If there was any question whether Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland had Avatar-like staying power, this weekend’s box office confirmed that it does.

Wonderland, the updated take where Alice returns to Wonderland as a 19-year-old, only dropped 47% after an extremely strong opening weekend. At this point, experts predict Wonderland will take home $62 million this weekend, far-and-away the top movie at the box office.  It has grossed $208.6 million domestically in its first 10 days in theaters.

The other story this weekend was the dismal performance by Green Zone. The Matt Damon-starring film took home just $14.5 million, which was far under the $100 million it cost Universal and Relativity Media to make the film.

Taking third place this weekend was She’s Out of My League, which took $9.6 million in its opening weekend.  Remember Me, the film starring Robert Pattinson, grossed $8.3 million and Our Family Wedding took home $7.6 million in its opening weekend.

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This post was written by Eric Van Dril.  For more of his writing, visit RipcordNews.com.

For years, thousands of people around the country who either saw or knew of Will and Grace seemed to have the same feeling: Sean Hayes is really convincing as a gay guy.

And for years, Hayes refuted all the rumors and maintained that he was a straight man.

Until he came out in last week’s The Advocate.

The piece in The Advocate is kind of a run-of-the-mill article about Hayes and the difficulties he’s had as a closeted man for so many years.  But the interesting thing I found about the piece was the first section where the article frames Hayes as an obvious gay man who has a ton of mannerisms and such that make it a no-brainer that he is a homosexual.

In my opinion, it’s weird that this article would be framed this way because it’s almost as if the writer and editorial staff are encouraging other gay men to come out by saying these things about Hayes in his ‘coming out’ feature story.

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This post was written by Eric Van Dril.  For more of his writing, visit RipcordNews.com.

Chad Ocho Cinco – the Cincinnati Bengals’ diva wide receiver – has landed a Bachelor-esque reality show on VH1.

OchoCinco will star in what is tentatively being called The Tournament and will pick one lady out of 85 looking for his love and affection.  The show will span 10 episodes and begin in July 2010, which is just two months after he wraps his time on Dancing with the Stars.

How the show is going to work, via the press release…

The Tournament will start with Ocho Cinco finding his “first 85″ by traveling all over the country meeting women that may be interested in dating him.  Then, during the first episode, he will narrow the playing field down to the sweet sixteen – four women from each of the four regions of the country – Northern, Western, Southern and Central Divisions. The sixteen chosen women will be invited to join Ocho Cinco for the rest of the tournament-style dating competition.

Once the competition begins, Ocho Cinco will follow a tournament bracket where each of the ladies will have an opportunity to spend quality time with him while also facing off against one another in double-dates.  The winner of each dating face-off will receive a game ball from Ocho Cinco and move on to the next round of the tournament, while the loser goes home.  Ultimately the sweet sixteen will be narrowed down to eight and then the final four.  In the end, the championship date between the two remaining women will result in Ocho Cinco awarding his chosen love the coveted Championship Ring. Hopefully, she turns out to be his greatest catch this season!

The ironic thing about this show is that Ocho Cinco has four kids by three different mothers.

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This post was written by Eric Van Dril.  For more of his writing, visit RipcordNews.com.

Jesse Plemons, who plays the beloved Landry Clarke on Friday Night Lights, will not return to FNL as a full-time cast member in the show’s fifth and final season.  The news comes via EW.com, who is the absolute source for breaking FNL news.

SPOILERS FROM HERE TO THE END

Plemons’ exodus from FNL doesn’t come as a surprise.  He was always the smartest on in Dillon High and it was pretty much a given that he would be going to college after graduating.  In my opinion, the biggest question mark about Plemons was his age.  He was driving in the first season of the show, but was still around in the show’s fourth season?  How does that make any sense?

Anyway, Plemons received a similar fate to almost every one of the show’s original high school castmembers.  Smash, Street, Lyla, Tyra, Matt and now Riggins are all off the show.

The one thing that people who will miss Landry should keep in mind is that there’s the possibility that we see Landry in the fifth season.  Tyra is expected to return and there wasn’t a definitive end to Landry’s storyline.

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This post was written by Eric Van Dril.  For more of his writing, visit RipcordNews.com.

Oftentimes in our culture young celebrities – especially young female celebrities – are expected to be role models for girls of the same age and younger.

16-year-old Taylor Momsen, who plays Jenny on the CW’s Gossip Girl, would like to officially go on record and say that she doesn’t want young girls to look up to her.  In fact, she is blaming the media for not allowing her to smoke her cigarrettes out of the public eye.

“I didn’t get into this to be a role model for 7-year-olds. I have no interest in doing that, you know? If parents don’t like some of the stuff I do then they shouldn’t let their kids watch me.”

“I smoke, so what? Why do people give a s— what a 16-year-old girl who they’ve never met does? It’s not like I’m sitting there going, ‘Kids, you should go buy a pack of cigarettes.’ When I walk outside with a cigarette and someone takes a picture of it and puts it on the Internet, its not my problem. I’m just living my life and I’m not gonna live my life for other people.”

via

There you have it.  Jenny Humphrey is not a role model and, if she has her way, neither is Taylor Momsen.

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This post was written by Eric Van Dril.  For more of his writing, visit RipcordNews.com.

In the middle of its eighth season, Fox announced Wednesday that the current season will 24’s last.

Hint of the news leaked on the Internet Tuesday night and now, Wednesday afternoon, the guillotine has dropped. The Kiefer Sutherland-starring program will end after eight more episodes because of decreased ratings and rising costs.

But the good thing for 24 fans is that there have been serious talks of making a feature film to properly wrap things up.  So yes, it’s unfortunate 24 is going off the air because it represents the end of a beloved television show, but now, it won’t be a dissatisfying exit.  At least I don’t think it will be.

For more about the end of 24 and how the events of 9/11 made it so popular at the beginning of its run, please read Time magazine’s blog post about the show.

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This post was written by Eric Van Dril.  For more of his writing, visit RipcordNews.com.

Back in the hay-day of NBC – the days of Friends, Seinfeld and a lineup that was called “Must-See TV” – Jerry Seinfeld was the principle writer and star of the network’s most popular television show.  But as every sitcom eventually does, Seinfeld went off the air, exiting in 1998.

Then, after staying out of the limelight for a decade, Seinfeld returned to the peacock network last year with an idea for a reality show.  That idea is what you see now with The Marriage Ref which, in my opinion, is unwatchable.

The New York Post reports that Seinfeld had such power at NBC that the network immediately green-lighted the project, meaning they didn’t perform any audience testing on it.  Which, in this day-and-age, is absolutely unheard of and a very stupid idea.

“Jerry could have walked in the door with a show based on a guy sitting with a paper bag over his head and it would have been green-lighted,” said the executive. “His name and fame is golden, and the network needs all the help it can get.

“If you know the Yiddish term kvelling, that’s what the executives were doing. They were rejoicing. Jerry’s back! Seinfeld’s in the house again!”

via

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This post was written by Eric Van Dril.  For more of his writing, visit RipcordNews.com.

The early ratings returns for last night’s Academy Awards indicate that more people watched this year’s show than last years, which might be attributed to the humongous success of Avatar. Or not.  We don’t really know at this point.

Anyway, the Oscars were up 20% from last year, averaging a 27.4 rating and a 41 share.  What this means, in terms of raw numbers, is that it’s more than likely that the Academy Awards were seen by over 40 million people in the United States (the numbers will be out later today).  36 million watched last year’s telecast.

Like I said in this post’s first paragraph, there’s a good chance that the increase in viewers is due to Avatar being nominated for so many awards.  If a movie is seen by a lot of people is nominated in several big categories, there’s a good chance that the Oscars will see its ratings rise. For example, the award show’s biggest audience ever was in 1998 – the year Titanic was up for all of its awards.  It was seen by 55.2 million people.

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This post was written by Eric Van Dril.  For more of his writing, visit RipcordNews.com.

Kourtney and Khloe Kardashian will be back for a second season.

It comes as no surprise that E! has renewed Keeping Up with the Kardashians spinoff Kourtney and Khloe Take Miami for 10 more episodes, given the show’s huge ratings and the emergence of Kourtney and Khloe as legitimate celebrities.

The fourth season finale of Kardashians was seen by 4.8 million viewers and the spinoff deals with a Miami-based DASH Boutique.

“Millions of people tuned in to E! to see Kourtney and Khloe’s lives change completely this past year, and now fans can follow them on their next adventure in this new season of ‘Kourtney and Khloe Take Miami’,” said Lisa Berger, executive vp of programing at E!. “However, this time it’s a whole different world as the pair must embrace their new life roles and juggle their hectic careers as they head back to South Beach where fun always follows.”

via

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This post was written by Eric Van Dril.  For more of his writing, visit RipcordNews.com.

I don’t know if this really warrents news, but JJ Abrams and Tom Cruise will co-produce Mission Impossible 4.

The reason I don’t know if this is actually news is because I’m not entirely sure Cruise or the Mission Impossible franchise has a legion of fans.  Or, you know, fans.

(I’ll take silence in the comments to mean that no, no one does actually care about Mission Impossible or the career choices Cruise makes.)

From Paramount CEO Brad Grey in the press release…

“Tom and J.J. are great talents and we are excited to be working with them to re-launch this legendary franchise.”

I think Cruise was believable as a Jack Bauer-type 14 years ago when the first MI film was released.  But Cruise as the star of the MI franchise right now is about as believable as watching a 46-year-old Keifer Sutherland running around and killing everybody in 24.

It’s totally unrealistic and, for me, off-putting. Quite frankly, I don’t think there’s anything JJ Abrams can do to change that.

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This post was written by Eric Van Dril.  For more of his writing, visit RipcordNews.com.