Cleolinda everywhere

Phew! New Moon Fails to Break Opening Weekend Record. So The Dark Knight is safe. However:

Instead, after clinching the Best Midnight Opening record and Best Opening Day record, New Moon will have to settle for third on the Best Opening Weekend list after walking away with a pretty astonishing $140 million when it was all said and done.

If that number holds up (and it should), the film will replace Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End for third place on the list of all-time best opening weekends (domestic), and will settle in behind only Spider-Man 3 (second) and The Dark Knight (first). Still, with $130 million, New Moon more than doubled Twilight's opening weekend ($69 million) -- in addition to taking in the largest domestic weekend gross of the year.

My final estimate of $140M did turn out to be correct, though. I feel irrationally smug about this, purely from a movie buff point of view.


Meanwhile, the new ep of Made of Fail is about to start recording, and it will actually not be an entire review episode of the movie. Not... entirely.


(Zomg e-book! The Annotated Movies in Fifteen Minutes: Wizards!)

The Made of Fail podcast is up! Aaaaand it's Twilight-themed, because you knew it would be, but we discuss the crazy-ass fan phenomenon as well as the movie--Kevin even threw a clip from the Stephenie Meyer Is Crazy interview in there. OH OH OH also? You know what you get? We were talking about the box office, so I went over to ew.com while we were recording, and you can actually hear the moment I found out they were saying that Twilight made $70M for the weekend (they've since downgraded that number a smidge, to, like, $69.99999M)--you hear this shriek of "JESUS CHRIST! OH MY GOD!" right in the middle of the podcast, and Dayna going "HOW? HOWWWW?"

Also, in the second half, we had a really interesting conversation about the shift from radio airplay to internet distribution in the music industry. Or at least, I thought it was really interesting.

(Audio samples: In which I admit that I am, in fact, a "Twilight blogger" [1:02]; Angel wings and glaucoma [1:40].)

First batch of Twilight/15M icons: there's already 40+ and I haven't even dealt with the meadow yet. (There's a lot of movie stills and caps out there, and I find it really relaxing to faff around making icons, so... indulge me. And take whatever you want, make your own, I'll link them here, two thumbs up, fine holiday fun.) ( Samples )

( So I took my mother to see the movie yesterday (spoilers) )

( And then, everything went to hell )

So... that was my Tuesday. I don't think I'll be doing linkspam today (I didn't do it last night either, did I?). It's Thanksgiving week, not a lot of people (well, not a lot of Americans) are online, not a whole lot is happening, and I want to post here in some capacity every day because I've had a perfect-attendance streak for two or three months now, but I'm going to take it easy and try to rest a little. I don't know--I just feel so drained (insert your own vampire joke here) from the last week or so. Not in a bad way--just like I need time to recharge.


(Oh, by the way, I forgot to link this here: enjoy screencaps of Movie!Bella's brief kinky old-fashioned vampire movie fantasy.)

I knew this was going to happen, and yet--I still can't quite believe it myself:

'Twilight': Early box office is bloody good!

The film adaptation of Stephenie Meyer's vampire-romance saga scored $7 million from shows at midnight on Thursday, and it's on pace to bank as much as $30 mil on Friday, Variety reports. That Harry Potter-esque sum would rank in the Top 20 of the biggest opening-day grosses in history. Moreover, the film is almost assured of exceeding its expected $60-mil-plus first-weekend haul -- by far.

Oh God.

Meanwhile, Robert Pattinson finally agrees to bite someone.

Oh, and--remember the conversation I had with my mother this morning? I sent her a picture from the movie and two magazine shots, and she emailed me back, I don’t necessarily agree with the crazies, but I can see what draws some of these girls to him………

It's all over, you guys. She's gonna be a TwiMom by Thanksgiving.

Just got back this red hot second from Quantum of Solace. Can't talk now. Still trying to figure out what the hell happened through most of it ("I have a suitcase? Do you want it? Make me an offer? I'm a geologist? I'm not a geologist? Was I supposed to kill you? Are you going to kill me? Who's that guy? Why hasn't he killed you yet? Look, whatever, call me. \m/ "). Will discuss later.

(Also, we got every trailer in the world EXCEPT Watchmen. *shakes fist at sky*)

Hey, polls are fun! Why don't y'all play with one that I wrote before I left while I go figure out what the hell Quantum of Solace was about, other than "My vengeful manpain, let me show you it it's pretty hot, I think you'll like it"? Let me give you a little background on each question first, though:

1) Quantum of Solace made $70 million this weekend ($70,000,036, now that we've seen it), a record for a Bond movie. By comparison, The Dark Knight made something like $158 million its first weekend, but keep in mind that they were showing it around the damn clock--I saw it at 9 am that Saturday--and also, it was the summer. And the economy hadn't completely tanked yet. (ETA: Take the Dark Knight number as "money that Twilight could not possibly make." So we have "really really good for a November weekend" and "no way in hell," those are the numbers I'm giving you.)

(As a side note, a Twilight/Robert Pattinson feature ran in the A&E supplement of our Sunday paper this morning. The title? "The dark knight." I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE.)

2) There's a premiere in LA tomorrow. Apparently they'll be handing out fan wristbands (oh God) at noon, but I'm unclear on when the movie actually starts. And the wristbands may be just for people to stand next to the red carpet and scream. Regardless of who actually is sitting in that theater when the movie runs, even if it's just industry types, I think there is a certain eventuality we can definitely count on.

Remember: place your bets realistically. E-cookies and bragging rights are at stake here.

[Poll #1298650]