Greetings, Moguls! For the launch of the new November-January season, Fantasy Moguls is giving everything a little extra oomph — we've got the holiday glutton movies ready to take in cash like it's Thanksgiving dinner, and the smaller releases that can be like perfectly crafted desserts, with high user ratings and gobs of PTA points. It's a new season of epic proportions! (And no Epic Movies, thankfully.) You've been hearing from all the columnists that this week will feature some special, extended columns, including the return of our good friend Nicodemus, and now, ladies and gentlemen, that time is upon us.

Christmas is coming. So is Thanksgiving. So is that awful frozen wasteland known as January, aka The Month Hollywood Forgot Except for Pushing Out All of Those Films That Pretended to Open in December Simply to Be Eligible for Oscars Consideration. It's a great time to be a Fantasy Moguls player, and a time that reminds all of us here at Moguls Central of our humble beginnings, a little over a year ago. If you've been playing since the first leagues hit the Web, then we're happy (and honored) to still have you aboard. Thanks for liking us. (If we were Julia Roberts or Sally Field, we'd keep right up on babbling until Gil Cates opened the trapdoor behind the podium.) If you're new to The Game (almost as cool as the one that ate up Michael Douglas), then we're pleased to meet you. Either way, we hope you'll enjoy a week's worth of special contributions from our regular Swamis of the Cinema.

Greeting fellow Moguls, and welcome to this SPECIAL EDITION of Bard's Eye View, where I, your beloved laureate, will be dispensing with my usual format and traveling down a heretofore untrodden road. At the behest of my editor (and heck, even Shakespeare himself had to answer to somebody, after all), I and the other Fantasy Moguls columnists (Mr. Informative, Indie Jones, and the glorious return of our wayward rodent, Nicodemus) will be bringing you something very special in order to give you all the heads-up regarding the entirety of the fast-approaching beginning to the November-to-January leagues.

Paramount's Beowulf has popped onto the film industry tracking with some very impressive numbers. Based on the epic poem read by many a high school student, this Robert Zemeckis-directed adaptation is set for release on Nov. 16, and with a huge IMAX push along with over 700 traditional  locations offering Digital 3D, this action/fantasy should generate a fantastic opening.

(Please note: Saturday night, I posted a weekend projection of $14.1 million for Dan in Real Life. There was a mistake in my formula, and the actual projection should be $12.07 million. Sorry for the inconvenience. The information has been corrected below.)

SATURDAY NIGHT: The Saw franchise is alive and well, but Jigsaw may be showing his age. Saw IV (Lionsgate), which opened with a monstrous $14 million-plus on Friday, appears to have taken a bigger-than-expected Saturday drop. Whereas 2006's Saw III fell about 20 percent from its opening day, the newest gruesome installment tailed off by 30 percent day-over-day. The Saturday haul is still a healthy $10.01 million, but it's now unlikely that Saw IV will challenge the franchise's best-ever opening weekend ($33.6 million for Saw III).

The original Saw, released for Halloween of 2004, was, for me, among the most blazingly original horror films ever made. That was an absolutely ingenious movie with a uniquely twisted premise, and the gore and sadism was balanced by a certain evil freshness. Witten by Leigh Whannell and directed by James Wan, Saw was rewarded with an $18.2 million opening weekend and a total domestic gross of $55.1 million.

Some mock arthouse cinema. It's true, let's face it, there will always be someone saying you can't have fun, you can't feel all trippy, in front of an arthouse film, the way you're having the time of your life alongside Jason Bourne or a bunch of Spartan warriors lusting after blood. I won't even mention the fact that a lot of foreign films that open in the United States under the label "arthouse" are in fact foreign "blockbusters" that do monstrous numbers on their local European or Asian box-office charts (just email me if you want titles [wink]).

On Monday, I reported that the tracking for Jerry Seinfeld's Bee Movie (Dreamworks/Paramount) suggests a $38 million-plus opening weekend when it hits the marketplace on Nov. 2. My analysis of the most recent tracking data indicates that there will be a second major blockbuster opening on that same day. Ridley Scott's eagerly-awaited American Gangster (Universal), starring Oscar winners Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe, has real traction in the marketplace, and it has the look of a "can't miss hit."

Greetings to all Moguls, Mogulettes and Mogulings out there, and welcome to the latest installment of Bard's Eye View, where I, your humble mentor, school you (much like Debbie, your favorite Time/Life operator) on the merits of picking the best possible lineup for your Box Office Moguls and Ultimate Movie Moguls leagues. Unlike Debbie, however, I will not be requiring your Social Security number, your home address or verification of your identity. (I will, though, at some point, be needing your credit card number, along with expiration date and that three-digit thingamabob on the back that people are always asking for these days. Wink.)

Greetings, Moguls! As promised, this week's piece is a feature on how early film reviews might fit into your Fantasy Moguls plotting and scheming. Trailers (or previews, or coming attractions, whichever term you prefer) are a great way of judging how a movie looks before it comes out, and early reviews fall under that same heading. Only, with early reviews, instead of just getting to see the most marketable bits of the film, you get to hear from someone who's already seen the whole thing. But should you take them into account? Do bad early reviews mean the film will perform below expectations? What if there aren't any early reviews? Answers to all this, and more, inside the latest Tip of the Week! (Cue ominous/suspenseful theme music.)