Liam Neeson's 60-year-old action star schtick proved victorious for another weekend, as Taken 2 held on to the box office's top spot with $22.5 million. It's down 55% since last weekend, but it's already earned $88.3 million in ten days. Not bad, and more than enough to generate interest in a third film.

In what appears to be a legitimate press release on the blog of the official Atlas Shrugged Part I website, the producers of the film have announced that they will "replace more than 100,000 title sheets appearing on the Atlas Shrugged Part 1 DVD and Blu-ray versions." Sounds like a pain in the ass. Why? Did child porn pics somehow show up on them? No! But the ultimate Randian curse word — "self-sacrifice" — did, and that's worse.

Today we heard that the producer of the new Atlas Shrugged Part 1 movie might not make parts two and three because the first one has been such a flop. Good, many of you said, because that book stinks. Or does it? One commenter wanted to know what's actually wrong with Ayn Rand's paean to individualism.

The producer of the recent film adaption of Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged, the tedious right-wing fantasy that Rep. Paul Ryan makes each of his staff members read, may never get around to making parts two and three. The film has made a dumpy $3 million at the box office so far, thanks to those liberal film critics who don't understand art.

This weekend was a battle between nostalgia and what's new and now and, as always, new and now won out. Also this weekend, lots of people went to see Hop and Atlas Shrugged, so we should be ashamed of ourselves.

"Exciting and rewarding for those of us who have been Rand fans for many years." —Cow porn judge Alex Kozinski, in his IMDb review of Atlas Shrugged. Turns out Kozinski is a movie buff. [ATL]

Oh, you know, she's always been around, but she coulda been a contender! But she isn't, for some reason. Also today: a new HBO show about theater finds its potential cast, plus a new Wizard of Oz movie.

Finally there will be one film to definitively separate stunted adolescent douchebags from regular people (besides Boondock Saints): Atlas Shrugged! Ayn Rand's million-page epic tale of monologuing in a ravine is going to be a movie.

All of the government's pesky market intrusions have people snapping up copies of Atlas Shrugged like they were bailout packages. Since it's not like Ayn Rand's laissez-faire fantasies got us into this mess.

We're not sure how many impatient fans it takes to make something "long-awaited," but we'll give Lionsgate's Angelina Jolie-starring adaptation of Atlas Shrugged the benefit of the doubt — especially now that the attached director Vadim Perelman has officially left Objectivist headquarters:

Vice chairman of Lionsgate Michael Burns' mission to grab the screen rights of me-first philosopher Ayn Rand's libertarian soap opera of a novel Atlas Shrugged ended at a strange place: his Catholic Church. As Burns tells it in an interview this week, he was leaving mass one Sunday when he ran into Ray producers Howard and Karen Baldwin, telling them, "I heard you have the rights to Atlas Shrugged and I'd like to talk to you about that because that is truly one of my favorite books." As all good Rand acolytes know, the stern founder of the philosophy of Objectivism wasn't a huge fan of God or the Catholic Church, once informing the late devout editor of National Review William F. Buckley, "But you are too smart to believe in God!" Burns, who says he attended Rand's funeral in 1982, is all too aware of his heresy, adding, "Ayn Rand's probably rolling over in her grave to think that happened in a Catholic church." Forget about rolling over, Michael. She might be assembling an army of the undead to take care of yo' ass.