Universal, which endured a lackluster year at the box office in 2004, has started off the year with a bang, capturing almost half the theatrical gross revenue over the weekend with first-place Meet the Fockers ($28.5 million) and second-place White Noise ($24.1 million). Both films beat analysts' forecasts, with Fockers dropping just 32 percent from the week before, a fact, Universal distribution chief Nikki Rocco said, which demonstrated that it "still has a great deal of playability in front of it." More surprising, however, was the monstrous box-office take for the supernatural thriller White Noise. Said Rocco: "The unexpected success of White Noise can be attributed to Universal Pictures' marketing group, whose on-the-mark materials and campaign really got the film out there and created a 'must see' feeling in the marketplace. This terrific weekend is a really great start to 2005 for Universal Pictures."

The top ten films over the weekend, according to final figures compiled by Exhibitor Relations (figures in parentheses represent total gross to date): 1. Meet The Fockers, Universal, $28,498,160, 3 Wks. ($204,297,870); 2. White Noise, Universal, $24,113,565, (New); 3. The Aviator, Miramax, $7,492,647, 4 Wks. ($42,798,842); 4. Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, Paramount, $7,438,867, 4 Wks. ($105,568,980); 5. Fat Albert, 20th Century Fox, $5,748,443, 3 Wks. ($41,022,439); 6. Ocean's Twelve, Warner Bros., $5,310,434, 5 Wks. ($115,312,023); 7. Spanglish, Sony, $4,251,776, 5 Wks. ($37,508,732); 8. National Treasure, Disney, $4,250,658, 8 Wks. ($160,521,536); 9. The Phantom of the Opera, Warner Bros., $3,420,307, 4 Wks. ($21,548,803); 10. The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, Disney, $2,744,639, 5 Wks. ($19,449,138).

Sideways picked up a new wagon-load of trophies Monday as the nation's top broadcast critics named it the best movie of 2004. It also received awards for best supporting actor (Thomas Haden Church) and supporting actress (Virginia Madsen), acting ensemble and writer (Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor). But the Critics' Choice Award for best director went to Martin Scorsese for The Aviator. Jamie Foxx took the best actor award for his performance in Ray, and Hilary Swank won the best actress award for her performance in Million Dollar Baby.

The video-rental chain Movie Gallery said Monday that it had reached a deal to acquire Hollywood Entertainment, the parent of the Hollywood Video chain, for $850 million. Analysts expected that the deal would be challenged by the nation's leading chain, Blockbuster, which has also offered a deal to Hollywood, the No. 2 chain. (Movie Gallery is No. 3.) Blcokbuster CEO John Antioco said Monday that he was "assessing the situation."

The trial of a shareholders' lawsuit against the Walt Disney Co. is resuming in Georgetown, DE today (Tuesday), in what is expected to be the final week of the two-month-long legal battle. The shareholders are seeking the return of $140 million paid to former president Michael Ovitz when he was fired from the company in 1996.

The lead film critic of the New York Daily News has taken Michael Moore to task for ditching an appearance at the New York Film Critics Circle dinner awards ceremony where he would have picked up a Best Documentary award for Fahrenheit 9/11 and instead flying to California to receive the favorite movie award on the televised People's Choice Awards. Saying that Moore's actions deserved an award for "Slight of the Year," Jack Mathews commented, "He chose the nonaward over the award, the patronizing TV show over a dinner with peers, the photo op over the credibility op. He chose to patronize the public as bastions of good taste, and to pretend that his anti-Bush screed had captured the fancy of a nation." Mathews remarked that it is unclear to him how Fahrenheit won the top award for favorite film. "Typically," he noted,"the film that sells the most tickets wins this award." Other analysts have pointed out that this year the producers of the show altered its selection procedure, ending their deal with the Gallup organization to conduct a scientific poll of moviegoers and instead conducting a vote on the Internet, subjecting the voting process to politicking and the equivalent of ballot-box stuffing.

The British box office rose 4 percent in 2004 to a record $1.58 billion. Today's (Tuesday) London Daily Telegraph quoted analysts as saying that the figure was especially encouraging since the year failed to produce any runaway blockbusters. Unlike the U.S., which also saw a slight rise in overall revenue, attendance figures in the U.K. were also up, rising to 156.8 million versus 148.5 million in 2003, according to the newspapers, which cited figures from Neilsen EDI. The three top films of the year were Shrek 2 with $90.32 million; Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban with $86.38 million and Bridget Jones and the Edge of Reason (no figure provided).

CBS suffered a humiliating blow Monday when it was forced to fire four key members of its news organization after a panel headed by former U.S. Attorney General Richard Thornburgh and former Associated Press chief Louis Boccardi issued a report chastising the news division for its handling of a 60 Minutes report about George W. Bush's National Guard service. Appearing on the PBS program NewsHour Monday, both men indicated that they could not blame political bias for the flawed story. Thornburgh commented: "If you're looking for a villain in this story, we have one. It's haste; the haste with which this program was put together short cut a lot of the necessary vetting that had to be done in order to authenticate the whole process." Nevertheless, he added, "probably the worst exercise of judgment was in the contact between Mary Mapes, the producer, and the John Kerry campaign." Added Boccardi: "I don't see any way that you can justify that." Asked why the report did not allege political bias, Thornburgh replied, "We didn't want to make the same mistake that was made in the original broadcast, that is, to state an assertion that we couldn't prove." Still, the report did not sit well with several media analysts. Andrew Tyndall, who writes the influential Tyndall Report on television news, pointed out that the findings devotes little attention to the role of CBS News chief Andrew Heyward or Dan Rather, who fronted the piece, in the debacle. It does note that Heyward had told told CBS News Vice President Betsy West, who was among those fired on Monday (along with Mapes, 60 Minutes producer Josh Howard, and Mary Murphy, his top deputy), to "defend every syllable" of the story and that she had failed to do so. "The panel concludes it is her fault. Heyward's management style is not addressed," Tyndall wrote. Likewise, he noted, the report observed that Rather at the time had been overworked covering the Republican convention and a hurricane "while squeezing in a couple of hours" for the 60 Minutes piece. Wrote Tyndall: "We see a once-major news division operating on a shoestring. The panel does not address the extent to which CBS News' errors arise from its management's decisions to scale back its resources -- decisions made under Heyward's leadership." CBS Chairman Les Moonves did not address that issue in his statement about the matter on Monday or in an interview with today's (Tuesday) New York Times. "This is a rude awakening for CBS News," he told the newspaper, "and the CBS News culture has to change."

The Directors Guild of America has included the late Christopher Reeve among its nominees for a DGA award in its made-for-TV movie category. Reeve, who died last October, received the nod for his direction of The Brooke Ellison Story, about a woman who was left paralyzed following a car crash. Other nominees were Robert Altman, nominated for the Sundance Channel's Tanner on Tanner, Pts 1-4, Stephen Hopkins for HBO's The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, Joe Sargent for HBO's Something the Lord Made, and Lloyd Kramer for ABC's Mitch Albom's The Five People You Meet in Heaven.The DGA awards will be presented in Beverly Hills on Jan. 29.

Fox, which has continued to languish in the ratings this season, got a big boost on Sunday when back-to-back season-opening episodes of its drama 24 averaged a 10.5 rating and a 15 share between 8:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. Earlier, the network scored a 24.1/36 for its coverage of the Minnesota-Green Bay NFL game. Although the numbers represented a tremendous improvement over any other ratings Fox had been able to attract with regular programming this season, they were not enough to beat ABC's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (11.5/16) and CBS's Cold Case (11.2/16) at 8:00 p.m. or ABC's Desperate Housewives (17.8/24) at 9:00 p.m. Another two-hour helping of 24 on Monday averaged a 9.3/13, easily beating the competition. However, NBC's hit new drama Medium, by scoring a 12.2/19 in the 10:00 p.m. hour, produced the highest ratings of the night and put the peacock network ahead overall.