It’s that time of year again. The time when actors and actresses are honored for all the hard work they piled together in the 12 months leading up to one moment of pay off and a tiny little statue. We’re speaking, of course, about the Razzie Awards. These are the awards given out on the eve of Oscar night to those actors, actresses, and fimlmmakers who have produced some of the worst film projects to hit theaters in the past year.

Many remember last year’s big Worst Actress winner being Sandra Bullock, who went on the very next night to win an Oscar for a role in a completely different film. This year’s potentials could have the same luck, but we doubt it. Here’s the shortlist of actors from LA Times.

Among movies and actors shortlisted for the Razzies are Jessica Alba, who is eligible for worst supporting actress for four films (“The Killer Inside Me,” “Little Fockers,” “Machete” and “Valentine’s Day”), and Emily Blunt, eligible in the same category for her work in “The Wolfman” and “Gulliver’s Travels.”

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Cerebral movie lovers can rejoice.  Christopher Nolan’s Inception handily won at the box office over the weekend, raking in over $60 Million. The film made over $3 Million on midnight showings Thursday night, and netted $20 Million on Friday, a true testament of the loyalty of Nolan’s fans.  Marketing a cryptic plot is no easy task, so Warner Brothers has to be happy about the opening weekend.

On the other hand, it might be a long climb to recoup the $160 Million budget.  The film will have to rely on repeat business from fans to maintain box office legs.  Everyone I know who really liked the movie has said they want to see it again, but it remains to be seen whether people actually follow through with those intentions. At any rate, it is nice to see an original film have a good opening weekend.

Despicable Me came in at number two, dropping about 42% from its opening weekend, which was a little higher than I would have anticipated.  It still earned a healthy $32 Million, and has grossed $118 Million in ten days. Disney’s wide release The Sorcerer’s Apprentice earned a paltry $17 Million, far below most industry expectations. The film opened last Wednesday, so its cumulative stands at $24 Million.  The film had a budget of $150 Million, so unless it performs well overseas, it stands little chance of recouping its budget.

Twilight: Eclipse dropped off 57% from last weekend, which is a fairly significant drop.  It managed $13 Million, and has made almost $265 Million in three weeks. Toy Story 3 is still doing well after five weeks, earning $11 Million over the weekend.  Its cumulative now stands at $362 Million.

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Animated films are having a pretty stellar summer. This weekend, Toy Story 3 just became the highest grossing Pixar film of all time (surpassing Finding Nemo.)   Illumination Entertainment just released their first film, Despicable Me, and cleaned up at the box office.  Despicable made over $60 Million during its opening weekend, earning the distinction of being the highest opening weekend for an animated film not made by Pixar or Dreamworks.  Just like that, we have some serious competition for the animation studios.   Not too bad for a movie with no built in audience.

Illumination spent about $69 Million for the animation in Despicable Me, which is well beneath the average for a Dreamworks or Pixar film.  The film enjoyed a healthy “A” cinemascore rating by exiting audience members, which typically indicates long legs and good word of mouth.  Despite the fact that the movie played in 3D, it was limited in its amount of theaters, because Toy Story and The Last Airbender are both still playing in quite a few 3D venues.  There is no doubt that Despicable take would have been higher had it been able to capitalize on more 3D screens.

Twilight: Eclipse was bumped down to the number two spot this week.  It had about a 48% drop from opening weekend, typical of the franchise that is historically heavily front-loaded.   It still managed to make about $33 Million, hardly a number to scoff at.  This brings the 12 day total to $237 Million, which is pretty astounding, and topped the total for New Moon in the same time period ($235 Million.)

Predators scared up a decent $25 Million over the weekend.  With a modest budget of $40 Million, this bodes well for the film. Toy Story 3 nabbed the fourth spot with $22 Million.  Its four week total is $340 Million.

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This week on The Flickcast, after a week off last week, the boys are back with an all new show. This time around things area bit different as Matt is now a resident of the West Coast and both he and Chris are doing the show in the same room. Let the hilarity ensue.

In addition to all the comedy, topics such as the new Spider-Man, problems with the iPhone 4, the new Harry Potter movie, Twilight: Eclipse, The Last Airbender, Hollywood’s strange accounting practices and a whole lot more get discussed and debated. Chris and Matt also make some new picks this week including Matt’s pick of the TNT’s new show Memphis Beat and Chris’ pick of the 1973 Charlton Heston starrer Soylent Green.

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

*Note: this column was written on Sunday, so four-day totals that include Monday’s receipts will differ from these numbers.

It was no surprise that The Twilight Saga: Eclipse dominated the weekend box office. The film made $69 Million over the weekend.  Add in a record breaking $30M midnight take on Tuesday night,  and Wednesday and Thursday’s totals, and the movie has made $161 Million as of today.

It did fall short of breaking the all-time opening day record set by its  predecessor New Moon, which made $72 Million on its opening day. Eclipse came awfully close, making about $68.5 in the same time frame.  At any rate, Eclipse recouped its budget of $69 Million in one day.

We can expect the film to drop off quite a bit in upcoming weeks, as the series historically has been very front loaded, but this film does seem to be getting good word of mouth, so the drop off might not be as steep.

The Last Airbender did a lot better than I expected it to.  Obviously the built in fan base helped elevate the critically reviled film to an okay opening weekend.  Airbender made $40 Million over the weekend, but since it opened on Thursday, its total is now $56 Million.

That’s still a long way from its $150 Million budget, though, and word of mouth has been brutal, so the movie may fall off considerably after this weekend.  If so, it will be a disaster for Paramount, which has sunk about $280M into the film between the budget and marketing.  It also leaves the future of the franchise, and the career of director M. Night Shyamalan hanging in the balance.

Toy Story 3 is still going strong in its third week in release, making another $30 Million.  This brings its total to $289 Million.  Finding Nemo is Pixar’s highest grossing movie of all time, with $339 Million in ticket sales. It is looking highly likely that Toy Story 3 will exceed that during its theatrical run.

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Welcome to this week’s On the Radar where we delve into all corners of the entertainment, tech and geek Internets for news, views and whatnot that may have escaped our regular coverage this week. Let is know if we missed something interesting. Otherwise, on to the links!

• Mel Gibson is, apparently, still a racist. Who knew? Oh yeah, we did.

• You will not see any more Sex and the City movies. Yes, try to console yourself.

• Do you like Toy Story? How about porn? If so, this is for you.

• The Twilight Saga: Eclipse opens bigger than The Dark Knight. Suck it nerds.

• In other movie news, people really hate The Last Airbender.

• Here’s a preview of that show where people act stupid and have stupid nicknames. Which one? Take you’re pick.

• Apparently, men are attracted to women with small feet. Really, it’s science and stuff.

• Apple is apparently reworking the Apple TV yet again. When do we abandon this device and move on?

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How the mighty have fallen.  In 1999, M. Knight Shyamalan was poised to become Hollywood’s next great director. His breakout hit The Sixth Sense energized audiences with its iconic twist and fresh premise.  Some maintain that he peaked with that first film, although he went on to make Unbreakable, Signs, The Village, Lady in the Water, and The Happening.

Even though his latest movies have not fared well critically, I have held out hope that he could recapture some of the magic we saw in the early days of his career.  The Last Airbender took those hopes, smashed them to the ground, and pissed on the ashes.  I was stupefied that someone so talented had actually made such a piece of junk. I’m still reeling.

Before I go further, I would like to make it clear to fans of the series that this is a critique of the movie, not the series. I have always believed that even if a movie is based on source material, the movie should speak for itself, and be worthy of a watch based on its own merit.  A lot of people go see movies based on books, comics, and other source material, and a movie should be accessible to anyone who buys a ticket, whether they know the source material or not.

This film is a dismal failure when it comes to storytelling, direction, acting, set design, and the post-production 3-D, and it cannot possibly do justice to the animated series upon which it was based.  I’ve heard nothing but wonderful things about it, but you won’t cull that knowledge from this movie adaptation.

Thirty minutes into the film, I had no clue what it is about. Worse still, I didn’t care to find out.  Not because I’m lazy, but because the script is so convoluted and did such a poor job of convincing me that there was anything compelling to the story.

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To all who have survived the month of June by successfully traversing lines of blood-sucking twihards, I congratulate you. You can relax now because the steaming month of July is less about men of iron and teenagers who use SPF 60 and more about whiz kids, dreamers, and spies.

Movie studios may appear to be throwing grenades into your trench, but don’t let the eye-catching blue and orange of the movie posters fool you. These grenades are merely filled with smoke and a good amount of marketing slickness. They will explode in your face only when you yank the pin by paying $12. Then, they will have truly won the battle. Instead of succumbing to the propaganda, arm yourselves wisely with the reviews below.

Those in the know will hold their breath until August when the golden generation of action heroes team up to save the world, kick some ass before kicking the bucket, and get sweaty enough to take off their shirts- giving both men and women some very good reasons for sitting in an air-conditioned multiplex.

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M. Night Shyamalan gets a bad rep sometimes. He’s an excellent storyteller who’s been known to go off of the deep end when it comes to getting his films made, most notably with Lady in the Water, which was basically just a love letter to his kids. We won’t address The Happening.

He seemed to go a bit more mainstream with the upcoming The Last Airbender, but now it seems the writer/director is getting back to his mysterious roots with his newest film. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the film’s premise, and even the title, is a mystery. Nothing has been revealed about the plot or the genre. What we do know is that Shyamalan has apparently already locked in three big actors for the film.

No details are known about the project, but it comes with some major acting talent: We’ve learned that Bradley Cooper, Gwyneth Paltrow and Bruce Willis are loosely attached to star in the film.

Shyamalan is famously secretive, and this project is no exception: Only top studio execs have read the script, and they were required to allow a Shyamalan assistant to supervise the process. When the execs finished reading, the assistant took the script back and left.

This project could be just what Night needs to get back to where he was circa 1997 with the success of The Sixth Sense. He’s got a pretty good track record with Willis, as he was in both Sense and Unbreakable.

Not sure where he could possibly go with this film, as he’s already touched on fairy tales, aliens, ghosts, and evil trees. We’ll be sure to keep a close eye on news from this upcoming project.

Welcome to this week’s On the Radar where we delve into all corners of the entertainment, tech and geek Internets for news, views and whatnot that may have escaped our regular coverage this week. Let is know if we missed something.

The Last Airbender may be another M. Night letdown, but at least it will have cool looking creatures.

Time to high five the 13 year old you, the lightsaber is finally real.

Andy Leipzig is a nerd like us. The difference is he uses it in some really cool art.

Guillermo Del Toro walked away from The Hobbit. Why? Because he totally digs vampires.

Remember the oil spill episode of Saved By The Bell? If not, here are the things you should remember. Maybe they’ll help us today.

Talk about life after death, it seems that Conan’s upcoming stint on TBS may be better than his NBC days ever were.

Who wouldn’t want to see a Japanese remake of Ghost? Oh….everybody.

Will Smith is already pimping Men in Black 3D, reminding us that parents still just don’t understand.

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While more than half of the people gearing up for this weekend’s Super Bowl XLIV will be more excited for the commercials, we unfortunately won’t be getting as many movie trailers as we are hoping to see. It’s been reported that Paramount, Disney, and Universal are the only studios buying time to promote their upcoming films during Sunday’s broadcast.

During the last two Super Bowl games, studios amped up their marketing and promoted 9 films over the course of the game, while we’ll only be seeing ads for 7 films this Sunday. Paramount will be buying ads to promote Shutter Island, and The Last Airbender, leaving Iron Man 2 out in the cold.

Disney, who promoted films like Up and Race to Witch Mountain last year will be focusing more on Toy Story 3, Alice In Wonderland, and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Meanwhile, Universal will be setting up promotion for The Wolfman, Robin Hood, and their 3D animated pic Despicable Me.

While it’s still mostly speculation that these films will get Super Bowl spots, it’s been confirmed that Overture bought time to promote The Crazies and Sony bought time for Bounty Hunter. Warner Bros and Fox will sit this one out, as they have since 2008.

Though we may be getting less movie trailers than previous games, this will be a big year for commercials. There are more than 60 spots that have been slotted for this year’s game, where last year’s telecast fell just short. This Sunday will be an entertaining show, for sports fans and entertainment fans alike.

Premiering on Entertainment Tonight last night was a new teaser for M. Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender. And now, thanks to the marvels of modern technology (i.e. YouTube) we’ve got the teaser for you right here, just in case you weren’t watching ET. And really, with all the great news and insight here at The Flickcast, why would you be? Don’t answer that. We know you think Mary Hart is hot.

In case you’re not familiar with the movie, The Last Airbender is a live-action film version of Nickelodeon’s animated series of the same name. It follows the adventures of the main protagonist Aang, who is an Avatar, one of the chosen who will lead his people, and his friends. In a world divided into warring tribes, Aang and his friends must save the world by defeating the Fire Lord and ending the destructive war with the Fire Nation.

The original series ran for three seasons on Nickelodeon and spawned several tv movies and three video game tie-ins. In other words, it was pretty popular. Expect The Last Airbender in theaters on July 2, 2010. Check out the teaser, sadly without Mary Hart, after the jump. Also, expect the full trailer for the film to run in front of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen starting this Wednesday.

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