II of III, Movies! The Mark Wahlberg-vehicle, Invincible, took in top honors this weekend. The inspirational football drama based on the true story of Vince Papali took in an estimated $17 million over the three-day weekend, beating out Will Ferrell's Talladega Nights which took in $8 million. And you can just call it this year's My Big Fat Greek Wedding: The film Little Miss Sunshine jumped from last week's seventh place to third, bringing in an additional $7.5 million.

(Source: BoxOfficeMojo)

Every week we bring you an extension of the Weekend franchise, the Preview. There too, we follow the three acts rule: stocks, movies and predictions. We give you a brief update on the stock market, we preview the movies coming out that upcoming weekend and we make our predictions for how well those movies will do at the box office. It would be well enough to just make predictions and call it good. But America demands accountability from it's internet authors! And as such, every week during the Recap we take a look at our earlier predictions to determine if they were fact or fiction.

We Said: 1. Invincible, $25-$30 million. "While the sports genre may be getting a little cliche, it's still a easy way for studios to turn a quick profit. This won't necessarily get the "movie regulars", but rather, the people who don't go to movies that often, ie parents, or, people who actually remember Vince Papale."
Fact: 1. Invincible, $17 million.

We Said: 2. Beerfest, $25-$30 million.
Fact: 2. Talladega Nights, $8 million.

We Said: 3. Talladega Nights, $15-20 million.
Fact: Little Miss Sunshine, $7.5 million.

We Said: 4. How to Eat Fried Worms, $15-20 million.
Fact: 4. Beefest, $6.5 million.

We Said: 5. World Trade Center, $10-$15 million.
Fact: 5. Accepted, $6.5 million.

We Said: Total Box Office Earnings: $105-$110 million.
Fact: $75.4 million.

Conclusion: It's too bad my predictions don't translate into reality, else I would be a studio's best friend. Apart from accurately predicting Invincible taking the top spot, I got nothing else right. NOTHING. For pete's sake, How to Eat Fried Worms debuted in twelfth place with $4 million. TWELFTH! Inbetween this and my Emmy predictions, I better rethink this third act feature...

And that's going to do it for this week's installment. Stay tuned to this site and your local news stations for the latest breaking, noteworthy and boring news and features imaginable. And remember, friends don't let friends nominate a 14-second cameo for a Emmy award.