Due to more holiday shenanigans, the HomeVideodrome podcast will return next week. For real this time!

It’s impossible to watch “The Guard” and not think of the magnificent black comedy “In Bruges,” due to the pedigree of talent behind it. Produced by Martin McDonagh (the man behind “In Bruges”), “The Guard” finds his brother, John Michael McDonagh, making his debut as a writer/director. Drawing on influences as diverse as Sam Peckinpah and Nicolas Roeg, “In Bruges” struck a perfect balance of hilariously dark humor, intense drama and startling violence, so immediately trotting it out as a point of comparison for “The Guard” seems unfair. But given how similar the stories are, it’s unfortunately inevitable.

Brendan Gleeson, the co-star of “In Bruges,” plays a mouthy Irish cop named Boyle, whose favorite extracurricular activities including wanton whoring and dropping acid. While investigating a nasty rash of killings in Ireland’s Connemara Gaeltacht, he’s paired up with Everett, a culture-shocked, by-the-book FBI agent played by Don Cheadle.

Together, they find the murders to be related to a drug-running operation. This standard odd-couple buddy-cop premise seems formulaic on the surface, but it practically plays as a companion piece to “In Bruges,” given the dynamic between Gleeson and Cheadle. It’s like “In Bruges” on the right side of the law.

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The Drew Barrymore-produced romantic comedy He’s Just Not That Into You has made the jump from catch-phrase to self-help book to movie hit. With an all-star cast this classic ‘chick flick” appears to be winning the weekend after posting a spectacular $10.5M in opening day ticket sales. That should mean a 3-day start of $27.4M or so, easily out-pacing holdover Taken (Fox) and three other new wide releases. With this kind of opening, Not That Into You could reach almost $60M by the end of next weekend (a 4-day Presidents/Valentine’s combo), which would forecast a potential $90M in US ticket sales.

The new movie developed by New Line and now released by Warner Bros is based on the book of the same name co-written by former Sex & the City scribes Greg Behrendt and Liz Tucillo. The line itself has come to be a reassuring fallback for women in the dating scene (and I’m guessing single guys have adopted the mentality as well in the rough-and-tumble world of dating).

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Steve Mason is on Facebook and now also on Twitter.

SUNDAY MORNING: Dog lovers everywhere united to make Fox’s Marley & Me the #1 Christmas weekend movie with an expected $51.18M in the Thursday-thru-Sunday period for a Per Theatre Average of $14,888. Pre-opening industry tracking pointed to a clear win for Bedtime Stories (Disney), but it was the lovable lab who finished on top.

As an aside, all of us who read John Grogan’s extraordinarily well-written novel should have seen this coming. The book is a joy, and anyone who has a dog, or has ever had a dog, could easily identify with the struggles and pleasures of having a 4-legged member of the family.

The success of Marley slightly mitigates a disastrous year for Fox. Its year started out well enough riding the huge success of 2007 release Alvin & the Chipmunks into January ($70M of Alvin’s gross landed in this calendar year). The January 18 release of chick-flick 27 Dresses scored for Katherine Heigl ($76.8M in the US), then Jumper was a good solid February hit, topping $80M, followed by the wildly successful Horton Hears a Who ($154.5M domestic). Little did Fox know that when the Ashton Kutcher-Cameron Diaz comedy What Happens in Vegas played solidly to the tune of $80.2M domestic starting in May, it would be its last legit hit until Christmas’ Marley & Me. This is a huge, redemptive win for Fox, and its sentimental tear-jerker of a dog movie could near $100M domestic by Sunday.

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