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"WINNER OF THE WEEK:&amp;#xA0;John C. Reilly. The veteran character actor and Will Ferrell sidekick (Talladega Nights,&amp;#xA0;Step Brothers) has never enjoyed an opening as big as the enormous $49.1 million estimated haul of&amp;#xA0;Wreck-It Ralph. The cartoon&amp;apos;s debut not only topped the weekend chart but also smashed the opening-weekend record for a non-Pixar, in-house-made Disney cartoon. It helped that the movie had a solid script with appeal beyond the family audience (surely a lot of Gen-Xers went to see it just for its evocation of 1980s videogames), and it also helped that Sandy-strewn audiences were ready for some gentle escapism. Still, Reilly deserves some credit, too, and let&amp;apos;s hope he gets it, even though no one can see his face.\r\nAlso excelling, as usual, was Denzel Washington, whose&amp;#xA0;Flight&amp;#xA0;debuted in second place with a strong $25.0 million, according to studio estimates. That&amp;apos;s very good for a movie that opened on fewer than 2,000 screens. Indeed, its hefty per-screen average of $13,275 was slightly higher than that of&amp;#xA0;Wreck-It Ralph&amp;#xA0;($13,086), which was playing in more than twice as many venues.\r\nRounding out the top five: Last week&amp;apos;s champ,&amp;#xA0;Argo, fell to third place with an estimated $10.2 million, down just 15 percent from a week ago. Ben Affleck&amp;apos;s movie has held up very well, with a four-weekend total of $75.9 million. Opening in fourth place was RZA&amp;apos;s kung-fu movie&amp;#xA0;The Man With the Iron Fists, which did about as well as expected (debuting with an estimated $8.2 million), followed by&amp;#xA0;Taken 2, with an estimated $6.0 million and a five-week total of $125.7 million.\r\nLOSER OF THE WEEK: Alicia Silverstone.&amp;#xA0;Vamps&amp;#xA0;had been gathering buzz for a year as a possible comeback for both the&amp;#xA0;Clueless&amp;#xA0;star and her director, Amy Heckerling. The idea was promising: a vampire-themed romantic comedy, with rising ABC sitcom siren Krysten Ritter (Don&amp;apos;t Trust the B---- in Apartment 23) as a co-star. But the film limped out, post-Halloween, on just one screen and grossed an estimated $500. Which means about four people per screening. Now,&amp;#xA0;that&amp;apos;s&amp;#xA0;scary.\r\nHAVE YOU SEEN ME?&amp;#xA0;It&amp;apos;s sad enough to see Silverstone and Heckerling fail even in the bargain bin. But what&amp;apos;s former A-Lister Barry Levinson doing there? The Oscar-winning director of&amp;#xA0;Rain Man&amp;#xA0;showed up this week on just 23 screens with a found-footage horror tale called&amp;#xA0;The Bay; is that really the best feature work he can find these days? And what of Sean Penn playing a retired goth rocker on a mission of vengeance in the barely released&amp;#xA0;This Must Be The Place&amp;#xA0;(two screens)? Sure, Penn&amp;apos;s just slumming (he&amp;apos;ll be back chewing more expensive Hollywood scenery in&amp;#xA0;Gangster Squad&amp;#xA0;in a couple months), but otherwise, the art-house is looking like the missing persons Twilight Zone of the multiplex."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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