Box Office - Jason and the Also-Rans

It looks like those Jason Voorhees fans got most of their curiosities satisfied early. Even though Friday the 13th opened with a whopping $19.3 million on Friday, the film struggled the rest of the weekend, particularly on Sunday. Still, a $42 million three-day total isn't bad at all, however, $50 million over the four-day President's Day weekend seems hard to believe.

While Jason would've won the weekend with a much less robust Friday, two other films played pretty competitively - last week's top two finishers, He's Just Not That Into You and Taken . Taken continues to amaze me. Without real star power, the Liam Neeson revenge flick has lost 18% of its audience from the first to the second weekends and an absurd 6% in its third stanza. The average drop is somewhere between 25 - 35% on the second weekend, and a little less than that the next. Box Office Mojo reports that the weekend's other new releases, Confessions of a Shopaholic and The International couldn't quite perform up to their expectations, collecting $15 and $10 million respectively.

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Box Office - 'Friday the 13th' Owns Friday the 13th

Nearly doubling its project Friday box office, Friday the 13th left no doubt as to what movie is the preferred choice over the four-day weekend. Earning $19 million in one day, according to Box Office Mojo estimates, means a likely $50 million-plus debut, which in turn means that Jason Voorhees might finally join the century club.

Friday the 13th earned about four times as much as anything else, and its big opening day was certainly a surprise. More than likely, it's one of those movie that will have a huge first day and taper off after that; I think it's unlikely that the numbers would go up from $19 million. Still, the other new releases felt the sting, with Confessions of a Shopaholic and The International earning just over four and just under three million each. Neither film cracked the top three and The International may not make it into the top five this weekend, thanks to strong performances by He's Just Not That Into You ($5 million) and Taken ($4.67 million).

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Confessions of a Shopaholic Starring Isla Fisher, Hugh Dancy, and Krysten Ritter Directed by P.J. Hogan Rated PG

I am fascinated less by the films themselves, but there is something to be analyzed in these movies that draw in viewers with the allure of high glamour and fashion but ultimately reject the expensive brand names as evil and soul-stealing. True, Sex and the City, which started the current trend, has an unabashed love affair for the clothes in its very well-dressed New York City, but labels are just accessories to dehumanized characters in The Devil Wears Prada, and certainly it exists on TV in Ugly Betty, where only the shallow, evil people wear the good threads. Confessions of a Shopaholic sounds like a funny title, but seriously, the girl's got issues. Rebecca Bloomwood - a name that simply belongs in the movies - owes thousands upon thousands of dollars. She lives rent-free with her best friend because she can't pay all the bills and swing the credit cards, too. She lies to important people about unimportant things, and worse, about important things, all because she has a compulsion. Replace booze with shoes, and it's like Leaving Louis Vuitton. Rebecca (Isla Fisher from Wedding Crashers and Definitely Maybe) is a writer by trade, which raises another question: Why is it that the only women in New York this mad about fashion work in publishing? In her first step towards shopping sobriety, Rebecca takes a job at a financial magazine, and if you don't get the irony, that's OK; it's explained six or eight times in the movie. Naturally, she falls for her boss (Hugh Dancy). There are good reasons for that: He's the only single male character under 40 in the entire movie, it saves us from needing an additional character down the road, and his name's Hugh. Everyone knows that in romantic comedies, the heroine always makes a beeline for the English Hugh with tousled hair. It can't be helped.

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Fearless Forecast - Jason Kills 'em All

Almost instinctively, I'm saying that Friday the 13th is going to dominate the weekend box office. And then I think about it, and I think it's going to be even more dominating..er...ing. You see, it's not just a reboot of one of those classic franchises, one that will continue to convert young fans, but it's also the only movie aimed at young moviegoers right now, so they ought to respond with their always frivolous spending.

That's not to say Confessions of a Shopaholic won't make money. It'll do fine, and it could even fare surprisingly well if a lot of single women band together on Valentine's Day weekend and see it in large groups. But there's a big audience split between this film and He's Just Not That Into You, and that, couple with the clear advantage Friday the 13th has in theater numbers, will keep Shopaholic from going toe-to- toe with Jason. I once held out hope that The International could be a box office hit. It seems smarter than the other two films, it's got a great cast, and it's timely. Perhaps it's too timely, though. The action thriller about corrupt banks may hit too close to home, and that might help explain why Sony is only releasing this in 2,300 theaters.

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International 'Shopaholic' Trailer with Isla Fisher

I've had my fill of the publishing industry in movies. Realizing that many of the movies that take place at a newspaper or a magazine are based on books so a lot of that can't be helped, we still see an awful lot of New York femme-based journalism between Sex and the City, The Devil Wears Prada, Ugly Betty, The Women, and now, Confessions of a Shopaholic. What makes this one different? Isla Fisher, I suppose. She broke through in a huge way as the maniacal nympho in Wedding Crashers and gave two underappreciated performances in The Lookout and the romcom Definitely, Maybe. She might be a big star, and if so, here's her chance to prove it. Fisher's not just very attractive, but being one of the few redheads in the room will help, as will her well-honed comedic skills. I don't think you could birth baby Borat without having a rather pliable sense of humor. And she'll need every bit of that sense of humor to make what appears to be a movie we've seen countless times before something worth remembering. Here's the new international trailer for Confessions of a Shopaholic. Let's just hope this is a springboard for something bigger and better for Isla. Shopaholic opens Feburary 13th.