Ray Lewis on MSNBC

MSNBC's Chris Hayes was practically giddy with excitement this Saturday morning. Not only had the morning news host snagged retired Philadelphia police Captain Ray Lewis (whose arrest during Occupy Wall Street's "Day of Action" last week made for some great copy and even better photojournalism), but he was able to start off his segment with a bunch of Star Wars references. Zoinkers!

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Captain Lewis seemed unamused by Mr. Hayes enthusiasm: not only does he correct the host on his date of arrival at Zuccotti ("I didn't come down Thursday, I came down Monday to assist the movement"), but he drops a big wet blanket on the leading question of his treatment at the hands of the NYPD.

Chris Hayes: The question that I guess that I'm dying to know is what your interactions with the NYPD was like. Presumably it was a little different than if I had been down there arrested, or someone else. Obviously, you were dressed like this...what was the interaction like?

Captain Ray Lewis: It was exemplary professional conduct, with me and every protester that I witnessed.

Chris Hayes: Ah. Interesting.

This clearly wasn't the sensationalist story of special treatment from the NYPD (nor an across-the-board condemnation for New York's finest) that Mr. Hayes was looking for. We could have told him that Captain Lewis had his soundbites ready about his arrest before the weekend began.

What strikes us as more interesting (and which the show completely glosses over,) is Captain Lewis' "special project" involving a Fracking protest upstate. Can we here more about that, please? Also, Captain Lewis gets all his information from the Internet and refuses to check other news sources? Is he part of Anonymous? These are the hard-hitting questions we want answered!

(And FYI: Don't think we didn't notice that you used the photos from Johnny Milano which first appeared on our site, MSNBC.)

"Under no metric should Up be considered any more viable than Star Trek as a Best Picture nominee," Rosen writes. There's the critical approval it received, and the recent precedent for blockbuster nominees, and this:

When you think about it, Star Trek isn't any sillier than Up!

Sure, Star Trek featured such ridiculous things as Romulans, red matter, a time-traveling Spock and Tyler Perry in a reasonless cameo appearance. However, did everyone forget the premise of Up: that an old man uses thousands of balloons to fly his house to a distant fantasy land inhabited by talking dogs and giant, possibly gender-bending, birds?

Don't laugh: the field of nominees seems to have been expanded to 10 for the express purpose of allowing these mainstream movies into the party. However, while you've most certainly heard rumblings of an Oscar campaign for Up—Disney is already running "For Your Consideration" ads in Variety—the Oscar buzz on J.J. Abrams' Star Trek has been decidedly muted. And to that we say: why? Under no metric should Up be considered any more viable than Star Trek as a Best Picture nominee. It seems the only thing holding Star Trek back is the perception that it is somehow a less legitimate contender. Well, allow us to throw dirt in the face of that notion. The Oscar campaign for Star Trek starts right here!

The critics loved Star Trek, too!

Disney is fond of calling Up the "best reviewed movie of the year." True story! Up has a 98 percent Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, meaning it ranks alongside The Hurt Locker as the best widely reviewed movie of 2009 thus far. But Star Trek's 95 percent rating is nothing to sneeze at either. And did you know that Star Trek actually has more positive notices than any other movie released in 2009 (260 positives reviews to Up's 241)? Whether or not critics hedged when reviewing Star Trek—many reviewers seem fond of taking the "it succeeded in what it set out to accomplish" track for summer blockbusters—is irrelevant. Couldn't you see Paramount unleashing an ad campaign calling Star Trek the "film more critics loved than anything else?" At the very least, it has the added bonus of being truthful.

It wouldn't be the first entertaining blockbuster to get a nomination!

Rocky. Jaws. The Towering Inferno. Star Wars. Raiders of the Lost Ark. The Fugitive. Gladiator. Just because The Dark Knight wasn't nominated for Best Picture doesn't actually mean that the Academy wholesale ignores beloved blockbusters. There is precedent for Star Trek to get a nomination, and not just because it was basically a rip-off of Star Wars.

When you think about it, Star Trek isn't any sillier than Up!

Sure, Star Trek featured such ridiculous things as Romulans, red matter, a time-traveling Spock and Tyler Perry in a reasonless cameo appearance. However, did everyone forget the premise of Up: that an old man uses thousands of balloons to fly his house to a distant fantasy land inhabited by talking dogs and giant, possibly gender-bending, birds? This is to take nothing away from the beauty that was Up, but more to illustrate that when it comes to Oscar movies, believability doesn't matter a whole bunch. Call us old fashioned, but championing one of these and not the other seems slightly disingenuous. Here's hoping there's room for both come nomination time.

Unless the idea of watching people get murdered at an alarming rate appeals to you—no, we will not be seeing Halloween 2 or Final Destination: 3-D—the summer movie season is officially kaput. Where has the time gone? At least with the book closed we can now look back fondly on the joys Hollywood had to offer. There are usually no Oscars given to summer movies, but maybe there should be. We’d name The Hangover as the summer’s Best Picture and, of course, we’ve already found our Best Supporting Actor: Eric Bana’s scene-stealing brilliance in Funny People was so good, in fact, it should be singled out during the more traditional Oscar season, too. Here are some of our other Summer Oscars picks. 

Best Actor: Brad Pitt, Inglourious Basterds

When it comes to awards bait, most critics have singled out Christoph Waltz’s performance as Hans Landa in Quentin Tarantino’s World War II revision as the one to watch. And with good reason: Mr. Waltz is by turns terrifying, bizarre and oddly charming as “The Jew Hunter.” However, give us good ol’ Brad Pitt instead. As Lt. Aldo Raine, head of the titular unit, Mr. Pitt appears to be having more fun than any role he’s tackled since the Ocean’s movies—and quite possibly a bit more. Sporting a pencil-thin mustache and speaking with his jaw pushed out in a manner that recalls Marlon Brando circa The Godfather, Mr. Pitt is the glue that holds Inglourious Basterds together. Some have accused the Pitt-led sections of Basterds as being the weak link, but don’t believe them: Without him, QT’s latest would be a horse of a different color.

Best Score: (Tie) Michael Giacchino, Star Trek and Up

Forget John Williams. If you’re a director in need of a blockbuster orchestral score, look no further than Michael Giacchino. The Bad Robot stalwart—who cut his teeth on Alias and Lost—was all over theaters this summer, providing the score for no less than three films: Star Trek, Up, Land of the Lost. Well, two out of three ain’t bad. With Star Trek, Mr. Giacchino combined the familiar sounds of the original Star Trek theme with the same somber bombast that he provides weekly on Lost; meanwhile, in Up, his compositions were light fluffy and wholly wistful; there was an almost European quality to their nature. In both cases, Mr. Giacchino’s scores made already great movies that much better. Maybe this year he’ll get a real Oscar too.

Best Cinematography: Eric Steelberg, (500) Days of Summer

We had major problems with the movie itself, but not even we can deny that (500) Days of Summer was a technical marvel. Director Marc Webb and his cinematographer Eric Steelberg created many memorable shots and scenes and we’d be damned if any other film looked so good over the last few months. Interestingly, Mr. Steelberg has officially become the twee cinematographer of the moment: In addition to (500) Days of Summer and his previous work on Juno, he also shot Juno director Jason Reitman’s follow up, the highly anticipated Up in the Air, starring George Clooney set for release this December.

Reason No. 68 why the disconnect between film critics and moviegoers is bigger than ever: The elitism of the old guard. Over the course of the past week, well known and nominally intelligent film critics Roger Ebert and A.O. Scott both wrote that the decline of the film industry is in direct proportion to the increasing stupidity of the audience. (Jeffrey Wells, hysterical blogger and all around curmudgeon, had written the same thing previously, albeit in more breathlessly hyperbolic terms.) Apparently, if you thought the culture war was reserved for political campaigns and Fox News talking heads, you were mistaken.

Of course, the funny thing is that these critics are waging this culture war on what seems like the entire population of the United States. Their consternation lies mostly with the wild success of two movies: G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. The latter, with close to $400 million in total grosses is one of the worst reviewed movies in the history of Hollywood to reach such lofty financial heights; the former was famously left unscreened for major film critics and scored a $54 million opening over this past weekend despite that fact. To Messrs. Scott and Ebert, the thinking seems to be that if crappy movies are making big bucks, the audience—particularly the young and impressionable—are to blame. (Mr. Ebert has even gone so far as to say that film critics are more “evolved” than regular moviegoers; this from the man who gave Knowing four-stars [Editor's Note: Some of us here also think that Knowing is pretty awesome.]). What other reason could there be for the perceived “failures” of ostensibly highbrow films like Public Enemies and The Hurt Locker, two critically beloved summer entries that have supposedly underwhelmed? Never mind that Public Enemies is actually kind of successful (Michael Mann’s gangland epic has grossed $94 million to date) and The Hurt Locker hasn’t been shown in more than 535 theaters at any point this summer (by contrast, G.I. Joe opened in over 4,000 theaters). The real reason Hollywood continues to put out a crappy product is because of you! This is all your fault.

And therein lies the problem: It’s not your fault! Was it your fault when Slumdog Millionaire grossed well over $100 million, or when Up and Star Trek, two of the best reviewed movies of the year, grossed over $250 million, each? Sure some great movies (like The Hurt Locker) will inevitably fall through the cracks, but most of the time, we audience members do see the good movies, if we’re given the opportunity. Of course, we see the crap movies too. That’s issue with these film critics: Somewhere along the way they forgot that people just fundamentally like going to the movies. This has nothing to do with intellect—or lack thereof—but a wish to escape the rigors of daily life for a couple of hours. The person who paid to see G.I. Joe this weekend isn’t necessarily dumb, just like the one who paid to see The Hurt Locker isn’t necessarily a Rhodes scholar. It’s time to separate the quality of the films from their paying audiences. The sooner film critics do this, the better.

1. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen: $112 million ($201.2 million total)

Where to begin? This is the seventh largest three-day opening ever, trailing only The Dark Knight, the first and third Spider-Man movies, the second and third Pirates of the Caribbean movies, and, Shrek 3; it’s the largest June opening weekend ever, shattering the $93.7 million mark held by Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban set back in 2004; while the first Transformers needed 12 days to pass the $200 million mark, the sequel managed to do it in just five. Plus, as if all that wasn’t enough, when Revenge of the Fallen surpasses $300 million in domestic grosses, Shia LaBeouf will become the first star to ever appear in $300 million blockbusters over three straight summers (Transformers and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull being the other two). Oh, and we didn’t even mention the $186.1 million that the Transformers sequel has already grossed from foreign territories. Phew! This probably goes without saying, but it’s a very good day to be Michael Bay.

2. The Proposal: $18.4 million ($69 million total)

America’s reignited love affair with Sandra Bullock continued as last weekend’s No. 1 film, The Proposal, dipped just 45 percent to fall into second place. At this rate of attrition and with no romantic comedies on the horizon until The Ugly Truth hits theaters at the end of July, The Proposal will not only clear $100 million, but it could also become the highest-grossing film of Ms. Bullock’s career. America’s Sweetheart is back.

3. The Hangover: $17.2 million ($183.2 million total)

With all the boys flocking to see Transformers, it isn’t surprising to find that The Hangover saw its largest percentage drop yet, easing 35 percent to land in third place. Of course, even bad news is good news for Todd Phillips’s smash: Among movies in the top ten, only Star Trek saw a lower decline. With $183.2 million accrued thus far, The Hangover is on course for upward of $250 million. Maybe that sequel isn’t such a bad idea after all.

4. Up: $13 million ($250.2 million total)

With another $13 million added to the coffers, Up has quietly become the highest grossing movie of 2009. Don’t get too excited though: Revenge of the Fallen might surpass its total by next weekend. Still, when all is said and done, the 3-D extravaganza should be the second-highest-grossing film in the history of Pixar. Well done, Ed Anser!

5. My Sister’s Keeper: $12 million ($12 million total)

Counterprogramming failure. While My Sister’s Keeper easily held off the second weekend of the bomb that is Year One ($5.8 million/$32.2 million total), a fifth place finish has to be considered a disappointment. My Sister’s Keeper only opened to $2 million more than star Cameron Diaz’s last best-selling adaptation, In Her Shoes. The lesson? Audiences want to see Ms. Diaz in romantic comedies, not weepy dramas. Perhaps she should give Sandy a call for some career advice.

Welcome back, Sandra Bullock! The Proposal accepted $34.1 million in ticket sales, giving America’s Sweetheart the No. 1 movie at the box office, and simultaneously knocking The Hangover into second place. The celebration wasn’t as joyous for Year One though, as the prehistoric comedy landed in a disappointing fourth with a pedestrian $20.2 million. As we do each Monday, here’s a breakdown of the top five at the box office.

1. The Proposal: $34.1 million ($34.1 million total)

File this under: If you build it, they will come. The Proposal is the first star-driven romantic comedy to hit theaters since Ghosts of Girlfriends Past on May 1 and it clearly filled a major void in the summer marketplace; 71 percent of the audience classified themselves as “couples.” For Ms. Bullock, in addition to being the biggest opening of her career, The Proposal marks the first time she’s seen one of her films top the box office since Forces of Nature turned the trick in the spring of 1999. At a time when A-list stars are watching their films fall by the wayside, watch Sandy rising! Now the mysterious  All About Steve, co-starring the now A-listed Bradley Cooper and reshuffled till September,  looks like a potential winner.

2. The Hangover: $26.8 million ($152.9 million total)

Somebody call 911. The Hangover continued its fire-burning run, dropping a laughably low 19 percent over the weekend, en route to bringing its total to nearly $153 million. Forget just passing Wedding Crashers as the highest grossing R-rated comedy of all time; Todd Phillips’ smash could wind up as the third-highest-grossing R-rated movie ever, behind only Matrix Reloaded and The Passion of the Christ. Not bad for a “sleeper hit,” eh?

3. Up: $21.3 million ($224.1 million total)

By shedding only 31 percent of its audience from week-to-week, Up continued its rise on the Pixar charts, passing Wall*E to land in seventh place all-time for the studio. With $224.1 million to date, Up will easily glide by Cars, Toy Story 2 and Monsters, Inc. in the coming week and it should still cross the $300 million barrier before all is said and done. And to think, the Wall Street types were worried about this film just two months ago.

4. Year One: $20.2 million ($20.2 million total)

Easily one of the worst movies of the year, Year One barely topped the opening of Land of the Lost to wind up in fourth place over the weekend. Since Year One cost about half as much as Will Ferrell’s bomb, the losses won’t be as severe, but, with word of mouth sure to be poisonous, don’t expect final grosses much more than double this opening haul. If this is the best Harold Ramis can come up with, we weep for Ghostbusters 3.

5. The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3: $11.3 million ($43.3 million total)

The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 plunged 51 percent from last week, but still managed to hold off the fifth frame of Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian ($7.3 million/$155.9 million total) to land in fifth place. We’re not saying that level of attrition isn’t disappointing, but with everyone touting Pelham as a failure, we must again note that a final tally of around $70 million will be right in line with the average grosses of Denzel Washington ($70.7 million) and John Travolta ($62 million) since 2000. What did everyone expect here? Sometimes the reality trumps perception.

Hollywood is officially on a bender. For a second straight week, The Hangover narrowly topped Pixar’s Up to earn the number one spot at the box office, grossing an astonishing $33.4 million in the process. Among the new releases, it was a tale of have and have not: The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 pulled into third place with a solid $25 million, while Eddie Murphy added another embarrassment to his résumé with Imagine That. The kiddie film landed with a thud in sixth place, earning just $5.7 million. As we do each Monday, here’s a breakdown of the top five at the box office.

1. The Hangover: $33.4 million ($105.3 million total)

So, at what point should we stop calling The Hangover a “sleeper hit?” Todd Phillips’ film dipped a scant 26 percent this weekend, pushing its total to $105 million in just ten days of release. At this rate, The Hangover has a chance to not only cross $200 million in domestic receipts, but to also surpass Wedding Crashers as the highest grossing R-rated comedy in history. No one's sleeping on this thing: The Hangover is a certified blockbuster.

2. Up: $30.5 million ($187.1 million total)

Speaking of blockbusters, allow us to introduce you to Up. After easing just 31 percent in weekend three, the Pixar smash is now running only $4 million behind the pace of Finding Nemo (a.k.a. the highest grossing Pixar film ever with $339 million), which scored $191.5 million after its first seventeen days of release in 2003. With 3-D ticket sales still strong (52 percent of this weekend’s purchases were for the extra dimension), Up should float passed $300 million with relative ease and has a very real chance of sailing by Nemo before all is said and done.

3. The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3: $25 million ($25 million total)

You’ll be reading a lot today about how this total for The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 is underwhelming. Don’t believe it just yet. In the last decade, Denzel Washington’s wide releases have averaged an opening weekend of around $23 million; over that same time period, John Travolta’s have come up with $20.5 million. Based on those numbers, the R-rated thriller opened perfectly in line with what should have been expected from its two stars. The true test for The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 will be in how it holds up next weekend. Stay tuned.

4. Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian: $9.6 million ($143.4 million total)

While not nearly as big as the first Night at the Museum, the sequel continues to hold strong, slipping just 36 percent in its fourth weekend. Fun fact: Battle of the Smithsonian is the fifth Ben Stiller film to pass the $140 million plateau; by comparison, Brad Pitt only has gotten to that number twice.

5. Land of the Lost: $9.1 million ($34.9 million total)

The ill-fated Will Ferrell comedy plunged 51 percent in weekend two, and still managed to easily hold off the opening frame of Imagine That ($5.7 million) to finish in fifth place. Why are we not surprised that a movie starring Eddie Murphy could make Land of the Lost look like a hit?

1. Up: $44.2 million ($137.3 million total)

Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve got legs! Up dipped a scant 35 percent over the weekend and in the process became the first movie of the summer to maintain its No. 1 position for two straight weeks. The much-loved film appears to be in the middle of a perfect storm: With the low rate of attrition, the more expensive price of 3-D tickets, and the fact that there isn’t another animated movie hitting theaters until Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs on July 1, Up is poised to become one of the biggest hits of the year.

2. The Hangover: $43.2 million ($43.2 million total)

The financial success of The Hangover feels about as surprising as the sun rising. Did anyone actually think this thing wasn’t going to make bank? The film to remember here is Wedding Crashers, which had a similar “surprise” opening back in the summer of 2005. That film got to $209 million domestic—with a smaller first weekend, mind you—because of great word of mouth. Based on the reactions we heard coming out of the theater (“That was the funniest movie since Superbad!”), expect The Hangover to perform similarly.

3. Land of the Lost: $19.5 million ($19.5 million total)

Move over, Terminator Salvation, there’s a new whipping boy in town! With a budget reportedly well past $100 million and an advertising campaign pitched just a shade north of ubiquitous, an opening under $20 million for Land of the Lost is borderline catastrophic. However, while we don’t want to sugarcoat this mess, some perspective: If you take away Talladega Nights and its $47 million opening, Mr. Ferrell’s last eight movies have averaged $23 million in their initial frame. Based on that, Land of the Lost really did what should have been expected. The fault here then lies with Universal. For some reason, the studio thought spending $100 million on a Will Ferrell comedy was a good business decision. News flash: It wasn’t.

4. Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian: $14.3 million ($127.3 million total)

While Universal is licking their wounds from Land of the Lost, 20th Century Fox has to be thrilled with Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian. Faced with both Lost and the second weekend of Up, the family film dropped just 40 percent and pushed its total to $127.3 million. While it isn't doing quite as well as the first Night at the Museum, the sequel has been a quiet moneymaker for three straight weeks. If a blockbuster falls in the forest and no one notices, is it still a blockbuster?

5. Star Trek: $8.4 million ($222.8 million total)

This is getting ridiculous. The fifth weekend of Star Trek dropped just 33 percent, the lowest decline in the top 10, and held off Terminator Salvation ($8.1 million/$105.4 million total) and Drag Me to Hell ($7.3 million/$28.5 million total) for fifth place at the box office. William Shatner cannot be pleased.

However! The much ballyhooed “Real 3-D?” Totally unnecessary! Up is the first film we’ve seen in 3-D since it became the flavor of the month, and we couldn’t have been more disappointed in the effort. There is the matter of the actual hardware being totally lame—the plastic glasses seem more suited to a bar mitzvah than a movie theater—but, more important, we just found the whole experience completely unpleasant. The draw of any Pixar film is the lush digital animation, and with Up it should be no different: the crisp blue sky and brightly colored balloons are a veritable feast for the eyes. But we only know that’s the case from watching the trailer in HD, since those lovely static images of the floating house were muted as we watched the film through blurry plastic lenses. Worse, the presence of 3-D gave the film no added aesthetic value—Mr. Doctor (thankfully) eschewed conventional gimmicks, like objects flying into the audience, and concentrated instead on depth of the viewing plane. While it was fun to see a Grand Canyon-like valley in 3-D, would Up have been any worse if that image was just normal?

Of course, we understand why film companies are ready to fully embrace this technology: In the end, the economics of 3-D are too good to pass, well, up. Thanks to more expensive ticket prices, Up grossed $35 million of its $68.2 million opening weekend from 3-D theaters alone. Plus, by producing movies in 3-D, online pirating becomes a bit harder—unless the pirates want to sell glasses as well. Still, we’re not quite sure 3-D is so good for the artistic side of the filmmaking ledger. Call us old-fashioned, but we prefer our movies to be like maps of the world, pre-1492: Totally flat.