Disney's Glory Road was no match for last year's inspiring-coach movie Coach Carter and Paramount's Last Holiday certainly was no Meet the Fockers, but both films performed relatively well for the first three days of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend. Glory Road took in an estimated $13.5 million at the box office, versus Coach Carter's $23.6 million for the comparable three-day weekend a year ago. Last Holiday placed second with about $13 million, versus $19 million for the fourth week of Meet the Fockers last year. The real surprise was the Weinstein Co.'s $12.2-million gross for the animated Hoodwinked. Most box-office analysts had held little hope for the cartoon. A fourth newcomer, Fox's Tristan & Isolde, came in eighth with a weak $6.6 million.

Once again, the box-office champ on a per-theater basis over the first three days of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday was Focus Features' Brokeback Mountain which grossed $5.8 million in just 683 theaters, averaging $8,430 per theater. Daily Variety observed that the film opened in a number of small markets where big grosses are rare for any movie, but that in the larger markets where it was shown for the first time, including Tucson, Little Rock, and Pittsburgh, it grossed well over $20,000 per theater. Brokeback is widely expected to win numerous awards, including best dramatic film, at tonight's (Monday) Golden Globe ceremonies and, as a result, increase its box office take substantially next weekend. In tonight's Globes competition in the best drama category, Brokeback faces The Constant Gardener, A History of Violence, Match Point, and Good Night, and Good Luck.

The top ten films for the weekend, according to studio estimates compiled by Exhibitor Relations: 1. Glory Road, 13.5 million; 2. Last Holiday, $13 million; 3. Hoodwinked, $12.2 million; 4. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, $10.1 million; 5. Hostel, $9.6 million; 6. Fun With Dick & Jane (estimate not provided); 7. King Kong, $7.3 million; 8. Tristan & Isolde, $6.6 million; 9. Brokeback Mountain, $5.8 million; 10. Cheaper by the Dozen 2 (estimate not provided).

The Chinese premiere of Memoirs of a Geisha, which aroused controversy in China and Japan after three leading Chinese film stars, Ziyi Zhang, Gong Li and Michelle Yeoh, were cast in the roles of Japanese women, has been indefinitely postponed, the online Shanghai Daily News reported today (Monday), citing a report in the Shanghai Morning Post. According to the report, a spokesperson for distributor Columbia Pictures "remained tight-lipped on the issue." The spokesperson said that the company had gone to great efforts to bring the film to the China mainland and remains optimistic that a "satisfactory outcome" will be reached in negotiations with authorities.

The president of Exhibitor Relations says that last year's box office slump should serve as a "wakeup call" to the movie industry. In an interview with Fox News Channel, Paul Dergarabedian remarked, "It's fair warning with plenty of time to fix things. If ignored, it's at the peril of the entire industry." Dergarabedian suggested that there was no quick cure for the downturn at the box office. "This convergence of technology and culture, combined with so many options for entertainment, has created a pie with so many slices now. It's tougher and tougher to grab a piece," he said. He indicated that he believes the solution is not releasing movies in theaters and on DVD simultaneously, as some studio executives, including Disney CEO Robert Iger, have recommended. "To collapse the window would be devastating not only to the theater industry but to the movie industry in general," Dergarabedian told the news channel. "Rolling them out in different windows creates a value that they would not have if they were all rolled out at once. It diminishes the product. When Iger and those guys say that stuff, it's very chilling."

The Filipino film industry which only recently turned out more than 200 films a year, will produce only about 25 in 2006 and faces extinction without government support, a top director said Saturday. As reported by the Philippine Star, director Joel Lamangan told a forum in Quezon City, "The movie industry is now clinically dead." He warned that unless film producers receive government backing, foreigners will eventually produce movies depicting Filipinos, and "the country will lose its soul." He demonstrated the lack of government support by noting that at international film festivals in which Filipino films compete, producers have to pay for the meals of Philippine embassy officials in attendance.

Shelley Winters, who started out in movies as a blonde bombshell and enjoyed a long career playing overweight, overbearing characters, died Saturday in Beverly Hills following a heart attack in October. Her age was variously listed as between 82 and 85 in news reports. She won best-supporting-actress Oscars for 1959's The Diary of Anne Frank and 1965's A Patch of Blue. She was nominated for best actress for 1951's A Place in the Sun and for best supporting actress in 1972's The Poseidon Adventure.

Reports that CBS is continuing to woo Katie Couric to anchor the CBS Evening News have had the effect of boosting morale at the news division, the Los Angeles Times observed today (Monday). In an interview with the newspaper, Bob Schieffer, the so-called interim anchor of the nightly newscast, remarked, "When we start going after the big money players on the other teams, we're really saying what a baseball team says when it goes after the big salaried players. ... We're saying, 'We're trying to win the World Series.' I think we've come a tremendous distance here. We had been beaten about the heads and shoulders so badly for so long there that people were pretty quiet about the office. People are talking again. They're having more fun, and they're smiling more." Schieffer has previously said that he hopes Couric will eventually jump ship at NBC and come to CBS.

Walter Cronkite, whose 1968 statement that he thought that the war in Vietnam was unwinnable was thought to have turned the tide of public opinion against the war, said Sunday that he would say the same thing about the current war in Iraq. After Cronkite's 1968 statement -- as the anchor of the dominant CBS Evening News, he was regarded as "the most trusted man in America" -- President Lyndon Johnson reportedly told an aide, "If we've lost Walter, then we've lost the war." At a news conference for the Winter TV Press Tour, Cronkite suggested that the U.S. was given the opportunity -- which it ignored -- to make an honorable withdrawal from Iraq following the Hurricane Katrina disaster to help its victims and rebuild the devastated area. Asked about the search for a successor to Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News, Cronkite, who is 89, joked, "I'm standing by if they want me." He also indicated that he has long regretted his decision to step down as anchor of the network newscast in 1981. "Twenty-four hours after I told CBS News that I was stepping down at my 65th birthday I was already regretting it and I've regretted it every day since," he told the TV reporters. "It's too good a job for me to have given it up the way that I did."

The Lifetime cable network's battle with Echostar's DISH satellite service has grown more volatile as the two companies go into a second week of negotiations while the women's channel remains blocked from DISH customers. DISH responded to a letter to leading women's groups from Lifetime, insisting that the dispute was "about economics, not women's issues." At the same time, Lifetime expanded an advertising campaign urging customers of the satellite company to "Drop DISH" so that they could resume watching on conventional cable systems. DISH contends that Lifetime is asking for a 74-percent hike in its fee; Lifetime has countered that it amounts to only pennies per customer.

CBS is planning to launch a one-minute-long "microseries" that will air during one of the commercial breaks in the 9:00 pm. hour every night of the week beginning Jan. 24. The series, titled The Courier, will be sponsored by GM's Pontiac division, and, according to the Wall Street Journal, "tells the story of a mystery man who races against time to uncover clues and rescue his kidnapped wife." The series is reportedly aimed at viewers who skip commercials with TiVo and other digital recording devices and also, because each episode will end with a cliffhanger, to draw viewers to sample the network's 9:00 p.m. programs.

Fox has acknowledged that it has little chance of regaining the top ratings spot among 18-49-year-old viewers that it held last year. In an interview with Bloomberg News, Fox programming chief Preston Beckman said that after such new shows as Head Cases, Kitchen Confidential and Reunion drew relatively few viewers, "we don't expect to necessarily be the No. 1 network for the broadcast season." Ratings for the network are down 9 percent from last season through Jan. 8 but are expected to rise following the return of 24 and American Idol this week, as well as the debut of the reality program, Skating with Celebrities.

The British film industry is planning to launch its own 24-hour channel next month to promote newly released films, Britain's Guardian newspaper reported today (Monday). Dubbed Eat Cinema, the channel will feature reviews, feedback from movie patrons, interviews with stars and "a behind-the-screens look at Britain's cinemas."