Final numbers have yet to be released, but “Happy Feet” appears to have beaten “Casino Royale” at the North American box-office.

Wow.

Not that a $40.6 million take for Bond 21 is in any way a bad thing, but the thought that “Happy Feet” could beat it (with an estimated $42.3 million) is a real shock.

Sure, it’s half an hour shorter and on a bajillion screens, and sure, Warner promoted the snot out of it … but, really? Word of mouth didn’t start to cripple it by Sunday morning?

Oh, and in entirely unrelated news, the Academy has announced its short list of contenders for the Best Documentary Feature award. The list of 15 titles includes such shoo-ins as “An Inconvenient Truth”, “Deliver Us from Evil” and “Dixie Chicks: Shut Up & Sing“, as well as a quartet of Iraq titles and the heavily-buzzed “Blindsight”, which naturally I managed to miss at TIFF.

“Jesus Camp” is in there, too. I still can’t believe nobody’s releasing it in Canada, what with the Ted Haggard controversy and all. Doesn’t Odeon have the domestic rights to Magnolia’s films?