January 27th, 2004

That 70s Weekend, Oscar Nominations

Two stars of the Fox sitcom "That '70s Show" battled for the top spot at the box office over the weekend with their respective films, and Ashton Kutcher was the clear winner. The pretty-much panned The Butterfly Effect took in a pretty strong 17 million. Right on its tail was last week's big winner, Along Came Polly, with 16.3 million.

Meanwhile, Topher Grace's new comedy, Win A Date With Tad Hamilton! failed to find much of an audience with a pretty dismal 7.3 million. Unless word of mouth is good on the film (I'm assuming it's not given Dreamworks gave 3 sneak previews of the movie during January), expect it to fall off the charts pretty quick. Right behind that was Big Fish with 7.1 million, while The Return Of The King slumps down to fifth with 6.7 million.

Cheaper By The Dozen took in another 6.3 million while Cold Mountain still shows some legs with another 5 million in the bank. Torque took a tumble with 4.4 million and Something's Gotta Give added another 4 million to its tally. And back in the top ten due to its re-release to cash in on awards season, Mystic River brought in another 3.3 million at the box office.

Speaking of awards season, last night's Golden Globes was pretty predictable. Oscar nods were announced today and while there were some major snubs (take that, Harvey Weinstein!), there were also a lot of surprises. I think this will be a fairly easy race to predict... but I'll save my picks until a few days before the actual show (which is now only about a month away).

With the last of the January releases coming this Friday, things should start to get interesting soon film wise at the box office. What will prevail? Stay tuned DVD fans!

-Zach B.