That makes it two years in a row that Murphy’s summer release qualified for “bomb” status. Meet Dave, his 2008 offering, took in a paltry $5,251,918 during its opening weekend after brutal reviews. It was Murphy’s worst debut since the disastrous The Adventures of Pluto Nash, which brought in a meager $2,182,900 when it came out in August, 2002.

Counting only films in which he was the star — excluding, for instance, his work in the Shrek series and anything that opened in limited release (Dreamgirls) — here are his other opening weekend totals since 2000:

– Norbit (2/9/07): $34,195,434

– The Haunted Mansion (11/26/03): $24,278,410

– Daddy Day Care (5/9/03): $27,623,580

– I Spy (11/1/02): $12,752,803

– Showtime (3/15/02): $15,011,430

– Dr. Doolittle 2 (6/22/01): $25,037,039

– The Nutty Professor 2: The Klumps (7/28/00): $42,518,830

Source: BoxOfficeMojo.com

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Joining Myers on the list of dishonorable mentions were Jessica Alba, Verne Troyer and Academy Award winner Ben Kingsley, all of whom were luckless players in Myers’ over-the-top flop.

Here’s a list of some the major “contenders”:

Worst Picture:
The Love Guru
Disaster Movie and Meet the Spartans
The Happening
The Hottie and the Nottie
In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale

Worst Actress:
Annette Bening , Eva Mendes , Debra Messing , Jada Pinkett Smith, Meg Ryan: The Women
Jessica Alba: The Love Guru
Cameron DIaz: What Happen in Vegas
Paris Hilton: The Hottie and the Nottie
Kate Hudson: Fool’s Gold; My Best Friend’s Girl

Worst Actor:
Eddie Murphy: Meet Dave
Al Pacino: 88 Minutes; Righteous Kill
Mike Myers: The Love Guru
Larry the Cable Guy: Witless Protection
Mark Wahlberg: The Happening; Max Payne

Worst supporting actor:
Uwe Boll: Postal
Pierce Brosnan: Mamma Mia!
Ben Kingsley: The Love Guru; War, Inc.; The Wackness
Burt Reynolds: Deal; In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale
Verne Troyer: The Love Guru; Postal

Worst supporting actress:
Carmen Electra: Disaster Movie and Meet the Spartans
Paris Hilton: Repo! The Genetic Opera
Kim Kardashian: Disaster Movie
Jenny McCarthy: Witless Protection
Leelee Sobieski: 88 Minutes; In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale

Worst screen couple:
Uwe Boll and any actor, camera and screenplay
Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher: What Happens in Vegas
Paris Hilton and either Christine Lakin or Jorel David Moore: The Hottie and the Nottie
Larry the Cable Guy and Jenny McCarthy: Witless Protection
Eddie Murphy in Eddie Murphy: Meet Dave

Worst prequel, sequel, remake or rip-off:
The Day the Earth Blowed Up Real Good  (The Day the Earth Stood Still)
Disaster Movie and Meet the Spartans
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Speed Racer
Star Wars: The Clone Wars

Worst director:
Uwe Boll, 1968: Tunnel Rats; In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale; Postal
Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer: Disaster Movie and Meet the Spartans
Tom Putnam, The Hottie and the Nottie
Marco Schnabel, The Love Guru
M. Night Shyamalan, The Happening

Worst screenplay:
Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer: Disaster Movie and Meet the Spartans
M. Night Shyamalan: The Happening
Heidi Ferrer: The Hottie and the Nottie
Doug Taylor: In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale
Mike Myers and Graham Gordy: The Love Guru

Worst career achievement:
Uwe Boll: “Germany’s answer to Ed Wood”

 Source: razzies.com

Some examples:

Sidney Poitier got the transition off to a stunning start. He was the first African-American mega-star Oscar-winner, and virtually all of today’s black actors acknowledge the debt they owe him. In In the Heat of the Night, when he shouted, “They call me MISTER Tibbs!,” it was a voice heard ’round the world. At the time, he was criticized for playing too many saintly roles. In retrospect, that seems a necessary part of the transition.

Oprah Winfrey made her feature debut in Steven Spielberg’s 1985 version of The Color Purple — and who would’ve guessed that one day she’d be more powerful than he? In the Presidential campaign, some disapproved of her going public with her Obama endorsement. But silence on her part might have been misinterpreted as a lack of support.

Bill Cosby never enjoyed the same success on the big screen as he did on television. But his TV roles reflect the ascent of the African-American actor. In I Spy, he mostly served as sidekick to smug Robert Culp. He was to I Spy what Sammy Davis Jr. was to Sinatra’s Rat Pack. But in The Cosby Show, the Huxtables avoided racial stereotypes and won a warm place in America’s living rooms. Cosby was preceded by Diahann Carroll, whose TV sitcom Julia was similarly embraced for transcending racial cliches.

Will Smith still reigns as box-office king despite the disappointment of the recent Seven Pounds. He’s bigger with ticket-buyers than Cruise, Hanks, Pitt or Sandler. He knows how to play the game, and he plays it smoothly.

Richard Pryor gained wide acceptance as a major movie star and opened the gate for such later titans as Eddie Murphy. Pryor’s personal tragedy sometimes obscures the fact that his talent frequently elevated mediocre movie scripts.

Jennifer Hudson didn’t win the American Idol contest, but she won a more important trophy — the Oscar for Dreamgirls. She also won the public’s respect for her dignity during her recent family tragedy.

Denzel Washington is today’s Sidney Poitier, a handsome, talented actor at home in a variety of roles. He’s the only African-American to win Oscars in both supporting and lead actor categories, and his two Oscars reflect his range. He was a martyred soldier in Glory and a sneering, smirking and deadly corrupt cop in Training Day.

Some genuinely unusual things happened in 2008, too.

As always, People magazine was keeping track of such offbeat events. Here’s the publication’s list of the most shocking moments of the year just completed:

1. Man gives birth

2. Britney held in psych ward

3. Heath found dead

4. Governor’s call girl scandal

5. Patrick (Swayze) cancer diagnosis

6. Mariah secretly weds

7. Jennifer (Hudson) family murder

8. Travis and DJ AM survive crash

9. Golden Globes canceled

10. Eddie and Tracey suddenly split

11. Clay: I’m a gay dad

Personally, our most shocking moment in 2008 was opening our 401k statement in November. But, we digress…

To read more about all these choices, and to see a slideshow, visit People.

The entertainment industry loves the tried and true, but not all certainties pan out. Now and then, fans recognize a stinker when they see one and change channels or stay away from the cineplex.

This year produced its share of big-star, no-audience disasters, and those misadventures did not go unnoticed at Forbes.

Here’s their list:

Mike Myers, The Love Guru

Christian Slater, My Own Worst Enemy

Eddie Murphy, Meet Dave

Patricia Heaton/Kelsey Grammer, Back to You

Will Ferrell, Semi-Pro

Ashton Kutcher, Opportunity Knocks

George Clooney, Leatherheads

Jerry O’Connell: Do Not Disturb

Nicolas Cage: Bangkok Dangerous

Lucy Liu: Cashmere Mafia

To get all the ugly details on these career missteps, visit Forbes.

Entertainment Weekly set out to indentify some of the best-loved political films of all time. The publication combined staff choices with readers’ votes to come up with a list of 16.

Here are the first 10, with primary star:

– Election (1999): Reese Witherspoon

– The Man (1972): James Earl Jones

– The American President (1995): Michael Douglas

– The Candidate (1972): Robert Redford

– Primary Colors (1998): John Travolta

– Bulworth (1998): Warren Beatty

– Dave (1993): Kevin Kline

– The  Distinguished Gentleman (1992): Eddie Murphy

– The Manchurian Candidate (1962): Laurence Harvey

– Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939): James Stewart

To see the rest, and to catch a slideshow of the entire list, check out Entertainment Weekly.

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Here comes Saturday Night Live on Sept. 13th with the first show of its 34th season.

The host is Olympic swimming god Michael Phelps, with musical guest Lil Wayne. As always, though, it’ll be SNL’s latest regular cast members trying to make Phelps look good while also vying to become big or bigger stars themselves.

So who are the show’s all-time stalwarts? This is a very tough list to winnow down. And it has nothing to do with how successful you’ve been on the big-screen. Otherwise Robert Downey Jr. would make this cut, even though few remember his lone 1985-’86 season with SNL.

It just goes to show that you can have a great college career without necessarily excelling beyond that. These are the Top 10 indispensable SNL stars who kept putting the show on the map.

10. Tina Fey (1997-2006) — An ace writer as well as SNL’s best-ever Weekend Update anchor, she sold herself as a plain Jane but looked smashing doing so. Totally unaffected when it came to letting her hair down to sell a joke. And no two SNL women have paired up better over the years than Fey and Amy Poehler.

9. Chevy Chase (1975-76) — No one in the cast seemed to like him very much, and his ego demanded that he leave after just one season to hit the big-screen running. But the first Update anchor also was SNL’s inaugural leading man, whether reading fake news or pratfalling as Jerry Ford. “I’m Chevy Chase and you’re not.” He fully believed this, and took it to the bank.

8. Dan Aykroyd (1975-79) — Chase’s early departure left him as the glue, not only as a Blues Brother but behind the scenes and in a wide variety of sketches in which he regularly played smarmy salesmen. Not everyone could get away with caricaturing Richard Nixon with a mustache. But Aykroyd did it, and also pulled off a sillified Jimmy Carter. Add a “wild and crazy” Festrunk brother, in partnership with Steve Martin, and you’ve got a body of work that’s never quit.

7. Eddie Murphy (1981-84) — Garrett Morris was SNL’s charter minority cast member, but Murphy became the first person of color to steal the show and make it his own during the otherwise mostly dismal early 1980s. All seven of the original “Not Ready For Prime Time Players” were gone by then, and SNL might not have gone on at all without Murphy and some decent wingman work by Joe Piscopo. Murphy’s Gumby, Mr. Robinson and Buh’wheat characters became his signatures. Otherwise what else was there? In those years, not very much.

6. Bill Murray (1977-80) — Brought in to fill the void left by Chase, he quickly made most fans wonder why he hadn’t been there in the first place. His lounge singer routines were crackups then and now. And he was a perfect, doofus partner for Gilda Radner in their recurring portrayals of Lisa Loopner and “noogy”-dispensing Todd diLamuca. Murray also teamed effectively with Jane Curtin as part of Update’s first co-ed anchor team.

In Tinseltown, nothing resonates with the locals quite like a bonafide disaster movie — and we’re not talking Titanic here. Successes are celebrated, but box office bombs stick out on resumes, too.

Even some of the industry’s biggest stars have been stung a time or too. When Moviefone put together its list of the “Biggest Box Office Bombs of All Time,” no cows were held sacred.

Here’s the Top 10:

1. Town and Country (Budget $90 million; Domestic Gross $6.7 million)

2. The Adventures of Pluto Nash (Budget $100 million; Domestic Gross $4.4 million):

3. Ishtar (Budget $55 million; Domestic Gross $14.5 million)

4. Heaven’s Gate (Budget $44 million; Domestic Gross $3.5 million)

5. Cleopatra (Budget $44 million; Domestic Gross $26 million)

6. Cutthroat Island (Budget $98 million; Domestic Gross $10 million)

7. The Postman (Budget $80 million; Domestic Gross $17.6 million)

8. Waterworld (Budget $175 million; Domestic Gross $88.2 million)

9. Gigli (Budget $54 million; Domestic Gross $6.1 million)

10. Battlefield Earth (Budget $73 million; Domestic Gross $21.5 million)

Ready to read more about these, and to see the rest of the list? Visit moviefone.com.

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