With the Oscars just weeks away, some last-minute wins at other awards shows:• Helen Mirren and Forest Whitaker earned top acting honors at Sunday's BAFTAs, aka the British Academy Awards.• Little Miss Sunshine and The Departed (where's my DVD?!) were the big winners at Sunday's Writers Guild of America Awards, in the original- and adapted-screenplay contests, respectively.• Cars was named best animated feature at the 34th-annual Annie Awards, but Flushed Away (aka the "mouse got flushed down the toilet movie," which my sons are dying to see... on DVD) came away with the most wins: five.
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How did 2006's film fare fare compared to the year before? Thanks in part to Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man's Chest ( which broke too many records to regurgitate here) and despite a somewhat lackluster holiday season, the final box-office tally is headed toward $9.42 billion, marking an increase of about five percent versus 2005. Before you crow, "Well, weren't ticket prices up at least five percent?" the Hollywood Reporter points out that the number of actual tickets sold — 1.44 billion — was up nearly three percent.Joining POTC 2 ($423.3 million) in this year's elite $200 mil-plus club were Cars ($244.1 mil), X-Men: The Last Stand ($234.4 mil), The Da Vinci Code ($217.5 mil) and Superman Returns ($200.1 mil).
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Speaking of the awards season... Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima, the companion film to this fall's earlier-released Flags of our Fathers, has been named best picture by the National Board of Review. Martin Scorsese was named best director for The Departed, while Forest Whitaker (Last King of Scotland) and Helen Mirren (The Queen) nabbed the top acting prizes. Volver won best foreign film, Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth was declared top documentary, and Cars led the animated-entries pack.
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Warren Beatty will receive the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement (in acting, not so much skirt-chasing) at the 64th-annual Golden Globe Awards, to be held Jan. 15, 2007.... Disney's Cars topped the DVD sales charts last week, moving five million units in its first two days alone. Mission: Impossible III held on to the top spot in rentals, earning $9.3 million to Lightning McQueen's $9.2 mil.
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Among today's DVD releases: Wordplay, a look at New York Times crossword creator Will Shortz (see related Q&A) and the annual puzzle tournament held in my hometown of Stamford, Connecticut, and Disney's Cars, aka the theme for my sons' birthday party this coming weekend.... Xbox 360 owners will be able to "unlock" a thus-far untapped part of the console and download movies and TV shows — including Batman Forever, The Nine and CSI — starting Nov. 22.... Jay Leno, Matthew McConaughey, Regis Philbin and Bob Costas are among the big names lending their voices to new releases in the Team Baby DVD series, which is likened by some to "Baby Einstein for the sports-minded set."
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