No Vacancy at the box office with 'Hotel for Dogs,' 'Bloody Valentine 3D'

By Sarah Sluis

The Martin Luther King box-office weekend frequently sees the release of horror, kid, and black-

oriented titles. This year, we have all three. The nepotism niece, Emma Roberts, stars in Hotel for Dogs (3,271 screens), the latest in a long string of canine titles that have swept the box office. In a recession, who better to turn to for comfort than man's best friend? The film riffs on a Lois Duncan children's novel of the same name, adding a foster children premise (what is it with children's books featuring orphans?) and "a pint-sized

engineer a la Kevin McCallister from Home Alone" (to quote our Ethan Alter). With no school on Monday, the film will be able to capitalize on the elementary-school set.

Mobilizing the males under 25 quadrant, My Bloody Valentine 3D (2,534 screens) and Paul Blart: Mall Cop (3,144 screens) will offer up the horror and comedy genres. Certainly, the novelty of seeing axes and fireballs being thrown at you in 3D (a thrill promised in the trailer) will make for good locker room water fountain chatter, but will teen boys pass up the chance to laugh at authority in Paul Blart: Mall Cop? A power-tripping mall cop on a Segway is certainly the bane of a food court loafer's existence. I can imagine a teen boy saying to his friend, 'Didn't we see The Unborn last weekend? Let's go for a comedy.' Unless, of course, the boys are already aware of that other mall cop flick hitting theatres soon, Seth Rogen's Observe and Report.

The Notorious B.I.G., of drug dealer to rapper fame, lived a crack-to-riches American Dream until he was gunned down in Las Vegas. Notorious (1,637 screens), releasing on the weekend honoring Martin

Luther King, and on the eve of Obama's inauguration, harkens back to the 1990s. As Teresa Wiltz from The Root noted, seeing the film is 'like time traveling back to the day when gangsta rap ruled, all bluster and bling, beef was settled with bullets and an XXL-sized brother from Brooklyn dazzled, if only for a moment." With Obama, King, and B.I.G. sharing the limelight this weekend, B.I.G.'s gangster success seems much less relevant than the achievement of our first black president.

For the foreign and Oscar loving audience, we have two Oscar expansions and three foreign/specialty releases. Defiance (expansion to 1,789 screens) and Last Chance Harvey (expansion to 1,054 screens) will both open in a multiplex (nearish) you. While neither of these well-reviewed films will sweep the Oscars, they have earned some awards attention (receiving one and two Golden Globe nominations, respectively) and good word-of-mouth. Chandni Chowk to China (130 screens) , which tackles the martial arts AND Bollywood genres, "should please fans of both genres ready to be happily assaulted for two-and-a-half hours," according to our critic, David Noh. If, of course, a "mulligatawny stew of a film that feels like it's been laced with liberal doses of acid" is right up your alley.

For NYC audiences, Cherry Blossoms, "a portrait of an aging couple" FJI critic David Noh found deeply imbued with "a strict humanist's compassionate observation," opens, along with Ballerina, a documentary of three professional dancers in the Russian Kirov Ballet. Both come recommended by Film Journal.

Stay tuned this weekend for posts from Sundance, courtesy of Daniel Steinhart.