In about five-and-a-half years, the world will supposedly end. Don't worry, though, because it will be a lot of fun. That is the impression I get from Nickelodeon Films, anyway. The kid-friendly division of Paramount is making an action-adventure for the whole family that is based on the idea that the apocalypse is coming in December of 2012. Called simply 2012, the movie will be about a family vacation during that fateful month when, according to the Mayan calendar, and some UFO theorists, something devastating is expected to take place. 2012 will be written by Tom Astle and Matt Ember, and it will probably be directed by Tom Dey -- all three of whom were responsible for Failure to Launch.

This is the second movie we've heard about so far that has to do with the Mayan doomsday prediction. The first is an adaptation of Whitley Streiber's upcoming book 2012: The War for Souls, which Michael Bay is making for Warner Bros. Though Nickelodeon's 2012 should be much lighter in tone, I have to assume that the whole premise will still be a bit scary for the intended audience -- unless kids these days just aren't afraid of the end of the world as much as I was (and honestly still am). According to Variety, those involved with 2012 have some time before they'll be able to get started on the movie. Currently, Astle and Ember are writing the direct-to-video spin-off Get Smarter: Bruce and Lloyd Out of Control and reportedly Dey is expected to be committing to other projects ahead of this one. The trio better not take too long, though, because they're running out of time. In only six years, either the movie will lose all relevance, or we won't be around to see it.

The Irish film director Jim Sheridan (My Left Foot) once told me that people don't really watch movies; they listen to dialogue to get the gist of the story. For example, if in his movie In America (2003), a little girl enters the New York apartment and exclaims, "It's huge!" then everybody complains that the apartment was too big for the family to afford. The dialogue suggests the review. Sheridan makes a good point. Certainly there were a handful of recent movies that relied on their images more than on dialogue, and they received mostly negative notices, or were flatly ignored (The New World, The Intruder, The Black Dahlia, Marie Antoinette, etc.). But there's another factor in movies that gets even less notice. I promised myself a year ago that I would spend more time listening to musical scores while watching movies to determine how effective they are. But more often than not, after the fact, I don't even remember hearing a score.

With only a week away from announcing the Oscar nominations, and with no apparent need to do so, the Academy has pared down its list of eligible foreign-language films from 61 to nine. This is the first time the Academy has shortlisted the category, but the decision to do so falls in line with a number of other changes pertaining to the category.

Those changes, which I told you about last summer, are a good thing for at least two of the nine films. Water and Black Book each would have been disqualified in previous years, but now their language issues are in full compliance with the rules. Of course, had they not made the cut, there might have been some happier countries in Asia or Australia, the two continents not represented (Antarctica may get some love from Happy Feet's animation nomination). It is too bad that Japan couldn't claim Golden Globe winner Letters From Iwo Jima and also too bad for Oz that Ten Canoes wasn't chosen.

The Academy has shortlisted another seven finalists for one of its award categories, and at least one movie on the list was a surprise to me. Click, which is considered by many critics to be one of the worst movies of 2006 (though is popular with "the people"), has been recognized for its achievement in makeup, and depending on how the Academy's makeup branch votes on January 20, it could even garner an Oscar nomination.

Of course, a lot of bad movies are nominated for Oscars, particularly in specific artistic and technical categories like Best Makeup, but typically with this category the nominations are obvious. 2000 winner How the Grinch Stole Christmas, for example, is perfectly apparent as having distinguishable makeup, if little else of worth. What does Click have in the way of significant makeup? Well, there is some special aging makeup -- designed by the master, Rick Baker, no less -- but does anybody, including the voting makeup professionals, really pay attention to aging makeup anymore? As I think should be the case with any Oscar category, the award should honor outstanding, innovative, monumental and pioneering work. Nothing less.

I forgive readers for not reading completely through my post on international box office. It was a very long post, and at least one commenter decided that its information was boring. But if you did make it to the bottom, you may have seen a story that I thought to be slightly interesting, if not significant: Consumer groups in Italy were protesting the all-ages rating stamped to Apocalypto.

It didn't seem too important because consumer complaints are made all the time. But now it is more significant because the consumer groups have won, at least temporarily. An Italian court has overruled the Italian censors by placing an age restriction on the film. At least until a hearing commences on January 17, children under the age of 14 will not be allowed to see the film. According to the country's censors, the violence in the movie is historical, artistic and "a way of life" and therefore not inappropriate, but the one consumer group that brought the case to court thought differently (our own James thinks the violence is "clammy and silly stuff -- boring and blood-soaked and incredibly obvious"). Here in the States the rating was R, and similarly restrictive ratings were placed on the film in other markets. After this ruling, only Russia still lacks an age limit for admission.

It was a good year for much of Hollywood, but a bad year for A Good Year. The Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe team-up only grossed $7 million domestically, and has been labeled a flop. Variety has listed the major box office disappointments for 2006, and interestingly enough, a few of them have to do with water. The appropriately bad way to describe their fate, then, is to say that they drowned. Flushed Away, The Lady in the Water, Poseidon and The Fountain (okay, I didn't see it, but I don't think there's an actual water-type fountain), just couldn't swim. Here's some more bad puns: Sharon Stone didn't have the Basic Instict 2 stay away from a dumb sequel; Producer Dean Devin said, "Flyboys," to his new movie but it crashed and burned; All the King's Men stayed away from this remake, and so did everyone else; Audiences let their Freedomland in other activities besides seeing a movie starring Julianne Moore and Samuel L. Jackson. There's no pun needed for The Wicker Man; it just sucked.

Unlike the biggest flops of all time, none of these movies from 2006 broke a studio or likely ended a career. Ridley Scott and Wolfgang Petersen (director of Poseidon) have had flops before, but they can be forgiven for "flukes" every once in awhile since they usually turn out successful work. Plus, their films did okay business overseas. International box office saves more flops these days than back in the times of the really big bombs. Most of the other filmmakers represented are also probable to bounce back, or at least fall back on their other talents. Joe Roth (Freedomland) has already returned to producing. Steve Zaillian (All the King's Men) is back to writing. Tony Bill (Flyboys) may continue acting. Michael Caton-Jones (Basic Instinct 2) will eventually make another crappy film. M. Night Shyamalan (Lady in the Water) might need to be forced to work on somebody else's script for once, but he isn't going to disappear anytime soon, unfortunately.

Well, a few weeks ago I made a prediction about Apocalypto's prospective box office as a side note in a review. And I was wrong. Not about the idea that Apocalypto would be a flop -- more on that later -- but to do so in the first place. First of all, a review is no place for box-office prognostication -- it's foolish to pretend movies don't cost, and make, money, but that's not my beat, frankly. I was just plain angry after Apocalypto -- it's one of those movies that is, to me, so bad it doesn't just represent the presence of bad storytelling but also the absence of whatever four movies we could have had in its place.

I mean, Apocalypto was budgeted at $40 million -- not a lot by modern standards, but a heck of a lot when you consider that it was in fact shot on video. (I'd hesitate to guess what a shot-on-film Apocalypto would have cost -- $60 million? A hundred million?) Add in the usual 50% of the orginal budget for prints and advertising – the cost of posters, commercials, and the shipping and manufacture of heavy, celluloid prints – and you get approximately $60 million total. And all I can think of is the four $10 million dollar movies you could have gotten instead -- give $10 to Karen Moncrieff, $10 to David Gordon Green, $10 to Kasi Lemmons and $10 to Don McKellar, say -- and have gotten at least one film more interesting than Apocalypto. As for my suggestion that Apocalypto was going to be a flop? (Actually, what I said was "(Shot for approximately $40 million, it's nearly impossible to imagine Apocalypto making more than a quarter of that investment back.)") So, if we look at the numbers? Or, precisely, a budget of $40 million with a P&A investment of another $20 mil, as compared to the initial two-week box office of $28 million? Right now, Apocalypto's made 50% of what it cost -- better than some movies do, more than others. (And my prediction was wrong, and I'll say that. It wasn't that far wrong, though, and I don't think Apocalypto's suddenly gonna sell tickets like a house on fire, either.) But, frankly, the even more telling statistic isn't Apocalypto's 46% drop-off in box office, which is pretty much a shellacking -- it's the fact that Mel Gibson's prior film before Apocalypto opened to $83 million. And if your last film opened to $83 million and your newest film opened to $15 that, then, makes your new film a flop -- a big, fat flop -- that lands broken and splay-legged on the cold, hard ground of the court of public opinion with the unspinnable thud of incontrovertible fact.

Math is fun,

J.

Well, another year is in the can folks, and what do we movie lovers have to show for it? Actually, we have a lot. 2006 has seen it's highs (Martin Scorsese gives us his best flick since 'Goodfellas'; a "racist" Kazakh reporter draws the fury of thousands, bags Pamela Anderson -- literally -- and scores box office gold) -- and its lows (Sidney Lumet's 'Find Me Guilty' is guilty ... of sucking; all couples who go see 'Date Movie' together break up within two weeks). I was lucky enough to see a whole lot of good flicks and only a moderate level of what we experts like to call crap. Below, I present my picks for the Top 10 Movies of 2006.* My fellow Moviefone editors will be posting their own lists later this week, so remember to check back for those. Happy Holidays!

10. Children of Men
Director Alfonso Cuaron follows up his masterful 'Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban' adaptation with a film about a war-torn future world in which women no longer bear children. Not surprisingly, the flick is bleak and most certainly not for kids. But its hopeful message is more powerful than a hormonal teenaged wizard hopped up on gillyweed.

9. The Descent
This lean, mean thriller about six sexy female spelunkers battling bloodthirsty cave mutants avoids all the classic horror-film pitfalls: lame plot twists, gratuitous shower scenes (OK, I secretly approve of these) and a silly hook-wielding killer. Plus, it oozes with a certain quality lacking from so many horror pics these days: actual horror.

8. Stranger Than Fiction
Will Ferrell tones down his shtick and reaps the benefits in this funny and poignant tale about an IRS agent who awakes one day to find that his life is being narrated by an author bent on killing him. The cornerstone of the movie -- the budding romance between Ferrell and the baker (Maggie Gyllenhaal) he's auditing -- is so sweet you'll want to start dating a baker just so you can bring her "flours."

7. Apocalypto
Say what you will about Mel Gibson, but the guy took a cast of mostly Yucatec-speaking non-actors and a topic (the downfall of the Mayan civilization) that isn't exactly hot-button and made a two-and-a-half-hour film that's gorgeous, captivating, unique, supremely violent and, frankly, awesome.

6. Casino Royale
Finally, a James Bond flick where 007 is a real guy who bleeds when the bad guys cut him, scars when the love of his life hurts him and wins the day with brut force and smarts rather than gadgets. It sounds like blasphemy, but Daniel Craig might be the best Bond ever. Yes, even better than George Lazenby.

5. Thank You for Smoking
Writer-director Jason Reitman has done something awe-inspiring with his adaptation of Christopher Buckley's satiric novel: He's made the smug, self-righteous chief lobbyist for Big Tobacco into a -- wait for it -- sympathetic character. For this, he owes no small debt to Aaron Eckhart, who imbues said lobbyist with equal parts piss, vinegar and vulnerability. Sounds gross, but it goes down smooth.

4. Borat
Despite offending just about every ethnic, religious, political and gender group known to man, woman or goat, Sacha Baron Cohen's improvisational road-trip comedy was a runaway hit and hands-down the funniest flick of the year. By the time the credits roll, you'll want to make sexytime with this moviefilm. Niiice.

3. Little Miss Sunshine
Dysfunctional family dramedies have become something of a cliché these days (damn you, 'Family Stone,' for being the nail in the coffin!), but the yellow-VW-van-driving Hoovers somehow managed to weasel their way into my heart nonetheless. Every performance -- from Steve Carell's gay, suicidal Proust scholar to Alan Arkin's drug-snorting, curse-spewing grandpa with a heart of gold to Paul Dano's mute, Nietzsche-loving pilot wannabe -- deserves an award. And, more importantly, despite their Grand-Canyon-deep flaws, each character is, at his core, good and intensely likeable. You'll laugh, you'll cry and you'll go wild for the film's finale, set to none other than Rick James' 'Superfreak' -- because they're the Hoovers, bitch!

2. Pan's Labyrinth
Fantasy and reality -- harsh reality, actually -- collide in director Guillermo del Toro's captivating yarn about a 10-year-old named Ophelia (the brilliant Ivana Baquero) who, at the behest of a faun named Pan, undertakes a harrowing quest to protect her family at the tail end of the Spanish Civil War. I'd say it's a fairy tale for adults, but not too many fairy tales feature a peasant being bludgeoned to death with a wine bottle. Still, it's beautiful, hopeful and more heartbreaking than anything I've seen in a long, long while. If you don't cry at the end, you have no heart in your hollow tin chest.

1. The Departed
Martin Scorsese's blood-soaked, cuss-filled urban morality tale about two undercover moles on opposite sides of the law (one a cop infiltrating the mob, the other a mobster posing as a cop) boasts a pitch-perfect script, some of the best actors in the biz (DiCaprio, Damon, Nicholson, Wahlberg, Baldwin) at the very top of their game and an ending so powerful it'll knock the wind out of you like a Louisville Slugger to the nards.

Honorable Mentions
Babel
Brick
Half Nelson
The Illusionist
Inside Man
The Last Kiss
The Prestige
Slither
Superman Returns
United 93

*Note: A few films that might have made this list were left off because I was not able to see them in time. These include, but are not limited to, 'Dreamgirls,' 'Notes on a Scandal' and 'Letters From Iwo Jima.'

POST: Do you agree with these picks?

POST: What are your favorite movies of 2006?

What's that joke about the talking farm animal who gets caught in a web and can't seem to move anywhere? Turns out I was way off on my predictions this week, as The Pursuit of Happyness held on to its early lead and finished with a very respectable $27 million. Sure, it's not the biggest opening for a Will Smith film, but you have to hand it to the guy (and his son) for beating two highly anticipated kids films. (Was Charlotte's Web highly anticipated? I don't even remember.) Oh, but Smith and Smith Jr. weren't the only ones who had a marvelous weekend ... and, for those of you who have friends at Sony, you might want to act really nice towards them this holiday season seeing as their bonuses will be ginormous.

With its 13th number one opening this year (the most ever for a studio in a single year), Sony has grossed $1.573 billion at the domestic box office -- yes, the most ever for a studio in a single year. What's that joke about the guy at Sony with a drug habit who was just awarded a ginormous holiday bonus? With that said, Eragon managed to pull off a decent $23 million landing it in sole possession of second place (But is it enough to continue the trilogy?). And what the hell happened to Charlotte's Web? $12 million? A lousy $12 million? Dakota? Are you there? Do you see this girl? Did you not smile enough during the film? Heck, your smile alone should guarantee at least $17 million. Those Happy Feet ($8.5 million) penguins and The Holiday ($8.2 million) rounded out the top five. And, although curiosity and Braveheart fans helped it walk away with last week's number one spot, Apocalypto dropped down to sixth place this week, finishing with $7.7 million.

Full numbers after the jump.

While surfing online this afternoon, I stumbled upon three pretty funny videos and wondered, "Gee, some of the readers over at Cinematical might enjoy these." Okay, I lied -- first I wondered whether or not I had any food in the fridge, and then came the videos. Check it out:

• Lots and lots of buzz is surrounding a few of the performances in Todd Field's Little Children, but did you ever wonder what the little children are saying about Little Children? Granted, the film itself is in no way targeted towards little children, but there is this comical teaser trailer over on YouTube called Little Sam's Promo for Little Children. Basically, it's just some kid telling us what the critics had to say about the film, but for some reason it made me laugh ... in that, "am I laughing because it's funny or because I'm really really bored" kind of way. [via MCN]
• We already brought you one fake Apocalypto trailer, in which its creator merged the Mel Gibson film with that Zach Braff film, The Last Kiss. Well, Saturday Night Live (God bless their little hearts for still trying to be funny after all these years) came up with their own fake trailer. And, although they're extremely late to the game with the anti-Jew jokes, it's still better than 94% of the crap that show shovels out each week. [via Hollywood Wiretap]
• It's not just audiences who are pissed about spending money on the recent horror flick Turistas, the people of Brazil (where the film was shot) are all up in arms over the nature of the pic and are afraid it will prevent people from visiting. Of course there's your standard boycott from one group, and Paris Filmes (the indie distributor releasing Turistas in Brazil) has already said they will show a text before each screening that claims Paris "is against anything that harms the image of Brazil." To further the protest, some folks got together to create this animated cartoon called Turistas 2, which reverses the roles and shows what happens when two Brazilian tourists visit America. As you can imagine, hilarity (and President Bush) ensues. (Note: Foul language included within) [via MCN]