Ms. Jackson Debuts at #1

Go Janet! Go Janet!!

Apparently Janet just needed a little discipline to get back on top.

Ms. Jackson's Discipline has debuted at number one, becoming her first chart-topping album since her pre-wardrobe-malfunctioning days, when All for You reigned supreme seven years ago.

Discipline is the controlmeister's 10th studio album but her first for Island Def Jam. Like fellow pop diva Mariah Carey, Jackson left Virgin Records to join partner Jermaine Dupri at Island in hopes of staging a comeback. Her previous two albums, 2004's Damita Jo and 2006's 20 Y.O., both missed the top spot breaking a string of number one albums dating back to 1986's Control.


But reflecting the down times in music land, Discipline moved just 181,000 copies, per Nielsen SoundScan, fewer first-week sales than either Damita Jo (381,000) and 20 Y.O. (297,000); All for You's whopping 605,128 first-week copies in 2001 is still Jackson's biggest sales week.

After leading with the Rodney Jerkins-helmed "Feedback," Discipline is currently at radio with the Ne-Yo- and Dupri-penned "Rock with U." Jackson also picked up a 2008 NAACP Image Award for Best Supporting Actress last month for her role in Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married?

While Discipline is Jackson's first number one album in seven years, New AmErykah, Pt. One: 4th World War is Erykah Badu's first full-length album in eight. The first in a two-part series, 4th World War sold 124,000 copies to open at number two.

With Jackson and Badu landing one-two, Jack Johnson's chart-topping streak ended at three weeks, with Sleep Through the Static falling to three on 92,000 copies. The other powerhouse album of late, Alicia Keys' As I Am, slipped three spots, selling 57,000 copies at five.

Webbie's Savage Life 2, featuring the lead singles "Independent" and "I Miss You," opened at four, selling 72,000. The original Savage Life, the rapper's breakthrough album, also debuted at four in the summer of '05.

Hannah Montana 2: Meet Miley Cyrus reentered the Top 10 at six, moving 54,000. The tween star's eight-spot surge stems from a recent trip to The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, a Barbara Walters interview on Oscar night and an Academy Awards appearance presenting Enchanted's Oscar-nominated "That's How You Know."

The Once soundtrack, featuring the Oscar-winning track "Falling Slowly," got its own Oscar show bump, flying up 24 spots to number seven with 47,000 copies. (That was one spot above another soundtrack from an Oscar-contending film, Juno.)

Shawty Lo's solo debut, Units in the City, narrowly missed the Top 10, at 13, selling 31,000 copies. The Peach State rapper, currently at radio with "Dey Know," is a founding member of the group D4L.

Dolly Parton followed at 17, selling 27,000 copies of Backwoods Barbie, the music legend's first mainstream country album in nearly a decade. In addition to nine Parton-penned tracks, the singer covered the Fine Young Cannibals with "Drives Me Crazy" and Smokey Robinson with "The Tracks of My Tears."

Other noteworthy debuts included the original Broadway cast recording of The Little Mermaid at 26, the After's Never Going Back to OK at 41, London electro-stars Goldfrapp at 48 with Seventh Tree, Stellar Kart's Expect the Impossible at 66, Pillar's For the Love of the Game at 71, Leeland's Opposite Way at 72 and Cheri Dennis' In and Out of Love at 74.

Meanwhile, over at radio, Usher's new single "Love in this Club" rocketed 50 spots this past week to reach number one on the Hot 100, dethroning Flo Rida's monster hit "Low." The first single from Usher's forthcoming Here I Stand album also topped SoundScan's digital tracks and iTunes in its debut.

Usher's last album, 2004's Confessions, made history with four chart-topping singles that dominated the Hot 100 crown for a combined 40 weeks. No other male artist has accomplished such a feat in SoundScan history.

Overall, sales were down 1 percent from last week and down more than 6 percent compared to the same sales week last year.

Here's a rundown of the Top 10 albums for the week ended Sunday:

1. Discipline, Janet Jackson

2. New AmErykah, Pt. One: 4th World War, Erykah Badu

3. Sleep Through the Static, Jack Johnson

4. Savage Life 2, Webbie

5. As I Am, Alicia Keys

6. Hannah Montana 2: Meet Miley Cyrus, Miley Cyrus

7. Once soundtrack, various

8. Juno soundtrack, various

9. Little Voice, Sara Bareilles

10. Back to Black, Amy Winehouse

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Moviegoers Feast on Serial (Killer)
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Los Angeles (E! Online) - Would-be Oscar contenders are flatlining. A writers' strike is looming. On the bright side, serial killers are still money.

The Jigsaw-graced Saw IV topped the weekend box office with $32.1 million, per estimates compiled by Exhibitor Relations Sunday. The bow was Hollywood's biggest in more than two months.

Steve Carell, meanwhile, saw a nice but unspectacular debut for his non-serial-killer entry Dan in Real Life (second place, $12.1 million).

The opening was the smallest of Carell's still-young career as a movie star—even the much maligned Evan Almighty, for instance, started off with $31.2 million. But for a fall film in a fall that's been quite unkind to movies about people who don't kill vampires (30 Days of Night), slay zombies (Resident Evil: Extinction), wage a vigilante war on crime (The Brave One) or engage in an Old West gunfight (3:10 to Yuma), the gentle comedy-drama posted the season's biggest debut behind only Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married? and The Game Plan.

That said, Dane Cook, who costars as Carell's brother in Dan in Real Life, saw a bigger opening for his much maligned star turn in Good Luck Chuck than Carell and company saw for their better-reviewed film.

Then again, Good Luck Chuck opened bigger, and has made more money to date ($34.8 million), than most of the season's offerings, especially the star-driven Oscar vehicles, à la George Clooney's Michael Clayton (sixth place, $5 million; $28.8 million overall), Reese Witherspoon and Jake Gyllenhaal's Rendition ($2.3 million; $7.7 million overall) and the Ben Affleck-directed Gone Baby Gone (seventh place, $3.9 million; $11.3 million).

The list of A-list fall bombs goes on and on, per Box Office Mojo stats: Halle Berry and Benicio Del Toro's Things We Lost in the Fire ($715,000; $2.8 million overall); Cate Blanchett's Elizabeth: The Golden Age ($1.6 million; $14 million overall); and Brad Pitt's The Assassination of Jesse James ($430,000; $2.9 million), the smallest grossing film of its star's career, by a lot, in 14 years.

The fall has been so brutal that not even the magic words Ben Stiller comedy worked on audiences. In its fourth weekend, Stiller's The Heartbreak Kid ($1.8 million; $35.1 million) slipped out of the top 10 and into a coma.

Even the art-house circuit has been hit. Ryan Gosling's Lars and the Real Girl ($952,000, $1.4 million overall) isn't blowing up. Ang Lee's NC-17-rated Lust, Caution ($471,000; $2.8 million overall, per Box Office Mojo) isn't heating up. And Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited ($1.7 million; $6.1 million overall) isn't expanding, even as it moved into wide release for the first time in five weekends.

By comparison, by the time Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums moved onto 600-plus screens back in 2002, the movie, which was also in its fifth weekend, grossed $8.5 million, bringing its overall total to $20.7 million.

Given all the grim stats, it was no surprise that the box office posted its sixth straight down weekend when compared to last year's totals.

And more bad news for Hollywood might be on the way in the form of a midnight Halloween strike by union screenwriters. The good (or bad) news for moviegoers is that there are plenty of movies in the can or in the works should a walkout happen.

Saw IV, for one, tried its grisly best to help out, opening in line with 2006's Saw III ($33.6 million) and 2005's Saw II ($31.7 million).

Eighty-three-old director Sidney Lumet (Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico), meanwhile, showed the youngens how it's done, posting the weekend's best per-screen average for his latest, the heist drama Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, which took in $73,500 from only two theaters.

Here's a rundown of the top 10 films based on Friday-Sunday estimates compiled by Exhibitor Relations:

1. Saw IV, $32.1 million

2. Dan in Real Life, $12.1 million

3. 30 Days of Night, $6.7 million

4. The Game Plan, $6.3 million

5. Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married?, $5.7 million

6. Michael Clayton, $5 million

7. Gone Baby Gone, $3.9 million

8. The Comebacks, $3.5 million

9. We Own the Night, $3.4 million

10. Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas, $3.3 million