The news broke on Friday that Dan O’Bannon, screenwriter of “Dark Star”, “Alien” and “Total Recall” and director of “The Return of the Living Dead”, had died at the age of 63.

Almost immediately afterward came word that Robin Wood, the writer and critic, was gone as well. He was 78.

I don’t really have anything to say about either of them that others haven’t said already. O’Bannon was an MVP of sci-fi and horror filmmaking — hell, even “Lifeforce” is worth watching once — and Wood was a seminal critic and vivid writer whom I was honoured to meet when the TFCA gave him the Clyde Gilmour Award in 2006.

And even though he kinda told us we could all go fuck ourselves during his acceptance speech, he said it with such panache that half the room didn’t even realize it until later in the evening.

That, my friends, is style.

… you’re up early. Oh, wait, that’s me, dragging my semi-conscious ass out to Agincourt for a 9:15 am appearance on CTV News Channel, the better to get the drop on the “Avatar” phenomenon.

No need to rush to your TV sets, folks. Just pull up yesterday’s NOW Daily post on the very same subject — I guarantee I’ll be hitting the same points, mainly because I won’t be awake enough to think of new ones — and when they add the hit to the CTV online archive, I’ll post a link.

Oh, and here’s my latest MSN Movies gallery, examining how a few other directors followed their world-shaking smash hits. You know, because of “Titanic”.

… yeah, I’m still not awake.

Welcome to Avatar Day, people. You’ve seen the TV spots, you’ve read the stories; this is the movie that changes everything forever. Except that it won’t. Because, ultimately, it’s just one of several movies opening this week, each with its own special place in the megaplex …

“Avatar“: Twelve years after “Titanic”, James Cameron returns to Great Big Event Movie Filmmaking with … a massive sci-fi version of “Dances with Wolves”. It’s kind of silly, metaphorically muddled and awfully long — except in the last 45 minutes, when everything comes together with such pure movie power that you’ll forget why you ever doubted his talent. And then the robot man pulls out a big knife, and you remember, but you go with it anyway.

“Big River Man”: Unchecked megalomania has never seemed quite so endearing as it does in John Maringouin’s ramshackle documentary about Slovenian swimmer Martin Strel, who plans to swim the length of Amazon in order to raise awareness about deforestation, but also because he’s sort of nuts. Rad explains.

“Broken Embraces”: Now that he’s been declared a master filmmaker, Pedro Almodovar can recycle his own scripts without fear of being called out; why develop new ideas when you can just staple chunks of “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” into the body of “Bad Education”? Not that the result — a moody, time-shifting melodrama — is a disappointment, exactly; indeed, it’s perfectly serviceable. But I thought we were supposed to expect more from master filmmakers than cromulence. Susan and Jason were similarly let down.

“Did You Hear About the Morgans?“: In which we finally discover just how bad a Sandra Bullock romantic comedy has to be for Sandra Bullock to pass on it. Hugh Grant looks miserable even before he sprays himself in the face with bear repellent, and Sarah Jessica Parker looks distressingly like a live-action Gollum. Just plain awful, on every level.

“The Young Victoria“: Jean-Marc Vallee’s period romance may come wrapped in the gaudy Oscar-baiting opulence perfected by Miramax back in the “Shakespeare in Love” era, but you know what they say about books and covers. Having gone back for a second look, I found it s a deeper and more affecting look at power and maturation than I first gave it credit for, built around finely honed performances by Emily Blunt and Rupert Friend as the untested queen and her supportive consort. Do give it a look.

And that’s everything for today. Which is good, because this week was flat-out insane. Don’t believe me? Check out my rather breathless appearance on CTV News Channel yesterday afternoon, arranged less than an hour beforehand … and nearly aborted when I got to the studio “just in time” to discover my watch was running about five minutes slow.

Good times, good times.

NOW’s annual Holiday Movie Guide hits the stands today, and it’s packed with cinematical goodness — just check out my interviews with Terry Gilliam, Emily Blunt, Jean-Marc Vallee and Sarah Ferguson.

And if you’d rather listen than read, check out our epic four-part podcast, in which Glenn, Susan and I discuss niche marketing, awards campaigns, the appeal of the Christmas Day rollout, and much more. You can find it at the top of our RSS page; right-click the appropriate links to save them to your computer. UPDATE: Apparently the RSS page still isn’t updated; try looking here instead.

Also, I think there might be some reviews in there, but we’ll get to those as they roll out.

The Toronto Film Critics Association announced our 2009 awards today — and they’re pretty interesting.

In our first-ever tie for Best Picture Steve McQueen’s “Hunger” and Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” shared the top prize, while Kathryn Bigelow was named Best Director for “The Hurt Locker”. (“Hunger” also took the Best First Feature prize.)

Other winners include Nicolas Cage and Carey Mulligan, named Best Actor and Actress for “The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans” and “An Education”, respectively, and Christoph Waltz and Anna Kendrick, who took the Supporting prizes for their roles in “Basterds” and “Up in the Air” — the two films that wound up sharing the Best Screenplay award.

Louie Psihoyos’ chilling “The Cove” was named Best Documentary; Wes Anderson’s “Fantastic Mr. Fox”, Best Animated Feature. And Michael Haneke’s grim Cannes hit, “The White Ribbon”, took the Best Foreign-Language Film prize.

We’ll be celebrating this year’s awards at a gala dinner in January, where we’ll also hand out the Rogers Best Canadian Feature Award and the Jay Scott Prize for emerging talent. Because we’re just that awesome.

With various critics’ groups weighing in on the best films of the year, and studios rolling their Oscar bait into limited release here and there, awards season is well and truly underway — and just in time! November gave us so little to talk about, after all; here’s a blog post I wrote for the NOW site about the prizing time.

Disney’s would-be 2D animated contender, “The Princess and the Frog”, topped the box-office in its first weekend of wide release with an estimated $25 million — a decent opening for a cartoon in December, though Variety had to do a little contorting to make it sound, well, specialer:

“Princess” scored the best nationwide debut for a toon opening in December, although it technically bowed in November, albeit as a limited run. Part of the reason is that most animated titles open around Thanksgiving, as “Princess” did.

I suppose they can’t just say “That’s a decent opening for a cartoon in December”. It’s Variety; they need to find something special about everything.

My latest MSN gallery is up, using Clint Eastwood’s “Invictus” as an excuse to examine other films that have used sports to lead audiences into a different kind of arena — the arena of the metaphor!

Well, not always. Sometimes a pool cue is just a pool cue, you know?

Sorry. Still tired from last night’s vote count … we really need to change our ballot deadline from midnight to 9 pm one of these years.

My duties as TFCA veep require me to spend most of the next 24 hours neck-deep in ballots, so let’s go straight to the week’s openings:

“Collapse”: Chris Smith’s second release this year — after the fine drama “The Pool” — is essentially a monologue on the perils facing humanity delivered by a fellow named Michael Ruppert, who’s either a total paranoid or the most perceptive man on the planet. Either way, he’s dealing in some pretty compelling material, and Jason and Susan were hooked.

“Invictus“: Morgan Freeman makes a fine Nelson Mandela in Clint Eastwood’s otherwise insignificant drama about the early days of post-apartheid South Africa, when a struggling rugby team brought the convulsing nation together. Or something. Frankly, it’s awfully hard to tell what we’re supposed to be caring about from one scene to the next.

“Me and Orson Welles“: Richard Linklater phones one in with this flat comedy about a starstruck New York teenager (blank slate Zac Efron) who falls into a friendship of sorts with a certain theatrical maverick back in the days before anyone knew Charles Foster Kane from Adam. Christian McKay makes a fine Welles, but he’ll be just as impressive on the DVD.

“The Princess and the Frog“: Walt Disney Pictures returns to old-school 2D animation for this intermittently charming but very, very minor comedy about a New Orleans waitress who kisses the wrong enchanted prince, and ends up kinda froggy herself. Yes, it’s “The Emperor’s New Groove” meets “Beauty and the Beast” … but neither of those had Cajun fireflies, now, did they?

“A Single Man”: A crisply despairing Colin Firth stars as a middle-aged gay man devastated by the recent death of his lover in fashion designer Tom Ford’s immaculately composed adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s novel … which is just a hair too on-the-nose about everything to fully blossom. This is not to say anything against Firth, who is really quite excellent; it’s just that the movie around him is so artificial that it hurts. Glenn feels much the same.

Right, that’s everything. Back to counting …

The new issue of NOW is out, wherein you’ll find my Ten Best Films of the Decade, as well as an overview of the key films and cinematic trends of the Aughties. (That’s what we’re calling them, right?)

And yes, I know, my top film is not a movie anyone else would pick. But that’s kind of the point. It’s my list. And six years later, my beloved “Shaun of the Dead” is the movie to which I keep returning, always finding something new and always, always, enjoying the hell out of myself. It is the film that gave me the most pleasure of any movie this decade.

Most importantly, it’s the movie that I found myself always weighing most carefully as I assembled my Top Ten list; every time I moved something else up or down, I had to see what that calculation did to “Shaun”. Once I realized I wasn’t trying to protect the other titles in quite the same way, the decision was clear.

So, yes. “Shaun of the Dead” is my movie of the decade. You wanna fight about it, it’s pool cues at high noon at the Winchester.