“The Hangover” and “Up” retained the top spots at the box office with $33.4 and $30.5 million, respectively, forcing Tony Scott’s pointless “Pelham 123” remake to an ignoble third-place debut with a $25 million gross.

And though “Land of the Lost” placed fifth in its second week with just $9.2 million, that’s still better than the new Eddie Murphy-and-children comedy “Imagine That”, which tanked profoundly with a $5.7 million opening-weekend gross. Ouch.

Also: The Onion AV Club’s summer-hiatus television coverage reaches back into the glory days of the 1990s for some excellent running coverage; among this week’s columns are Donna Bowman’s appreciation of my very favorite episode of “NewsRadio”, “Arcade“, and over in the “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” section, Noel Murray’s reviews of the key third-season episodes “Lover’s Walk” and “The Wish” have launched a few truly awesome comment threads, including some great discussions of what it truly means to be an ensouled vampire.

Spoilers for “Buffy” and “Angel”, obviously:

For the record: Angel is a vampire who’s been given a brand-new soul as punishment for his evil deeds: He’s still Angelus, with all of the instincts and desires of a monster, but now he understands the pain he causes, and it cripples him into seeking redemption. (One of the commenters calls it a “moral shock collar”, which is something like genius.)

But Spike, having sought and reclaimed his original human original soul — the soul of William the bloody awful poet — is a different case; it’s suggested by the middle of season seven of “Buffy” that he’s found a way to reconcile the two selves, and in classic Spike fashion has simply decided that he bears no responsibility for anything he did in his soulless days, since he was a monster and operating under the appropriate monster rules.

Hey, it worked for Oz and Nina …

A good friend of mine got married yesterday, and as often happens at weddings, I reconnected with people I hadn’t seen in years. And in the course of the conversations, someone expressed surprise that I’d been able to land a job as a film critic, given the state of things in the industry.

“Yeah, tell me about it,” I said. “I’m probably the last guy who’ll ever get hired to do that full-time, given how many positions are being eliminated these days.”

Well, here’s more bad news: Jim Emerson and Glenn Kenny are reporting that Andrew Sarris is among the victims of an employee reconfiguration at the New York Observer. It’s not as bad as it sounds: Dave Kehr passes along a clarification from Molly Haskell, explaining that Sarris will still be writing for the paper, but he’ll be doing so as a freelancer — no benefits or status, and presumably a different pay scale. And he’ll still be teaching film at Columbia, which I’m sure he sees as his primary purpose anyway. (John spoke both fondly and with irritation of having Sarris as his thesis advisor there in the seventies — which, if you knew John, was how he spoke about most people he held dear.)

Still: In the trinity of American film writers, Sarris is unquestionably the father — Ebert would be the son, and Kael is the holy spirit. (And Michael Medved is the heretic who misinterprets their gospel for his own selfish ends.) What respectable publication wouldn’t want to have him on the masthead?

Come on, Post. Poach the guy. Class yourselves up a little.

Hey, everybody! It’s Friday movie roundup time! Apologies for having seen just a fraction of this week’s releases; between the Worldwide Short Film Festival and the film component of NXNE — about which more next Thursday — I just haven’t made it to that many screenings.

“Away We Go”: Just five months after “Revolutionary Road”, Sam Mendes delivers another tale of couplehood; this one’s a contemporary dramedy sort of thing, with John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph playing thinly veiled versions of screenwriters Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida. Susan liked it; Jason did too, though perhaps with less enthusiasm.

“Departures”: Last year’s foreign-language Oscar winner — about a cellist who moves back home to take a job as a mortician — finally lands a theatrical release; Susan calls it one of the year’s best films, though Jason is as underwhelmed as I was. (Really, AMPAS? Y’all liked this calculated life-lessons drama more than “Waltz with Bashir” and “The Class”? For shame.)

“Everlasting Moments“: At the press screening for Jan Troell’s latest intimate Swedish drama, Kevin Courrier told me this is Troell’s first feature to rate a Canadian theatrical run since something like 1982; otherwise, it’s all been film festivals and home video. This seems terribly unfair, but you can help buy seeing this at the Bloor and establishing a customer base for the next one.

“Imagine That”: Director Karey Kirkpatrick made “Over the Hedge”; screenwriters Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon gave us “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure”. And yet, somehow, this movie features Eddie Murphy pandering to children. I blame the government.

“The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3“: Tony Scott’s utterly unnecessary remake of Joseph Sargent’s 35-year-old thriller demonstrates that not all vintage properties need to be updated to the age of Final Cut Pro. Or maybe they just don’t need to be updated by Tony Scott.

And now back to work …

Fun fact: It’ll take longer to read my NOW coverage of the Canadian Film Centre’s 2009 Worldwide Short Film Festival than it takes to watch most of the movies.

But it’s totally worth it, surely. How else will you find little gems like “Heart of Karl” (pictured at right) amidst the sea of entries? Or Natalie Portman’s subtle “Eve”, or Olivier Hens’ tragic “Nous”, or Nick Park’s latest Wallace & Gromit entry, “A Matter of Loaf and Death”?

Okay, the last one was going to rise to the top regardless. But the other stuff needed a little push.

To celebrate the arrival of “Mega Shark versus Giant Octopus”, the Onion AV Club does it again: This week’s inventory is an inspired compilation of “27 Ridiculous Yet Entertaining Pop-Culture Fights (That Didn’t Take Place in Comic Books)“.

They left out “Buffy vs. Dracula” and “The Squid and the Whale”, but nobody’s perfect.

Good news, everyone! Pixar’s “Up” held the top spot at the box office over the weekend, pulling in an entirely respectable $44.2 million in its second week of release.

Coming in on its heels with $43.3 million was “The Hangover”, which is still pretty good for an R-rated comedy with no stars. (Don’t get me wrong: I love Ed Helms and Zach Galifianakis, and Bradley Cooper is a swell guy, but none of them has ever opened a picture before.)

And in other news, the Tonys tried to kill Bret Michaels. So the universe is ruled by a just and decent god.

UPDATE: Turns out the estimates were wrong — when the final tallies were delivered on Monday, “The Hangover” had crept into first place with $44.98 million, dropping “Up” into second with $41.14 million. Maybe now they’ll bring back “Kitchen Confidential”.

In light of “The Hangover” opening this weekend, my latest Sympatico/MSN gallery follows the obvious path, cataloguing memorable movie drunks.

And before anyone says anything, I know I left out “The Lost Weekend” and “Days of Wine and Roses”. Didn’t really suit the tone.

Summertime is all about blockbusters and counter-programming, as the smaller distributors clear out their backlog of festival acquisitions under the pretense of firing everything they’ve got at the big, bad studio pictures. Either way, it means stuff’s coming out.

“Empties”: Festival favorite Jan Sverak’s comedy about a bored retiree (screenwriter Zdenek Sverak, who’s also the director’s father) looking for something to do finally gets a theatrical run nearly two years after its bow at TIFF 2007. Glenn liked it; Adam did not.

“The English Surgeon”: Glenn was raving about Geoffrey Smith’s profile of neurosurgeon Henry Marsh at last year’s Hot Docs; he’s just as high on it now. So, clearly, we should see it.

“The Hangover“: No, Todd Phillips’ ultimate Vegas nightmare breaks no new ground, but it’s appropriately entertaining and absurd, and almost perfectly cast. I even enjoyed Justin Bartha, which is saying something.

“Land of the Lost”: In which Will Ferrell shouts non-sequiturs at dinosaurs for an hour and a half, apparently.

“O’Horten”: The week’s other movie about a retired guy seeking purpose, this one from the deadpan Bent Hamer. Jason and Paul both enjoyed it; I’ve been trying to see it since Cannes, with no bloody luck.

“My Life in Ruins”: After the disaster of “Connie and Carla”, Nia Vardalos goes back to humping the Greek thing. Susan didn’t mind it; I suspect Adam‘s response is closer to my own.

“Tokyo!“: Three directors, one city, one more metropolitan omnibus film. But it’s worth seeing for the Leos Carax episode alone.

“Waterlife“: Kevin McMahon’s look at humanity’s destruction of the Great Lakes is somewhere between a conventional documentary and a thumb-sucking visual essay; I found the visual-essay stuff so twee that I turned against the documentary portions. Also, it’s at least half an hour longer than it needs to be.

Also: David Carradine, dead at 72 … and, um, apparently not a suicide. Damn.

As we’re leaving the land of mini Jaffa cakes and chocolate ginger biscuits this afternoon, there’s not much time for the net … so here are a couple of new movie galleries over on Sympatico/MSN’s “Pelham 1 2 3” site, focusing on inventive hostage thrillers and souped-up remakes, respectively.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to take one last whip around the video shops in search of abandoned HD DVDs …

If the Guardian allows users from outside the UK to access its video files, you should really check out Nick Broomfield’s new documentary “A Time Comes“.

It’s the story of the Kingsnorth Six, a group of Greenpeace activists who climbed a coal plant tower in 2007 to protest Gordon Brown’s plans to build new ones … and wound up charting a new course for environmental protest law.

It’s not even twenty minutes long. But here’s the trailer, if you’re wary.