Well, this sucks.

Apparently, WordPress decided sometime in the last couple of weeks to eat all comments to the blog, meaning that you can’t leave new ones and I can’t find the old ones. It’s some kind of database hiccup, apparently, which should be easily fixable, but I haven’t found a solution in the support forums I’m not savvy enough to figure it out on my own.

So this is gonna be a one-way street for the next little while, until I figure something out. Sorry about that.

In the meantime, consider this: “American Gangster” outgrossed “Bee Movie” this weekend, by more than seven million dollars.

“Oh,” you say. “That’s interesting, I guess.” Well, yeah, it is.
“American Gangster” is 160 minutes long. “Bee Movie” runs 100 minutes, a full hour shorter. That means one more show per day, per screen, for “Bee Movie” — and maybe even two, if the megaplex opens early and closes late. (I don’t personally relish seeing a movie at 11 am, but some people do it every weekend.)

One more thing: According to Variety, “Bee Movie” opened in 3,298 theaters, while “American Gangster” opened in 3,054. (That’s locations, not screens.) “Bee Movie” is a family film; “American Gangster is rated R, further limiting its potential take.

Therefore, when you consider all of these factors — and then think of the nonstop marketing campaign Paramount/DreamWorks has waged on behalf of “Bee Movie”, with Jerry Seinfeld’s cross-country tour and those frackin’ “TV Juniors” during “Heroes” and “The Office” — “Bee Movie” looks more and more like it got its stripey little ass kicked all up and down the box-office this weekend by a movie for grown-ups.

No wonder Jerry’s a little testy these days.