Educating Ratner

Listen up Brett Ratner: It's time for today's vocabulary lesson.

eve·ry
adj.
1. Constituting each and all members of a group without exception.

And...

one
adj.

4. Being a single member or element of a group, category, or kind: I'm just one player on the team.

So, Brett, which of these words should you have used when you said:

"I feel sort of guilty, because I look up to guys like Spielberg, and I beat every record of his."

In this instance, you should've said one, seeing as how you only beat a single member of the group of Spielberg's records, and not each and all without exception. Because while you (and you alone, with no help from the comic book fanbase or the interest fostered by Bryan Singer's previous X-Movies) managed to beat Steven Spielberg's 9-year-old Memorial Day opening weekend record, there are still many members of the group of Spielberg's records that you did not beat.

For starters: The Lost World: Jurassic Park sold more tickets (thanks to inflation) over its Memorial Day weekend bow than X-Men: The Last Stand (and on fewer screens) and The Lost World had a bigger pre-Memorial Day Sunday (in actual dollars) than X-Men. Spielberg still holds the records for highest grossing director of all time (more than doubling his closest competitor and more than quadrupling Ratner), most movies to gross over $200 million (7 to Ratner's 1), most movies to gross over $100 million (13 to Ratner's 3), most directing Oscars won in the last 13 years (2 to Ratner's 0), most DGA Award nominations and wins ever, and the list goes on and on.

You'd think Ratner would give Spielberg his due, considering how Spielberg gave him a check that helped get him laid.

Previously, on The Dish: Retraction, Big Brother Vocab Lesson of the Week, Gross Negligence