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Finally there's How She Move, yet another movie about dancing and the street that will drive grammaticists crazy. This probably doesn't star anyone you've heard of, and seems utterly generic. It even goes for that old trope of the big dance contest, which I thought went out of vogue with '70s sitcoms. It's hard to discount this completely since every once in awhile one of these breaks out, but I only see this one coming with about $5 million.

The big winner of last weekend was Cloverfield, which pulled in an impressive $40 million over its first three days. The rethought monster movie, told from first-person perspective, seized on a savvy viral marketing campaign and its gimmick to pack in the younger demographic, despite its total lack of stars or even recognizable actors.

In the end, it's really just an above average "big thing eats people" movie, but there's often a hunger in the marketplace for a new idea. I don't see this having huge legs, especially because of its gimmick, but I don't see it cratering either. I'll say $23 million for the second weekend, with a very good chance at winning two weekends in a row.

27 Dresses had a strong showing in the romantic comedy department, coming in second with $23 million. This makes a really strong case for Katherine Heigl as a top female box office draw, since she shared the billing in Knocked Up, and this film was almost all her. Romantic comedies typically have pretty good legs, although reviews were not kind to this one, and it's got quite the male repellent built right into it. I see this coming in with about $14 million for weekend number two.

Oscar nominations came out this week, with several of the heavy hitters still in theaters and able to take advantage of them. Among that list is There Will Be Blood, which jumps to about 900 screens, as well as re-expanding films like No Country for Old Men and Michael Clayton. Atonement also continues its expansion after bringing in a handful of nods. Typically, nominations do a lot more for films that are in the first go in the theaters than those that are getting a second kick at the can, but it depends a lot on where films got their nominations.

No Country for Old Men should see the biggest benefit of all the nominees, since it's one of the two big front runners, along with There Will Be Blood. Atonement should stay about par for the course, and I think the Michael Clayton release will be met with a bit of a yawn. However, we're talking about a range here of between $2 and $5 million for these films. The tales will be told on these films in the coming weeks, not necessarily this one.

Forecast: Weekend of January 25-27, 2008
Rank	Film	Number of Sites	Changes in Sites from Last	Estimated Gross ($)
1	Cloverfield	3,411	0	23.3
2	Rambo	2,751	New	21.4
3	27 Dresses	3,074	+14	14.2
4	Meet the Spartans	2,605	New	13.5
5	The Bucket List	2,915	0	9.9
6	Juno	2,426	-108	9.1
7	Untraceable	2,368	New	6.7
8	National Treasure 2	2,154	-809	5.2
9	How She Move	1,531	New	5.2
10	Mad Money	2,470	0	4.9

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