The Weekend Report
by Leonard Klady

It's an odyssey with a decided happy ending. The Pink Panther squeaked ahead of the competition with an estimated $21.4 million to emerge as the weekend's top grossing movie. Three other films also made national debuts and took the next three positions. The horror sequel Final Destination 3 grossed $19.9 million while the animated Curious George arrived with $15.4 million and the Harrison Ford thriller Firewall followed with $13.7 million.
Weekend Estimates (Full List)
Domestic Market Share

Five short documentaries about the number 12… What did you want to be when you were 12? Did you ever see a 12-toed cat? People—and animals—will always surprise you.

MCN DVD Wrap-Up
Elizabethtown

Copies of the Elizabethtown DVD should come with a special sticker, warning diabetics that the contents could be dangerous to their health. It would be difficult to find another big-budget Hollywood production that wore its heart so openly on its sleeve. More >

MCN Review: The film misfires in virtually every way. It opens with a faux Jerry Maguire section that feels like we’ve seen it before – complete with company girlfriend who leaves when things go bad

Plus: Bambi II, The Batman, The Best of the Electric Company, Demon Hunter, Doom, Dungeons and Dragons 2 - Wrath of the Dragon God, Elizabethtown, Extreme Dating, The Cary Grant Box Set, Grounded for Life, Growing Pains, Live Freaky! Die Freaky!, Oktober, Pizza, Beer and Smokes, Poltergeist: The Legacy, Ryan's Daughter, A Slightly Pregnant Man, Teen Titans, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, You Stupid Man, When a Stranger Calls

The Ultimate DVD Geek
Hustle & Flow
by Doug Pratt

A wonderful movie about the American Dream, Hustle & Flow, has been released as a Widescreen Edition. Oscar nominee Terrence Howard is a smalltime Memphis pimp (he has three girls), who wants to become a rap star. Directed by Craig Brewer, the film's style is sneaky, giving off the air of a tacked-together low-budget inner city drama, when in reality it has a stealthy, precise rhythm that locks your attention onto the screen and slides you effortlessly from one scene to the next. The characters are as comical as they are realistic, and the natural humor that comes from their aspirations and predicaments prevents the movie from seeming too earnest or self-important, something the otherwise admirable and vaguely similar 8 Mile failed to achieve.

The Gurus Look At The Top Three Choices In The Big Eight Categories This Week, Hoping For Some Heated Competition Somewhere The Charts

It's Oscartown, Jake
A Civil Year
by Kristopher Tapley

It is far too easy to filter everything down to a cinematic year of "political" or "social" statements. Those sentiments are obviously happening on the surface, but the deeper you look, especially within the Academy's Best Picture candidates, the more the focus seems to tighten. More than any year I can think of, this year's nominees are representative of the human experience as it relates to civil interaction and personal relationships.

20 Weeks To Oscar
Pass, Present And Future
by David Poland

It's the micro/macro Oscars this year.

There will be competition in the tech/craft categories… and there looks to be some intense competition in the top two categories, Best Picture and Best Director. The only high-profile category that is seriously competitive is Best Supporting Actor… and as I recall, that is the second award given out in the evening. So buckle up and try not to fall out of your chair in boredom as you wait the three hours between seeing if George Clooney, Paul Giamatti, or the upset-minded Matt Dillon of Crash wins and finally finding out whether Brokeback Mountain has been backed or broken.
The Oscar Chart

Updated throughout the day
Updated: 11:07 pm

Michael Medved Offers His Opinion About Che Gueverra, The "Commie Thug"

Claudia Eller On The Long Road To The Pink Panther Release... Which Will Actually Mean Something If The Film Has Legs, But Is, For Now, Just The First Not-Unkind Piece About Sony In A While After A Job Well Done By The Studio In Getting The Film Out There And Sold To Kids

Tim Burton On Hollywood, The Oscars And What's Really Important
"But will they let me to go the front of the line at the Hollywood Wax Museum?"

Vendetta
"You have a world teetering on the brink -- apocalypse being the animating anxiety of the superhero genre"

Berlin Welcomes A Prairie Home Companion

Devin Gordon Spins Out Seven Oscar Opinions Prentending To Be Observations... Including A Few Factual Errors And Grand Canyonesque Leaps

John Horn On The Studio Mergers And The Orphaned Releases They May Leave Behind

Lars Von Trier Makes A "Statement Of Revitality"

Jaws' Peter Benchley Dies

Mark Caro On The Long Road To Crash

Before The Olympics, "Cinema In Italy Was Born In Turin"

Even In The Year Of Gay Cowboys, Ian McKellen Says "The Film Industry Is Very Old Fashioned In California"

Peter Howell On The Often-Overlooked Magic Of Good Film Editing

The Tale Of Roy Lee: The Amazingly Successful Producer Who Gets The Business & Has Only A Passing Interest In The Show

Paramount Continues To Use "Interim Journalism" In Which The Troubled Target Tries To Overwhelm Traditional Media With "Honest Insight" Before Perspective Can Cement The Real Story Into Ugly Legend
Anne Thompson Delicately Joins The "Paramount Is Not Flailing" Marketing Team... Though She Does Get In Some Shots... But Those "We'll Talk Candidly" Interview Offers Are Hard To Pass Up

The Oscar After Market
"It's almost like buying the Mona Lisa — no, like that painting 'The Scream.' There's no or little value, or even underground value. It's too famous."

Icahn, You Con, We All Con... For Icahn
And - Why Don't Messages Movies Say Very Much Anymore?

"I don't Michael Moore this shit. I don't come out and go, 'Look what these fuckers do.'"

Does This Letter From The World Conservation Union Bury Hubert Sauper's Already Remote Shot At Winning The Doc Oscar For His Darwin's Nightmare... Or Does It Make You Root For Him Even Harder? (pdf)

The Woz Looks At The Red Carpet Celebs Confused For Support Staff

The Democratic Image Of Netflix Threatened By A Year Old Policy That Penalizes Customers Intentionally For Frequent Use Of The Service

In The Valentine Mood, Erik Lundgaard Lists Great Kisses In Film

The Paramount Bloodletting Hits Distribution Hard

Sony Embraces The Da Vinci Code Critics And Launches A Forum Just For Them

Berlin Opens In Snow Cake

Picture Jack Black In Blue Tights And A Red Cape Flying Behind Him
And - Here And Here And Here
And -Now See The Trailer

Mark Caro's Pop Machine Dispenses Bad Movie Titles

John Malkovich, Fashion's Mr. Kimono

Park Chan-wook May Be The Korean Tarantino, But There's A Lot More To Him

Where The Girls Aren't Is In Family Movies, For Starters
"Not that I want `Toy Story' to be changed. I don't think there should be any sort of gender formula. But there are other movies to be made with powerful messages featuring female characters."

Brokeback, Constant Gardener And Bruno Ganz Are Winners With The London Film Critics

The Killer Is Among Us, Theme-Wise

David Thomson On Brotherly Love In Hollywood, From Mankiewicz To Bridges To Penn

The Da Vinci Code Won't Get A Protest Out Of Opus Dei

Roger Ebert On The Lasting Greatness Of Inherit The Wind

Dogs Of The Movie Imagination At Worth1000

But What About Beyonce?
Rob Harvilla Offers A $50 Reward If Randy Newman Will Perform "It's Hard Out Here For A Pimp" At The Oscars

The Guerilla Girls Take On Oscar With Queen Kong And A Sunset Blvd Billboard
And - The Billboard

Oscar Satire Of The Day
Son Of The Mask Snubbed

Paramount Classics Corners The Market On Polar Bear/Walrus Movies... Hopefully A Defensive Move... Otherwise, It Might Just Seem Stupid

Monkeying Around With Animated Product Placement

Sing Along To Bollywood And Learn To Read

Trailer du Jour
Sofia Coppola's Marie-Antoinette

"I wanted to put up a 'Do Not Disturb' sign because I was so embarrassed about anyone going in."
Keira Knightley On Her (VF Cover) Virginity

Uma Thurman Honored By France... Yes, All Of France... Yes, All Of Uma

X3 Changes Name... Not To "Oy, The Entire Movie Is A Spoiler," But To X-Men: The Last Stand

Carl Icahn Details A Plan That Splits Time Warner Into Four Public Entities
Plus - The 371 Page Report

The Year Of The Statement Film Everywhere
A Turkish Film Whose Rambo-Like Hero Takes On US Soldiers In Iraq

Jesse L. Martin Walks Marvin Gaye's Line In Sexual Healing