Wait a minute...Hustle & Flow

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Wait a minute...Hustle & Flow dropped 50% in its second weekend for a $4 million haul? The big hit of Sundance...one of the very best films of the year so far with a vibe that leaves you in a very spiritual place went down 50%? Don't misunderstand -- Craig Brewer's film will turn out to be one of Paramount Classics' biggest hits (figure $25 million domestic when all is said and done) but Hustle should have dropped 25% or 30% this weekend, at most. A 50% drop means people out there are telling their friends, "Yeah, sorta...but not altogether." And they're dead wrong...they're lazy and short-sighted. I'm not an ivory-tower elitist, I spent my childhood in Union County, New Jersey, and I'm now staying in a non-affluent middle-class area of Brooklyn. So I understand the regular-guy thing and am speaking with a certain authority when I say that the people failed this weekend -- they let Hustle & Flow down, let themselves down, let the specialness-of-movies down. I haven't felt this upset and dismayed since the November '04 Presidential election when it was clear that younger voters had stayed away from the polls in sufficient numbers to allow Goerge W. Bush a second term.