> For many years, the National Board of Review has been the self-appointed first group on the calendar to announce awards for Best Picture and other categories.  The NBR is sort of like the Golden Globes without super-powers; they’re 110 people tangentially related to the world of film whom you’ve never heard of and whose […]

>BREAKING DAWN PART 1: Although the huge day-after-Thanksgiving take lifted everything in the multiplex, Breaking Dawn 1 continues to run behind New Moon by 10 percent. THE MUPPETS: Still well under Tangled’s Thanksgiving gross last year, but given its moderate cost, a solid hit. HUGO:. It’s per-theatre gross is almost identical to Muppets, although it’s […]

> The boxoffice did more or less what it was supposed to on Wednesday, drifting down 5-10% from Tuesday.  Thursday should be fairly steady, then business should have a bit of a roller-coaster ride:  an increase on Friday, down somewhat on New Year’s Eve, back up on New Year’s Day, and down again on January […]

> After what seemed as long as a presidential primary season, the Oscar nominations are finally here. What do they tell us? THE ARTIST Is Still The Film To Beat. There were plenty of surprises sprinkled throughout today’s nominations, but none that seriously challenged the conventional wisdom. If Martin Scorsese were still looking for his […]

> Deadline is reporting a fairly spectacular Saturday for THE LORAX (Universal), considering the size of its Friday:  $32M, representing more than an 80% increase from the day before.  As a point of comparison, Horton Hears A Who! increased only 40% on its second day of release.  If this number holds, it puts Lorax in […]

> Gary Ross should probably think twice before leaving THE HUNGER GAMES. THE HUNGER GAMES: Because of the Good Friday holiday, Friday numbers were unusually strong this week and Saturday’s will appear unusually weak. That could mean a 3rd weekend of around $33M for Hunger Games (Lionsgate/Summit) (depending on the Easter Sunday drop), which could […]

Warners is claiming that Sucker Punch cost around $80M, which given the scale of the film suggests either admirable cost-effectiveness or a lowball number–in any case, word of mouth is likely to be terrible (see my review, not to mention that its overall Rotten Tomatoes number is at 20%), so it’s doubtful to get past […]

KILLER ELITE:  Watch It At Home – Neither Killer Nor Elite   The new KILLER ELITE takes little from Sam Peckinpah’s 1975 action movie apart from its title (Peckinpah used “The” in his) and the general notion of mercenaries and ex-spies double-crossing each other.  This isn’t a huge loss, as the 1975 version was part […]