Even though 2008 was a good year for the box office, budgetary concerns remain foremost in many studios' thoughts. What better way to help shore up cash intake than to make movies with huge merchandising potential? Look at the blockbuster Transformers, for example. Hasbro will be following up with a sequel, as well as movies based on their board games, like Candy Land, Monopoly, and the ol' party-pleaser, the Oujia board. Not to be outdone, Mattel will be getting into the action with a live-action Barbie movie and a movie revolving around their Hot Wheels toy line. Man, it's like the Mattel and Mars Bar Quick Energy Chocobot Hour come to life.

If we look carefully at the movie trends of 2008, it's not hard to make a few predictions for the year ahead. Sure, some of these may seem kind of crazy, or maybe they sound flat-out impossible. But just remember these seven words: Steven Soderbergh to direct Cleopatra rock musical. Anything can happen, so get in on the ground floor of these predictions while you can!

In a time when studios seem to be placing their bets on safe, tested properties by cranking out remake after remake, it's nice to hear about movies that spring from unexpected sources. Today there's news about two such movies where the source material isn't from an excavated '80s B-movie or a rebooted take on an old superhero. Rather, the inspiration for one of these movies comes from a real-life YouTube courtship, and the other from the pen of a nine-year old boy.

Through a confluence of mystical forces that included a borderline food coma, a shoddy remote control, and a level of laziness I defy anyone to equal, I found myself a few years back absorbed in watching that Christmas-time TV movie staple of the modern era, Love Actually. Though I freely admit that I have been known to succumb to the charms of countless saccharine rom-coms, even I didn't deign to spend money on a ticket to see this film when it came out in theaters. Nor did I feel compelled to rent it on DVD, or even on-demand it on one of those bleak, self-pitying Saturday nights when you're too hungover/depressed/full of pizza to drag yourself out of your house. But on that fateful night, the stars aligned and I found myself staring transfixed into the deep pools of Keira Knightly's eyes, guffawing at Colin Firth's bumbling attempts to woo, and tearing up at the mere sight of a broken, grieving Liam Neeson.

Since the news cycle is still pretty clogged with election results and stories (even Variety has an electoral map on their home page) and the rest of the world -- including Hollywood -- can't seem to get much of a word in edge-wise, I'm going to follow Odie's lead and report on a politics-movie tie-in. Over at The Hollywood Reporter's Risky Biz Blog, Steven Zeitchik explored the possibility of whether or not Republican Presidents are bad for movies. It turns out they kind of are.

In what is not the strangest red carpet interview Joaquin Phoenix has ever given (some of you may remember when he was convinced during an interview that a large frog was trying to eat his brain at the Walk the Line premiere a couple of years ago), he has nevertheless gone above and beyond the call of weird when he told a reporter for E! and later confirmed with Extra that he is retiring from acting, and that the upcoming film Two Lovers would be his last. In a move that's usually reserved for actors who actually can't get any more work, he told the reporter that he was quitting to focus on his music.

Since Brits (and suave American Double-O-Odie) get their fill of Bond this Friday, two weeks before America, The Guardian is running a special section on all things Bond. There are articles on stunts, villains and a very weird, almost homoerotic video featuring my doppelganger Cuba Gooding's Boat Trip co-star, Roger Moore. In honor of tonight's world premiere of Q of S in London, here are some of the highlights.

If, while reading today, you notice a stray u in words like "colour" and "honour," or you realise that "realize" is spelled with an s, do not adjust your browsers! Movies Without Pity has gone global! I'm reporting to you live from Birmingham, England, where I've been working for the last eight days. Whilst here in the Midlands, I shall visit Mr. Craig's onscreen persona when Quantum of Solace opens on Halloween (more on that next week). I'll also visit his actual persona to see if I can take that free Aston Martin off his hands. One major plus to being here is that I can escape the bombardment of political commercials currently clogging up my TV at home. Unfortunately, I can't escape the candidates nor the election, which leads me to an article in The Guardian about celebrities and politics.

As much as my Jersey upbringing makes me love dirty politics, I'm still sick of the U.S. Presidential race. It's the one reality program more drawn out than Flavor of Love. "Be over already, for God's sake!" I scream at the TV. I'm hoping tonight's debate suddenly becomes an episode of Dancing With the Stars. Seeing the two candidates put aside their differences to dance an ass-kicking version of the lambada (it's the FORBIDDEN DANCE, y'know) would do so much to heal America's wounds. Especially if they dance with each other. But I digress. In honor of tonight's sure-to-be-boring rehash of promises neither side will keep, here are some political movies you can enjoy.

People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, but I guess it's fine if they watch movies. Two people, Suresh Joachim of Toronto and Claudia Wavra of Germany, have broken the world record for continuous movie watching, racking up 57 films in 123 hours in a plastic-glass house in New York's Times Square. The previous record, held by Ashish Sharma of Mathura, India was 120 hours and 23 minutes. Though a representative for Guinness World Records said that it would take two weeks to officially verify (doesn't it make it easier to verify if they did it in a glass house in the middle of Times Square?), I'm going to go ahead and say they've done it.