Both Disney's Apocalypto and Warner Bros.' Happy Feet performed far better at the box office on Sunday than their respective studios had anticipated. Weekend estimates released on Sunday afternoon are based on actual receipts for Friday and Saturday and an educated guess by the studios on how well their films will do on Sunday. But Apocalypto, which Disney had expected would earn $14.2 million, actually earned a surprising $800,000 on top of that on Sunday, crossing the $15 million-mark. Likewise, Happy Feet tap-danced away with $12.9 million -- $200,000 more than expected -- to take second place on its fourth weekend. (One reader wrote us that he expected to see the headline "Happy Feet Has Legs.") That pushed Sony's debuting The Holiday to third place, as it took in some $700,000 less than the studio had estimated, a total of $12.8 million.

The top ten films over the weekend, according to final figures compiled by Media by Numbers (figures in parentheses represent total gross to date): 1. Apocalypto, Disney, $15,005,604, 1 Wks. (New); 2. Happy Feet, Warner Bros., $12,904,413, 4 Wks. ($137,932,841); 3. The Holiday, Sony, $12,778,913, 1 Wks. (New); 4. Casino Royale, Sony, $8,926,207, 4 Wks. ($129,020,082); 5. Blood Diamond, Warner Bros., $8,648,324, 1 Wks. (New); 6. Deja Vu, Disney, $6,019,672, 3 Wks. ($52,995,929); 7. Unaccompanied Minors, Warner Bros., $5,815,474, 2 Wks. (New); 8. The Nativity Story, New Line, $5,713,854, 2 Wks. ($15,907,450); 9. Deck the Halls, 20th Century Fox, $3,993,188, 3 Wks. ($30,144,903); 10. The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause, Disney, $3,254,729, 6 Wks. ($77,184,019).

With Sony Films seemingly poised to extend its record of 12 No. 1 opening weekends this year with the premiere of the Will Smith starrer The Pursuit of Happyness on Friday, the studio is crediting "a genuine synergy between marketing and production" for its success. In an interview with today's (Tuesday) Los Angeles Daily News, Matt Tolmach, co-president of production at Sony, commented, "When we fall in love with a script, we have to consider if it's marketable or releasable and if they have a slot and if we feel confident about packaging the right stars in the right movie at the right time." Tolmach pointed to the $750-million worldwide gross of The De Vinci Code to underscore his point, describing it as "a huge selling piece of source material with built-in awareness." The studio's worldwide box-office take for the year has already exceeded $3 billion -- a figure that Media by Numbers president Paul Dergarabedian attributed not only to "great talent and great filmmakers" but also "a marketing and distribution team that is perfectly in sync with what the marketplace wants."

Few people who watch the short video clips posted on such sites as YouTube, Yahoo!, and MySpace have downloaded full-length movies, according to a study by ABI Research reported by Informationweek.com Monday. The study found that of people who watch video on Internet only 5 percent have rented or bought a digital movie download. Even when taking into account those who download bootleg copies of movies, the percentage remains tiny, the study concluded. Most of those surveyed complained about the long wait time involved in downloading movies, the relatively high price charged by the movie sites, the fact that the "extras" that come with the DVD packages are generally not available online, and the difficulty of viewing the downloaded movies on television screens.

Despite a huge increase in the sales of iPods this year and the addition of Disney movies to its offerings at the iTunes Store, Apple has experienced a plunge in revenue at the iTunes Store, according to Forrester Research and reported Monday by the British online technology publication The Register. According to the Forrester analysis, the iTunes service has seen monthly revenue fall 65 percent since January. Although analysts speculate that iPod buyers are likely transferring music from newly purchased CDs to the devices, Forrester ovserved that CD sales continue to fall, leading Forrester analysts to conclude that new iPod buyers are packing the devices with pirated content.

In the latest round of critics awards, both the New York Film Critics Circle and the Washington, DC Area Film Critics Association named United 93 the top film of 2006.

A Los Angeles judge has tossed out a lawsuit by a group of South Carolina college students who had sought to have a scene from Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan in which they appeared deleted from the forthcoming DVD version. The students are seen drinking and making racist remarks. They claim that they were duped into appearing in the movie and were assured that it would not be shown in the U.S. On Monday, Judge Joseph Biderman ruled that the students had failed to show a reasonable probability of success on the merits of their case.

The always enterprising celebrity gossip site TMZ, which was the first to report on Mel Gibson's arrest and subsequent racial tirade and the first to post video of Michael Richards blowup at a West Hollywood comedy club, quickly obtained the 911 dispatch tape in which motorists told of spotting a car driven by Nicole Richie going the wrong way on a freeway in Burbank, CA. She was later arrested on DUI charges.

Television viewers Monday night were more interested in seeing what was inside all those cases on Deal or No Deal than in watching another tale about Santa Claus. The game show drew a solid 10.0 rating and a 15 share in the ratings at 8:00 p.m. But audiences deserted the network at 9:00 p.m., when it aired an original holiday special, The Year Without a Santa Claus, which averaged a 4.7/7 between 9:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. With NBC's Heroes out of the Monday line-up, CBS averaged the highest ratings of the night, with CSI: Miami registering an 11.0/17 at 10:00 p.m.

The CBS blog PublicEye.com described as "good, fascinating stuff" the video blog AliveinBaghdad.com that presents ordinary Iraqis speaking about their daily lives. Founded by American Brian Conley, the site offers videos about car bomb survivors; the children's ward of a Baghdad hospital; a police officer talking about his work; and the effects of the city's electricity shortage. One video is titled "A Mother Tells a Martyr's Story." In its endorsement of the blog, the CBS website commented, "The videos aren't particularly long, but they're longer than anything you're likely to see on the Evening News or the cable networks, long enough to provide a human dimension to a war usually discussed in broad, general terms. Particularly if you're someone that feels the mainstream media doesn't give the full story out of Iraq, you don't want to miss it."

The current price war between manufacturers and retailers of big-screen LCD and plasma TV monitors will likely see price drops of 25-30 percent this year, according to Sony Electronics President Stan Glasgow. CNET News quoted Glasgow as saying that the plunge in prices has narrowed the profit margins of all manufacturers and could leave them weakened and less able to invest in future technologies.

NBC Sports Chairman Dick Ebersol has sued Key Air Inc., the company that arranged the flight on which he and his two sons were injured when the plane crashed on take-off in icy conditions in Colorado in November 2004. One of his sons, 14-year-old Edward suffered fatal injuries. Ebersol and his other son Charles were burned and received spinal injuries. The suit alleged that the pilot, who was also killed in the crash, was not qualified to fly the plane.

The Netherlands on Monday became the first country to switch all of its television stations to digital. A spokesman for Royal KPN NV said that all analog transmitters were turned off between midnight and 2:00 a.m. The U.S. plans to end analog transmission in 2009.