That movie no one will shut up about is setting new records already — The Hunger Games' $68.3 million opening gives it the biggest opening day of any non-sequel, and the fifth-biggest opening of all time. Midnight showings accounted for $19.7 million of the film's take, which gives you a sense of how devoted fans of this series are.

"The real sport of the Hunger Games is watching the tributes kill one another," says protagonist Katniss Everdeen in the first book of Suzanne Collins's Hunger Games trilogy. The real sport of The Hunger Games, Gary Ross's compulsively entertaining cinematic adaptation, is breezing by those murders without offending delicate sensibilities.

Hunger Games mania is upon us. The Young Adult trilogy-turned-blockbuster is due out this weekend, and some of you out there still have no idea what these crazy Food Games are all about. Fear not, as we have compiled a detailed Hunger Games explainer, just in time for G-day. Be you screaming tween, good-sporting parent, or disgruntled old timer, this explainer will guide you as we as a nation prepare for the newest (and unavoidable) pop-culture phenom.

Epic fantasy flop John Carter is going to cost Disney big bucks: on Monday, the studio released a statement projecting a total loss of $200 million.

The much-hyped John Carter didn't exactly live up to box office expectations, earning only $9.8 million on Friday. Although it stands to take in a more respectable $27 million through the weekend, that's still chump change compared to the $250 million the studio threw down to make it.

A flight in Texas was sent back to the gate about an hour ago after a flight attendant snapped and started "ranting over the PA system about the plane crashing," according to the Dallas Observer. The plane is still scheduled to take off. Didn't anyone see Final Destination?

Looks like that aggressive ad campaign did its job after all: The Lorax earned $70.7 million this weekend, giving it the biggest opening weekend so far this year. In second place, Project X, with a comparatively unimpressive $20.8 million. Should've cast Zac Efron and Taylor Swift, guys.

Jason Segel, the sitcom star who is just dying to make it big in the movies, luuurrrrvved The Muppets so much that he convinced Disney to bring the franchise back and cowrote their recent movie. But now that he's popular in Hollywood he's too big for the Muppet's planned sequel.

There's a bigger, better, badder trailer for Marvel's summer tentpole The Avengers. It looks good. It looks so good that every comic book nerd out there (myself included) is popping a tentpole. But the real questions is, will they fuck it up?

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but the world as we know it is almost certainly going to end. Scientists have found evidence of flu in bats and are reporting the existence of a "never-before-seen virus whose risk to humans is unclear," which is almost exactly how the devastating virus in the movie Contagion is billed.

You may not be the only one at your Oscar party tonight pretending to have seen all nine Best Picture nominees: 2011 moviegoing attendance was the lowest in 15 years.

Move over, Norbit — on Saturday, Adam Sandler beat the previous record of five Razzie nominations with a staggering 11. The Razzies, which are basically the Oscars for terrible movies, has singled Sandler out for his writing, producing, and acting work in the films Jack and Jill, Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star, and Just Go With It.

The Oscars are the definitive award for motion pictures, the highest achievement in film. But, the Academy has been known to make some bone-headed decisions in the past giving awards to inferior films or performances while passing up clearly superior fare. These are Oscar's biggest misses.

Just because Netflix users aren't professional film critics doesn't mean they don't have strong opinions. Some Netflix reviews are, in fact, insightful, cogent, and sharply composed — but who wants to read those? In honor of the 2012 Academy Awards on Sunday, here are the best of the worst Netflix reviews of the 10 Best Picture nominees.

Sacha Baron Cohen just received some great free publicity for his new comedy, The Dictator, courtesy of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Deadline Hollywood reported last night that the actor had been "banned" from the awards show on Sunday because he'd been planning on showing up dressed as his next character, an anti-democratic dictator named General Aladee.

Want to watch The Bodyguard? No worries; it's one of Netflix's streaming titles. Or it was — until the studios removed it, and all of Whitney Houston's movies, from the streaming video site after the singer's death, allegedly to goose DVD sales. (Update: This appears to be wrong.)

Osama bin Laden was killed by a team of Navy SEALS on May 2, 2011. About a month later, Relativity Media purchased the rights to the fictional Navy SEAL-centric action movie "Act of Valor," for a sum that was "arguably the biggest money paid for a finished film with an unknown cast." That unknown cast is made up partly of active duty Navy SEALs. The movie's trailer was "shown on the official website of the video game Battlefield 3." The movie will be released on President's Day.

Above, Nicolas Cage describes his acting discipline, "nouveau shamanic," which involves "put[ting] on Afro-Caribbean paint" and "sew[ing] in bits of Egyptian artifacts that are thousands of years old into my costume and gather[ing] some onyx or tourmeline or something that was meant to have vibrations." Yesterday, he told Moviefone:

It's been less than a day since Whitney Houston died, but the show must go on. And that doesn't just refer to the Grammys, which will air tonight as scheduled. MTV News reports that Sparkle, Houston's final film and her first since 1996's The Preacher's Wife, will be released in August.

Well, we can't give all the credit to Daniel Radcliffe, but — we kind of can, right? The Boy Who Lived as Harry Potter For a Decade has moved on to a starring role in Woman in Black. Despite low expectations, Reuters reports that the horror film opened strong at $8.3 million on Friday. (It's worth noting that CBS Films predicted $11 million for the entire weekend.) The other big surprise was Fox's teens-with-superpowers thriller Chronicle, which actually beat out Woman in Black on Friday. Relax, Dan Rad fans — his movie is expected to surpass its competition.