April 26th, 2016
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We are in Q2, which is historically the slowest time of the year on the home market. The last of the monster Christmas hits were released weeks ago and none of the yearly year hits have come out yet. Ironically, the biggest release of the week is actually a Christmas film, Krampus, and its Blu-ray Combo Pack is a contender for Pick of the Week. (It is admittedly a slow week.) Its two biggest competitors are both foreign-language films: Phoenix: Criterion Collection - Buy from Amazon: DVD or Blu-ray and Son of Saul - Buy from Amazon: DVD or Blu-ray. Son of Saul won the Oscar this year for Best Foreign-Language Film, but I'm going with Phoenix instead.
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February 28th, 2016
Voting in our annual Predict the Academy Awards contest is now closed, and we can reveal the final vote totals in each category, along with the rough probability for which film will win each award. This is a year where readers are very confident about the outcomes in many of the categories. In fact, there isn’t a single major category where less than 50% of readers picked the same winner, and there are five Oscars where 90% or more of readers agreed on the outcome, including a massive 97% of the vote for Inside Out for Best Animated Feature. That makes The Revenant a rather more uncertain bet, with 70% of readers favoring it for Best Picture. That’s actually theoretically the closest call among all the major prizes…
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February 28th, 2016
This is shaping up to be a triumphant weekend for 20th Century Fox. The studio will take three out of the top five spots at the box office this weekend, with Deadpool claiming a third straight win with $31.5 million, taking it to a huge (for the time of year) $285.6 million by close of business on Sunday. The studio’s Kung Fu Panda 3 will be down just 28% to $9 million in third place, for $128.5 million to date, and their new release Eddie the Eagle will land in fifth with a slightly disappointing, but not horrible, $6.3 million. Oh, and The Revenant is still in the top ten in its tenth weekend in release, and is the hot favorite to win Best Picture at the Oscars this evening (more on that in a moment).
All of which is a roundabout way of saying that Gods of Egypt had a horrible opening weekend…
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February 28th, 2016
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It’s Oscar day and, if all goes to plan, I will be live-blogging the ceremony tonight. Here is the list of nominees marked according to predictions from our readers, and my personal wishes. Nominees in Bold are the ones predicted to win by our readers (we’ll have a full rundown of the predictions at noon, after the contest ends). If I am predicting a different film, those are in Italics. Meanwhile, the nominees I want to win, but don’t think will win, are Underlined. There are a few categories where the film I really think deserves the award was not even nominated, plus a few I don’t have a real opinion on.
If you haven’t done so already, it’s not too late to enter our Oscar competition, and win all Best Picture nominees on Blu-ray or DVD.
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February 24th, 2016
The Mermaid led the way as far as limited releases were concerned with $985,000 in 35 theaters for an average of $28,144. The film has broken records in China, which we will talk about more tomorrow with the international top five. The Embrace of the Serpent was next with an average of $16,985 in three theaters over the weekend, while it earned an average of $20,721 during its five-day opening. The only other film in the $10,000 club was Deadpool with an average of $15,172. On a related note, Warner Bros. has announced an R-rated Blu-ray for Batman v. Superman. The is the wrong lesson to learn from the success of Deadpool.
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February 7th, 2016
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The Directors Guild of America awards were handed out and it was a big night for Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and The Revenant.
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January 15th, 2016
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The Oscar nominations were announced at 5:30 am Pacific time. Nothing is good that early in the morning. Worse still, this was a terrible year for snubs, especially when it comes to diversity of the nominees. The voters for the Oscars are 94% white and 77% male... but that's still more diverse than the list of nominees. The Revenant led the way with 12 nominations and it is expected to win a few of those, while it is a serious contender in most of the categories it was nominated in.
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January 14th, 2016
The Directors Guild of America spread out the nominations, which I always felt hurt the buzz. There are ten categories of awards, but only three of which pertain to theatrical releases. There are very few surprises across these three categories, so the Oscar nominations today shouldn't be full of surprises either.
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January 11th, 2016
The Golden Globes were handed out on Sunday evening. There were a few minor surprises and some infuriating results. On the other hand, no one film truly dominated, with The Revenant leading the way with just three wins. Only two other movies earned more than one win, The Martian and Steve Jobs.
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December 22nd, 2015
Star Wars: The Force Awakens led the way on the theater average chart and broke the record for highest theater average for a wide release. Its average was $59,982, which is the fifth best opening theater average this year. This is just ahead of Ex Machina and just behind Carol. The Big Short fell 46% to $47,286. A 46% drop-off is bad news for a limited release most of the time, but The Force Awakens hurt all of the holdovers and I'm still bullish on its box office chances for its Wednesday expansion. Carol remained in the $10,000 for the fifth week in a row, this time earning an average of $14,446 in 16 theaters. Mojin: The Lost Legend opened with an average of $12,726 in 22 theaters, while Son of Saul was right behind with an average of $12,643.
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December 18th, 2015
It's not a long list this week, but there are a few films worth checking out. Topping that list is Son of Saul, which could win an Oscar for Best Foreign-Language Film. Also worth checking out are He Never Died and The Lady in the Car with Glasses and A Gun.
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December 10th, 2015
The Golden Globes nominations were announced this morning and we are already beginning to see a trend for this year's Awards Season. For the most part, the same films are coming up over and over again. Carol led the way with five awards, while there was a three-way tie for second place with The Big Short, The Revenant and Steve Jobs each picking up four.
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November 25th, 2015
Awards Season begins with the Independent Spirit Awards nominations. There were definitely some surprise nominees this year, but that also meant there were some unfortunate snubs as well. The overall leader was Carol, which just opened this past weekend. This is great timing and should help its box office numbers, as well as its chances throughout Awards Season. Its six nominations were one ahead of Beasts of No Nation and Spotlight. (One of Spotlight's was the Robert Altman Award, which has no nominations, just one winner.)
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