Nicholas Cage scored his second box office topping hit of 2007 as National Treasure: Book of Secrets led another strong session at the box office with a chart-topping total estimated at $45.5 million.  Book of Secrets easily topped its predecessor, National Treasure, which opened with $35.1 million in November of 2004.  The audience for the PG-rated archival adventure film was 54% male with 55% over the age of 25.  Book of Secrets' rating allowed it to find a much broader audience than the other new films opening this weekend -- 80% of the audience for Charlie Wilson's War, which grossed an estimated $9.6 million and finished in fourth place was over 30, while 65% of the crowd for Tim Burton's film of the Steven Sondheim musical Sweeney Todd was over 25.  Females accounted for 52% of the audience for both Charlie Wilson's War and Sweeney Todd.

Will Smith's I Am Legend dropped to second place, but still brought in an estimated $34.2 million, while stoking its domestic cumulative to $137.4 million in just ten days.  I Am Legend's drop of 55.7% between its first and second weekend has to count as a success in the world of big budget action films these days.

Kids' movies and cartoons are a different story of course and, in the absence of any real competition for the young audience, the hybrid Alvin and the Chipmunks dropped only 34.5% while garnering an estimated $29 million this weekend.  The top three films accounted for two-thirds of the weekend box office total, which reached $150 million for the second week in a row, reversing a Q4 swoon.

The success of Alvin and the Chipmunks, which registered only 24% approval rating from the critics surveyed on Rotten Tomatoes.com, and National Treasure: Book of Secrets, which managed only 36% positive notices, demonstrates once again that when it comes to box office performance (at least for most film genres), critics don't appear to matter very much.  While Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd, which amassed a sterling 87% approval rating from the critics, did all right, finishing in fifth place with only 1,249 theaters, Charlie Wilson's War, which earned an 82% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, which managed to get 77% of the scribes on its side, were disappointments -- especially Walk Hard, which was well-advertised and has the Judd Apatow (Knocked Up, Superbad) pedigree, stumbled badly -- earning only $4.1 million and averaging a pathetic $1,547 per venue.  The music for this pseudo biopic is great, and though audiences don't appear ready to embrace it during the holiday season, it has all the earmarks of a potential cult hit on DVD.

Another film that might have to find itself on disk is The Golden Compass, which dropped from third to ninth, while earning just $4 million and bringing its total after three weekends to just $48.4 million.  The Golden Compass has already earned more than twice as much overseas as it has here in the States, and should do well on DVD if the producers have the sense to release it on a date that is as far from a major religious holiday as they can find.