Shrek the Third defied both box-office analysts and the majority of film critics as it opened with an estimated $122 million in ticket sales over the weekend -- making it the third-highest opening in box-office history. It was also the best opening ever for an animated film, exceeding the record set by Shrek 2, and the best opening in history for a film released by Paramount, Hollywood's oldest studio. "We could not have asked for a better opening," Anne Globe, head of marketing at DreamWorks Animation, told today's (Monday) Los Angeles Times.Spider-Man 3, which set the record for the highest-grossing film just two weekends earlier with $151 million in ticket sales dropped 51 percent to $28.5 million but landed in second place. It has now collected $281.9 million domestically.

The top ten films for the weekend, according to studio estimates compiled by Media by Numbers: 1. Shrek the Third, $122 million; 2. Spider-Man 3, $28.5 million; 3. 28 Weeks Later, $5.15 million; 4. Disturbia, $3.7 million; 5. Georgia Rule, $3.5 million; 6. Fracture, $2.4 million. 7. Delta Farce, $1.8 million; 8. The Invisible, $1.3 million; 9. Hot Fuzz, $1.26 million; 10. Waitress, $1.14 million.

Michael Moore received a standing -- and sustained -- ovation following the screening of his latest documentary, Sicko, at the Cannes Film Festival Saturday. But some critics suggested that in censuring the U.S. health system, Moore was overly generous in his praise of other countries'. At a news conference, Canadian journalists harangued Moore for, as Toronto Star film critic Peter Howell wrote, making "it seem as if Canada's socialized medicine is flawless and that Canadians are satisfied with the status quo." Apparently taken aback by the assault from the Canadian journalists, Moore said, "You Canadians! You used to be so funny! ... You gave us all our best comedians. When did you turn so dark?" Later, he suggested that the U.S. ought to adopt the best parts of other countries' health systems. "We should steal from them," he said.

The former costar of the long-running Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, claims that job offers suddenly disappeared after a picture of him kissing another man was published in a tabloid magazine in 1996. Chad Allen, who played Matthew Cooper on the series from 1993-97, said during an interview Friday on ABC's 20/20 that, rather than accept his publicists' advice to cover up the matter, he decided to come out -- a decision, he indicated, that virtually put the brakes to his career. "You know, you're talking to a guy who never stopped working from the time he was five years old. I came out, and it stopped," he said. "The year after Dr. Quinn was over, I couldn't get an audition for a pilot for the same network I worked six years in a top-ten television series for." Allen said that it is his belief that it will take an A-list movie star to come out before film producers are willing to hire openly gay actors in starring roles. "I am so certain of that as a fact," he said, "that the audience could care less."

Internet bloggers have lampooned comments by MPAA chief Dan Glickman that efforts to crack down on camcording in movie theaters aided Spider-Man 3 in achieving its record-breaking box office three weeks ago. Mike Masnick, who runs the TechDirt website, observed, "As soon as one decent camcorded version made it to the net (as at least a few did), then it's infinitely available and it doesn't really matter if the industry stopped every other camcording attempt." While most bloggers complained of the poor quality of camcorded movies in general, the Los Angeles Times reported that one of them "evidently shot in Russia, got fairly good reviews at a site that tracks online movie bootlegs."

Director Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunting, Psycho) has indicated that casting directors are increasing turning to such social networking sites as MySpace to cast movies. He said that for his latest film, Paranoid Park, which is competing for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival this year and stars a group of unknown teen actors from Portland, OR, he put out a list of "Who I'd Like to Meet" on MySpace, including skateboarders, cheerleaders, punks, drama kids, athletes, leaders and followers. "When you're putting out an open casting all, [casting directors] have been using MySpace, because you're speaking to a great number of people -- it's so popular," he said.

Danny Glover, who costarred in the Lethal Weapon movies with Mel Gibson, has been granted nearly $18 million by the leftist Venezuelan government to make a historical movie in Venezuela about Toussaint Louverture, the heroic leader of the Haitian revolt that led to the country's independence in the early 1800s, Britain's Guardian newspaper reported today (Monday). Glover is a supporter of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. According to the Guardian, the film will be financed with funds from a recent bond sale with Argentina. Glover told the newspaper that preproduction of the film, titled Toussaint, is already "so advanced that you can taste it."

Ratings for ABC's Desperate Housewives may be down somewhat this season, but Sunday's season finale handily beat everything else in sight. The show averaged a 12.3 rating and an 18 share, the highest-rated show of the night. Nevertheless, the numbers were 24 percent below last year's finale, which registered a 16.1/24. At 10:00 p.m., ABC's critically praised Brothers & Sisters, which has been making steady improvements in the ratings (and, some critics say, in its scripts as well), wound up in first place with a 9.0/15. Earlier in the evening CBS's 60 Minutes continued to dominate the 7:00 p.m. hour, recording a 7.7/14. ABC took over first place at 8:00 p.m. with the second hour of an Extreme Makeover: Home Edition season finale that averaged a 7.9/13.

The Fox Business Channel may not be marrying The Wall Street Journal -- as owner Rupert Murdoch had hoped when he offered to buy Dow Jones, the Journal's corporate parent -- but it may be close to catching Donald Trump. Speculation of a Fox deal with Trump became rampant over the weekend as the real-estate mogul announced that he has informed NBC that he is "moving on from The Apprentice to a major new TV venture." Last week the network indicated that it would not renew the Trump reality series next season but hoped to develop a new series with him. The statement from the Trump camp provided no details concerning his plans. It concluded: "If Mr. Trump's past TV success is any indication of the future, then one can anticipate that millions of Apprentice fans will be migrating to his new venture."

Satellite company DirecTV has filed suit against Comcast over the cable company's ad campaign in which it claims that customers who compare its HDTV picture with DirecTV's prefer Comcast's 2-1. The lawsuit accuses Comcast of false advertising and deceptive trade practices and asks the court to enjoin the cable company from "engaging in any further false advertising and promotion." Comcast said that it obtained the information used in its ads from a research study conducted by Frank N. Magid Associates. But DirecTV says that the Magid survey fails to substantiate the claims.

Discovery Communications, which owns The Discovery Channel, The Learning Channel, Animal Planet, Discovery Health, Travel Channel, and Discovery Times is closing down its retail stores -- 103 of them. The stores account for 25 percent of Discovery's workforce, about 1,000 employees. It's the latest cost-cutting measure by the company. Earlier this year, 250 people were cut from the company's cable operations.

A cameraman and soundman working for ABC News in Iraq were killed Friday -- ambushed on their way home from the network's news bureau in Baghdad. The killings of cameraman Alaa Uldeen Aziz and soundman Saif Laith Yousuf were reported on ABC's World News with Charles Gibson. ABC correspondent Terry McCarthy said that the American news media depend on Iraqi journalists to get the story of the conflict out. "They are really our eyes and ears in Iraq," he said. "Many places in Baghdad are just too dangerous for foreigners to go now, so we have Iraqi camera crews who very bravely go out, and without them we are blind, we cannot see what's going on." Clearly, such news gathering can be equally dangerous to the Iraqis. Of the 104 journalists who have been killed since the U.S. invasion in 2003, 82 have been Iraqis. ABC's Dean Reynolds, who spent nine years covering the Middle East, said that men like the slain camera crew "got the shots, the soundbites, the tips that were turned into stories. I got many pats on the back for my work as a result."