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SATURDAY NIGHT: The card counting thriller 21 (Sony) enjoyed a solid 19 percent increase Friday-to-Saturday for an excellent $10.17 million take on Saturday. Based on the book Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich and produced by Oscar winner Kevin Spacey, the hip gambling saga will likely grab another $6.3 million on Sunday, which will be enough to push it to $25 million for the weekend. (Scroll down to my Friday night update for more detail, including a link to my interview with card counter Jeff Ma.)

Greetings, Moguls! 2008 has certainly brought its share of surprises thus far and, for a few of those, the film's theater count has been part of the surprise. Take, for example, Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour, which rang up a $31 million opening weekend at just under 700 locations. Jumper didn't grab that much green even at almost five times as many theaters. Or how about Under the Same Moon winning the PTA title this past weekend despite a theater count over 250 — something that would usually be disastrous for a PTA hopeful.

It's fun to try to remember your cinema "firsts." First film you saw, first time you went alone to the movies, first time you cheated and went to see a restricted film, first time you noticed Salma Hayek was such a hottie (those last two were the same film for me — From Dusk Till Dawn, yowza!) or, like I said last week, first time you fell in love with Asian cinema (thank you, Wong Kar Wai). Writing about the independent American films that will be released on April 11, I was wondering what's the first American indie I remember watching in a theater.

Hello once again, and welcome to the latest issue of Bard's Eye View, the luxury box in which we Fantaversians sit and coffeehouse about the biggest of the big flicks coming out down the line. (Actually, that would be a description better attributed to the Message Boards, but I digress.) Whether you are a regular's regular, craning your neck upward to get full view of the three-story screen mere inches from your face, or whether you are perched in the nosebleed section, binocs in hand, preparing yourself for a full two hours of squinting, I bid you welcome. "Overture, curtain, lights, this is it, you'll hit the heights, and oh what heights we'll hit ... on with the show, this is it ... " (Wink.)

SATURDAY NIGHT: Horton Hears a Who! (20th Century Fox) continued its box-office roll on Saturday, adding another $9.45 million, but it was down 10 percent from its monstrous Good Friday. The CGI Dr. Seuss adaptation should grab another $6.61 million or so on Easter Sunday for a three-day of $26.56 million, giving Horton the all-time fourth-best Easter weekend box office performance.

Greetings, Moguls! It's that time of year again — the first real box office whoppers of 2008, this summer's May Monsters, are just around the bend. Even in the new March-May leagues, some carry steep prices: Speed Racer will set you back $57 in Box Office Moguls leagues, for example. Imagine what the prices in April-June and May-July leagues are going to be like! Still, might you find benefit from using half of your funds on one movie? Is the field so bare that you've got to pick up a May Monster to have a chance at victory in your March-May leagues? Here's a look at May's four tentpole releases: Iron Man, Speed Racer, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Which ones (if any) are worth their enormous price tags?

When I was a kid, I used to think arthouse cinema was a punishment, invented by mean people who gave parents an opportunity to torture their kids. They made you sit for two hours, listening to people talking about things that had nothing to do with time-traveling DeLoreans, archaeologists looking for the Holy Grail, or how to save people trapped by terrorists in a building when you only have a gun, a big mouth and no shoes. And then one day you change. You start to like when a film not only entertains, but also makes you think. You start to enjoy seeing foreign films with subtitles.

'Allo, 'allo, and welcome back to Bard's Eye View, the place to come for the bare bones on upcoming wide-release films. Whether you are breathing a collective sigh of relief at the opening weekend of Horton Hears a Who!, pumping your fist in silent triumph, or whether you are cursing the fates and emulating Jim Carrey in that scene from Liar Liar ("I'm kickin' my own ass! D'ya mind?!?!"), I bid you welcome. Thank God at least one film this year has lived up to its hype, as 2008 was perilously close to the precipice of mediocrity. We're not completely out of the doldrums yet, but we've taken one step up the ladder. But, oh, wait, here comes April, and with it the Giant Bird of Foreshadowing ... (Wink.)

SATURDAY NIGHT: An elephant named Horton and the residents of a certain tiny dust speck are celebrating a huge opening weekend for the CGI-animated Horton Hears a Who! (20th Century Fox). Featuring the voices of Jim Carrey, Steve Carrell and comedy legend Carol Burnett, the Dr. Seuss adaptation received a 40 percent, family-driven Friday-to-Saturday increase for an $18.62 million second day. Assuming a 35 percent Sunday drop, Horton will deliver another $12.1 million, giving the warmly-reviewed charmer $44.02 million in the bank by Sunday night.

Hello everyone, moguls looking for some arthouse tips, professionals keeping an eye on your films' buzz, and friends I force to read my column every week. I know you guys are craving to see the new Indiana Jones movie, or The Dark Knight, or Tropic Thunder (who wants to bet it will be the funniest film of 2008?) ... but you know that you won't find any mention of those kinds of film in these lines. (Well, at least not in the rest of the column!) Instead, we'll take a look at the limited release that will conclude the month of March, as well as a few others that recently became available in Fantasy Moguls games.

Hello again, and welcome to the latest installment of Bard's Eye View, the place to come for counsel, confirmation, validation and plain ol' vanilla advice on the spring's endless bombardment of large-, and medium-scale films. Whether you are a player who likes to front-load his lineups and pray that you can hang on before the bell tolls, or whether you prefer to play catch-up by picking late-comers and climbing the ladder authoritatively, I bid you welcome. After this year's myriad of disasters, this sense of schadenfreude must be giving you a pretty good buzz by now, eh? (Wink.)

Greetings, Moguls! As it turns out, I was both right and wrong about 10,000 B.C. It didn't totally flop, but it did make less than the projected $45 million on opening weekend. So I guess you could say I had at least some semblance of reason (and correct ... ness?), and I can roll with that. It's all about small victories, my friends. Small victories.

SATURDAY NIGHT: Roland Emmerich’s 10,000 B.C. (Warner Bros.) received a better-than-expected 9 percent uptick in Saturday business, delivering an estimated $13.62 million. Many were looking for a Friday-to-Saturday dip in ticket sales, but the badly-reviewed prehistoric epic wasn't especially front-loaded. With an anticipated 38 percent drop on Sunday, 10,000 B.C. should rake in another $8.44 million or so for a three-day take of $34.57 million.

Warner Bros. has another March box-office juggernaut on its hands. On the first weekend  of March in 2007, they opened Zack Snyder's strikingly original 300 to a spectacular weekend of $70.8 million. Now Roland Emmerich's 10,000 B.C. is headed for a monstrous opening weekend according to industry tracking passed along by studio executives.

Greetings, Moguls! Welcome to the Tip of the Week. If you started off a brand new March-May slate with Semi-Pro, then my condolences. And my apologies as well; go ahead and give me a technical foul, because I heartily recommended Will Ferrell's basketball bomb in my February Studs and Duds column. Then again, very few people saw such underperformance coming. This week, I'll examine the March Madness (no, not that kind) that coming weeks will bring. Can Horton Hears a Who become the biggest film of the first quarter? Is there any hope left for Asian horror remakes? And can the Martin Lawrence overachievement train be stopped? (Answers: yes, no, and maybe.) As per usual with this column format, I've outlined a stud, a dud, and a wild card for each March weekend:

The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in ... OK, so someone already used those lines to begin something else. Let's just bid you a simple, and warm welcome to this weekly appointment with arthouse cinema. I'm not sure you'll be dancing with it, but I sure hope you'll be thinking about it a bit. After the failure of Semi-Pro, most of you will probably be looking for box-office muscle to keep up with those who cleverly avoided Will Ferrell's semi-bomb. I'm sure there are others, however, who feel they missed PTA opportunities by not grabbing The Counterfeiters or The Duchess of Langeais, both of which have proven to be well worth their price tags. If Horton Hears a Who is the possible redemption for Semi-Pro, then I think the weekend of March 21 could help PTA laggers snatch a few points for next to nothing. If you don't trust foreign movies though, pass by, because the films I will write about today are Mexican and French. (What!? Again?? Yes, again.)

Greetings all Fantaversians, and welcome back to Bard's Eye View, the place to come for the skinny on the latest wide release films, and what impact they may have on your slate. Whether you are rejoicing and celebrating at not having picked Semi-Pro for your March slates — and are snickering evilly at those of us who did — or whether you are pounding your head on the pavement, cursing the name of Will Ferrell and a certain unnamed columnist who told you that his latest sports romp would be yooge, I bid you welcome. Hey, if it makes you feel any better, I didn't purposely lead the rest of the lemmings off the cliff ... now put that pitchfork down! (Wink.)