So I covered the MTV Movie Awards for MSN Canada last night, but forgot to give all you blog readers a heads-up because I spent the whole day struggling with a laptop BIOS issue and … um … forgot. I did tweet about it, though.

Sorry. I suck. But you can catch up to the coverage here. Kinda kills the immediacy, I know, but at least now you’ll know who the winners were.

And in other news, the “Shrek” fourquel held on to the top spot at the box office for the third straight week, grossing $25.3 million. Which was considerably more than any of the week’s new releases earned —
“Get Him to the Greek” placed a distant second with $17.4 million, and “Killers” third with $16.1 million. “Marmaduke”, the only other kid-friendly challenger, pulled $11.3 million to take sixth place; “Splice”, which is definitely not for the young’uns, earned $7.5 million to place eighth.

The good news? With a cumulative gross of $183 million, “Shrek Forever After” looks less and less like a disappointment for DreamWorks Animation. The bad news? General box-office is way, way down. Maybe everyone just spent the weekend at home, loading up on vodka and Vicodin to suitably numb themselves for the Tom Cruise fat-suit danceathon.

Lord knows I wish I had.

With Universal spinning “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” scene-stealer Russell Brand into his character’s own movie, the very funny “Get Him to the Greek“, my latest MSN Movies gallery celebrates other second bananas deserving of their own showcases.

Seriously, who wouldn’t want to see Dr. Evil get his own movie? By my admittedly unscientific calculations, it’d have to be at least 50% funnier than any of the “Austin Powers” pictures …

… oh, and in other news, what the fuck is up with Rogers suspending my brother for doing his job? I know the story’s just breaking, but seriously, this should be a much bigger deal than it is.

It’s an interesting week, summer-blockbuster-wise, with four biggish releases in very different genres — a comedy, a kiddie flick, an action thing and a horror movie. But none of them is quite as generic as its genre might suggest … well, except maybe “Marmaduke”.

“Get Him to the Greek“: Remember how Russell Brand stole “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” out from under everyone else? Well, they’ve given him his own movie now — a spinoff vehicle which lets him reprise the role of idiot hedonist rock god Aldous Snow — and dear god is it funny. My review should be up later this afternoon.

“Killers“: Everyone wants to kill Ashton Kutcher and Katherine Heigl; it writes itself! No press screening, so I’m catching it today, but with any luck my review will be online shortly thereafter. UPDATE: It took until Monday afternoon, but it’s up now. Whee.

“Land“: Julian T. Pinder’s documentary looks at the latest American adventure in Nicaragua, as real-estate speculators attempt to create a South American riviera. It starts off really well, but goes sideways halfway through — either because events went in a direction Pinder hadn’t anticipated, or because he didn’t know how to cover what he had. Which is disappointing.

“Marmaduke”: I know, I know. We all thought they were kidding. They weren’t, and now the world must suffer another CG talking-dog comedy.

“Splice“: Vincenzo Natali’s clever horror hybrid stars Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley as a couple of arrogant geneticists who create a weird new life form, then have to raise the damn thing in an icky allegory for ordinary parenthood. Much, much smarter than the simple monster movie being teased in the TV spots.

Oh, and the “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” trailer is attached to “Get Him to the Greek”. It’s somewhat amazing. I had my doubts about Michael Cera, but it looks like he can pull this off after all. (There’s also the fact that I trust Edgar Wright with this material more than just about any other filmmaker on the planet.)

Anyway, the trailer’s readily available online, but it’s really worth seeing on a big screen. And then you get to see “Get Him to the Greek”, which is pretty great itself. I’m just saying.

The Hot Summer Guide issue of NOW hits the street today, and if you’re curious, here’s my look at the season’s niftier movie options. We cast a pretty wide net, so hopefully there’ll be something in there that you’ll (a) be surprised by and (b) want to see.

One film that fits both those critera is Vincenzo Natali’s “Splice”, which didn’t make it into the guide because it’s opening this week. Here’s my Sarah Polley interview, which ran in the paper proper, and here’s my online Q&A with Natali.

Full disclosure, as I keep saying: I’ve known Natali casually for more than 20 years. (I went to York with his friend and eventual “Cube” co-writer Andre Bijelic, who introduced me to both Vince and their actor pal David Hewlett.) We don’t see each other socially or anything; in fact, the last time I saw him before our sit-down for “Splice” was at our sit-down for “Nothing” at the 2003 edition of TIFF.

It’s not like Richard Schickel and Clint Eastwood hanging out in Johannesburg during the shooting of “Invictus” or anything, but one just wants to put that out there.

“Sex and the City 2” failed to repeat the smash-and-grab success of the first movie, pulling in just $32.1 million at the North American box-office over the weekend. Even if you factor in its Thursday opening, the four-day total of $46.3 million falls well short of the $56.8 million the first film made in its first three days.

But within that weekend frame — which is all that counts when the box-office chart stories are being written — “Sex 2” got its clock thoroughly cleaned by “Shrek Forever After”, which held the top spot for a second weekend with $43.3 million. “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time”, which had been pitched as Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer’s latest world-beating franchise-launcher, scraped into third place with $30.2 million.

What happens next? If the blessing of Bruckheimer can’t turn Jake Gyllenhaal into an action hero and Carrie and the gals are looking increasingly like extras from “Land of the Dead”, can we be sure of anything anymore?

Well, people still go to see Shrek movies, we can be sure of that. But this is supposed to be the last one, so that rule isn’t particularly helpful going forward.

Invaluable actor, respected painter, wildly uneven director. My remembrance of Dennis Hopper is up at the NOW site, just one small memorial among hundreds that are popping up online — they’ve assembled a rough guide over at MUBI.
I particularly liked Andrew O’Hehir’s Salon piece, if you’re looking for something thoughtful.