Deal Was Mucked at the Box Office, Will My Blueberry Nights Be Better?

Deal, the new poker movie starring Dancing with the Stars' Shannon Elizabeth, limped in to this weekend's box office, banking $31,000 on 50 screens. It received exactly no good reviews, scoring a 0% on rottentomatoes.com. Not a good year for the poker movie. The Grand, which wasn't actually that poorly reviewed, still flopped. And Lucky You (which doesn't even deserve italics or bolding), which came out around this time last year, is possibly the worst movie ever made. However, thanks to reader Mike May (his blog here) for tipping us off on a Norah Jones/Natalie Portman/Rachel Weisz pseudo poker flick opening in Las Vegas this weekend called My Blueberry Nights: "I don’t know if this is anything that would be of interest to Wicked Chops, but...there’s a movie called My Blueberry Nights that is opening in Vegas this weekend.  It’s not really a poker movie. It’s mostly chick stuff that you might not be so into, with the singer Norah Jones driving around the country after a bad breakup.  But there are about 8-10 minutes of hot poker action.  Norah Jones’ character runs into a professional poker player played by Natalie Portman.  Unlike the Natalie Portman movie Closer, unfortunately in this movie Ms. Portman does not get down on all fours and show her Hooha to someone in a strip club.  Nonetheless, she does play poker and she looks pretty hot with short hair and a tiny dress." Pics of Portman from the flick above. Click to enlarge. May be just us but in the photos alone it seems that Natalie channeled a bit of the late Brandi Hawbaker for her role as a young, sexy and struggling poker player in Las Vegas. Mike May noted that Stu Ungar bio co-author Peter Alson was a consultant on the movie and he helped write the poker scenes.  And Mike himself played Portman's nemisis at the poker table.  Check out a video review of the Wong Kar Wai directed movie by the NY Times here. It shows Natalie playing some poker and Mike at the table with her about a minute or so in. In semi-related news, the still funny Natalie Portman SNL rap.