With Christmas over and the new year in full swing, Chris and Matt are back with a brand new episode of The Flickcast. This week, your favorite team is joined by Cortney Zamm to discuss all sorts of topics including new and returning TV shows such as Chuck, 24, Human Target, Caprica, Lost and True Blood. Also, the threesome talks Avatar, Sandra Bullock, “feel good” movies, Spartacus: Blood and Sand and Thor casting.

In addition, Chris, Matt and Cortney make some new picks for the new year including one of Cortney’s favorite books Silent Bob Speaks, Matt’s new favorite “blacksploitation” film Black Dynamite and one of Chris’ top ten films of 2009, District 9.

As always, if you have comments, questions, critiques or offers of sponsorship, feel free to hit us up in the comments, on Twitter and at Facebook, MySpace or via email.

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Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:00:02 — 82.5MB)

Last week I mentally predicted that New Moon would come in around the $80 Million mark. Obviously, there is a reason that I am not in the business of box office predictions. New Moon grossed over $140 Million during its opening weekend, and broke a few records along the way. Fangirls (and a few fanboys) showed that they are an emerging force to be reckoned with, as New Moon ($72.7 Million) broke the opening day record previously held by The Dark Knight ($67.2 Million.)

According to Entertainment Weekly, over 80% of the ticket sales were from women, a truly rare occurrence. Although the film was critically drummed, (currently 29% on Rotten Tomatoes) audiences gave it an A- cinemascore, indicating that they were very happy with the film. The film opened on a massive 4,000+ screens, and averaged over $34,900 per screen. There was a drop off from Friday to Saturday of about 40%.

Also of note: New Moon now has the 3rd biggest opening weekend ever behind The Dark Knight and Spiderman 3. Its midnight screening averages on Friday morning garnered over $26M, setting a new record for that. The world box office take was over $258 Million. Director Chris Weitz must feel vindicated after the disastrous box office performance of The Golden Compass, his last directorial effort.

Early estimates show that The Blind Side had an opening weekend gross of $34.5 Million, which is nothing to sneeze at. This marks the best opening ever for Sandra Bullock, just behind last summer’s The Proposal. The film also got a remarkable A+ cinemascore, which means it will start getting some seriously good word of mouth. Expect it to remain in the top ten for a long time.

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