Hello once again, and welcome to the latest issue of Bard's Eye View, the place to come for advice on which films have the punch to add muscle to your Fantasy Moguls lineups, with fancy User Ratings footwork, PTA jabs, Top 5 right crosses and some serious Box Office uppercuts, and which films are just washed-up palookas. Tomato cans, if you will. Winning a league can seem like a three-month long prizefight, with you striving to outmaneuver your opponents by planning the best strategy. And if that fails, hell, you can always just bite their ear off. (Wink.)

What do you expect to find in American theaters during summer? Superheroes, sequels and family-friendly comedies are definitely somewhere in the list. Woody Allen is not. Yet he is here. No, he has not concocted an action-packed adventure with pirates or aliens, but just keeps on exploring Europe and European actors with another character-driven story. It's not exactly your usual summer movie, but the fact is this year, the fall will be Woody-free. So summer it is. Woody's only oppponent in the arthouse department on Aug. 15 will be the "Are we sure it's getting released this time?" Luke Wilson flick Henry Poole Is Here. So, what's up with Woody this time? And is Henry Poole really here? Let's get some answers ...

Brendan Fraser and the long-awaited (by some) return of his  Mummy franchise will likely unseat mega-hit The Dark Knight (Warner Bros.) this weekend. Industry tracking points to a massive opening for the F/X-laden, family-friendly action-adventure movie, and I am targeting $50 million-$55 million. That would be stronger than 1999's original The Mummy, which grabbed $43.36 million, but shy of the $68.13 million start for The Mummy Returns in 2001. For Brendan Fraser, this would mark his all-time second-best opening:

The Dark Knight (Warner Bros.), which has generated an estimated $315 million since opening 10 days ago, has provided a huge boost to the film industry. 2007 was a record-breaker for the business with a total domestic take of $9.65 billion, almost 5 percent better than 2007. The current year is at $5.66 billion so far, which is less than 1 percent behind last year's pace.

The final five months of 2008 look very strong, and I believe that Hollywood will set a new all-time box office record, proving once again that the movie business is recession proof. Gas prices have led to more "staycations," and at a national average of just over $7 for a movie ticket, a trip to the local multiplex remains a very good value.

SUNDAY 8:00 a.m. (Pacific):

3-DAY STUDIO ESTIMATES
1. The Dark Knight (Warner Bros.) — $75.63 million, $17,322 PTA, $314.24 million cume
2. Step Brothers (Sony) — $30 million, $9,696 PTA, $30 million cume
3. Mamma Mia (Universal) — $17.86 million, $5,974 PTA, $62.71 million
4. The X-Files: I Want To Believe (20th Century Fox) — $10.2 million, $3,202 PTA, $10.2 million cume
5. Journey to the Center of the Earth (Warner Bros.) — $9.41 million, $3,502 PTA, $60.18 million cume
6. Hancock (Sony) — $8.2 million, $2,478 PTA, $206.37 million cume
7. WALL-E (Disney) — $6.34 million, $2,085 PTA, $195.23 million cume
8. Hellboy II: The Golden Army (Universal) — $4.93 million, $1,634 PTA, $65.89 million cume
9. Space Chimps (20th Century Fox) — $4.37 million, $1,723 PTA, $16 million cume
10. Wanted (Universal) — $2.72 million, $1,554 PTA, $128.6 million cume

FRIDAY 9:00 p.m. (Pacific): By Monday morning, The Dark Knight (Warner Bros.) will likely be the No. 1 movie of 2008. Even the rosiest of forecasts could not have anticipated that the Christopher Nolan-directed Batman Begins sequel would surpass Marvel's Iron Man (Paramount) and Lucasfilm's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of The Crystal Skull (Paramount) in only 10 days, but it appears that the dark superhero/crime thriller hybrid will do just that.

To no one's surprise, The Dark Knight took the American box office hostage and cracked all kinds of records last weekend. Records are made to be beaten, and the Hollywood film industry has always given itself the benefit of the doubt by counting box-office in terms of raw dollars rather than tickets sold. What amazes me the most is how so many people can still get so enthused and excited by new box-office "records," when in fact they are just mileposts on the long highway of inflation, a direct reflection of ever-higher ticket prices at the local multiplex.

There is no question about which film will be No. 1 at America's multiplexes this weekend. The Dark Knight (Warner Bros.) has been posting unprecedented weekday grosses, with $24.5 million on Monday and $20.9 million on Tuesday, and it will easily win the upcoming three-day. The question is how much of a dive will the Christopher Nolan-directed crime thriller/superhero hybrid suffer on its second weekend?

To formulate an answer, let's look at the second-weekend drops for the other 11 movies that have grossed $100 million so far in 2008:

Greetings, Moguls, and welcome to a Classic Tip of the Week. Just like one of this weekend's releases, Brideshead Revisited — or, as I like to think of it, the ESPN Classic channel, I'm revisiting/publishing/broadcasting/releasing (with some revisions) some previous advice. For those Moguls among you who may not have been around last September, this will be new to you — and if my 10 Rules for Winning Fantasy Moguls are old hat to you, well, at least they've updated with new 2008 examples!

Hello once again, and welcome to the latest issue of Bard's Eye View, the place to come for "the skinny" on the latest wide release films. Actually, you know, I've never liked that phrase: "the skinny." How did it start, anyway? Can anyone tell me? Can it be updated for the new millennium? Of course, "the anorexy" doesn't sound quite as hip, but let's give it a shot. Welcome once again to Bard's Eye View, the place to come for "the anorexy" on the latest wide release films. Yeah, that'll work. (Wink.)

It's never too early to start speculating about the Academy Awards. Although the year is just 200 days along, and most of the obvious Oscar titles will not arrive in theaters until September or October at the earliest, I thought it would be entertaining to ask the question, "What if the Oscar nominations came out today?"

I have mapped out five nominees in each of the big six categories, and, no surprise, both The Dark Knight (Warner Bros.) and WALL-E (Disney) show up in both the Best Picture and Best Director categories. I have also been very kind to some of my favorite specialty releases from the first six-and-a-half months of 2008, including The Visitor (Overture), Under the Same Moon (Weinstein), The Fall (Roadside Attractions), OSS117: Cairo — Nest of Spies (Music Box) and Roman de Gare (Samuel Goldwyn). Yes, some of these films are assured of being long since forgotten by next January.