Werewolves and vampires can’t kill him, apparently, as Paul Blart: Mall Cop survived its second week of release to stay atop the box office charts. The comedy, which stars former King of Queens headliner Kevin James, pulled in an additional $21.5 million, bringing its 10-day total to an estimated $64.8 million.

The third Underworld movie, Rise of the Lycans, could only manage $20.7 million in its initial bow. Rise of the Lycans is the first Underworld without Kate Beckinsdale atop the credits and B-movie actress Rhona Mitra has thus far not proven up to the challenge.

Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino was a distant third with $16 million, Hotel for Dogs added $12.3 million, Slumdog Millionaire added $10.5 and My Bloody Valentine 3D added only $10.05 million to round out the top six spots. Every other movie, including new release Inkheart, was well below the $10 million threshold. Inkheart took seventh place with only $7.7 million.

None of these movies will set iPods ablaze anytime soon, but better days are ahead. Next weekend marks the debut of action-thriller Taken, while the horror movie The Uninvited also will take a stab at box office glory. The February will bring Pink Panther 2, He’s Just Not That Into You and Push into focus, as well as an intriguing Friday the 13th remake on the horizon later that month.

Sounding about as sincere as a Seattle injury lawyer, Stephen McPherson, president of ABC’s entertainment division, mock-mourned the cancellations he ordered for both Pushing Daisies and Eli Stone. (Dirty Sexy Money was also mentioned, which just goes to prove his insincerity.)

Daises and Stone are two of the freshest shows ABC has aired since debuting LOST several seasons ago, and yet declining ratings – which are linked directly to the writer’s strike and viewer apprehension over a threatened actor’s strike – were his excuse, even though he talked about how poor a tool the current Nielsen system is for measuring total viewership, considering all the ways and venues a show can now draw viewers from.

Of course, the grief expressed might have been more convincing if McPherson hadn’t been so evasive on the subject of when the final episodes of Stone and Daisies would air – speculation is that, at best, they will burn the episodes off over the summer; at worst, that they’ll be posted for online viewing at ABC.com and never make it to air, although they will surely show up on the expected “Complete Series” DVD/Blu-Ray collections sure to follow.

Comic Kevin James, the former King of Queens star, proved to have some MLK weekend box office punch as the Lipovox-needing actor’s latest movie, Paul Blart: Mall Cop, led the pack with $33.8 million, already making back its modest $26 million production budget in its first weekend of release.

Produced by Adam Sandler and directed by Steve Carr, James’ comedy rose on the decision to hold the humor to a family-friendly PG level, rather than the trendier PG-13 edginess so many comedies go after. The morose suicide drama, Gran Torino, by Clint Eastwood, held strong to retain second place, drawing $22.2 million in its sixth week of release total, though the movie has been in widespread release for only two or three weeks.

My Bloody Valentine 3D ($21.9 million) edged out Notorious ($21.5 million) in the face for third and fourth spots, while the fifth place finish went to distant contender Hotel for Dogs ($17.7 million). Bride Wars ($11.7 million) took sixth place and was the only other film to garner at least $10 million over the weekend, though The Unborn ($9.8 million) and Defiance ($9.2 million) came close.

Tom Cruise’s World War II drama, Valkyrie, slid more than any other top movie, falling seven places from seventh place last week, to fourteenth this week.

Virtual unknown Matt Smith, who boasts a Doctor-like collection of Swiss Army watches, has been hand-selected by the BBC to replace David Tennant as the new Doctor Who. Tennant, who is exiting the popular British SF show after three series, announced his intent to step down at the same time as series reviver Russell T. Davies stepped down, following a handful of special episodes produced this year.

Smith’s debut, though, will have to wait until nearly 2010; his first appearance will be in the 2009 Christmas Special, scheduled to be Tennant’s final bow. Smith will immediately become the youngest man ever to take on the role of The Doctor in the long-running British show.

Smith’s debut will also be marked with changes to the creative team, as Davies steps aside in favor of Piers Wenger and Steven Moffatt. Smith is the eleventh actor to be cast as The Doctor, not counting Rowan Atkinson and a boatload of others during a BBC Christmas satire skit several years ago.

Personally, I was pulling for the new Doctor to be Dr. House – Hugh Laurie!

SAG executive director Doug Allen is not claiming that an actors strike, which the union is poised to call for by mid-January, would not shut down the entertainment industry as a whole, according to our friends at DeadlineHollywoodDaily.com.

Of course, it’s all just a PR smokescreen. When you read the details of SAG’s agitprop, it soon becomes obvious that Allen is going for the misleading headline and not the reality of the situation; he claims there are plenty of employment venues through which actors could find work, including new media, videogames and other such claptrap.

What Allen skillfully avoids mentioning is how many actors (and, as a result, other entertainment industry pros) would suddenly be without work because they rely on big studio movies or broadcast entertainment to make their living.

Still less than a year after the end of the Hollywood writer’s strike, and in the midst of one of the worst economies since the 1970s, SAG is still insisting on better terms than any of the other unions secured before the economy turned south.

That’s just unrealistic, especially in a season in which ratings are in the dumps following the last industry-stopping strike, and are not indicating any type of bounce-back in viewer interest is in the offing; baseball learned the hard way that two strikes too close together can kill US interest in just about anything. It would be wise for SAG to consider this before taking the strike authorization vote, before the industrial clamps are secured on the entertainment biz as we know it and people turn increasingly to alternate forms of entertainment.

Marley and Me, the dog-centric holiday comedy, stayed atop the post-holiday box office last weekend as the family film earned $24.2 million in its second week of release, good enough to stay on top. The film now stands at $106 million in domestic take since it opened, but has only added a meager $5.3 million in foreign ticket receipts thus far.

Bedtime Stories was close behind with a $20.5 million weekend and finally made its $80 million budget back by going to $85 million in total take. Benjamin Button was third with $18.6 million and at $79.2 million so far, still is only just over halfway to making back its lofty $150 million budget.

Valkyrie ($14 million), Yes Man ($13.9 million) and Seven Pounds ($10 million) rounded out the top six as the only movies to go over $10 million on the weekend. While none of these movies are exactly bonfires of the bathroom vanities, the results are mixed as films like Marley and Me overperform, but highly-touted dramas like Tom Cruise’s Valkyrie continue to disappoint.

No new movies debuted over the weekend following New Year’s Eve.