The Green Hornet buzzes to the top of the box office

Sony's dreary action release THE GREEN HORNET easily ruled the roost over the Martin Luther King holiday weekend in the US, which in itself raises several questions – not least what the iconic civil rights leader would have made of the violence that pervades the current crop of films. It doesn't bother me personally because I'll take a cartoonish bout of fisticuffs over an abysmal comedy such as Little Fockers any day, but it just struck me as intersting

And what is it about Seth Rogen? I'm sure he's a wonderful chap, and he is clearly a polished multiplex screenwriter, but does he need to be in front of the camera? His fixed expression of benign puzzlement and unfortunate propensity for grunting don't exactly bode well for the next generation of Hollywood leading men. Hats off to the man, though: he clearly exudes a winning allure with the ladies as evidenced by his female co-stars. To wit, Cameron Diaz in The Green Hornet and Katherine Heigl in Knocked Up, Anna Kendrick and Bryce Dallas Howard in the forthcoming Live With It and Michelle Williams in Take This Waltz.
The Dilemma from Universal launched in second place and managed about half of The Green Hornet's weekend gross. Vince Vaughn stars in this one with Kevin James, a likable character whose career took off after Sony's 2009 hit Paul Blart: Mall Cop and who has reunited with Sony for the summer tentpole comedy release Zookeeper. True Grit finished the weekend in third place and has taken $126.4m after four weekends, which is a complete mystery to me. It's superbly crafted as one would expect from the Coens but $126.4m? Really? The characters and story are mere sketches.
The two most recently released big-hitters at the Golden globes  The King's Speech and Black Swan, are both performing well at the box office. The former is starting to really flex its claws now after the Weinstein Company almost doubled its theatre count to 1,543. So in its eighth weekend Colin Firth et al enticed a further $9.1m out of Anglophile audiences to leave it on a promising $44.6m. Watch that tally swell after the Globe wins and Oscar nominations.
Ditto Black Swan, a much wilder and frankly less likely commercial success that I am delighted to say has become exactly that. It's on course to cross $100m and currently stands at $72.9m in fourth place after adding $8.1m in its seventh weekend. There's nothing like it out there. Yes, it's barmy and plunges lustily into OTT territory towards the end, but who cares. This is grand guignol movie-making and only a brilliant maverick such as Aronofksy could pull it off. Wonderful stuff. Fox Searchlight executives will be smiling from ear to ear. What a pair of movies they've got this year with 127 Hours also in contention.