10. Ruined by Rambo
The high price tags for Cloverfield and Semi-Pro in the January-March season were enough reason for me to stay away from them, instead settling on Rambo as my highest-priced movie ($24) on a Box Office slate. But I've got to say, I overestimated the nostalgia factor, at least on this one. The January release date should have given me a clue that the grosses wouldn't be huge, but I was still expecting a good $60 million or so. Instead, Rambo managed only $42 million, costing me a victory by $20 million. (I just missed out on the podium, too, finishing fourth.) Had I chosen Fool's Gold (also at $24) or even 27 Dresses ($21), I'd have cruised to victory, but, alas, I failed to realize that those movies with their friendlier PG-13 ratings could and would make more than Rambo.

9. Foul Air
As the only limited release on the weekend of Jan. 25 (at least, the only one available for Fantasy Moguls players), I thought I had found a surefire PTA winner with The Air I Breathe. Even when terrible reviews began to surface in mid-January, I stuck with it, believing that, with its existing IMDb score over 8 and a release in just a few theaters, PTA points would still come rolling in. I should have listened to those early reviews — The Air I Breathe didn't even make the PTA Top 10, while Persepolis and There Will Be Blood both did, even in their fifth (!) weekends. The Air I Breathe didn't even have a higher average than Meet the Spartans! It also dropped out of theaters after just one week, and the IMDb score fell to 7.5. That's still respectable, but the movie had no other benefit for my slate. For $8, I should have taken Love Songs instead, or even gone with $3 cheapie Teeth, which at least managed 1 PTA point.

8. Where in the World did Morgan Spurlock's popularity go?
I figured that a humorous, literal take on the search for Osama bin Laden would be a potential PTA gold mine in the April-June season. I thought I might as well pick a few films just for PTA, and get them out of the way early in the season, before the big sluggers of summer hit theaters. I also guessed that the success that befell Super Size Me had made Morgan Spurlock much more of a household name, and now that more people knew who he was, they'd be more apt to see Where in the World is Osama bin Laden? And I could not have been more wrong. Thankfully, my summer picks like Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and even The Incredible Hulk, did pick up a few PTA points, so my total in that category isn't as low as it might otherwise be. But I'd be much better off if I hadn't wasted that $7; I should have, in retrospect, matched this April slate with most of my others, and chosen The Visitor, at just $5.

7. Pacino the Pushover
In a February-April Box Office league, I hadn't picked 10,000 B.C. or Horton Hears a Who, but was still within striking distance of the lead by the last few weekends of the season. I had $7 remaining, and wanted two weeks of grosses (thus, I didn't consider Baby Mama or Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay). So it came down to either 88 Minutes ($6) or The Forbidden Kingdom ($7), and I went with the ol' ticking clock, assuming that Pacino's star power would outshine a kung fu movie I had only heard negative things about. I thought that when even the stars of a movie were quoted as saying it wasn't that great (as Jet Li had said about Forbidden Kingdom), it'd be a flop for sure. But I seemed to have forgotten that family-friendly movies nearly always prevail; 88 Minutes managed a meager $12 million in two weekends while The Forbidden Kingdom raked in $38 million. Again I missed out on the podium, finishing fifth, out of first place, coincidentally, by $26 million — exactly the difference between 88 Minutes and Forbidden Kingdom.

6. An Unfortified Slate
You might say that some of my slates had an iron deficiency — Iron MAN, that is. I didn't put this film in any of my studios, fearing that there was no way it'd be worth its enormous price tag. But now in retrospect, this may've been one of the only films in the past year worth spending more than $40 Fantasy Moguls dollars on. $304 million gross, 12 PTA points, 19 Top 5 points and an IMDb rating over 8. You really can't ask for much more than that from any blockbuster. Instead of Tony Stark, Dr. Jones was the anchor of most of my March-May and April-June slates, and while IJ4 has brought in almost as much money as Iron Man, numbers in the other three categories are lower: only 9 PTA, 13 Top 5, and a 7.1 IMDb score. Granted, it was a cheaper pick, but I really thought the nostalgia factor would help it outdo Iron Man. Not taking a flyer (heh) on Iron Man wasn't enough to cause a last place finish, or eliminate me from contention in the Super Leagues, but if I had invested in Iron Man on at least some slates, I've no doubt they would be a bit better.

5. Knuckle-heads
I foolishly ignored the warning sign of Leatherheads moving from December 2007 to April 2008, thinking it must have been delays in post-production causing the move, and not a lack of confidence on the part of the studio. My rationale was that George Clooney rarely makes bad movies, and so no matter when Leatherheads came out, it'd make decent money. I even shelled out $20 for it in a February – April league, expecting that (and I said as much in a past column) it would perform about as well as any April movie could. As soon as I saw opening weekend estimates, I knew I'd made the wrong call. There's no way Leatherheads was worth $20. It made $31 million total; I could have gotten $32 million out of the cheaper Definitely, Maybe. But the most beneficial alternate scenario would have been to take Jumper ($23) instead of Leatherheads, and The Flight of the Red Balloon ($4), instead of Love Songs ($7), netting an extra $50 million or so in box office gross and one extra PTA point. Darn that stupid George Clooney man-crush ...

4. Not So Smart After All
No, I'm not talking about Get Smart. Back in my April Studs & Duds column, my lock for the weekend of April 11 was Smart People (against my better judgment in avoiding praise for anything involving Sarah Jessica Parker. Incidentally, I channel-surfed into an episode of Sex and the City the other day in which SJP was walking up to a horse. I thought, "Wow, it's like looking in the mirror", and then continued on). Calling Smart People a stud was, let's just say, clearly not a Smart choice. It made a measly $9 million total, debuted out of the Top 5 and didn't manage a single PTA point. The real stud for the weekend was The Visitor, which, with a much cheaper price tag, went on to make a commendable $7 million and earn 12 PTA points. And I'd contemplated listing it as such, but changed my mind — alas, I should've stuck with my original train of thought. Thankfully I wasn't burned by my own bad advice; I made some last minute changes once I saw tracking and projections. If any of you were burned, though — and I suspect that might be the case — my sincere apologies.

3. When a Stranger Calls for $2
In most of my March-May slates, I needed a $2 filler pick and settled on Deception, seemingly blind to the fact that multiple name changes and little to no marketing would doom the film to a very poor theatrical showing. Even so, I figured anything it could muster would be better than The Strangers, yet another gory R-rated horror flick — especially because I saw The Ruins struggle pretty mightily in early April. Plus, I thought Deception would benefit from an entire month of eligibility in the March-May season, whereas The Strangers only had one weekend. To my chagrin, The Strangers went ahead and bucked the trend of R-rated horror failures, managing a solid $20 million opening weekend and even securing a few PTA points. Aside from Superbad and Forgetting Sarah Marshall, that has to be one of the best performances ever from a $2 film. I benefited from it on a few slates, but didn't change all of them — and for one league in particular, that could have been the one improvement necessary to get me a victory. Shoot.

2. Let's Rewind Time ...
... so I can take back my advice that Be Kind Rewind would be the stud for the weekend of Feb. 22-24. That honor should have gone to Vantage Point instead. Even hearing about how New Line Cinema was going down the tubes, I thought that Be Kind Rewind would help right the ship; it did the exact opposite. It got a purgatory release of 810 theaters — too wide to be a PTA goldmine (although it did grab 2 PTA points), yet not wide enough to make a substantial amount of money at the box office. It ended up with a total of just $11 million. And for BKR's expensive price tag of $20 Ultimate or $16 Box Office (in February-April leagues), even Hannah Montana would have been a better choice. Again, I bailed this movie off all my slates after seeing the late warning signs, but it still remains one of my worst calls of 2008. The worst, however, is ...

1. Airball
Semi-Pro. It seems like most Moguls were burned by this in one way or the other, and to those of you who avoided it like the plague, kudos. On the advice of a friend who screened the film early, I dropped Semi-Pro from all of my slates except one January-March Ultimate venture, thinking that even if it tanked, I needed whatever it could provide because I was already so far behind. That was, of course, not true in the slightest; I could have picked up 10,000 B.C. instead and been just fine, because I also had Horton Hears a Who. Dropping Semi-Pro also went against my own logic, because I figured Will Ferrell in another sports comedy, even with an R rating, was a sure bet. Instead, it ended up being possibly the most colossal failure since The Heartbreak Kid — and yet I was convinced otherwise up until the very end. Yeesh.

Next week I'll return with my monthly Studs & Duds format, taking a weekend-by-weekend look at July's offerings. Until then, good luck!

Mister Informative's superheroic judgement allowed him to give the right advice about Sex and the City even despite his deep dislike of all things Sarah Jessica Parker. Or maybe it wasn't his judgment. Did you notice that he admitted to recently watching an episode of Sex and the City? You know, sort of. Protest his continued Man Club membership by writing to misterinformative@gmail.com.