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The New York Times offers a very cool interactive info-graphic.

Summer blockbusters and holiday hits make up the bulk of box office revenue each year, while contenders for the top Oscar awards tend to attract smaller audiences that build over time. Here's a look at how movies have fared at the box office, after adjusting for inflation.

... then you'll also like this up-to-the-minute version. Scroll to the right to see how The Dark Knight lords over the rest of the industry.

From the archive:

The Rise and Fall of the Blockbuster

Blockbuster Culture's Next Rise or Fall: The Impact of Recommender Systems on Sales Diversity

Were these works of art, or were they commodities? The distinction had become blurry.

The industry does care; the people who make movies need to be able to take themselves more seriously than the people who make popcorn do.

Some of the explanation for what happened to the movies has to do with the movies and the people who make them, but some of it has to do with the audience. "It's not so much that movies are dead, as that history has already passed them by."

In 1946, weekly movie attendance was a hundred million. That was out of a population of a hundred and forty-one million, who had nineteen thousand movie screens available to them. Today, there are thirty-six thousand screens in the United States and two hundred and ninety-five million people, and weekly attendance is twenty-five million.

In 1975, the average cost of marketing for a movie distributed by a major studio was two million dollars. In 2003, it was thirty-nine million dollars.

The primary target for the blockbuster is people with an underdeveloped capacity for deferred gratification; that is, kids.

2008 US Movie Box Office

Cristina first eyes Juan Antonio in an art gallery. Later, she is sitting with Vicky in a restaurant, and the artist, dining in the same place, comes over and suggests, with virtually no preliminaries, that the three fly to a small city not far from Barcelona for a weekend of sex. “Life is short, dull, full of pain,” he says. Why not seize any opportunity for pleasure? He’s provocatively teasing the Americans, but he’s neither a cynic nor a user. He gives good value; that’s why he’s a heartbreaker.

One is meant to emerge from “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” believing that happiness may be elusive, even impossible, but that life has a richness greater than one’s personal satisfaction. There’s something stronger in the air—a largeness of spirit, as well as abundant physical beauty.

From the archive:

If Penélope Cruz or Jennifer Lopez sees this movie, she may just give up and become a librarian.

“No one in Hollywood has ever asked me to be anything other than attractive,” Cruz told me at the Cannes Film Festival, where the women of “Volver” shared the Best Actress prize. “They have no idea what women can do. They don’t give them the chance.”

Young Loves

A film buff tells a friend that he's finally broken "the code" - the mystery behind the character & story threads that bleed from one Quentin Tarantino movie or screenplay into the next. His friend is less than impressed. Starring Seu Jorge (The Life Aquatic) and Selton Mello (Tarja Preta). A short film by Brazilian directing duo 300ml.

Tarantino's Mind

Sydney Pollack, a Hollywood mainstay as director, producer and sometime actor whose star-laden movies like “The Way We Were,” “Tootsie” and “Out of Africa” were among the most successful of the 1970s and ’80s, died on Monday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 73.

Sydney Pollack, Film Director, Dies at 73

Anthony Lane profiles David Lean.

There are two of them, man and boy. They emerge from a sandstorm and pass through the remains of civilization—a few broken walls and a swinging door. Beyond, they see something amazing: a ship sailing calmly through dry land. Only as the pair advance does the vision explain itself. This is the Suez Canal, a shocking stripe of blue. A motorbike buzzes along a road, on the far side, and the rider catches sight of the stragglers. He halts and shouts across the water, “Who are you?,” and again, “Who are you?” We look at the face of the man from the desert. His eyes are even bluer than the canal, but he says nothing. Maybe his tongue is too dry for speech. Maybe he has no answer.

Later in the essay, we encounter this turn of phrase:

Lean said, “Being brought up a Quaker, I was blissfully ignorant of anti-Semitism.”

This means that he was ignorant of Semitism, period, but the problem is not the ignorance. The problem is the bliss.

Master and Commander

Anthony Minghella, the British filmmaker who won an Academy Award for his direction of “The English Patient,” died Tuesday morning in London. He was 54.

Mr. Minghella’s films, which also included “Breaking and Entering” (2006), “The Talented Mr. Ripley” (1999) and “Cold Mountain” (2003), used a careful eye for cultural and historical detail to explore ways in which the dynamics of class often pushed people into corners that they had to fight or scheme their way out of.

Anthony Minghella, 54, Director, Dies

The New York Times offers a very cool interactive info-graphic.

Summer blockbusters and holiday hits make up the bulk of box office revenue each year, while contenders for the top Oscar awards tend to attract smaller audiences that build over time. Here's a look at how movies have fared at the box office, after adjusting for inflation.

The visualization technology bears a strong resemblance to ThemeRiver.

The Ebb and Flow of Movies: Box Office Receipts 1986 - 2007

If you have a milkshake, and I have a milkshake, then you have Hollywood's hottest catchphrase.

Every year, we seem to get at least one. "I see dead people." "I wish I knew how to quit you." Anything from Napoleon Dynamite.

This year's latest cinematic must-say comes from There Will Be Blood, the oil drama in which Daniel Day-Lewis delivers a crushing insult to a nemesis with the punch line "I drink your milkshake! I drink it up!"

'Blood' fans drink up milkshake catchphrase

Last month I made my picks, and tonight's the night. Let's see how I did. Correct picks are in bold.

Picture, Drama: "Atonement."
Actress, Drama: Julie Christie, "Away From Her."
Actor, Drama: Daniel Day-Lewis, "There Will Be Blood."
Picture, Musical or Comedy: "Sweeney Todd."
Actress, Musical or Comedy: Marion Cotillard, "La Vie En Rose."
Actor, Musical or Comedy: Johnny Depp, "Sweeney Todd."
Supporting Actress: Cate Blanchett, "I'm Not There."
Supporting Actor: Javier Bardem, "No Country for Old Men."
Director: Julian Schnabel, "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly."
Screenplay: Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, "No Country for Old Men."
Foreign Language: "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," France and U.S.
Animated Film: "Ratatouille."
Original Score: Dario Marianelli, "Atonement."
Original Song: "Guaranteed" from "Into the Wild."

So, 7 out of 14, though I hedged a bit on Director and Screenplay. If I had seen "There Will Be Blood" when I made my picks, I definitely would have chosen Daniel Day-Lewis over George Clooney in "Michael Clayton." And if I'd seen "La Vie En Rose" before last week, I would have picked Marion Cotillard, too.

List of Golden Globe Award winners

About 1.41 billion movie tickets were sold this year, about the same number as last year. However, in 2002, 1.61 billion tickets were sold.

So, ticket sales are down 12% over the last 5 years.

The big macro story is that once upon a time, most Americans routinely went to the movies. Today, only a minority do. And that minority continues to shrink.

From here on out, Hollywood can -- and will -- continue to raise ticket prices to offset shrinking audiences. But that will presumably just cause the audiences to shrink faster.

Numbers numbers numbers, film industry edition