Saturday morning I thought that The Book Of Eli might actually pull off the feat of toppling the unstoppable Avatar, because it did lead the box office on Friday. Well, close, but no cigar. Avatar reigned supreme once again, and made an astonishing $41.3 Million in its 6th week of release, and it is still playing on over 3,000 screens.

Avatar has now surpassed Star Wars as the number three highest grossing movie of all time with a cumulative total of $491 Million. The Dark Knight stands at number two, with $533 Million.

The Book of Eli had a pretty decent showing, with $31.6 Million on just over 3,000 screens. If the movie gets good word of mouth, it should do well in upcoming weeks. In third place was The Lovely Bones, which fared better than I thought it would. It was postponed from last year, and has received somewhat of a critical drubbing, but it still managed $17.1 Million.

In my opinion, this is a testament to how much readers loved the book. Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel, hung around and made $11.5 Million for fourth place. The movie is closing in on $200 Million, as it now stands at $192 Million.

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The Book of Eli is an overly stylized movie that takes itself way too seriously, features hammy acting and laughable dialogue.  You could drive an eighteen-wheeler through its gaping plot holes, but despite all this, I rather enjoyed the film. If I’m going to have to eat some cheese, this is the type of movie I prefer to dole out my rations.

Brothers Allen and Arthur Hughes (From Hell, Menace II Society) are the directors of the post-apocalyptic tale of Eli (Denzel Washington), who traverses a bombed out tundra while traveling westward with a precious undisclosed cargo. For the first 20 minutes or so, The Book of Eli looked to be an exact retread of The Road, which was just out in theaters a few months ago.

The movies share the exact same vision of a dystopian future. Color is bleached from the scenery, light ash appears to constantly fall, and all humans are bedraggled, filthy, and desperate. Both films feature cannibalism as a major threat to their protagonists, and both show how precious throw-away commodities from modern society become in this world.

Cigarette lighters and individual wet wipes from KFC are bartering fare, not money. If you are a shoe whore, you should be set, because apparently shoes are one of the most valuable and hard to come by possessions when everyone has to walk everywhere.

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Over at USA Today they’ve posted the first pictures from the Denzel Washington starrer The Book of Eli. In case you’re not familiar, the film, which is directed by The Hughes Brothers and co-stars Mila Kunis, Gary Oldman, Ray Stephenson and Jennifer Beals, concerns a man who’s fighting his way across a post-apocalyptic America to protect a book that hold the key to saving humanity.

In addition to the photos, USA Today also posted some questions and answers with the film’s directors. Some of the tidbits that the brothers reveal include the fact that Washington shed 55 pounds for his role in the film and that shooting conditions in Albuquerque, New Mexico were less than ideal, but did provide a great location that really helped enhance the depiction of post-apocalyptic America.

“You occasionally ask yourself why you’re shooting a movie in these conditions,” says Allen Hughes, who co-directs the film with his brother Albert, in the article. “When the wind is really blowing, it looks like the earth is meeting the sky. It looks like the end of the world.”

The desolate landscape also helped set the mood of the film as well. “We had one scene where Denzel had to kill off one of his enemies,” said Albert Hughes in the article. “Right after he kills the guy, a little dust storm picks up and blows right over them. It was eerie. We’re going to have people thinking an effect was computer-generated, when really it was just from shooting out here.”

The Book of Eli hits theaters January 15, 2010. Check out the larger version of all the pictures after the jump.

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