(1)  Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs  ($24.6 million, $7887 per screen, $60 million total):  Dropping only 19% from a decent opening weekend, it appears that people actually like this movie and are on the verge of turning it into a legitimate hit.  That’s good news for the box office, which otherwise is in shambles right this moment.

(2)  Surrogates  ($15 million, $5083 per screen):  I was convinced this was going to do okay, but looking back on it, I’m not sure why I thought that.  I guess I’m stuck in the early ’90s, when Bruce Willis was actually relevant as a box-office star.  No more.

And I’d guess that those silly shots of him with a full head of blond hair may have cost the movie millions of dollars in ticket sales.

Surrogates was positioned to be the 2009 version of 2008′s Eagle Eye, a mildly successful sci-fi/action thriller, and it won’t end up being even as successful as that.

(3)  Fame  ($10 million, $3241 per screen):  A remake of a movie people below the age of 35 don’t remember, starring nobody the paparazzi would break into a trot to photograph, opening in late September…?  That equals non-starter, and that’s exactly what MGM got.  All things considered, this movie probably overperformed.

(4)  The Informant!  ($6.9 million, $2760 per screen, $20.9 million total):  Holding up reasonably well from last weekend, this movie still has a long way to go before anybody will be calling it a success.

(5)  I Can Do Bad All By Myself  ($4.7 million, $2241 per screen, $44.5 million total):  Continuing to slow down, which is typical for Tyler Perry movies.

(6)  Pandorum  ($4.4 million, $1759 per screen):  As predicted, nobody cared.  I’m surprised it made as much as it did.

(7)  Love Happens  ($4.3 million, $2280 per screen, $14.7 million total)/(8)  Jennifer’s Body  ($3.5 million, $1278 per screen, $12.3 million total):  Last week’s pair of high-profile duds got no solace this week, as the chances of either of them becoming slight word-of-mouth successes flew out the window.  Both will bedistant memories in another couple of weeks.

(9)  Appropriately enough, 9  ($2.8 million, $1399 per screen, $27 million total):  The movie is now close to earning back its stated budget of $30 million, so it’s not all bad news for the studio.  Still, this was a dud.

(10)  Inglourious Basterds  ($2.7 million, $1389 per screen, $114.4 million total):  Continuing to do relatively well on a week-to-week basis, this is the last week we’ll be hearing from Aldo and his Apaches in this column, but they had a good run, and will be fondly remembered.

Next week finds five new movies going into wide release, including Capitalism: A Love Story, which performed quite well in its limited opening this weekend, averaging $60,000 on eahc of its four screens.  It won’t do as well when it hits 1000 screens, but look for it to pull in no less than $5 million.

Pixar will possibly get its first taste of defeat when it rereleases Toy Story and Toy Story 2 as a combo double feature, this time in digital 3D.  Now, I can see this doing as well as $15 million, but I can also imagine people mostly looking at it and shrugging.  After all, do you know anybody who wants to take their kids to a three-hour movie?  I didn’t think so.  But I will say this: if I’m wrong, and the box office take is considerable, then it means next summer’s Toy Story 3 is going to be absolutely ginormous.

Also opening: Ricky Gervais’s The Invention of Lying (nobody cares), Drew Barrymore’s Whip It (good for $7 million), and Woody Harrelson’s Zombieland (good for $10 million now and every pothead in the world claiming it as their favorite movie five years hence).

It can’t help you get through reading it, though; that’s on you.

(1)  Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs  ($30.1 million, $9651 per screen):  Not too shabby an opening for a kiddie show opening during the first couple of months of the new school year.  It’s got a cute, visually appealing concept, and the movie got decent reviews, so it’ll probably play reasonably well over the next few weeks.  This is the kind of movie that keeps theatres afloat during the lean months of September.

(2)  The Informant!  ($10.5 million, $4210 per screen):  Let’s just say it right out in the open: the studio kinda just dumped this into theatres.  Opening a movie for adults this early on in the football season is a bit like committing box-office suicide, and this tepid opening reflects that.  Add in the fact that a decent number of the rubes who bought tickets attendees probably expected to see something more along the lines The Bourne Informant and I would guess Matt Damon is going to have to rely on Invictus to bring him all of his true ’09 glory.  Too bad; I hear this is a pretty great movie.

(3)  I Can Do Bad All By Myself  ($10 million, $4461 per screen, $37.9 million total):  As is typically the case with Tyler Perry movies, this one nosedove in its second weekend, dropping 57%.  That’s still a good total for a low-budget film, though, and the descent will level off from here, resulting in a total in the $50-60 million range.  Trust me, nobody will be less inclined to bankroll a Tyler Perry movie because of this one.

That won’t be true for the next few names discussed.

(4)  Love Happens  ($8.4 million, $4455 per screen):  An exceptionally weak debut for Jennifer Aniston’s new chick flick, especially considering how well her last couple of films (Marley & Me and He’s Just Not That Into You) performed.  Folks, these are the facts: nobody goes to see a movie because of Jennifer Aniston.  She may not keep people away, either, not if the concept is good (see previous two films); but if there’s not much of a hook, then you can expect a dud.  Here’s another fact: Aaron Eckhart ain’t much of a hook.

You can damn well bet that those two actors’ agents are having a shitty week already.

However, not as shitty as the agent for…

(5)  Jennifer’s Body  ($6.8 million, $2517 per screen):  …Megan Fox.  For the past half-a-year or so, Fox has been all over magazine covers, all over the internet, all over television; omnipresent wouldn’t be the right word, but it’d be close.  In short, the industry has been doing its damnedest to turn Fox into Angelina Jolie 2.0, and for a while there, it looked like they were making some excellent progress.

Screech, crash, bang, boom.  Looks like that progress has been halted.

This is a terrible performance for a movie as relentlessly promoted as this one was.  (The per-screen average is particularly awful.)  And since Megan Fox was nearly the sole focus of that promotion, it really can’t be seen any other way than as a referendum on the actress herself.  It may not kill her career, but it’s certainly going to wound it.

Emerging marginally less scathed: screenwriter Diablo Cody.  The movie got decent reviews, and at least a few of those reviews suggested that the marketing campaign would have been better served focusing on Cody’s dialogue.  Also, this fail is balanced out by a big weekend win for Cody: her Showtime series The United States of Tara picked up a big Emmy nod this weekend for it sstar, Toni Collette.

Also emerging totally unscathed: the adorable Amanda Seyfried, who got mostly great reviews for her role in Jennifer’s Body.  Her star power lives to be tested another day.

(6)  9  ($5.4 million, $2650 per screen, $22.7 million total):  An uninspired second weekend.  This one is fading into cult obscurity pretty quickly.

(7)  Inglourious Basterds  ($3.6 million, $1430 per screen, $109.9 million total):  In terms of pure dollars, this one is now Quentin Tarantino’s most successful film to date.  That’s a big win for everybody involved.  It’ll be interesting to see how the movie fares come awards season.

(8)  All About Steve  ($3.4 million, $1575 per screen, $26.6 million total):  Giving back almost all of those points she earned with The Proposal this summer, this one is a big black eye for Sandra Bullock.

(9)  Sorority Row  ($2.4 million, $961 per screen, $8.8 million):  $961 per screen!  That’s terrible.  Between this and Jennifer’s Body, it’s been a rock-bottom couple of weekends for horror films.  If not for the final flick in the top 10, people would be talking about how horror is dead … again.

(10)  The Final Destination  ($2.3 million, $1316 per screen, $62 million total):  The flick took a big 57% hit this weekend, no doubt due to the opening of Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs on 3D screens.  The scrapping over 3D screens can be fairly rough, and if more theatres don’t start adding more compatible screens soon, the format is going to have a hard time ever truly becoming anything more than a gimmick.

Next week brings Bruce Willis’s Surrogates, which looks okay and might actually succeed in tearing a few dudes away from the football for a couple of hours.  I’m going to guess that it opens at about $27 million.

Also on the dockets: Astro Boy on Wednesday (nobody cares), Fame (nobody cares), and Pandorum (nobody cares).

Despite the ongoing setbacks this production has been facing, the producers and stars have been soldiering on, determined to make a great movie. And now, despite having a potential cast member in the form of Nicolas Cage dropping out of the film, they have a new reason to celebrate.

After surprising everyone this year with his role in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, Christophe Waltz, AKA Hans Landa, has been cast as the villain Chudnofsky, a gangster who makes things troublesome for our hero. This is definitely good news to all the fans who were worried this film was in trouble. Waltz completely stole the show in his villainous “Jew Hunter” role and is basically a lock for a Best Supporting Actor Nomination. I believe this will make the film even more enjoyable than what it would have been before.

The Green Hornet is set for a December 17, 2010 release and also stars Seth Rogen, Cameron Diaz, Jay Chou, Edward James Olmos, and Tom Wilkinson, and is being directed by Michael Gondry.

However, I was dead wrong about which one would be an achiever and which would be a loser.

(1)  The Final Destination ($28.3 million, $9079 per screen):  This, frankly, is a bit stunning.  Not only did it trounce the Rob Zombie movie, it also handily beat the openings of the first three films in its own series … without having one single star in the cast.

Is there any doubt left that 3D can be a big draw?

(2)  Inglourious Basterds ($20 million, $6332 per screen, $73.7 million total):  Here’s an interesting fact.  This movie’s gross on Friday was down about 60% from its Friday gross last week, which is usually a sign of doom and gloom.  However, the weekend overall ended up being down only 47% from last weekend, which is a big turnaround from that second Friday.

What does this mean?

Well, who can say for sure, but it seems highly likely to me that it means the movie has good word of mouth among older audiences, who tend to go to the movies on Saturday and Sunday afternoons.

They also tend — as we’ll see with at least one other movie further down the chart — to cause a movie to stick around for a number of weeks, so this might be excellent news for the long-term prospects for the Basterds.  Tarantino and Pitt (not to mention the Weinsteins) are undoubtedly smiling widely over this one.

(3)  Halloween II ($17.4 million, $5754 per screen):  A very disappointing opening, considering that the first film in Zombie’s series opened to nearly $30 million.  Clearly, this movie was the victim both of disdain for the first movie and of the unexpectedly stout competition from The Final Destination.

I’d guess it’ll be a while before Hollywood opens two same-genre films on the same weekend agaain.

The budget on this movie was apparently only $15 million, so nobody will lose any money on the deal.  Still, a disappointment.

(4)  District 9 ($10.7 million, $3365 per screen, $90.8 million total):  Down 41% this weekend, it’s another good performance from the Blomkamp flick, which is now a lock to make $100 million.

(5)  G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra ($8 million, $2307 per screen, $132,4 million total):  Down 35%, which isn’t bad, I continue to be fairly impressed by how well this movie is doing.  Not a huge hit, by any means, but it’s doing similarly reobust business overseas, which probably means a sequel is a go.

(6)  Julie & Julia ($7.4 million, $2956 per screen, $70.9 million total):  Word of mouth continues to propel this movie into strong business.  It dropped only 16% this weekend, and I’m now starting to wonder if that magic — and mostly meaningless — plateau of $100 million isn’t doable, after all.  As I mentioned earlier, movies that really entertain older audiences tend to have long shelf lives, and if you want a great argument for that fact, look no further than this movie.

(7)  The Time Traveler’s Wife ($6.7 million, $2278 per screen, $48.1 million total):  This movie is also holding up well, and while Eric Bana can’t quite claim to be a box-office star yet, it’s clear that he still has potential.

(8)  Shorts ($4.8 million, $1568 per screen, $13.5 million total):  There isn’t much kiddie business to be had during this part of the summer, but this movie dropped only 24%, which is at least a mild rebound from a poor opening weekend.

(9)  Taking Woodstock ($3.7 million, $2691 per screen):  Not good.  Clearly, nobody much cared to see a movie about Woodstock that wasn’t really about Woodstock.

(10)  G-Force ($2.8 million, $1477 per screen, $111.8 million total):  If Disney World ever opens a ride based on this movie, I’m gonna crap in its doorway.

Elsewhere on the charts, there was another strong late-run performance from Harry Potter; the sixth film in the series is up to $294 million, and seems likely to hit the $300 million mark, which will make it the most successful entry since the first one.  Looks like those IMAX screens were pretty darn helpful, after all.

Also, both (500) Days of Summer and Ponyo continue to hold up well (dropping merely 9% and 19%, respectively).  Both films have proven to be very successful with the audiences they were aimed at.

Next weekend is Dragon*Con weekend for me, so this column will be taking a one-week hiatus.

Tarantino is also interviewed, and talks about the Cannes Film Festival, his love of Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns, his new movie, his directorial influences, and more.

Roth directed a short film called “Stolz der Nation (The Nation’s Pride)” that will appear during Basterds as a Nazi propaganda film.  The short apparently features quite a bit of over-the-top Reich-style shenanigans, which made even Roth think he might have gone too far.

The director quipped that the Nazi party is “going to make me their Sarah Palin,” joking that skinheads may be confused by how such a great movie could have been directed by a Jew.  “It’s going to throw off all the neo-Nazi’s,” he continued, speaking to a reporter who apparently doesn’t know that when you want to use the written word to indicate a plural form of the word “Nazi,” you don’t put an apostrophe between the “i” and “s.”  That actually indicates a possessive, which is clearly not what Roth was saying.

Maybe MTV Movies was just playing along with Tarantino’s intentional misspellings in the movie’s title.  Yeah.  Yeah, I’m sure that’s what they were doing.

The highly-anticipated film is scheduled to be released this August.