Stereoscopic Deathvision's Moment Has Arrived!

The weather has exceeded 100° in Los Angeles for several days now. A mountainous billow of white smoke has settled to the north, hanging ominously above the city like the stalled spacecraft of District 9. This morning, Gov. Schwarzenegger has urged 12,000 families to flee their homes before it's too late. For many, heading into a movie theater to watch a young woman have her head sanded off by a car wash buffer was the only hope for relief. Their story and more after the jump.

1. The Final Destination

Gross: $28,335,000 (new)

Screens: 3,121 (PSA: $9,079 )

Weeks: 1

The formula is a simple one: Take a handful of fresh, interchangeable faces, then pick one off at a time via intricate death scenarios in everyday locations like Pilates studios and supermarket deli counters. Throw in the added enticement of 3D -- and the delicious promise of a loose meat slicer blade flying out between your eyes, along the way decapitating an actress whose biggest previous credit was a three-episode arc on One Tree Hill -- and what you have is a perfect recipe for end-of-August, get-me-out-of-this-100-degree-heat, I-will-literally-pay-to-see-anything-so-long-as-there-is-working-AC box office success. Death truly did save the best for 3-D -- he's so cutting-edge that way!

2. Inglourious Basterds

Gross: $20,041,000 (cume: $73,760,000)

Screens: 3,165 (PSA: $6,332)

Weeks: 2 (Change: -47.3%)

[Spoiler alert.] The far more favored of Harvey Weinstein's two August babies comfortably took second place, despite the meager protests of picketers from the Int'l Society for Accurate Depictions of Screen Nazis, who taunted patrons with chants of "Hey hey! Ho ho! Fictional 'Bear Jews' have got to go!" and "What do we want? Hitler alive! When do we want it? Now!"

3. Halloween II

Gross: $17,405,000 (new)

Screens: 3,025 (PSA: $5,754)

Weeks: 1

Not even an appearance by Weird Al Yankovic as himself could help push Rob Zombie's latest past a modest, if not embarrassing, third-place finish. The Weinstein Company's one-movie-long comeback streak comes to an unceremonious end, and it won't be long before the blame game begins anew, culminating in a red-faced Harv barking, "DIDN'T MARKET IT RIGHT? HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO MARKET A HORROR MOVIE STARRING THE GUY WHO SANG 'LIVING WITH A HERNIA!'" into his BlackBerry, then hurling the communication device at a cowering intern's head.

4. District 9

Gross: $10,700,000 (cume: $90,813,000)

Screens: 3,180 (PSA: $3,365)

Weeks: 3 (Change: -41.3%)

District 9 did monumental things in highlighting prawns' rights abuses. For further reading, we'd guide you to Pepe the King Prawn's best-selling memoir, It's Hard Out Here For A Shrimp: Life, Love and Living Large, which is already being touted as The Feminine Mystique of the modern prawnist movement.

5. G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

Gross: $8,000,000 (cume: $132,436,000 )

Screens: 3,467 (PSA: $2,307)

Weeks: 4 (Change: -34.5%)

9. Taking Woodstock

Gross: $3,749,000 (new)

Screens: 1,393 (PSA: $2,307)

Weeks: 1

The last time Ang Lee faced disappointment, with 2003's Hulk, he went into a depression, and even briefly considered giving up making movies altogether. I hope Taking Woodstock's box office fizzling doesn't provoke similar impulses, and that he can tune out dissonant critical voices like that of Big Hollywood's John Nolte, who objected to Woodstock on the grounds of it being a dirty-filthy-hippie-ridden anti-Semitic faggot fantasia. Come to think of it, Dirty-Filthy-Hippie-Ridden Anti-Semitic Faggot Fantasia would have probably made a buzzier title.

[Data: Box Office Mojo]