Hollywood’s gone to a dog.

Specifically, Marley and Me, the good-natured dog comedy, which took in $37 million over the weekend and $51.6 million since Christmas Day. That was enough to best Adam Sandler’s latest, Bedtime Stories, which took in $28 million over the weekend and $38.5 million since Christmas Day. Close behind in third place was The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, the Brad Pitt fantasy that took in $27 million ($39 million since Christmas Day).

So Tom Cruise’s $75 million-budget World War II drama, Valkyrie, was left in no better than a distant fourth place with $21.5 million over the weekend and $30 million since Christmas day. That puts the flick in good position to make its money back, which may not be the case with Pitt’s Benjamin Button, a $150 million-budget-buster that severely underperformed expectations.

The biggest disappointment, though, had to be the comic book movie The Spirit, based on the long-running Will Eisner comic strip; although it opened in nearly as many theaters as Valkyrie, it couldn’t stand the heat of competition from five new movie debuts and barely managed $6.5 million ($10.3 million since Christmas Day) and a ninth-place finish.

Yes Man and Seven Pounds continued to draw between $13-$16 million in their second weeks but were pushed out of the way by all the strong debuts. Tale of Despereaux and The Day the Earth Stood Still both dropped out contention for the most part, beating out only The Spirit from all the strong debuts.

The fastest grower of the week, and winner of imaginary heated mattress pads, was the Fox Searchlight flick, The Wrestler, featuring Mickey Rourke. Available on only 18 screens nationwide, it’s averaging $21,000 per screen.

All in all, if you want a pain-free experience, Washington DC teeth whitening might be your better bet compared to the mess SAG is causing in depressed economy negotiations with the AMPTP.

Despite a long-standing stall between the two parties (since July, really), SAG continues to think it should earn a better deal than any other union in Hollywood, even though the economy is in the tank. Wonderful, right?

But the latest rumor making the rounds is that the New York branch may be in rebellion, urging SAG to make a deal now and keep actors and everyone else in Hollywood working in a down economy, rather than striking during one of the worst economic times since the Carter Years.

We can only hope the New York Rebellion succeeds. A second TV season-shortening strike could spell a very real death-knell for network television, which is already reeling after the writer’s strike; ratings are down for almost every show this season, to historic lows.

Despite turning an underdog movie into a box office cause celeb, director Catherine Hardwicke will not return to direct New Moon, Summit Entertainment’s sequel to Twilight, also based on the Stephanie Meyer novel of the same name. In Hardwicke’s place is a more recognizable name, perhaps… but also perhaps not for good reasons.

Chris Weitz, the newly-dubbed director for New Moon, is best known for starting the craze known as American Pie. His other work includes About A Boy and Golden Compass. Given that Twilight made its mark without sex, violence or notable foul language, Weitz’ resume may not inspire much confidence.

Still, he has been given the blessing of author Meyers, which may be worth something; let’s just hope New Moon doesn’t turn into a romp about a bunch of vamps and humans peeping on others having sex and throwing wild parties hoping to get laid, since that’s pretty much what American Pie was all about. I think the guy down the street who sells horse supplies might have inspired more confidence in me; but only time will tell.

It took six years from the end of the TV series and ten years from the first motion picture – far longer than anyone expected, due to legal hassles between Fox and series creator Chris Carter – for a second X-Files movie to be made, and unfortunately it was buried by its movie studio, which debuted it only one week after The Dark Knight opened to be one of the strongest movies since the release of The Titanic. Yet with its release on DVD and Blu-Ray, X-Files: I Want to Believe is finally available to long-suffering fans of the sci-fi hit, and beats most lame sports gifts you might name.

As promised, X-Files: I Want to Believe is not connected to the show’s traditional “alien mythology,” but offers up a chilling scenario with supernatural overtones that allows for thrills, suspense, and plenty of character development. The movie acknowledges that time has passed and our primary characters have moved in with their lives. Scully is now an accomplished surgeon, while Mulder’s a bit of a shut-in and neither of them have worked for the FBI’s X-Files division in years.

That changes when a new agent, played ably by Amanda Peet, calls both Mulder and Scully back into service to help out with a missing persons case that includes an abducted FBI agent. Currently relying on a supposedly-psychic pedophile priest (did we hit enough politically correct notes with that piece of villainy?) to lead them to clues, the actual need for Mulder and Scully’s expertise in the peculiar is never one hundred percent clear, but the resulting case does reignite the smoldering ember of chemistry between Mulder and Scully.

Long-time series fans will be disappointed to hear that the Lone Gunman and the Cigarette-Smoking Man (William B. Davis) are notably absent, although a cameo from Mitch Pileggi as Walter Skinner is welcome recompense. Yet the lack of fan-service cameos serves the movie itself quite well, leaving it room enough to focus on the essentials: a creepy main plot, and real movement in the long-stagnant relationship between Mulder and Scully.

As odd as it may sound, both X-Files movies were, at their core, a classic romance between Mulder and Scully, and what is admirable about the job done by Carter and company here is that even though the character’s relationship does move forward significantly in this movie, they both retain their core beliefs and principles – the differences of which has always sparked the chemistry between them.

Released on DVD in a special two-disc set, there are loads of extra features that ought to be enough to satisfy even the most demanding of special-feature freaks. And I count myself among that number. Although its poor box office performance may have killed any chances for a third movie down the road, at least X-Files: I Want to Believe provides an emotionally resonating and satisfying wrap on science fiction’s longest-running dynamic duo since Batman and Robin.

The latest Keanu Reeves sci-fi thriller, the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still, dominated weekend box office activity as the film raked in a hefty $31 million in its debut, against an $80 million budget. That’s not bad, especially considering foreign box office has already added an additional $39 million to bring the movie to a combined box office total of $70 million; the film ought to reach profit mode by next weekend.

Still, Day vastly underperformed compared to the Will Smith sci-fi epic from last year, I Am Legend, which enjoyed a $77 million debut. Of course, there are several reasons for the drop. First, Keanu Reeves is no Will Smith. Second, the film went for cinematic spectacle and abandoned the human drama of the original. Third, the film had a painful, Algore-and-His-Zittohead-Chorus agenda that overshadowed the thriller aspects of the flick. And finally… did I mention Keanu Reeves is no Will Smith?

The rest of the box office was underwhelming. Four Christmases came in second with $13.2 million; Twilight stayed strong at third with an additional $8 million, bringing its one-month total to $150 million domestic, plus $34 million overseas, for a grand total of $184 million against its original $37 million budget. All that with no stars, no sex, and no violence to speak of. Pretty nice story.

Below the top three, the so-called office furniture of releases were pretty underwhelming, with Bolt, Australia and 007 Quantum of Solstice coming in spots four, five and six, with dismal totals.

Day was the only freshman offering to do well this weekend; Nothing Like the Holidays came in seventh and barely managed to rake in $3.5 million. But the biggest disappointment had to be the no-push-or-ad-campaign-at-all animated film, Delgo, which opened without a peep on over 2,000 screens and couldn’t even manage a million, coming in at sixteenth place.