They were slighted by the Oscars after their bid to host this year was ignored, but the Muppets have soldiered on, and now they're seeing their hard work pay off: today, the gang will get a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame. more ›

In a huge surprise, the brilliantly subversive Despicable Me dominated the weekend box office ($60.1M), almost doubling the total of last week's winner The So-Called Twilight Saga: Eclipse ($33.4M | $237M). The surprisingly well-reviewed Predators placed a strong third ($25.3M), just ahead of the sturdy summer champ Toy Story 3 ($22M | $340.2M). The dismal Avatar: The Last Airbender collapsed in its second weekend but still raked in an undeserved $17.1M ($100.2M). more ›

Steve Carell gives an ever-expanding heart and heavily accented voice to the (initially) despicable villain Gru in the new animated film, Despicable Me. When we first meet our hero, er, villain, Gru’s having a bad, bad day. He’s just found out he has lost his title of World’s Best Villain to some newcomer named Vector (Jason Segel) and he’s not one to settle for second place. Vector bested Gru by stealing a giant pyramid from Egypt, so Gru hatches a plan to regain his title by stealing something treasured by every nation. The moon. more ›

Here's a little something something for people (like this LAist poster) heading for the Swell Season concert at the Wiltern tonight. Jason Segel (How I Met Your Mother, Forgetting Sarah Marshall) asked for songwriting advice from the band, and Markéta Irglová told him to "write a song from the heart" and "include as much personal information as you can." Here's the result, which he performed at last night's show. more ›

I keep trying to resist these manufactured "bromance" movies, but damn if they don't continue to work on me. While some men enjoy the guilty pleasure of crappy, godless action spectacles like Transformers and G.I. Joe, I am helpless against the machinations of Paul Rudd. I gave 17 Again a chance in the theater only because I still have a soft spot for Matthew Perry. Probably should have waited for the DVD. The Class was one of the best-reviewed films of the year, so naturally no one saw it during its brief theatrical run. Correct that mistake today. Zooey Deschanel gets nekkid in Gigantic! Yay! (uh, the movie is okay, too). The way I figure it, any time I get a chance to point someone toward Led Zeppelin, I'm gonna point them toward Led Zeppelin. more ›

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Two very good studio films opened at the box office this weekend (I Love You, Man and Duplicity) and, naturally, neither of them managed to win the box office crown. That went to the terrifyingly moronic Knowing which tricked America's rubes into shelling out approximately $24.8M of hard-earned money. The quite funny I Love You, Man under-performed to the tune of $18M as did Julia Roberts' Duplicity which only managed to bring in $14.4M. Last week's champ Remake of Witch Mountain fell all the way to fourth but still had a solid performance ($13M/$44.7M). The ambitious Watchmen, however, continued to flounder ($6.7M/$98M). more ›

Knowing looks so spectacularly bad that it may almost be worth seeing. Nic Cage really is a national treasure. The Apatow brand is so strong these days that a movie like I Love You, Man -- which isn't even an Apatow film -- actually feels like one. I'll see it for the ravishing Rashida Jones alone. Does Julia Roberts still have juice at the box office? The performance of Duplicity will let us know. I'm gonna go with a 'no' on this one. I've never understood the fuss about her anyway. It's still appalling that she beat out Ellen Burstyn for the 2000 Oscar. more ›

For the 86 people who didn't see , I once lived underground for 3 years harrassing innocent women from below. more ›

As expected (due to its wussy PG-13 rating and higher theater count) ($3.5M/$144.4M). more ›

Ordinarily, I'm completely disinterested in the box office performance of a movie. Sure, my innate sense of justice leads me to wish that good films will do well and bad films poorly, but I never check Boxofficemojo over the weekend to see how a movie is doing. I may keep on eye on Forgetting Sarah Marshall, though, to see if the weakening Apatow brand can regain some strength after the relative failures of will restore some order to Judd's universe. more ›