With one of Oscar's biggest players entering the box office ring this past weekend, the most resounding breakthrough rumbled just outside the top ten. The usual brawlers were there: that Michael Jackson documentary, a fantasy movie about a child and some monsters, some film about goats and George Clooney, and of course Disney's latest attempt to reinvent Charles Dickinson, despite Vanessa Williams' success with that initiative years ago. While Disney's A Christmas Carol leads the pack on numbers alone, the $200 million production budget saw only a seventh of that money trickle back with about $31 million opening sales. Many are terming the film a "flop" even though there's still over a month until Christmas. Precious is enjoying the opposite fate.

Look. I know Mo'Nique and I didn't see eye-to-eye in the past, but that doesn't mean I think less of her as an actress. In fact, I'm still pulling for her to pick up an Oscar win, possibly as a tasteful eff you to less-deserving victors of yore. Also as a bird-flip to the Academy who probably assume that with her unique body of work, she'd never get within spitting distance to even a Best Supporting Actress nomination. In fact, she and I celebrate our birthdays within a day of each other, so I could think of no one more fitting to uncork a bottle of champagne with. Another reason to pop the champy? Today, Precious opens everywhere (well, New York and Los Angeles anyway). Many of you are probably coordinating your happy hours accordingly. But somewhere in your post-movie regiment this evening, you may need to work in a restaurant conducive to eating your emotions, as the film is set to leave salt deposits on your face. Five suggestions after the jump.

Inside midtown Manhattan’s Bistro Milano, television screens broadcast an Italian soccer game, around which the majority of servers and patrons have crowded to gasp, cheer, and clap in unity. But first-time actress Gabourey Sidibe, oblivious, drowns out the clatter with her frequent snort-punctuated laughter. “My roommate and I love Chipotle. It’s so awesome!” she says, chuckling. “We go around noon, and we’re like, How badass would it be if we got a Corona with our burrito -- we’re such derelicts.” Sidibe’s definition of what makes a derelict couldn’t be further from the abuse she suffers as the title character in Lee Daniel’s Precious. Alongside Mo’Nique as her bilious mother, Sidibe plays a teenager who is twice impregnated by her HIV-positive father. The film, a dark but hopeful story about urban poverty and spiritual endurance, was produced by Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry, and will quite possibly garner Oscar nominations for its two leads. Here, the charming and spirited Sidibe explains the magic of being in the same room with Oprah, Mariah and, um, Steve Buscemi. (For more on Sidibe, check out the upcoming December/January issue of BlackBook -- this is just the gossipy stuff.)

2012 is Roland Emmerich's big destruction epic where after Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, Godzilla, and Stargate, he basically threw up his hands, said "fuckit, bring on The Four Horsemen and kill 'em all." Which he tried to do in his other movies, but they weren't "Kill 'Em All" enough, so he decided to make 2012, the selling point of which is the world is definitely going to end, there's no question that it won't, it's just a matter of why and how and how we're going to kill them and who we're going to kill, and let's do this shit. And after we do that shit, you know the world lives, because we're gonna make a goddamned TV show about 2013. As a fan of the End of the World genre, and as someone who counts the epic genius of Independence Day as a Great American Movie, I can no longer stand by and allow Roland Emmerich to cash in on making shit movies anymore. From the tyranny of bad End of the World moviemaking, today is our Independence Day. Here's your 2012 spoiler.

In 2012 Roland Emmerich lays the following things to waste: the Washington Monument, the White House, Yosemite National Park, the city of Los Angeles, Christ the Redeemer, the Vatican, the Himalayas, Las Vegas, Air Force One, and a Buddhist Monastery. Notably absent from the carnage (besides the Kaaba in Mecca) is the fair city of New York, which Emmerich vaporized in Independence Day, flattened in Godzilla, and froze in The Day After Tomorrow. So we have one question: why?

By performing enough spells to burn mid-sized Prussian villages to the ground, flighty mogulista Madonna is now finally rid of ex-husband Guy Ritchie. Which frees her up to try her own hand at being an auteur. This works well! Because there won't be awkward bedroom exchanges that find Ritchie sulking, spouting, "Oh. I'm the filmmaker in this family, but people obviously like your crappy films better than my crappy films! Harrumph," and Madonna groaning and offering, "No, no sweetheart, you're a special person," as she applies witch hazel to her chapped cheeks and swigs a half bottle of Maalox before nodding off. Oh, those olds and their Maalox. Projects that will suffer premature ends then: the album campaign for her umpteenth greatest hits and some finishing school for Malawi girls that she was heading up she was heading up. The barge is already headed for another port, and so on.

Actor Paul Reubens is ready to dust off his gray suit and resurrect the bow-tied, bonkers Pee-Wee Herman in a traveling live stage show, before appearing in two new films by indie envelope-pushers David O. Russell and Todd Solondz. Here, the manic man-boy blows his big-top with a list of things that get him bent out of shape.

So the folks responsible for the Transformers and G.I. Joe franchises are now attempting to revive Jem & the Holograms. Oh there will be blood (but also glitter)! Hollywood has a lousy history manufacturing girly franchises (see Catwoman.) But it's all baby steps. Toy giants Hasbro are issuing a new line of Jem dolls to test the commercial waters. And if those dolls sink into oblivion, then we can all heave a collective sigh of relief. But if those dolls float, even butter-side down, then we're in for a world of trouble.

When I started working on this post, it was intended as a sort of think-piece regarding Uwe Boll’s Darfur and how its serious, self-important trailer pitches a genocide drama leavened here and there with gunplay and the attempted revival of Edward Furlong’s career. The thing was coming together just fine -- if a bit drably, I think -- until a quick e-jaunt over to Sci Fi Wire turned up a photograph that totally derailed me. It is, as title of this piece promises, a picture of Carrie Fisher and her body double, sunbathing on the "Tatooine" set of Return of the Jedi. Uwe Boll will have to wait.

Unlike her younger self Megan Fox, nobody doubts the acting abilities of Angelina Jolie. You know that shiny gold man she keeps in that cardboard box in the attic? Well, it's called an Academy Award, and she won it for being an excellent pretender. Today, we get our first look at Angie's latest exercise in make-believe, in the trailer for her espionage movie Salt. Jolie plays a CIA agent who is wrongly accused of spying for the Russians, and she gets chased around New York City by people who may or may not be her friends. Angelina Jolie's fame is so mind-fucking that it's hard to imagine her as anything else other than the mother of Brad Pitt's International School of Children, but her talent is so huge that she can vanish into just about any role. After the jump, we have your free pass to Acting 101, taught to you by none other than Angelina Jolie herself.