February 1st, 2018
2018 got off to a good start and January more or less held its ground when compared to 2017. There were some misses, but surprise holdovers made up the difference. Looking forward, February will be dominated by Black Panther. In fact, it will very likely make more during its opening weekend than the second place film, Fifty Shades Freed, will likely make in total. Black Panther likely won’t break records, but it could come close, while Fifty Shade Freed and Peter Rabbit both have a 50/50 shot at $100 million. Last February, The Lego Batman Movie both earned $175 million, while Fifty Shades Darker earned over $100 million. Black Panther will easily beat any film from last February; in fact, it could earn more than the top two films earned combined. As long as the rest of the box office isn’t a complete disaster, February should help 2018 earn a significant edge over 2017 in the year-over-year comparisons.
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February 28th, 2016
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.
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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
With our annual Oscar Prediction contest underway, now is the best time to look at the nominees and try and figure out who the favorites are and which films should just feel honored to be nominated. This year, Best Supporting Actress is a two-horse race, making it one of the more competitive categories of the ones we are going to look at.
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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 9th, 2016
The BAFTA nominations were announced and you can read them on their site... in alphabetical order. Alphabetical order is very useful in most circumstances, but not here. On the other hand, the nominees within each category are not presented in alphabetical order. ... Are the BAFTAs trolling us? As for the actual nominees, the big winners here are Bridge of Spies and Carol, both of which earned nine nominations. For Carol, this is just another impressive score, but this was a pleasant surprise for Bridge of Spies.
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January 1st, 2016
2016 will begin the same way 2015 ended, with Star Wars: The Force Awakens on top. In fact, three of the five films that have the best shot at box office success in January are The Force Awakens, The Hateful Eight, and The Revenant, all of which opened in December. There are two true January releases that could also do really well, for this time of year: Ride Along 2 and Kung Fu Panda 3. The rest of the releases are just hoping to become midlevel hits. Last January, American Sniper dominated earning more than $300 million. Its success could prevent 2016 from being ahead in the year-over-year comparison by the end of the month, but this year does have better depth.
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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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January 10th, 2013
eXistenZ is a Canadian movie that cost more than $30 million Canadian dollars to make, but made less than $3 million at the domestic box office. There's never been a time when the exchange rate was great enough to cover that difference. Is it a bad movie? Is that why it failed to find an audience? Or is it, like so many David Cronenberg movies, just too weird for a mainstream audience?
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