Klady's Friday estimate for New Moon is a few million lower than others, but still a new record. The number is about double the Friday for the first film.

That said, the big question here will be the multiple. The box office is getting more and more front-loaded. Twilight did 2.9x opening. You have to figure that this one is looking at around $130m for the 3-day. At the first multiple,that would be about $375 million domestic. But I am thinking more a 2.2x multiple and $286m domestic. That would put it in the realm of other 2009 movies Watchmen, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Fast and Furious, and Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail. This is not a doubt of the quality of the film itself, though it seems to be - to others, I wasn't invited to see it - a less thrilling experience than the first film of the series. It is the nature of having such intense must-see response to a film that is niche... albeit a big niche.

New Moon so skews everything this weekend that it is hard to read the opening for The Blind Side... except to note that this will be Sandra Bullock's #2 opening of all time, right after The Proposal. What confuses me about opening opposite "the girl movie of the year" is that even though Blind Side has a giant football player at its core, I haven't seen a very hard push for the film with men, who would seem to be a key demo, especially this weekend. Still, a good start, even if it is in the shadow of the vamps.

This is less true of Sony's Planet 51. Thing is, even though this number is crap when compared to the big studio animated releases, it's pretty good for a group of films that now needs a name... say, B-Animation. This is made of up films that majors acquire but which are not up to the standards that audiences expect from in-house, more expensively produced product. In this case, Sony picked up domestic theatrical only for this film made with UK financing.

By that standard, an opening of $7m - $9m is not so bad. TWC's Hoodwinked is the king of this genre. Here's a list...

As you can plainly see, the holdovers all got slammed yesterday by New Moon's opening, though that should ease up over the weekend, in part because of less tickets sold for the vamps and in part because many of these films probably lost screening times to multiplexes stealing every screen they could for the big opening of the month.

It looks like 2012 will come up well short of The Day After Tomorrow, but $450 million still seems inevitable as a worldwide number, which is about enough for this one to break even.

(apologies to those who now have to re-vote... puberty was misspelled... the irony was too much...)

When writers, particularly on the web, are accused of quid pro quo on ad sales, I don't like it... unless there seems to be a clear correlation. After all, having an ad sales division is quite unusual for websites that aren't under major corporate ownership and everyone needs to eat.

But when the first and only mention of Epix on your blog is unsubstantiated gossip claiming to know of fear in the heart of the direct competition of one of the sources that both constantly feeds you scoop and is one of the corporations partnered in Epix... and then the ads show up shortly thereafter... especially when most studios won't buy ads on your site with a 10 foot pole... hmmm...

Of course, we have ads on MCN for The Hurt Locker and we are promoting a Hurt Locker screening coming up Monday... but the ads have been up a lot longer than its been since we booked the film. Is that the same thing?

Truth is, we sell all of our awards ads in advance of content rolling out. And I don't think we have ever had ads sold or withdrawn over editorial content over these last seven years. I don't think anyone has even mentioned it as a threat or a joke.

But y'all can judge for yourselves.

And I'm sure someone over there will think I am making fun of them by running this in a blog entry, but actually, having this kind of backstage info from studios makes the lives of those covering them easier. Some tools we use, some we do not. But occasional reminders about how many arms there are out there are very helpful. It's a smart choice.

And here is their list of Facebook pages

Media noise - amplified by a combination of ad budgets being slashed thus making publicity more important again, a wave of new online businesses trying to sell themselves and their ads, and old media flailing about, trying to get attention, also in fear of their own demise - is more relentless and less thoughtful than ever.

The rest...

And the charts...

I'm not sure why Searchlight hasn't pulled the trigger on Crazy Heart, a movie that will play better on TV... not coincidentally made for TV.

There will be plenty more DVDs on the way...

In any case...

What I do want to say is that the film is remarkable free of race as an issue once you get past the first 20 minutes or so. As Disney told everyone, the characters are black, white, and mostly, cajun, whether good, bad or somewhere in between.

The lightening bug that some worried about is one of the strongest characters in the film and doesn't identify black or white. The horn-playing alligator,a completely positive character, does play black... and unlike the characters who seemed black in The Jungle Book, is voiced by a black actor.

And Keith David, as the voodoo dude, gives - and I guess I am breaking my own rule a little here - a magnificent vocal performance, both speaking and singing. His character is not driven by race, but by greed.... a vice shared by all races.

Anyway, it really hit me about half way through that issues of race - including the prince in the film seeming more South American than black - just were not on the plate in this film, no matter what the setting. The fact that we are dealing mostly with animals through most of the film helps. A frog is green, not black or white.

I saw it at a NAACP screening... and it occurred to me that while race didn't play much of a role in the film as I saw it, for this mostly black audience, it must have been truly wonderful to see a film based around a black heroine and other black characters whose motivations are human and not just ethnic.

Of course, the first thing many of us wonder about is who got left out... and so... docs that have been released, had some real heat, and did not make the cut...

Capitalism: A Love Story
Anvil: The Story of Anvil
The September Issue
Tyson
It Might Get Loud
We Live in Public
Crude
The Yes Men Fix the World
Collapse

It is possible that a couple of these were not qualified or were disqualified. (Anvil may have been last year's qualifier) But after We Live In Public went through the process of actually getting dispensation from The Academy for a webmaster webcast, we know that political positioning does not always take in this very odd system of nomination.

Every Little Step, The Cove, and Valentino: The Last Emperor would have to be considered the frontrunners now, though I would be keeping an eye out for Garbage Dreams, and The Beaches of Agnes coming up from behind.

Of course, the way things work at The Academy, any number of those 5 titles could miss the final nominations list.

(You can meet the filmmaker behind Garbage Dreams in this DP/30... and the Every Little Step guys are here...)

ADD 4:20p - It seems there is going to be a lot of whining, screaming, and general complaining about this list. I would guess that less than 10% of the whiners have seen all the movies and that less than 20% have seen 10 of the 15.

That said, much as I personally care for some of the left out titles, the only one that strikes me as truly offensive in its absence is Tyson, a movie that does such a mighty job of getting through that history and a truly unique interview with the man, showing skills far more complex than the split-screen shenanigans. It is worthy in the way Errol Morris' The Fog of War was.

But there is not a single title on that list that urges me to wonder how "that piece of crap" made the list. Some are better than others, but even on the weaker ones, it is pretty clear why a committee would find them so compelling.

And frankly, the guts to leave Michael Moore off the list for the first time since they idiotically snubbed Roger & Me, aside from the dubious removal of Fahrenheit 9/11 from consideration, is kinda a winning notion. He made a weak movie. Happens. And he didn't get a free pass for being America's best-loved doc filmmaking character. He will recover. He's a very smart and capable man.

The September Issue was very overrated, a shadow of the Valentino doc. I'm not 100% sure Collapse was qualified, but it is also a chat doc based on an little known guy. Loud & Yes Men are not really Academy speed. Crude is- can't believe I am actually typing this - last year's issue. And Public might have been too public for the committee, perhaps hurt politically by the special treatment it was given. Or maybe they just didn't like it.

In any case, not as shocking a list as I think some are saying. Not the greatest year ever for docs. The system is still a bit screwy. But overall... pretty good.

And the chart below, from Nielsen, is pretty iffy... to the degree that they misname Lisa Schwartzbaum "Lisa Schwartzman." Oy. But one clear thing does seem clear. When any single "answer" dominates a survey of any size this clearly, that dominant answer bears attention.

After years of literal silence, Ebert's voice is as loud as ever.