‘Meet the Fockers’ sets Christmas Day record

Los Angeles — Millions of Americans went shopping for comedy this weekend, giving the star-studded “Meet the Fockers” the record for the best Christmas Day opening ever.

The sequel, reuniting Ben Stiller and Robert DeNiro and adding Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand as Stiller’s parents, earned $44.7 million over the holiday weekend, beating the previous record of $30 million, set in 2002 by “Catch Me if You Can.”

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at North American theaters, according to Exhibitor Relations Co. Inc.

1. “Meet the Fockers,” $44.7 million

2. “Fat Albert,” 12.7 million.

3. “Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events,” $12.5 million

4. “The Aviator,” $9.4 million.

5. “Ocean’s Twelve,” $8.6 million.

6. “Darkness,” $6.4 million.

7. “The Polar Express,” $6.3 million.

8. “Spanglish,” $5 million

9. “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou,” $4.8 million.

10. “Andrew Lloyd Weber’s The Phantom of the Opera,” $4.2 million.

French is better

In Woody Allen’s America, Bordeaux or Burgundy wine and other things French are always in vogue. But he admits his European sensibility makes his films less popular back home, ABC News reports.

Even with trans-Atlantic ties at a low ebb, the French are still seen as standard-bearers of class, elegance and, well, romance among Americans, Allen said, and the U.S. filmgoing public knows it.

“If you were doing a scene of seduction, and the man gets the woman in a candlelit restaurant, he would never order a California wine because then everyone would laugh,” Allen told reporters in Paris. “It will not be a Portuguese wine, it will just always be French.”

The filmmaker was in Paris to promote his new film “Melinda and Melinda,” which explores both tragedy and comedy through the two separate and parallel lives of a young woman, each of whom is played by Radha Mitchell.

It’s all in the lips

Nicole Kidman enjoyed one last day of magic on the set of her latest movie, “Bewitched.” The 37-year-old was snapped laughing and joking with costar Will Ferrell on the final day of filming in Los Angeles, Hellomagazine.com reports.

The actress also was spotted wiggling her nose the same way her character Samantha does when casting a spell. And contrary to some media reports, Kidman said she needed no special training to achieve the nose-twitching effect.

“I saw some article which said I did five hours of yoga facial exercising,” she said. “I was like, ‘Yeah right.’ Having studied Ms. Elizabeth Montgomery thoroughly, I’ve figured out it wasn’t a nose twitch — it was a lip twitch more.”

Who’s afraid of Michael Moore?

Los Angeles — Some pharmaceutical companies are telling their employees to look out for the scruffy guy in the baseball cap.

The Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday that at least six drug companies have released internal communications telling employees to be wary of filmmaker Michael Moore.

Moore’s targets have included General Motors (“Roger & Me”), the gun lobby (the Oscar-winning “Bowling for Columbine”) and President Bush (“Fahrenheit 9/11”).

Moore, normally seen sporting a beard and a ball cap, has now set his sights on the health care industry, including insurance companies, HMOs, the Food and Drug Administration and drug companies.

“We ran a story in our online newspaper saying Moore is embarking on a documentary, and if you see a scruffy guy in a baseball cap, you’ll know who it is,” said Stephen Lederer, a spokesman for Pfizer Global Research and Development.

Other companies sending out instructions include Wyeth, AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi-Aventis Pharmaceuticals and Synthelabo.

Work on ‘CSI’ a dirty job

Radnor, Pa.– When Louise Lombard landed a role as the new crime-scene investigator on “CSI,” a producer suggested she prepare by visiting a morgue.

“I turned to her and said, ‘That’s where the acting comes in,”‘ Lombard said. “There’s no way I’m going to see a corpse just in the name of research. I’m dedicated, but not that dedicated.”

Lombard became a household name in the United Kingdom on the BBC series “The House of Elliott.”

On “CSI” Lombard plays a crime scene investigator demoted to work on the graveyard shift with star William Petersen.

“She’s not a scientist by instinct,” Lombard, 34, told TV Guide for its Dec. 26 issue. “She’s a cop. Her interest is in justice.”

Still, Lombard hasn’t been able to avoid the grimier tasks of her pseudo-job. In her first scene she inspects a pool of vomit, and it didn’t get any better.

“The next shot was me putting my hand down a toilet,” she said. “I’ve waited my whole career to do that.”

Oscar dish on Wolfgang Puck

Celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck will cook up a storm at the Oscars next year, after signing on to cater the star-studded official Academy Awards banquet for the 11th time, Agence France-Presse reports.

Oscar organizers said the Austrian-born super-chef, long a favorite of the stars who regularly cluster in his Hollywood restaurants, had again been selected for the glittering Governor’s Ball.

“This is Hollywood’s biggest night, so it’s great to have the opportunity each year to create a menu that is new and exciting,” Puck said.