It seems like over the past decade or so people have given up on Tim Burton.  After a string of successful films filled with his trademark stylistic flourishes and quirk, the auteur seemed like he stopped caring.  With his Planet of the Apes, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Corpse Bride it felt like Burton lost an emotional stake in his work.  And even though 2010′s Alice in Wonderland was his biggest commercial hit ever (a god damn billion dollars?!), it still seemed like he was phoning it in.  In 2012 (maybe in order to jump start his creative libido again) he returned to material that got him fired up.  One was his interpretation of a gothic ’60s soap opera and the other was Frankenweenie - the 3D stop motion animation based on his 1984 short.  Find out how the Disney Blu-ray fares after the jump.

The 85th Annual Academy Awards announced its slew of nominations yesterday, but today the American Cinema Editors guild has released their nominations for excellence in editing for 2012.  Nominees for the 63rd Annual ACE Eddie Awards in the dramatic category include Zero Dark Thirty, Argo, Life of Pi, Lincoln, and Skyfall, while the comedy or musical category includes Best Picture hopeful Silver Linings Playbook and Seth MacFarlane’s R-rated comedy Ted.  Argo and Zero Dark Thirty seem like the formidable competition in the dramatic category given how expertly both films layer and manage tension throughout their running times, and coincidentally they both share one of the same editors: William Goldenberg.

Hit the jump to check out the full list of nominees in the dramatic, comedy or musical, and animated categories, as well as documentary and television categories.  The 63rd Annual ACE Eddie Awards will be held on February 16th.

The nominations for the 85th Academy Awards have been announced, and it’s quite a whirlwind of nominees.  As expected, Lincoln landed the most nominations with 12, followed with Ang Lee’s Life of Pi which nabbed 11.  The big story here, though, is the Best Director category.  Shockingly, only two (two!) of the DGA nominees for Best Director made the Oscar cut: Ang Lee and Steven Spielberg.  The rest of the category was filled out by Benh Zeitlin for Beasts of the Southern Wild, David O. Russell for Silver Linings Playbook, and Michael Haneke for Amour.  It was almost guaranteed that Ben Affleck and Kathryn Bigelow would be landing nominations for Argo and Zero Dark Thirty, respectively, but shockingly neither made the cut.  Apparently those films just directed themselves.  Based off today’s nominations, it now looks like it’s (surprisingly) down to Lincoln vs. Silver Linings Playbook for the big win.

Hit the jump to check out the list of nominees, and click here to check them against my predictions (somehow I predicted the Best Picture and Supporting Actor categories perfectly).  The 85th Academy Awards will take place on February 24th.

The holidays are over, but there are plenty of new films hitting Blu-ray soon that would make perfect use of those gift cards you’ve been piling up.  Here’s a brief look at this week’s new Blu-ray releases:

• Archer: Season Three [Blu-ray] – $22.99 (43% off)
• Compliance [Blu-ray] – $19.99 (33% off)
• Dredd [3D Blu-ray + Digital Copy + UltraViolet] - $19.99 (50% off)
• Frankenweenie (Four-Disc Combo: Blu-ray 3D/Blu-ray/DVD + Digital Copy) – $27.99 (44% off)
• Frankenweenie (Two-Disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo) – $22.99 (43% off)
• Game Change (Blu-ray/DVD Combo + Digital Copy) – $17.99 (28% off)
• Hit & Run (Two-Disc Combo Pack: Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy + UltraViolet) – $22.99 (43% off)
• House at the End of the Street [Blu-ray] – $19.99 (50% off)
• Samsara [Blu-ray] – $24.99 (29% off)
• Stolen (Blu-Ray) – $14.86 (41% off)

Hit the jump for more details on the aforementioned releases.

The nominations for the 2013 Producers Guild Awards have been announced.  The PGA’s are a fairly reliable predictor of the Academy Awards, as last year all but two eventual Best Picture nominees (The Tree of Life and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close) were PGA nominees.  This year’s contenders include expected fare like Argo, Les Miserables, and Lincoln, indies such as Beasts of the Southern Wild and Moonrise Kingdom, and critical favorite Zero Dark Thirty.  The PGA’s are also fond of singling out one “popular” choice, and in this year’s case that film looks to be the excellent Skyfall

In addition to the feature films, the PGAs also announced the nominees in television.  Drama series nominees include the usual suspects like Homeland, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and Game of Thrones, while the comedy category is filled out by 30 Rock, Louie, Modern Family, and for some reason The Big Bang Theory.  Notably absent is HBO’s Girls and NBC’s brilliant Parks and Recreation.  Hit the jump to check out the full list of film and television nominees.  The 24th Annual PGA Awards will be held on January 26th.

Director Kathryn Bigelow’s drama Zero Dark Thirty continues its dominant critics awards path, as it has picked up two more Best Picture wins from the New York Film Critics Online and Boston Society of Film Critics groups, adding to its previous wins from the New York Film Critics Circle and National Board of Review.  Bigelow also won Best Director from both organizations, while Daniel Day-Lewis took home Best Actor for Lincoln.  Emmanuelle Riva won Best Actress from New York and Boston, while she shared the award in a tie with Jennifer Lawrence for Silver Linings Playbook in the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.

Los Angeles broke from the mold a bit by naming director Michael Haneke‘s devastating French-language film Amour the Best Film of the year.  They also awarded Paul Thomas Anderson Best Director for The Master and Beasts of the Southern Wild’s Dwight Henry the Best Supporting Actor honor in a couple of pleasant surprises.  Hit the jump for the full list of winners from all three critics groups.

The New York Film Critics Circle has kicked the awards race off in earnest, and the love was spread primarily between Zero Dark Thirty and Lincoln.  The drama about the hunt for Osama bin Laden took home Best Picture, Best Director for Kathryn Bigelow, and Best Cinematographer, while Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln was awarded Best Screenplay, Best Actor, and Best Supporting Actress.  The group also had a couple of left field choices with the Best Supporting Actor award going to Matthew McConaughey for Magic Mike (alright, alright, alright) and Best Actress going to Rachel Weisz for The Deep Blue Sea.  McConaughey winning the trophy was a pleasant surprise, but Weisz’s win is a tad baffling.

Hit the jump to check out the full list of winners, and click here to peruse our recent Oscar Preview features.

The Annie Awards, which honor achievement in animation, have announced their best picture nominees for 2012.  According to THR, most wide-release animated films made the cut including Brave, Frankenweenie, Hotel Transylvania, ParaNorman, Rise of the Guardians, The Pirates! Band of Misfits, and Wreck-It-Ralph.  The only independent animated movie to pick up a nomination was The Rabbi’s Cat.  With this many nominees, to lose out on a nomination is a basically slap in the face, so tough luck to The Lorax (which deserves a face-slap), Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted, and Ice Age: Continental Drift.

Keep in mind that for the best picture category, a film has to be feature length.  Otherwise, Paperman would smoke all these flicks.

We’re continuing on with our weeklong preview of the upcoming 85th Academy Awards, and after running down both acting categories it’s time to take look at some of the other races.  Today we’ll be looking at the Best Animated Feature, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Original Screenplay categories in depth, and I’ll also make some way-too-early quick picks in the technical categories.  The fun begins after the jump.

With the number of Academy screenings picking up and the holiday season fast approaching, we’re starting to get into the thick of awards season.  A full list of the animated films submitted for the Best Animated Feature Oscar consideration has now been unveiled, and it looks like we’ll see 21 films vie for the coveted trophy.  The films include the big studio releases like Brave, Frankenweenie, and Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted, as well as Studio Ghibli’s From Up on Poppy Hill and the adult-oriented A Liar’s Autobiography: The Untrue Story of Monty Python’s Graham Chapman.

It’s been a strong year for animated features, and Pixar is in no way a lock to take home the trophy for Brave given the film’s fairly lukewarm reception. It’s probably safe to assume that Brave will be still be nominated, and I’d venture to say ParaNorman and the upcoming Wreck-It Ralph and Rise of the Guardians are also pretty good bets as well.  Hit the jump to check out the full list of animated films under Academy consideration, and be sure to leave your thoughts on the Best Animated Feature race in the comments.  Nominations for the 85th Academy Awards will be announced on January 10th.

This week on The Collision, we talk about horror movies: what defines them, their past, their present, and their future.  What comes after found footage movies?  Are horror movies required to scare us?  How have classic horror films like the Universal Monsters movies changed over the years?  This all leads us into a discussion of Tim Burton‘s Frankenweenie, which proudly pays homage to classic monster movies. And as always, we finish up with our recommendations.

Click here to listen to the new episode of The Collision, click here for the previous episode (“Summer 2012 and Lawless“), click here to add the podcast to your RSS, and click here to find us on iTunes. To keep up to date with The Collision, you can follow us on Twitter at @MattGoldberg, @AdamChitwood, and @DrClawMD (Dave Trumbore). Hit the jump to check out the trailers for this week’s recommendations.

It’s a weekend box office worth celebrating, with grosses up more than 50% from 2011. That success was almost entirely due to Taken 2, which delivered an estimated $50 million from 3,661 runs for one of the highest October debuts of all time. On the other end of the spectrum, Disney’s Frankenweenie failed to impress; opening in fifth place with an estimated $11.5 million from 3,005 runs despite weeks of heavy promotion.

Frankenweenie, from director Tim Burton and screenwriter John August, is a charming, macabre and heartwarming tale, about Victor (voiced by Charlie Tahan), a young boy who, after unexpectedly losing his beloved dog Sparky, harnesses the power of science to bring his best friend back to life, but quickly faces unintended and sometimes monstrous consequences for his actions.  The voice cast also includes Catherine O’Hara, Martin Short, Martin Landau, Winona Ryder and Atticus Shaffer.

At the film’s press junket, actress Catherine O’Hara (who has also done Beetlejuice and  The Nightmare Before Christmas with Burton) spoke to Collider for this exclusive interview about her experiences working with Tim Burton as a filmmaker, how mind-blowing it was to see the final film put together, how she approached developing the voices for each of her three characters (Victor’s mom, the gym teacher and Weird Girl), getting to record with Martin Short (who plays Victor’s father), why Burton’s films are so special for so many people, and what it’s like to be a part of work that’s so enduring for the fans.  Check out what she had to say after the jump.

If you’ve followed the Top 5 for any amount of time you’ve probably already deduced that I like to use the opening paragraph in an anecdotal fashion. Whether I’m spinning a recap of my latest pop-culture excursions or using the latest wedding I’m attending as a gateway for complaining about the pop-culture excursions I’d rather be partaking of, I try and keep this space at least loosely based around entertainment. That said, this week is no different as I finally had the chance to sit down with writer/director David Ayer‘s End of Watch last night. I won’t do the film the disservice of reviewing it in two sentences, but I will say that I found Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña‘s chemistry to be excellent and the action to be consistently suspenseful/captivating. Is the script’s attempt to tie nearly every encounter the partner’s undertake into an interconnected climax a little bit of a stretch? I think so. Nevertheless, End of Watch is still a cop drama that pushes almost all of the right buttons.

But enough of my reviews in 100 words or less, in this week’s trek down memory lane is the first official image and trailer for A Good Day to Die Hard, Taken 2 interviews with Liam Neeson, Famke Janssen and more, a recap of all our James Bond / Skyfall coverage from the past week, Frankenweenie interviews with Tim Burton, Winona Ryder and more, and finally a look at some classic video games that we feel deserve an HD remake.

October’s box office got off to an impressive start on Friday with the launch of Taken 2. More than three years after Liam Neeson and his “very particular set of skills” captivated audiences in Taken, the sequel took in an estimated $18.6 million from 3,661 locations on its opening day. That puts Taken 2 on track for a $50 million first weekend – more than double what its predecessor realized in its debut and just shy of the all-time October opening record set last year by Paranormal Activity 3. After setting a new record for a September opening last weekend, Hotel Transylvania remained a force on Friday with its second-place estimate of $6.5 million. Unfortunately, that was not good news for Disney’s Frankenweenie. With its similar theme and target audience, the stop-motion animated film from director Tim Burton fell short of Hotel Transylvania: earning an estimated $3.3 million from its 3,005 locations towards what should be a $12 million opening frame. We’ll have full details tomorrow.