This week sees the release of a few Academy Award nominees and winners, some new tv shows and some movies coming to Blu-ray for the first time. Among the ones we’re most interested in this week are Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire, The Boondock Saints II, Scarecrow and Mrs. King, The Commish and Up in the Air (with George Clooney and Anna Kendrick, pictured above.)

Check them out:

Movies

Capitalism: A Love Story (Blu-ray and DVD)

Edgar Allan Poe’s The Pit And The Pendulum ~ Lorielle New, Stephen Hansen, Bart Voitila (Blu-ray and DVD)

Falling for Grace ~ Gale Harold, Fay Ann Lee, Billy Asher (Blu-ray and DVD)

Hachi: A Dog’s Tale ~ Richard Gere, Joan Allen, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa (Blu-ray and DVD)

Nine Dead ~ Melissa Joan Hart, John Terry, Lawrence Turner (Blu-ray and DVD)

Old Dogs ~ John Travolta, Kelly Preston, Robin Williams, Seth Green (Blu-ray and DVD)

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The Blind Side pulled off a pretty nifty feat this weekend. After three weeks in wide release, it finally nabbed the top spot at the weekend box office, making about $20 Million and standing at about a $129 Million cumulative total. It is on track to become the highest grossing movie of Sandra Bullock’s career.

In second place, New Moon looks like it is finally cooling off a bit. In its third week, the movie made about $15.7 Million, and dropped another 63% (after a steep drop off of 70% last week.) Domestically, it crossed the $250 Million mark.

Newcomer Brothers made a modest $9.7 Million. Starring Natalie Portman, Jake Gyllenhal, and Tobey Maguire, I thought the movie about an Iraq War veteran returning home would fare better. Holdover A Christmas Carol hung in for the number four spot, and made an additional $7.2 Million.  Its cumulative take now stands at about $115 Million. Old Dogs managed to land the fifth spot in the top  five.

Star-laden Everybody’s Fine (Robert De Niro, Sam Rockwell, Drew Barrymore, and Kate Beckinsdale star) failed to find an audience, and brought in an anemic $4 Million. George Clooney’s critically hailed Up In The Air only played on 15 screens. but made over $1.1 Million, for an impressive $79,000 per screen average.

As far as I know, Paramount is testing the waters for this film, and they should be pleased with the weekend performance. Hopefully they will go ahead and open wide now rather than roll it out slowly. Overall, it was a soft weekend, which is typical of the after-Thanksgiving weekend box office.

This week we will be looking at the weekend box office as well as the 5-day holiday, which includes totals for Wednesday through Sunday. There were some interesting developments regarding the international box office scene as well, so this will be a jumbo sized report. New releases barely made a blip, it was the holdovers that led this weekend to the highest grossing Thanksgiving weekend ever.

The Twilight Saga:  New Moon continued to dominate on the domestic and international side. Playing on over 4,000 screens, it grossed $42.5 Million domestically. Over the five day stretch, it grossed $66 Million. No matter your thoughts on the movie, you have to admit we are witnessing a cultural phenomenon unfold in real-time.  Its domestic cumulative take for 10 days now stands at $230.7 Million.

Nipping at the heels of New Moon was The Blind Side. The movie grossed $40.1 Million for the weekend, and $57.5 Million for the five day, with that weekend total being higher than its opening weekend total of $34 Million. Wide releases rarely see an increase in ticket sales from one weekend to the next so this is unusual. This movie is getting exceptionally positive word of mouth, which is bringing more people into the theaters — a topic we discussed on the most recent edition of The Flickcast podcast.

The Blind Side drove over the $100 Million mark as well. Not too shabby for a family friendly film made for around $30 Million. I’m also starting to hear the “O” word casually mentioned regarding this film, as in Oscar. Sandra Bullock seems to be edging her way into consideration for best actress.

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