2013’s box office downturn stretched to its sixth frame this weekend, as Warner Brothers’ Jack the Giant Slayer failed to justify its giant pricetag. From 3,525 locations, the fairytale adaptation took in an estimated $28 million – more than its Friday estimate promised, but less than half of what The Lorax delivered at this time last year. The weekend’s other offerings fared little better though, in the case of The Last Exorcism Part II, a small opening was mitigated by an even smaller budget.

Last year, Mondo put together a fun little event for the 2012 Academy Awards:  a few days prior to that Oscar Sunday, Mondo announced that a series of brand-new posters (all of which were based on that year’s Oscar-nominated films) would be dropping throughout the Academy’s broadcast.  Everyone dug the idea, the whole thing went off without a hitch, and—most importantly—waiting on a drop gave all of us something to focus on whenever watching the Oscars became too much to bear.

And so, when the Mondo guys announced they’d be doing it all over again in 2013, we were pumped (as were many of you).  But once that excitement died down, we were left wondering which of 2012’s Oscar-nominated films would get the Mondo treatment…and which of the rumors we’d been hearing would turn out to be true.  Answers to those questions (and many more) await you after the jump, folks.

I just finished live-blogging the Oscars.  My brain hurts.  It wasn’t a very good show, and it was a ceremony unworthy of all the great films we saw in 2012.  Briefly, the prognosticators were correct and Argo took Best Picture.  Ang Lee won his third Oscar and his second Best Director Oscar for Life of Pi, a film that also took home awards for Best Cinematography, Best Score, and Best Visual Effects.  In the acting categories, Daniel Day-Lewis won Best Actor for Lincoln, Jennifer Lawrence won Best Actress for Silver Linings Playbook, Christoph Waltz won Best Supporting Actor for Django Unchained, and Anne Hathaway won Best Supporting Actress for Les Miserables.

Hit the jump to check out the full list of winners.

Alas, we’ve come to the end.  The 85th Academy Awards will take place tomorrow evening, after which the past year of maneuvering, campaigning, and controversy-drumming will be rendered obsolete as we wipe the slate clean and start the next awards season cycle anew.  Over the past six days, we’ve been taking a look back at the 2012 awards race in a number of categories, chronicling the ebbs and flows that have led us to today.  This past year was one of the more crazy awards seasons in recent memory, but at least it’s been interesting.  Today we close out our Road to Oscar feature with the final category, Best Picture.  Hit the jump to read on, and click here to read our predictions for tomorrow night’s ceremony.

For proof that 2012 was a nutty year for awards contenders, look no further than the Best Director category.  Over the past few days, we’ve been looking back how the ebbs and flows of the past 12 months have shaped the awards race in a number of categories, and one of the most dynamic shifts came with Best Director.  After the jump, we run down how the race for Oscar glory progressed over the past few months to give us the five nominees who will be vying for the gold on Oscar Sunday.  Hit the jump to read on.

This week on Blu-ray a Best Picture favorite comes to home video, the second season of an incredibly addicting HBO series hits HD, and a classic Pixar title finally gets a Blu-ray release.  Briefly:

• Anna Karenina (Two-Disc Combo Pack: Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy + UltraViolet) – $22.99 (34% off)
• Argo (Blu-ray/DVD Combo+UltraViolet Digital Copy) – $22.99 (36% off)
• Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome (Unrated Edition -Two-Disc Combo Pack: Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy + UltraViolet) – $19.99 (43% off)
• Game of Thrones: The Complete Second Season (Blu-ray/DVD Combo + Digital Copy) – $29.99 (63% off)
• Insider [Blu-ray] – $14.86 (26% off)
• Monsters, Inc. (Five-Disc Ultimate Collector’s Edition : 3D Blu-ray / Blu-ray / DVD Combo + Digital Copy) – $29.99 (40% off)
• On the Waterfront (Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray] – $41.99 (16% off)
• Sinister [Blu-ray] – $19.99 (50% off)
• Top Gun (Two-Disc Combo: Blu-ray 3D / Blu-ray / Digital Copy) – $19.96 (50% off)

Hit the jump for special features details on all of the aforementioned releases.

Like a lot of Best Picture contenders, Argo has been swallowed up by the hype of Oscar season. The perceived slight of director Ben Affleck turned the former dark horse into the current favorite, prompting all kinds of speculation as to whether the film itself actually deserves its front-runner status. Don’t worry: it does. Amid a very strong field of contenders (at least five of the nine nominated films legitimately deserve to win), it makes a damn strong case. Hit the jump for the full review.

The Writers Guild of America Awards were held tonight, and Ben Affleck‘s Argo continued its sweep through awards season by netting Best Adapted Screenplay for writer Chris Terrio.  Mark Boal won Best Original Screenplay for the film that will actually continue to resonate for years to come, Zero Dark Thirty.  Meanwhile, Malik Bendejelloul‘s won Best Documentary Screenplay for the wonderful Searching for Sugar Man.  Over on the TV side, Breaking Bad won Best Drama Series, Louie won Best Comedy Series, and Girls won Best New Series.  Hatfields & McCoys and Game Change continued their awards winning streaks by picking up Best Long Form (Original) and Long Form (Adapted), respectively.  Finally, Portlandia beat out some stiff competition (such as The Daily Show and The Colbert Report) to pick up Best Comedy/Variety.

The 63rd annual American Cinema Editors Eddie awards were held last night, honoring editorial achievements from the world of film and television.  The list of nominees included familiar titles from the awards circuit, such as Argo, Life of Pi, Brave, Frankenweenie, Homeland and Breaking Bad, along with some less-talked-about documentary fare and non-scripted television series.  Hit the jump to check out a list of the winners from the 63rd annual American Cinema Editors Eddie awards.

Is an Argo Best Picture win now inevitable?  The 2013 British Academy of Film and Television Awards (BAFTA Awards) were handed out this evening, and director Ben Affleck’s thriller continued its domination of awards season by landing the Best Film and Best Director prizes.  The BAFTAs have always been an important bellwether for predicting Oscar, but they may be even more in tune with the Academy this year as a rule change allowed the entire BAFTA voting body to vote on every award (like the Oscars), instead of writers only voting for screenplay, actors only voting for acting, etc.

Les Miserables won the most BAFTAs of the night, taking home four trophies including Best Supporting Actress for Anne Hathaway (duh) and Best Production Design (over Anna Karenina? Really?).  The winners actually lined up pretty closely with my current Oscar predictions, though most were surprised to see David O. Russell take home the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar over Lincoln and Argo.  Jessica Chastain and Jennifer Lawrence were also overtaken in Best Actress by Emmanuel Riva for Amour, who has emerged as a strong possibility in a tough category.  Hit the jump for the full list of winners.

Last week, BAFTA premiered special posters for their Best Picture nominees.  Today, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences had followed suit by teaming up with Gallery1988 and various artists to create posters for this year’s Best Picture Oscar nominees.  There are some impressive posters, and I’m curious to see if they’re going to go on sale at some point.  The Academy’s website lists the dimensions and type of production (screen print), which leads me to believe that these might be available for purchase some day.  I’m sure there are plenty of readers who would love to get their hands on Mark Englert‘s print for Django Unchained. [Update: Gallery1988 has tweeted the following: "G1988 x The Academy. Official. 2/14 - 2/17. More soon." so it looks like you should get your wallets ready, and keep an eye on their official website.]

Hit the jump to check out the posters.  The Academy Awards will be held on February 24th at 7pm EST on ABC.

The freight train that is Argo kept on trucking last night.  Though the film’s Best Picture Oscar chances were all but dashed when Ben Affleck was snubbed for Best Director (it’s incredibly rare for a movie to win Best Picture without a Best Director nomination), the film picked up the top awards at two major guilds—the Screen Actors Guild and the Producers Guild.  Now two becomes three, as the Directors Guild Awards were held last night and Argo pulled off the hat trick by landing Affleck the Best Director DGA trophy.

There is one major precedent that everyone keeps pointing towards with regards to Argo: 1995’s Apollo 13.  That film won the PGA, DGA, and SAG awards, only to find Ron Howard left out of the Best Director Oscar nominations and it ultimately lost Best Picture to Braveheart.  Is Argo in the same boat as Apollo 13 or can it pull off the win?  Furthermore, who wins Best Director at the Oscars?  Hit the jump for more, along with the full list of DGA winners that includes Looper’s Rian Johnson for his work on Breaking Bad and Girls’ Lena Dunham.

Winners of the 66th BAFTA Awards will be announced on February 10th, and artist Jonathan Burton has drawn up posters for the Best Picture nominees Lincoln, Argo, Zero Dark Thirty, Life of Pi, and Les Miserables.  These are some nice posters, and I wish the Oscars would do something similar.  Speaking of the BAFTAs, I’m curious to see if they follow suit with the PGA Awards and the SAG Awards and give Best Picture to Argo.  Adam recently pointed out to me that this year could be like 1995 where Apollo 13 picked up the PGA, SAG, and DGA but lost out on Best Picture to Braveheart.  Of course, Apollo 13 had a Best Director nomination, and Argo doesn’t [Correction: Ron Howard was not nominated for Best Director, making the comparisons to Argo even more apt].  Competition-wise, it’s going to be an interesting Academy Awards.

Hit the jump to check out the posters.  The 85th Annual Academy Awards will be held on February 24th.

We’re nearly a month away from the 85th Academy Awards, and Oscar prognosticators now turn their attention to the various guild awards ceremonies that will be taking place over the next couple of weeks.  The guilds are a major bellwether for Oscar since the crossover between guild voters and Oscar voters is significant, and the Producers Guild Awards were handed out last night, making this already wide open race even more interesting.  Argo won the top prize at the ceremony, positioning the film as a serious Best Picture contender despite Ben Affleck’s lack of a Best Director nomination.  Hit the jump for the full list of winners and what this means for Argo’s Oscar chances.

The 2013 Golden Globes have just wrapped up.  I only watched the last hour of the ceremony because the Globes no longer have their awards season power due to voting schedule changes.  Reading tweets and Facebook posts, it seems like it was a fairly entertaining show (keep an eye out for Jodie Foster‘s acceptance speech for her Lifetime Achievement Award).  As for the winners, they were very “Globes” in that they were more populist choices that are unlikely to have much bearing on the Oscars.  Argo may have had a good night at the Globes by winning Best Picture (Drama) and Best Director, but I still think Lincoln is the picture to beat when it comes to the Academy Awards, especially since Ben Affleck was snubbed for the Best Director Oscar nomination.

Hit the jump for the full list of winners.