2015 Awards Season: Oscar Preview

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.

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. More...

2015 Awards Season: Oscar Highlight: Best Feature-Length Animated Film

February 18th, 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. Today we look at Best Feature-Length Animated Film. Inside Out has a better than 90% chance of winning. If it doesn't win, it would almost certainly be the biggest surprise of Oscar night. More...

2015 Awards Season: Oscars - Nominations

January 15th, 2016

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. More...

Home Market Numbers: Ultron's Reign Continues

November 7th, 2015

It was the first full week for The Avengers: Age of Ultron on the home market and it topped the new releases for October 6th, 2015 and earned first place on the combined DVD and Blu-ray chart for October 11th. Over the week, the film sold 1.02 million units and generated $18.02 million for the week for sales of 2.62 million units / $47.21 million after nine days of release. By comparison, Furious 7 generated $47.05 million, not during its first two weeks, but since its release nearly a month ago. It is already in the top ten for the year and it should climb into the top five shortly. More...

Home Market Releases for October 6th, 2015

October 7th, 2015

The home market release report is a little late this week, because in our ongoing attempt to improve our site, we are looking at the format of this column and it will change shortly. (Also, this week both Amazon and Rotten Tomatoes were acting up. I had to download a script blocker and block all scripts on Rotten Tomatoes. Certain things no longer work, but at least it doesn't cause Firefox to freeze every ten minutes.) The biggest release of the week is The Avengers: The Age of Ultron, sort of. It came out last Friday, not this Tuesday. I'm waiting for my copy to arrive so I can do a full review. Meanwhile, the best new release of the week is When Marnie Was There in Blu-ray Combo Pack. More...

Featured Blu-ray / DVD Review: When Marnie Was There

October 6th, 2015

When Marnie Was There is the latest Studio Ghibli released through GKIDS. It did very well in limited release, at least compared to most animated films, but it was still not seen by most. Now it is coming out on Blu-ray / DVD. Is it worth checking out for those missed it the first time? Is it worth picking up for fans of the studio? More...

Per Theater Chart: In the Name of the Per Theater Chart

May 27th, 2015

In the Name of my Daughter rose to the first place on the per theater chart with an average of $20,069 in four theaters. I'll See You in My Dreams saw its theater count expand to 26 while its average was mostly flat down to $14,593. The best new release was When Marnie Was There, which earned an average of $13,695 in two theaters. This is great for an animated film in limited release. More...

Weekend Estimates: Tomorrowland Barely Ahead of Pitch Perfect 2

May 24th, 2015

The good news this Memorial Day weekend is that five movies will gross over $20 million. The bad news is that none of them will do any better than Tomorrowland’s soft $32 million debut. Disney’s latest will barely scrape in ahead of Pitch Perfect 2 over three days, with the singing sensation expected to generate $30.3 million. Over four days, Tomorrowland may pull into a slightly larger lead, thanks to its more family-friendly nature, but it will take a much better performance overseas for the sci-fi adventure to recoup its costs. More...

Limited Releases: When Limited Releases are Here and There

May 22nd, 2015

There are not a lot of films on this week's list of limited releases and almost none of them look like they will expand enough to earn some measure of mainstream success. When Marnie Was There seems like the best candidate, but it is very hard for an animated film in limited release. More...