Oh Boy It Never Ends: Weekend box office

1	(1)	Spider-Man: No Way Home	Sony Pict…	$32,617,921	-42%	4,012	-194	$8,130	$668,356,116	4
2	(2)	Sing 2	Universal	$11,597,590	-42%	3,713	-179	$3,124	$108,660,575	3
3	N	The 355	Universal	$4,621,765		3,145		$1,470	$4,621,765	1
4	(3)	The King’s Man	20th Cent…	$3,272,000	-28%	3,040	-140	$1,076	$25,091,034	3
5	(4)	American Underdog: Th…	Lionsgate	$2,413,000	-38%	2,728	-85	$885	$18,742,589	3
6	(5)	The Matrix Resurrections	Warner Bros.	$1,843,306	-52%	2,875	-677	$641	$34,300,409	3
7	(6)	West Side Story	20th Cent…	$1,413,000	-35%	2,290	-400	$617	$32,157,045	5
8	(7)	Ghostbusters: Afterlife	Sony Pict…	$1,115,529	-24%	1,501	-144	$743	$125,039,654	8
9	(8)	Licorice Pizza	United Ar…	$981,886	-24%	772	-14	$1,272	$8,152,697	7
10	(12)	House of Gucci	United Ar…	$616,744	-23%	607	-100	$1,016	$50,069,949	7

That's the weekend box office and I copied it Monday night along with Monday's snapshot (below). I was just too tired. I can't do THIRD every Sunday. I think this has been coming to a head for some time and Ava and C.I. have had to be the ones to raise the issue. They're tired. And I get why. I haven't done a full Sunday with THIRD since before the pandemic. I usually give two or three hours and that's it.

I get why they're tired -- Ava and C.I. It's too much.

Anyway, thoughts on the top ten.

I don't see any major changes coming along the way.

The pandemic is worse so you're not seeing any big openings. Spider-Man is a holdover from before things got bad. Nothing's managed to go to number one since. And when you look at everything below Tom Holland's movie, you see low, low box office.

355 made a huge mistake by not being VOD while at movie theaters. We really wanted to see that one, my girlfriend and I did. But with the huge increases in COVID numbers, we did not want to go out to a theater.

Ellen e-mailed about LICORICE PIZZA and whether I had any desire to see it?

Nope. Not a big fan of films that commercials tell me I have to see. I'm a grown ass adult, I don't have to see anything. I remember being a little kid and BREAKING AWAY being promoted as a film I had to see. When I finally did? Hated it. It's a bad little TV movie about a boy growing up. Kind of like LICORICE PIZZA, no?

I don't find it charming to see the same White boy becomes a man story over and over. Maybe it's because I'm African-American? Maybe it's because there are over a million of those films already?

Going out with C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"

Monday, January 10, 2022. Press misreports even the basics.

Well I gave them plenty of time to do their job. Their refusal to do so indicates that either they don't care about the truth or they're not supposed to tell the truth. Whatever it is, it's on them. They're paid to do a job and they're doing it poorly. I noted the problems in their 'reporting' last night "and the follow up from that was a whole bunch of nothing" -- as Joss Stone sings in "Drive All Night." So do not whine to the public e-mail account about how bad things are at your outlet and how you meant to or you forgot to. Again, you're paid to do this job. I'm not. You're paid to report. I'm not. You refuse tod o your job and there's no excuse for it so don't whine again in another e-mail. Or, as Billty Joel sings in "Big Shot," "Go on and cry in your coffee but don't come bitchin' to me."

Sunday, the Iraqi Parliament held their first session. Shortly before October 10th, they dissolved the Parliament. The October 10th elections would result in a new Parliament and, besides, we were told, changes had ensured that the vote counting would go quickly (for a change) and they would have the count fully tabulated within 24 hours of the end of voting on October 10th -- that promise came from Iraq's laughable electoral commission. That didn't happen. And it was December before they finally had all their counting done. For a change, they didn't announce that. We learned of it from a commission member who e-mailed the site. They were holding off ont he announcment (we didn't). And then, as December was winding down, the Court signed off on the count.

All this time later, the Parliament finally held its first sessions.

We are told in multiple reports that it was confusion and blah blah blah. And at least they named a Speaker -- they renamed the same person who was Speaker in the last Parliament(Mohamed al-Halbousi ) and everyone knew that was going to happen -- everyone knew and has known for at least 6 weeks now.

Alex MacDonald (MIDDLE EAST EYE) writes the least offensive dispatch:

Iraq's new parliament began its first session on Sunday with 329 newly-elected MPs taking their seats in the assembly.

Politicians hailing from the anti-government Tishreen movement entered the parliament for the first time and could be heard chanting "long live Tishreen revolution" after taking their oaths.

They took their seats alongside more established political parties for the first time since the October 2021 elections, which were widely boycotted and handed the political movement of cleric Muqtada al-Sadr the largest number of deputies.

Though the first session was officially opened on Sunday - at which MPs were to be tasked with electing a new speaker and deputy speaker - it had to be adjourned for deliberation after interim speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani fell ill.

Mashhadani, who as the oldest member of the parliament was tasked with filling the role, was seen in photos being carried out of the assembly by security officials.

The Tishreen Revolution is The October Revolution.

Other than that? How about noting legal realtieis. The new Parliament is already in violation of the law. First of all, the previous Palriament is not supposed to dissovle itself in the manner it did. Check out Article Fifty-Six of the Iraqi Constitution and grasp that they weren't supposed to dissolve ahead of the election. (Forthy-five days before they dissolved, the new Parliament was supposed to be elected.)

By custom, not by law, Iraq sees the president elected in the parliament's first session. It's not that hard. By custom, the position goes to a Kurd and the Kurds themselves pick out any nominees. The press didn't talk about that.

It's a ceremonial post with little real power.

The press could have explained that the 'chaos' and 'turmoil' was largely an act to avoid naming a president. Why? Because the president then names the prime minister-designate.

The whole excercise on Sunday was theatrics and performative measures. It was meant to distract and justify the failure to name a rpime minister-designate.

The prime minister-designate should not be Moqtada al-Sadr. The press won't tell you that. They won't even tell you it shouldn't come from his bloc. They're too busy lying and pretending that Moqtada is the next prime minister. He's not. For oen thing, he's not an MP. But they don't want to tell you real reality because they've been whoring for the US State Dept for months now. Since Moqtada took US taxpayer money back in August, the US government has pimped hgim non-stop. Moqtada, previous to taking the bribe, had been pretending to not support the elections and that he would not particiapte. As we noted in real time, that was a lie His bloc was already participating. They had to and they had to file or they wouldn't be allowed on the ballots. That came from two members of Moatada's own bloc -- one of whom has been e-mailing this site for over 16 years now.

Let's jump to misreporting and I'm not in the mood to do a lot of this -- specifically call out a press failure. I'm still getting over COVID and I'm already tired this morning and wanting to go back to bed. Oh wait, we've got to call out this lie from AFP:

His movement, which ran after he reversed an initial election boycott call, won 73 of the 329 seats.

No, they ran before. They had already filed and they already had posted campaign material -- most of which was torn down, as was the case with most physical campaign material for all the candidates -- possibly the first indication of just how angry the Iraqi people were with their failed system.

His 'reversed decision' (the announcement the US government paid him to ake) was aimed at his cult. The politicians were already running. We were advised of that at the end of June -- again, by two members of his own bloc -- because I was repeating what the press was noting. We corrected the record here. When does AFP plan to do so?

Let's move over to AP -- and we'll be as kind as possible by not naming the author of this nonsense:

As leader of the biggest bloc, Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr — a maverick leader remembered for leading an insurgency against U.S. forces after the 2003 invasion — has the upper hand in forming a new government. But he will have to manage tensions with rival Shiite groups who continue to reject the election results and are demanding to have a say in the government formation process.

According to Iraq’s constitution, the largest bloc in Parliament has the right to choose the new prime minister. But as the meeting got underway Sunday, a coalition known as the Shiite Coordination Framework, an alliance of Shiite factions which object to the vote results, submitted a list of lawmakers’ names it claimed now hold the biggest parliamentary bloc with 88 seats, rather than al-Sadr.

Chaos erupted briefly in the chamber, during which lawmakers crowded around Mahmood al-Mashhadani, who was leading the session. Within minutes, the 73-year-old lawmaker was carried out of the room by security forces and bundled in an ambulance that took him to hospital, where he was visited by some of the heads of political and militia factions. The lawmaker appeared to be in good condition, according to witnesses who later saw him there.

Following the disruption, the parliament session resumed, although the issue of the majority was not immediately resolved.

That's it? That's reporting? You've been covering Iraq for how many years and that's reporting

Context and the past are mssing from his article.

Maybe that's because he and everyone else typed what the US State Dept told them to. Once Moqtada took the bribe -- a bribe much larger than many planks to Joe Biden's Build Better Back act that Republicans objected to, by the way -- the story became Moqtada, Moqtada, Moqtada all the time.

We were alone, ahead of the election, in noting that Nouri al-Maliki wasn't sitting passively by (alone among westerners commenting or reporting). After the election, we were alone in noting how Nouri was working behind the scenes while fat and fluffy Moqtada did nothing. Nouri was reaching out and meeting with other blocs.

The bloc challenging Moqtada right now? Built by Nouri, among others. And built in public even though the western press ignored it to do their minute rice 'reports' where they just said Moqtada over and over again.

So they missed that story -- an important one -- and we noted while these meetings were taking place that they were important and that.]

Is their failure to report this in real time why they are ignoring it now?

Who knows. But they don't need to be playing who knows with regards to this news. They need to be providing context.

This happened in 2010 and they treated it as normal.

Have they all forgotten or does context no longer mattered.

Nouri did this in 2010. He insisted that he had the largest bloc because he had cobbled it together after the election. And guess what? He had a Court verdict to back it up. The Court issued a finding ahead of the election and Nouri waited until after the election to flash it around.

So the Court has already found that the biggest bloc can be the biggest bloc after the election.

That's a key detail and one that the whorish press needs to be noting. Instead, they're playing and pretending.

New conent at THIRD: