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David Mumpower: I was just looking over the list of releases over the past eight weeks and it's the Hollywood equivalent of a missing persons bulletin. If we take the re-release of The Lion King out of the picture, the numbers stagger me. Only 2 (!) out of 26 releases during that period have opened north of $20 million. If we drop the criteria down to $19 million, the number does double to four so we will use that as the baseline. Only 15% of titles over the past two months have debuted to $19+ million.

Here is what is absolutely terrifying, though. 17 out of 26 wide releases in that time frame failed to earn double digits. Other than the four respectable performers above, only five others are even adequate. Anything debuting under $10 million has to have a shoestring production budget and marketing campaign to approach breaking even. And the scary aspect is that the one bona fide "hit" out of the 26 titles, Real Steel, cost $110 million to make, meaning it's in the red as well. Words cannot describe how desperately the movie industry needs a bona fide blockbuster.

Whatcha watchin'?

Kim Hollis: What are your impressions of Fall Television so far? (You can include Doctor Who if you want.)

Edwin Davies: A couple of the new shows have impressed me quite a bit; Persons of Interest is establishing itself as a fun, pulpy piece of genre television, Up All Night, whilst a touch wobbly in the early going (I'm still unsure if Maya Rudolph is ever going to fit in with the rest of the show), is generally really funny, and I thought that the pilot of 2 Broke Girls showed a lot of promise. Mostly, I'm happier with the returning shows; Community and Parks & Rec both came back very strong, Modern Family tackled the hour long format better than most, and I'm just happy that I can say that Fringe has a fourth season. FOURTH! That's crazy to me. I think I'm going to hang back when it comes to a lot of the other shows and see which ones get good buzz further down the line.

As for Doctor Who, I thought that the season finale was pretty good, if only because it seems to suggest that the next season is going to be a little less concerned with overarching plots and obtuse storytelling. The apparent resolution of the Amy/Rory/River stuff and The Doctor faking his death seemed to be a nice caper to the season, which has been a lot less consistent than the last. To paraphrase the end of the episode: it got a little too big and loud, so maybe a movement towards quieter, smaller episodes is the way to go.

Reagen Sulewski: Looking at the state of my DVR, can a few of these shows fail and get cancelled? Charlie's Angels, I'm looking in your direction. (Editor's note: Charlie's Angels has in fact been cancelled since the time we had this discussion last week.)

Max Braden: I wanted to be a big trashy fun Kat Dennings fan with 2 Broke Girls, but by the second episode it seemed like the writers didn't even know what they wanted to do with the characters and were just writing in "adlib." It pains me even more because I really liked Mad Love, which was replaced by this show. I gave Up All Night and Unforgettable about half an episode before I dumped them; the first because of too much character bickering, the second because of Poppy's "acting." Revenge is kind of ridiculous, but I'll continue watching it because of Emily Van Camp, who I could see giving Jennifer Lawrence some serious competition on the big screen in the future.

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