Some days it just doesn’t pay to get outta bed. First, the news broke this morning that Ridley Scott is jumping aboard the sequel/reboot train once again with a new Blade Runner movie which, let’s face it, is basically a terrible idea and completely unnecessary.

Now word comes that his brother Tony is prepping a reboot of Sam Peckinpah’s western classic The Wild Bunch. WTF? Sorry Tony, but that’s about as stupid an idea as rebooting or making a sequel to Blade Runner. Oh, wait. . .

Instead of mining classic films looking for good ideas you obviously can’t come up with yourself, how about finding some smart writers to come up with some ideas for you? I’m sure you can find one or two talented writers in all of Hollywood.

If you’re having trouble, I’ll get some friends of mine to send you over some scripts. Really, it’s no trouble. In the meantime, stick to making ridiculous movies about trains that won’t stop or trains that get taken over by terrorists or, well, you get the idea.

Please, leave the actual thinking to others. It’s painfully obvious you’re not capable of doing any yourself.

Oh, on another note, nobody plays baseball in the rain. It’s just stupid.

This may be the biggest year for the Academy Awards, as some major Hollywood players are going up against some fresh newcomers. Eyeballs everywhere will be glued to ABC on Sunday, February 27th at 8PM E/5PM P when the awards show goes live. But before that, we decided to do some picking of our own with the staff’s predictions for each award.

For a full list of the nominees, check out our previous article on the subject. Now, on to the predictions.

Best Picture

Shannon Hood-The Social Network. It had early and consistent momentum all year, and the Academy appears to be trying to shake up their stodgy image. This would be the perfect film to put their money where their mouth is.

Matt Raub – True Grit. Not only are the Coens a regular in the “I Have an Oscar” club, but this testament to classic western films is definitely one for record books, between its all-star cast and gritty (no pun intended) visual style, this one definitely deserves the golden statue.

Chris Ullrich – True Grit. Even though this was a pretty great year for movies and there are many excellent choices in this category, True Grit stands on its own as my pick. As an example of pure movie storytelling, this Coen Brothers masterpiece excels on every level and delivers a pure entertainment experience you will want to revisit many more times in the future.

Cortney Zamm – The Social Network. There’s a lot of great films in this category, some of them from my favorite directors and starring my favorite people. But the one that combined all of the essential elements of filmmaking into a truly gorgeous, compelling, and memorable film was The Social Network.

Seems that everyone got their fill of turkey and movies last week, as the overall box office was down 54% from last weekend.  Don’t worry, that’s normal.  Despite the box office being fairly slow, Tangled managed to best Harry Potter and finished the weekend in first place with $21.5M.  That brings its total to just over $96M.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 took a comfortable second place finish with $16.7M.  It dropped off about 65% in its third weekend.   The film is still playing on over 4,000 screens.

Burlesque and Unstoppable tied for third place, earning $6.1 each. Love and Other Drugs nabbed the fifth spot, making $5.7M.

The Warrior’s Way opened to little fanfare, and no screenings for critics. The film failed to make any sort of impact at the box office, placing in 9th place for the weekend, barely clearing $3M.

Harry Potter held off a fair haired princess to eke out a win over the weekend.  Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows made $50.3 M, bringing its ten day total to $220 M.  If you count the entire Thanksgiving weekend (Wednesday through Sunday) the five day total was over $76 M, making it the fourth best Thanksgiving total on record.

It was hardly an easy task. Disney’s new princess caper Tangled performed very well, and made $49.1 M for the weekend;  $69 M over the five days.  This Thanksgiving opening take is second only to Toy Story 2, back in 1999.  When actual grosses come in on Monday, Tangled very well could top the box office.  It also got the first “A+”  from Cinemascore for the entire year. Audiences absolutely loved it.

Megamind is still performing very well.  It only dropped 19% in its fourth weekend for an additional $12.8 M.  It has now made $130 M, finally matching its reported budget. The Cher/Christina Aguilera musical Burlesque played well to audiences, and received a surprising “A-” from Cinemascore exit polls.  It placed fourth with $11.8 M ($17.2  M five-day total).

Denzel Washington’s Unstoppable was just a tad behind, in fifth place. Another new release, Love and Other Drugs, came in sixth with $9.8 M.  It should be noted that the film played on about a thousand fewer screens than the top three films this week.  Faster (starring Dwayne Johnson) came in just behind it.

The Harry Potter franchise enjoyed its biggest opening weekend ever, as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 bowed at the box office with $125.1M.  That included midnight totals ($24M) from Thursday.  The film made $61M on Friday (factoring in the midnight totals).

That is a great total, but it did fall short of Twilight: New Moon’s opening day total of $72.7 last November.

The film was well received by audiences, and received an “A” according to a Cinemascore poll. The franchise’s previous best opening weekend total was $102.7M back in 2005, with Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

Deathly Hallows can now boast the sixth best opening weekend of all time, and the fifth best opening day ever. It also had an outstanding per/screen average of about $30,000.

Coming in at a very distant second was Megamind, now in its third week of release.  The film made $16M, and has now made just shy of $110M over its entire run. Unstoppable dropped about 42%, but managed another $13.1M.  Its two week total is $41.9M.  It will have  a steep climb to reach its $100M budget total.

It was  surprising to find out that Unstoppable was indeed stoppable at the box office over the weekend.  The movie did extraordinarily well with critics and audiences alike, so its modest (but solid) take of $23.5 Million was a bit of a head scratcher. The Denzel Washington/Chris Pine action thriller is the fifth collaboration between director Tony Scott and actor Denzel Washington.

Megamind was the big winner of the weekend once again, adding another $30 Million to its two week total for a cumulative take of $89.8 M.  It dropped about 35% from its opening weekend, which is typical.  Megamind and Unstoppable both had per screen averages of around $7,000, which were the best of the top five this weekend.

The road comedy Due Date came in at third place with $15 Million.  Despite taking a 52% tumble from last weekend, the film is poised to break even with its budget. It has made $59 Million in two weeks, and its budget was $65 Million.

Skyline wasn’t screened for critics, and it has received some of the most scathing reviews of the year, but it still was able to scrape up $11.6 Million, good enough to place in fourth.

I’m somewhat at a loss to explain how good a film Unstoppable is. Once it starts, you think you know everything that’s going to happen—a train gets out of control, and two guys need to stop it. Along the way they’ll encounter some human obstacles and gain a few allies, and, oh yeah, the stakes have to be really high, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Denzel Washington is the old hand working for the railroad company who knows all the tricks that those fancy, rich-and-inexperienced college kids (Chris Pine), with their degrees in Physics, Metallurgy, and What-Have-You think they do. Rosario Dawson plays the station controller racing-against-time and being the mediator who’s trying to juggle both Washington, trying to stop the train, and the head of her company, who’s trying to minimize the casualties and maintain the bottom line.

The situation itself begins harmlessly enough: Ethan Suplee is a dim-witted railroad worker who’s switching trains at the station and leaves his cab to manually change a switch. He fails to catch up to the train, and the situation escalates from there due to a series of train mechanics I won’t even attempt to describe. But the point is things get out of hand, and soon a half-mile freight train filled with combustibles and toxic gas is barreling at 70 miles per hour down the tracks and hell-bent on taking out a nearby city.

As far back as I can remember, I’ve been a fan of Denzel Washington. No matter what film he’s been in or if they’ve made money or not, he’s always fun to watch and a great actor as well. I’m sure most people would agree.

Conversely, people may criticize me for this but I’m also a fan of director Tony Scott. Sure, he’s not as artsy or sophisticated as his brother Ridley (His name is Ridley, after all) but he does know how to use a camera and call tell some pretty interesting stories when he puts his mind to it. So naturally, when these two get together on a film, as they have before for Crimson Tide and Man on Fire and now for the upcoming Unstoppable, I’m going to give that film my attention.

In the movie, Washington and Star Trek‘s Chris Pine are struggling to stop an out of control train before it derails on a curve and causes a toxic spill that will decimate a town. The trailer, while superbly put together, does seem to give quite a bit of the movie away. However, it does look pretty good — at least to me.

Judge for yourself after the jump. Unstoppable, which also features Rosario Dawson and Ethan Suplee, hits theaters on November 12th.