Monday box-office exhaust fumes

"Cars" sped past the weekend competition, no surprises there (and I promise that this will be absolutely the last automotive metaphor I'll make regarding this movie). The film pulled in $60.3 million, which, for the record, is lower than opening weekend figures for either "The Incredibles" or "Finding Nemo" (both around $70.4) but on a par with "Monsters, Inc." ($62.6). So how do the tea leaves read? Maybe that audiences figured a talking-car was aimed at a slightly younger audience than previous Pixar releases. Other than that, the message is: Everyone still loves Pixar.

Opening "The Omen" on a Tuesday -- 6/6/06 -- proved to be a smart move. Suckers -- I mean early moviegoers -- spent $20-some million on the film in the first part of the week, with another $15 million flowing in over the weekend. Not enough to beat out the flagging "X-Men: The Last Stand," but better than anyone expected for a horror remake that'll die off as soon as word gets out how bad it is.

"A Prairie Home Companion" did a very nice $4.5 at 760 screens, pulling in grizzled acolytes of Robert Altman, totebag-carrying Garrison Keillor fanatics, and the stray confused Lindsay Lohan wannabe. It's a lovely, lovely movie; get off your duff and go see it.

The other interesting bit of info is that "An Inconvenient Truth" keeps packing them in, with a $12,200 per-screen-average just south of "Cars." It's playing at only 122 theaters, but those legs imply that the film could go wider. And when was the last time Al Gore was accused of having good legs?

More box-office opining here.

While we're on the subject of "An Inconvenient Truth," what do you do when you disagree with a documentary but don't have (or can't be bothered to dig up) the facts to support your thesis? Simple: You compare the messenger to Hitler. Like this guy quoted in the Washington Post. Or CNN Headline News host Glenn Beck on his radio show. Even the Exxon-owned pundit on Fox didn't go that far: He just likened Gore to Joseph Goebbels.

When they compare you to the Third Reich, that's when they've finally run out of ammunition.