The James Bond franchise celebrated its 50th anniversary in style this weekend, as the 23rd entry in the series, “Skyfall,” absolutely crushed the box office, earning a staggering $87.8 million in its debut weekend.

That amount is not only by far the biggest opening ever for a Bond film, easily dwarfing the $67.5 million brought in by 2008′s “Quantum of Solace,” but combined with vigorous overseas receipts it could already push “Skyfall” over the $500 million mark worldwide.

Well, okay. The film didn’t seem that special to me, but apparently everyone else thinks it’s special. I mean…

Doom may have flopped, and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World may have been all buzz and no buck, but Disney’s Wreck-It Ralph proved that there is a place for videogame-themed movies at the box office this weekend.

The $165 million animated film topped the chart with $49.1 million out of 3,752 theaters — the strongest debut ever for a Walt Disney Animation production (i.e. not including Pixar titles). Disney’s Tangled opened with a whopping $48.8 million over the more lucrative Thanksgiving weekend in 2010, so Wreck-It Ralph‘s slightly larger bow (and its hefty $13,086 per theater average)…

“Of course the U.S. release was disappointing, but it hasn’t changed our release plans,” A Company topper Alexander van Dulmen told THR. “Cloud Atlas has a more intellectual approach and theEuropean audience is more open to movies where you have to think a bit.”

Either that or it was just stupid. But then, maybe I’m just one of those dumb Americans and don’t have any intelectual chops or something.

Whatever. I maintain my opinion on how awful this film is.

In one of the weakest weekends of the year which may yet get weaker thanks to the oncoming Frankenstorm (stay safe, East Coasters), the only real winner was Ben Affleck‘s “Argo.” It’s rare for a movie to make it to number one several weeks into release, but the actor/director’s political thriller has had outstanding word of mouth, and though it dropped a touch more than its record-breaking hold last weekend, it still managed to rise up to the top of the charts with a $12.4 million haul. It’s the second-lowest number one of the year, but for a third week of release, still very strong…

With relatively little fanfare, A Christmas Story has spawned a sequel, with Ralphie this time eying a car instead or an air rifle, which has the elements of a disturbing trend of materialism by the little imp.

No, no no no no no no no no. Please tell me this is a joke, a bad dream, not happening.

This looks like a truly horrible film.

Thanks to a massive opening in China, The Dark Knight Rises is now the 13th movie ever to reach $1 billion worldwide. Including Monday domestic grosses, The Dark Knight Rises has now made over $1.01 billion, which means sometime this weekend it passed The Dark Knight ($1.003 billion) to become the highest-grossing Batman movie ever.

...

The Batman series joins Pirates of the Caribbean as the only franchises with two $1 billion movies. The Dark Knight Rises is also now the second movie (after Avatar) to reach $100 million in worldwide IMAX grosses.

Those are some impressive… Read The Rest

After its inauspicious opening Wednesday, when the bizarre kiddie flick The Oogieloves in the BIG Balloon Adventure earned a shockingly low $47 average at each theater, it looked like it could be headed for the worst opening weekend of all time for a film playing in over 2,000 theaters.

Well, it happened.

According to studio estimates, the colorful toddler-targeting entry, which is being distributed by Kenn Viselman Presents (Viselman formerly found massive success as producer of The Teletubbies), earned a truly awful $448,131 from 2,160 theaters in its debut three-day weekend.

That…