Bob Ford writes a perfectly Philadelphia Eagles column, which is really just doom-saying about the Giants:

Whatever. They won. They jumped around. They held on to the division lead.

Enjoy it for now, guys. If it’s this hard to beat the Eagles, the road ahead doesn’t extend quite as far as you think.

Don’t miss his post on life with IEDs. Some of the best reporting you’ll ever read from Iraq; you’ll think you’re there and then be thankful you’re not.

Narnia had a huge opening weekend, pulling in $67.1 million (that number will probably fall a little once the final numbers are crunched, but probably won’t dip below $65 million). Disney should be thrilled and overjoyed with this release. Good for them!

Not, however, good news for those who have been insisting that Narnia will beat Kong next weekend. Remember, that using the most conservative estimates–which means guess that Kong will open very weakly and that Narnia will hold incredibly well–we calculated that Narnia would have to open somewhere between $70 million and $87 million in order to be within striking distance of Kong next weekend. It’s now all but inconceivable that Narnia will be Kong next weekend and, if Kong is as good as the early reviews, then it’s also difficult to believe that Narnia (which will be helped by being a children’s film, but only has so-so word of mouth) will out-gross it in the long run. I suspect that, when all is said and done, Narnia will finish with somewhere around $280 million in North American box office.

Bonus: Narnia did a bit better than I thought it would–I suspected it would be around $59 million–largely because I was figuring it to be on 3,200 screens. Instead it debuted on 3,616 screens. Where will it go from here?

If Narnia performs similarly to Goblet of Fire, and I think they’re pretty analogous properties–it’ll have a profile similar to this. That means that it will retain its high screen count this weekend and, more crucially, for the two following weekends, both of which are holidays. That means it could dip to about $37 million next weekend, but could uptick over the Christmas holiday and show excellent legs over New Year’s.

Update: Inexplicably, Hugh Hewitt seems to be gloating. Maybe he thinks that the “tens of millions” of people who were going to see The Great Raid on its opening weekend are going to materialize next weekend for Narnia. And maybe–Army of the Dead-style–they will!

That would make Hugh Aragorn, son of Arathorne, and heir to the throne of Isildur, right?

For many months there has been a conservative knashing of teeth over Munich by those worried that it will be equivalent, anti-Israel, pro-terrorist, etc. Spielberg’s recent statements have been seen by some on the right to confirm their worries about the film.

I haven’t seen it, but I’ve been very wary of such predictions: Spielberg has been so heavily involved in World War II and Holocaust projects that I find it difficult to believe that he’s going to suddenly head in the other direction. As for his remarks about the cycle of violence, etc., etc., I’ve wondered if he isn’t trying to insulate himself from the left.

Now Todd McCarthy–the best straight-on film critic in America (Lane is an entirely different sort of animal; he’s in his own class)–gives his verdict. He doesn’t like the Munich much but has this to say about it:

Spielberg, Kushner and Roth go out of their way to try not to demonize Palestinians or anyone else, but the story is indisputably told with Jewish and Israeli concerns at heart.

A Berkeley professor does some interesting math about kicking vs. going for it on fourth down. (He uses the Bellman Equation, in case Brendon or any of the other scientists were wondering.):

omer realizes that his conclusions run counter to conventional football wisdom. But he argues that the conclusions make sense if one thinks about them.

An example he gives in the paper concerns a team facing fourth and goal on the 2-yard line. The usual strategy is to attempt a field goal, which will almost certainly produce three points. In this situation, however, going for a touchdown has about a three-sevenths chance of success, and so, on average, produces about the same payoff in terms of immediate points. But because trying for a touchdown and failing leaves the opponent with the ball in terrible field position, thinking about what will happen next tips the balance in favor of the aggressive strategy.

Go read Ross Douthat’s exceptionally funny post about the end of the Reformation. Not to be missed!

Shocked, aren’t you? What bravery! Here’s a clip from Stephen Holden’s review:

That’s exactly how Mr. Lee films their first sexual grappling (discreetly) in the shadows of the cramped little tent. The next morning, Ennis mumbles, “I’m no queer.” And Jack replies, “Me neither.” Still, they do it again, and again, in the daylight as well as at night. Sometimes their pent-up passions explode in ferocious roughhouse that is indistinguishable from fighting.

This moving and majestic film would be a landmark if only because it is the first Hollywood movie to unmask the homoerotic strain in American culture that Leslie Fiedler discerned in his notorious 1948 Partisan Review essay, “Come Back to the Raft Ag’in, Huck Honey.” Fiedler characterized the bond between Huckleberry Finn and Jim, a runaway slave, as an unconscious romantic attachment shared by two males of different races as they flee the more constraining and civilizing domain of women. He went on to identify that bond as a recurrent theme in American literature.

In popular culture, Fiedler’s Freudianism certainly could be applied to the Lone Ranger and Tonto. Minus the ethnic division, it might also be widened to include a long line of westerns and buddy movies, from “Red River” to “Midnight Cowboy” to “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”: the pure male bonding that dare not explore its shadow side.

We’re all gay cowboys, now.

Not being a literary scholar, I’m just wondering: Wasn’t Huck Finn in his early teens? Wasn’t Jim a grown man?

Gitesh the Box Office Guru isn’t infallible. But he’s very astute. His weekend estimate is out. Here’s what he has to say about Narnia:

Narnia is in many ways Lemony Snicket meets Lord of the Rings. What begins as a story of siblings sticking together in a new environment turns into a fantasy action film complete with epic battle sequences and plenty of violence. Surely fans of the books will all be out in force this weekend and over the holidays. . . In fact, those used to Tolkien-style fantasy every December will surely be tempted by Narnia, even if very little blood is shed on screen. . . .

The studio is not leaving anything to chance by having its marketing team target and attack every demographic group with money to spend. Given the author’s popularity in the Christian community, a solid church marketing campaign has been underway which should help deliver a massive turnout. Reviews have been mostly positive and it will be interesting to see how the two-hour-plus length will affect younger children used to 90-minute kidpics. Plus with Goblet of Fire going into its fourth weekend, and King Kong still a few days away, Narnia is in a position to dominate the box office this weekend with considerable force.

Despite the arrival of the great ape, the Disney flick should still be able to post strong numbers throughout the holidays and if American kids don’t find the film to be too British and the studio can find that holy grail – repeat business – then it will be well on its way to investing in more Lewis pics. Cross-gender appeal is solid, and with most movies currently in release getting stale, teen and young adult patrons that have already seen everything they want to see should also turn up at the cash registers. Roaring into well over 3,000 theaters on Friday, The Chronicles of Narnia might open with around $45M.

That screen count is a little lower than I expected, which may explain why Gitesh is more bearish. Still, that $45 million is a long way from the target window needed for Narnia to be in position to duel with Kong next weekend.