It seems strangely appropriate that “Avatar” should break the two-billion-dollar ceiling in the same week that Disney shutters Miramax, doesn’t it? Thirty years of indie-film history ends in a whimper as the giant studio picture keeps rolling over everything in its path.

I hope this doesn’t affect the releaseability of the remaining Miramax acquisitions. I’d really like to see “Dean Spanley” emerge from the vault one of these days. So would Sam Neill, actually; we commiserated about its status at TIFF last year.

Maybe we should take up a collection.

Kathryn Bigelow just won the DGA award, which means she’s likely to take the Best Director Oscar, too — assuming she gets nominated, of course.

I’m still not sure she will; “The Hurt Locker” is very good movie, and the best thing she’s done in twenty-odd years, but it strikes me as exactly the sort of unconventional genre work that gets shafted on a regular basis by the Academy.

I made that very point, and several others, in a post for NOW Daily just the other day. Take a look, if you’re so inclined … or just weigh in below. It’s all about the conversation.

Consider the Hollywood romantic comedy. Our lives would be very different without it, because we wouldn’t have all these ridiculous expectations of love, courtship and the pageantry of weddings.

It’s not that I don’t believe in romance — it’s worked out pretty well for me so far, actually. But there’s definitely an unrealistic standard being set by the rom-com industry.

With my latest MSN Movies gallery, I use the release of “When in Rome” to consider the world of the rom-com, and how it doesn’t always measure up to the world we inhabit. Like, never.

Join me, won’t you?

With just days to go before the Oscar nominations, the week’s movie selection is the usual mixed bag of late-January studio dumping and indie titles jockeying for screen space. And since I’ve got a long day ahead of me, let’s get right to it!

“Body“: Rossana Foglia and Rubens Rewald’s complex Brazilian tale of death, obsession and identity that somehow refuses to resolve into a thriller. Instead, it does whatever the hell it wants to do, and lets us draw our own conclusions. Kinda invigorating, actually.

“La Donation“: Bernard Emond completes his trilogy of misery with this airless tale of a Montreal doctor (Elise Guilbault) who finds new purpose working in a remote village. It’s like “Doc Hollywood” or “Cars” — only, you know, dour and suffocating.

“Edge of Darkness“: In which we all get to watch as Martin Campbell turns his own terrific BBC miniseries into a crappy Mel Gibson revenge picture. My review should be up later today (UPDATE: there it is!), but the bottom line? Stay home with the DVD this weekend instead.

“Grown Up Movie Star”: Like most Canadians, I was utterly unaware of this movie until it got into Sundance. (Strange how no drums were beating for Vincenzo Natali’s “Splice”, the Canadian Sundance entry I actually want to see.) I’m still in the dark, having had a conflict for the press screening; Susan liked it, though Jason was less enthused.

“When in Rome”: I know Kristen Bell will probably never get another role as good as “Veronica Mars”, but that doesn’t mean she should throw herself into every romantic comedy that comes her way. “Forgetting Sarah Marshall”, good. “Couples Retreat”, not good. See how that works?

“The Yes Men Fix the World“: Andy and Mike are at it again, tilting against corporate wind machines with little more than fake websites, a strong sense of moral outrage and some truly monstrous pranks. Bless their pointy little heads.

Seriously, though, I hope you’re all planning to stay indoors this weekend. It’s harsh out there.

Why won’t “Orphan” die?

Jaume Collett-Serra’s terrible, terrible thriller — the one where Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard adopt a child and suffer terribly for their compassionate gesture — has clawed its way from the bottom of last year’s worst-movie lists into a sort of guilty pleasure. And not just a guilty one; when I did that radio spot with my brother last month, one of the callers named it one of the three best movies of 2009.

No. No no no no no, for the love of god no. “Orphan” is a lot of things — demented, unbalanced, preposterous, self-serious, ludicrous, embarrassing — but “best”? No. Unless that “Best” is immediately followed by “Squandering of Talent”.

Today, Zack Handlen spins up the DVD for the latest installment of the AV Club’s I Watched This On Purpose — and what he finds may chill your soul. Or, if you choose to watch any of the clips embedded in the piece, you may laugh until you pull a stomach muscle.

According to industry estimates — and this Hollywood Reporter article — “Avatar” is set to break “Titanic’s” box-office record sometime today.

The 3D experience with the giant blue cat people will overtake “Titanic’s” global gross of $1.843 billion, and keep right on going.

Seriously, there’s no end in sight: It’s still dominating the charts in North America, having just logged its sixth straight week at number one.

The last movie to do that, by the way? “Titanic”. Has any other filmmaker ever been able to duplicate a blockbuster hit so perfectly? I mean, sure, Cameron’s an engineer, but this is ridiculous.

In other news, Jeff Bridges won another acting award for “Crazy Heart”, so that was nice.

When Forbes.com story runs a story about “Hollywood’s Biggest Flops“, well, how can you resist? Until you actually read the piece, and see the method by which the writer came up with her formula:

To calculate our list we looked at movies that featured big-name stars (like Penn, Eddie Murphy and Mike Myers) but failed to earn back their budgets at the box office. We used numbers from Box Office Mojo and IMDB to get estimated budgets and earnings. We then figured out what percentage of its budget each film failed to earn back. We’re only looking at box office revenue here, not DVD and TV sales, which can often make up for box office shortfalls. But we’re also not including the cost of advertising, which often adds another one-third or more to a film’s budget.

So, production budget minus global box-office. But only for movies with “big-name stars”. Oh, and the budget estimates were taken from the IMDb, which is not always the most reliable source for anything. Indeed, it’s so unreliable that the author herself chooses not to trust it when it comes to Marc Forster’s “Stay”:

IMDB reports the film’s budget at an estimated $50 million, but that seems incredibly high. We gave the producers at News Corp. studio Twentieth Century Fox the benefit of the doubt and estimated the budget at $30 million. Even at that level the film failed to earn back 73% of its budget at the box office.

So what else made the list? “All the King’s Men”, “The Invasion”, “The Express” and a couple of Eddie Murphy comedies. Oh, and “The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford”, which earned $15 million on a budget of $30 million — which is actually quite an accomplishment for a three-hour minimalist Western that was barely supported by its studio.
But wait! The landscape isn’t littered with as many bodies as you might think:

One film that surprisingly didn’t make our list was 2007’s Evan Almighty, starring Steve Carell. The Universal Pictures follow-up to the successful 2003 film Bruce Almighty is commonly cited in Hollywood as a huge flop. The film cost an estimated $175 million to produce and earned $173 million at the box office, meaning it missed covering its production budget by only 1%. The film was still a disappointment for the studio, which expected great things from the comedy. But compared to the films on our list, it was a relative hit.

Right. Except that it was a massive bomb. The standard line is that a movie needs to gross three times its budget to break even; “Evan Almighty” didn’t even come close. And is it really appropriate to weigh a failed studio tentpole on the same scale as something like “School for Scoundrels”, which makes the list because people still think Billy Bob Thornton is a big-name star?

“The Golden Compass”, which cost roughly the same amount as “Evan Almighty”, recovered from its domestic face-plant (total North American box-office: $70 million) by grossing $300 million overseas — and even with that considerable take, it was still considered a failure.

And where’s “Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li”? $12.7 million worldwide on a budget of $50 million … come on, that totally qualifies. And Michael Clarke Duncan is at least as big a star as Steve Carell.

Stories like this make my head hurt.

With “Legion” pitting man against angel at the megaplex this weekend, I just had to build an MSN movie gallery about other theological thrillers.

… and dammit, I just realized I forgot “Stigmata”. But in my defense, I bet you did, too.