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I’m sadly not at Sundance right now as I’d like to be, and apparently neither is the majority of America. Its sixth weekend now, James Cameron’s Avatar remained #1 in the box office. This weekend the sci-fi epic raked in $36 million, bringing its domestic total to $552.8 million. On Friday it surpassed The Dark Knight’s gross of $533.3 million and is now $48 million away from cracking Titanic’s all-time record and becoming the highest-grossing film of all time. What really surprised me though, was that Rolling Stone movie critic Peter Travers took a second look at Avatar and bumped up his three and a half star rating to a full-fledged four stars, main reason being all of the buzz impressed him.

Never in recent memory has Travers ever done that, and I trust him with movies more than I do anyone. That’s why Cameron’s blue people are at the top spot again, because people are seeing this movie multiple times. While I’m still betting on The Hurt Locker to take the Oscar for best picture, Avatar has affirmed that in the past year of no surprises with blockbuster intakes, it had the balls to rise above the rest.

The highly-anticipated (I guess?) Legion, Scott Stewart’s action/thriller about a pissed off God sending angels to Earth to reign in the apocalypse, debuted in second place with a respectable $18.2 million. I couldn’t care less for this crap, but I hear that even loyal Comic-Con fanboys excited for this were severely disappointed. Surely the poor reviews (23% on Rotten Tomatoes) and equally negative word-of-mouth won’t take part in convincing anyone else to see this in the coming weeks.

The Book of Eli fell 48.2% to #3 with $17 million this weekend, bringing its total to a respectable $62 million. I’m not really sure how Warner Bros expected this movie to do with audiences; its budget was $80 mill, but then again they gave it a graveyard January release. Another opening The Tooth Fairy, starring former wrestler (though I’m sure all his fans have lost faith in him by now) Dwayne Johnson, managed $14.5 million. A decent-enough start for The Rock after his animated bomb Planet 51 only grossed $40.2 million in its lifetime, however Fairy has a $48 million budget to make back.

Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones finished off the top five with $8.8 million, falling 48.3%. Its total is up to $31.6 million, but like a lot of other people I just don’t care about this movie anymore.

Out of the top five-

• The real extraordinary story was that anyone thought Extraordinary Measures was a good idea for a movie. It debuted in seventh with a mere $7 million.
• Brian Baugh’s drama To Save a Life started off with $1.5 million on 441 screens.
• Crazy Heart’s expansion paid off; the country western drama took in another $1.4 million after expanding onto 46 more screens.
• The controversial Creation (nothing debatable about its stinking, however), also starring Paul Bettany and real-life wife Jennifer Connelly, opened with $52,000 on seven screens.
• Foreign language flick The Girl of the Train made $20,000 on two screens.

Here are the box office results according to studio estimates Sunday:

1. 1. Avatar…$36 million
2. 2. Legion (2010)…$18.2 million
3. 3. The Book of Eli…$17 million
4. 4. The Tooth Fairy…$14.5 million
5. 5. The Lovely Bones…$8.8 million
6. 6. Sherlock Holmes…$7.1 million
7. 7. Extraordinary Measures…$7 million
8. 8. Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel…$6.5 million
9. 9. It’s Complicated…$6.2 million
10. 10. The Spy Next Door…$4.8 million