Jake Gittes

All-time domestic as of Sunday:Die Another Day $160,942,139Skyfall $160,941,621lol

There were 20 strong Best Actress contenders last year, this year I can't count more than 10 with any sort of buzz. Lawrence, Wallis, Mirren, Cotillard, Riva, Chastain, Knightley, Streep, Watts and Winstead. I'd say Cotillard definitely has a better chance than the last four in that list. All we really need now is some strong, reliable word about Chastain's work.

She definitely might get a nom. It could change, but this point, I'd pick her over Chastain any day of the week. And definitely over Knightley.Lawrence, Wallis, Cotillard, Mirren, Riva. For now, imo.

Anthony Hopkins' opinion of Oscars isn't at all different from Phoenix's: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/19/anthony-hopkins-hitchcock-oscars_n_2156179.html?utm_hp_ref=tw

Agreed. See how the DGA nominated Fincher last year and the director branch went for Malick.

Hooper actually has a better chance of winning the Globe than the Oscar because that's where TSN got to clear up. Plus, it's Hollywood Foreign Press Association, and Les Miserables is star-studded and known all around the world. Affleck would probably be too boring for them, but they'd eat Hooper up this time around.

To counter Riczhang, I think he has a damn great chance there. As I've said before I don't believe there is anything award-worthy about Amour's screenplay, which leaves us with Wes Anderson, PTA and QT. Tarantino's film will definitely be the most commercially successful of the three and most likely as well received critically, and he was clearly snubbed for IB in favor of The Hurt Locker (which, just like Amour, was a screenplay far less rich in plotting, dialogue, characterisation and imagination than his). PTA has three previously-received nominations at his side, as well as no wins, but yeah I think The Master is a kind of film that's a dark horse at best here.

More realistically, although I didn't think Argo was any sort of a masterpiece (just a strong old-fashioned thriller, well-made in every aspect, but not one that I'll give much thought to a year from now), I think Affleck is the best contender for Director at this point, followed by Spielberg and only then by Hooper. I'm pretty certain the voters remember how recent Hooper's last Oscar was. With Spielberg, I think it'd be awkward if he won 2 directing Oscars for films that didn't win Picture (but I don't think it'd be a make-or-break situation for most voters). But absolutely nothing stops Affleck from winning for Argo a la Mike Nichols for The Graduate and Soderbergh for Traffic. (Interestingly, The Graduate only won Director out of numerous nominations, and Traffic only lost BP after winning in its four other nominations). Outside contenders would be Russell and QT, but the former needs to pick up a whole lot of additional buzz and the latter needs to really get people united behind him. I have no doubt that Django will be a great film and QT is more established in Hollywood now than ever, but that didn't help Fincher at all. I don't really think Lee or Bigalow have any chance of winning, no matter the reception. But we'll see.Speaking about Fincher, the funny thing is, if he won Director two years ago and Les Mis turned out as good as expected, Hooper would be a virtual lock to win this year and we probably wouldn't be considering Affleck or Spielberg nearly as seriously.

I want Tarantino to come and snatch the directing Oscar from all the past winners this year. #onecandreamIt's a shame The Master's fire burnt out so quickly, PTA could have been a much better contender for director if a split were to happen. Now all we can hope for is him getting last year's Malick spot.

After seeing Argo I hope Arkin doesn't get in. It's a non-performance unless they want to nominate not Arkin, but "Argo fuck yourself". Especially if Di Caprio and Jackson are as good in DU as they seem to be, they are going to need those two spots with Hoffman and TLJ already locked in and De Niro and Crowe being incredibly likely.

The ones I tracked personally: July-Sept 2006 (DMC domination & Little Miss Sunshine demonstrating the power of a platform release with great WOM) Summer 2007 (3 $100m OWs in May, Transformers outgrossing AWE, The Bourne Ultimatum reaching its well-deserved heights) Dec 2007 - Feb 2008 (I Am Legend & Alvin breakout, No Country for Old Men in platform) July 2008 - TDK and the culmination of IM/IJ4 race for the second place May-June 2009 (Star Trek, Up and The Hangover) Dec 2009 - Feb 2010 (you know what I mean) Sept 2010 - Feb 2011 adult drama/thriller domination (The Town, The Social Network, The King's Speech, Black Swan, The Fighter, True Grit) Jan-March 2012 (expectations were beat practically every other weekend... box-office totally felt freaking alive)

Yeah, Murray isn't happening.

Cloud Atlas got by on the Wachowski name (all Matrix movies are well-liked by the general audience), the visuals in the trailers and the very wide release. It just so happened to be an intelligent movie in addition to that, like Inception, if you will.

Oh yeah, Blood Diamond. One of those films where I just don't care, as far as I'm concerned, it ends with Di Caprio's phone call to Connelly and the plane flying away. None of the subsequent cheesy bullshit.

Subtitles are unfortunately something most Russian audiences would take a lot of time to accept over dubbing or, yes, even voiceovers. The latter is just something people here are naturally used to, they have been for decades.

What shaky start? Sony had The Vow and 21 Jump Street early in the year

End of Watch is the first one that popped into my head too. First I couldn't believe how damn powerful the alleyway scene was... then I couldn't believe Ayer actually thought the very final scene wasn't out of place. An example of cheap, beating-you-over-the-head sentimentality that was completely worthless. The movie as a whole was still good, but it would have been far better without that part.

Comparing it directly with CR is somewhat incorrect IMO, since CR opened right before Thanksgiving and had a sub-25% second weekend drop as a result, helping it make substantially more money in its first 10 days than it would have made otherwise.

Came up with a longlist of 45 scores. Gonna be fun to narrow them down.

What about Star Wars and LOTR, are multiple films eligible there? There are some core themes reused, but most of those scores are original and stand on their own. They were deemed eligible for Oscar noms, too - John Williams was nominated for TESB after winning for ANH, Howard Shore won for FOTR and ROTK, plus Nino Rota also won for Godfather II. Not saying it's your obligation to do what the Academy did, but what are your conditions there?

It increased on Saturday from a $32m Friday. Maybe I missed something, but I wouldn't describe that as people rushing out to see it.

I'm thinking 53-57%. Highly doubt it's going to hold better than TBU even despite the time-of-the-year difference. On the other hand, over 57% is closer to 2012/QoS territory, and Skyfall is better than that. Right now I'd say $40m is exactly where it'll end up next weekend.

If QoS (and also 2012, which opened the exact same weekend with mid-$60millions) could do 2.5x, I'd expect 2.7x at the very least from Skyfall. I'd say it's nearly guaranteed (meaning like a 99% chance) to outgross The Bourne Ultimatum, has a good chance to make it past 250 and an outside chance to crawl past TASM. I think 240-270 is the range, and if forced to make a closer prediction, I'd say 250-255.Also, I was no fan of TASM, but to me it still blew SM and SM3 right out of the water. SM2, on the other hand, remained untouchable... for the time being. Just my two cents. I also enjoyed Garfield and Stone in their roles much more than Maguire and Dunst.

More like around $5m. There was some money made in the Mon-Wed period too, especially as Monday was a holiday.