‘A Christmas Carol’ is No. 1 with $31 million

It may be only the first week of November, but Disney’s A Christmas Carol got the holiday season started by spiriting $31 million at the box office, according to early estimates by Hollywood.com Box Office. The $175 million animated movie, which utilized performance-capture technology to allow Jim Carrey to play multiple roles from Charles Dickens’ beloved story, represented the best opening in director Robert Zemeckis’ career. And even though Carol performed a bit below expectations, the family film should hold up well in the coming weeks, especially since it’ll be playing on nearly 200 pricey IMAX screens until Avatar opens on Dec. 18.

The concert documentary Michael Jackson’s This Is It dropped only 40 percent in its second weekend, sliding into second place with $14 million. Not far behind was the new George Clooney comedy The Men Who Stare at Goats. Unlike the Chicago Cubs, the movie managed to escape the Curse of the Billy Goat for a weekend total of $13.3 million. The Milla Jovovich alien-abduction film The Fourth Kind debuted in, appropriately enough, fourth place with $12.5 million, while the box-office phenomenon of the season, Paranormal Activity, recorded $8.6 million—good enough for fifth place. Activity, which reportedly cost only $11,000 to produce, has now grossed $97.4 million domestically. Such success is not in store for the Cameron Diaz horror flick The Box, which debuted in sixth place with $7.9 million and managed to garner a rare “F” grade from CinemaScore moviegoers.

The most newsworthy box-office story of the weekend was the record-breaking opening for Precious, the Oprah-endorsed and Sundance-winning drama starring Mo’Nique, Mariah Carey, and newcomer Gabourey Sidibe. On only 18 screens, Precious grossed $1.8 million for a per-screen average of $100,000—the largest per-screen average ever for a movie opening in more than 10 theaters. With many Oscar prognosticators—including EW’s Dave Karger—calling the film one of the front-runners of the awards season, Precious has an undoubtedly bright future in store as it gradually expands into additional markets throughout November.

‘The Wanda Sykes Show’ premiere: Trying too hard for too few laughs

Wanda Sykes is terrific: at ease and bawdy; The Wanda Sykes Show is awkward: self-conscious and constrained.

At least, that’s what last night’s premiere episode was like. Sykes delivered a scattershot, eight-minute opening monologue that tried to establish her rebel credentials by attacking the network on which she appears: “Let me be the first person on Fox not to pick on President Obama.” (Intentionally confusing the Fox entertainment network with the Fox News Channel didn’t help the weakness of the joke.)

A lot of pro-Obama jokes followed, which fit the definition of the cliche, “preaching to the choir”: her studio audience clapped dutifully at every slap at targets like Rush Limbaugh and George W. Bush, but they didn’t really laugh very hard. Sykes also made the mistake that The Jay Leno Show does too frequently: illustrating punchlines with big pictures behind the comedian. That’s just beating an already-dead horse.

Speaking of horse cliches, Sykes did an out-of-the-studio sketch about buying environmentally-sound sex-toys. Sykes invented a “solar-powered vibrator” and “reuseable condoms,” saying, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him use a reuseable condom.”

The final segment was a panel of guests consisting of 24’s Mary Lynn Rajskub, Brothers‘ Daryl “Chill” Mitchell, and Amazing Race host Phil Keoghan. Unlike Bill Maher or Chelsea Handler’s similar panels, these guests were permitted to sip alcoholic beverages, but the martinis and wine did help the quality of the humor. Ostensibly playing off events in the news, topics included rich people using their wealth to travel in outer space. Mitchell’s comment was that if he had that kind of money, he wouldn’t leave Earth’s orbit, he’d “spend it on weed and hookers.”

One should never count out Wanda Sykes; she’s too talented. But she’s got to get away from the way her monologue looks (so choppily edited) and sounds (even if that was real laughter, some of it sounded “enhanced” with some of the canned stuff). And find better topics for her boozy panel discussions. A debate on “Is screaming the new spanking?” just won’t cut it at 11 p.m. on Saturday nights.

GMA : Rihanna’s Diane Sawyer interview

The first part of Rihanna’s vaunted interview with ABC’s Diane Sawyer just aired on Good Morning America. It was only a five-minute clip — a teaser for the real interview that’s coming tomorrow night on 20/20 – but already the singer has said more than she did in the nine months following ex Chris Brown’s violent attack on her.

GMA cherrypicked some gripping excerpts for this interview trailer. The part that everyone will be talking about came when Rihanna acknowledged getting back together with Brown in the weeks after he assaulted her. “It’s pretty natural for that to be the first reaction,” she told Sawyer. “The moment the physical wounds go away, you want the memories to go away.” Love, she said, had blinded her at the time. Given how many victims of domestic violence do go back to their abusers, it’s important for the public to hear an explanation of that toxic thought process.

Rihanna told Sawyer that she eventually ended things with Brown after thinking about the example she was setting for fans in abusive relationships of their own. “When I realized that my selfish decision for love could result in some young girl getting killed, I could not be easy with that.” She said she became ashamed that she had ever been with someone who was capable of what Brown did to her: “I fell in love with that person. That’s embarassing.”

Intense stuff. In this clip, at least, Rihanna made an honest, powerful advocate for victims of domestic violence — tearing up at times, but determined to get her message out. Like I said yesterday, it’s not this 21-year-old musician’s responsibility to take up that role, but so far she’s doing an impressive job talking about issues that are all too often ignored or kept quiet for the very reasons she mentioned.