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...films that Baron Cohen has devoted to each of the three characters he developed first on British television and then on HBO. Though Ali G Indahouse was a hit in the U.K., it went straight to video in the U.S. Borat was, of course, a global cultural and box-office phenomenon, except maybe in Kazakhstan, where some people got a bit sniffy. Both characters are too famous now for Baron Cohen to use them anymore as a lure for the unsuspecting. Before the summer is out, Brüno will be too. So this may be the last film...
Buying, though, is different from conspicuous consumption. At the string of big-box retailers north of town, a few miles before city streets fall away and the horizon takes over, shoppers leaving Kohl's and Best Buy and Shoe Carnival are carrying bags - but not huge ones. In plenty of other places, that might be a sign of cutting back. Here in Bismarck, though, moderation is business as usual. Yes, Bismarckers like their things; it's rare to drive down a residential block and not see at least a few boats or RVs sitting in driveways. But splurging never really...
There's an even bigger problem in the weekend box-office tallies announced each Sunday around noon Eastern time. They are taken as an accurate summary of an industry's health, like the Dow Jones average, but they're grounded less in facts than in wish fulfillment. They take the hard data on the Friday and Saturday grosses, then add each studio's educated guess as to how its movie is likely to do on Sunday. Sometimes those guesses are wrong. A month ago, Up was declared the weekend winner over The Hangover, but the Vegas comedy lured more customers...
...ruling that the team ahead after the sixth inning has won the game, or declaring an election over when the sampling polls come in. So why make these figures public a day before they can be validated? Because Sunday is a slow news day, and the report of the box-office winner, almost always included in the day's top headlines, is free publicity for the movies cited as being the most popular...
Here are the studios' official weekend estimates for the top 10 movies, as reported by Box Office Mojo...