The domestic box-office estimates for the July 4th holiday weekend are in. According to Boxofficemojo, at the time of this writing, the results are too close to call. Both Viacom's (NYSE: VIA) Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and News Corp.'s (NASDAQ: NWS) Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs are credited with the same amount of money: $42.5 million. Boxofficemojo is giving Dinosaurs the edge for now and calling it the top movie, presumably because the per-theater average for the computer cartoon is slightly higher.

I previously discussed News Corp.'s strong opening with Dinosaurs, but unfortunately, I'm not so sure the movie lived up to it. When the second Ice Age was released back in 2006, it scored $68 million in its three-day debut weekend. Dinosaurs didn't do as well, but let's take into account the film's Wednesday opening, and tally up the gross for the five-day period, since some of the excitement that might have been reserved for the weekend could have been spread over the mid-week showings. Even by that standard, as of the current estimate, Dinosaurs has taken in a little less than the second Ice Age.

News Corp.'s (NASDAQ: NWS) new computer cartoon, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, had a strong domestic debut this past Wednesday. It opened with $13.8 million on that day, which represents a record-breaking performance for an animated feature released in the middle of the week. Now, just recently, I mentioned how I hate it when Hollywood promotes the breaking of a record. It tends to be very qualified. This situation is no different. Still, I'll give credit where credit is due. Dinosaurs is doing well so far.

We'll have to see how the weekend ultimately treats the new feature. The competition is stiff. It's the July 4th holiday, and Viacom (NYSE: VIA) is out there with Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Thankfully, News Corp. won't have too much to worry about from Disney's (NYSE: DIS) Pixar cartoon Up. As can be seen by a Boxofficemojo chart, the excitement surrounding Up has faded. News Corp. was naturally counting on this to happen by this point in time.

Disney (NYSE: DIS) programmed a new movie recently on one of its prime media assets. The film, titled Princess Protection Program, debuted on the Disney Channel and stars a young actress named Selena Gomez. The casting choice was no accident. Because Disney tries to be as synergistic as possible (the company is generally good when it comes to the science of synergy, although there are certainly opportunities for it to be even better), the Mouse made sure to use Gomez since she is the popular star of another Disney Channel program called Wizards of Waverly Place, a project meant to capture at least a little of the Harry Potter magic.

Well, as Boorstin rightly points out, CBS (NYSE: CBS), Disney's (NYSE: DIS) ABC, General Electric's (NYSE: GE) NBC, and News Corp.'s (NASDAQ: NWS) Fox do need to worry. These DVR technologies basically translate to a drop in the economic value of advertising. Let's face it: who watches commercials when they don't have to?

Recently, DreamWorks Animation (NYSE: DWA) announced that it would be making more movies. According to the press release, the move calls for five movies every two years. The plan would be for one year to have the normal two projects, while the next year would have three releases.

This is an interesting scheme. It has many implications. First, it means that CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg is extremely confident in his company's ability to produce compelling content. Second, it means that he believes that 3D theaters will be more important than ever in the near future. Third, it is a direct attack against Disney's (NYSE: DIS) Pixar asset. DreamWorks Animation is, without a doubt, becoming much more cutthroat in its competitive stance.

Social networking sites gained a lot of eyeball-share last year. The time that users spent on sites like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace nearly doubled in the past year, increasing by 83% relative to April 2008. The number of minutes spent on Facebook by its 200 million active members spiked 700% year-over-year to 13.9 billion. The second most popular social networking site, MySpace, saw a 31% fall in minutes spent on the site to 4.97 billion, but ranked number one in video stream consumption.

Blogger, Tagged and Twitter took the third, fourth and fifth spots. In April 2009, the number of tweets unleashed shot up 3,712% from April 2008.

The missing link? Money.

Disney (NYSE: DIS) soared to the number-one spot this past weekend with its new Pixar project, Up. The computer cartoon grossed roughly $68 million at domestic theaters as of early estimates, according to Boxofficemojo.

Disney took a lot of thunder away from News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) and its Ben Stiller comedy/fantasy Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian. That movie dropped to second place, taking in about $25 million.

Analyst upgrades:

• Keefe Bruyette upgraded Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) to Outperform from market Perform after transferring coverage to a new analyst. The firm expects Morgan to benefit from the pending joint venture with Smith Barney and improvements in its operating environment.
• FBR Capital upgraded Winn-Dixie (NASDAQ: WINN) to Outperform from Market Perform as it believes the company is executing well and shares are cheap at current levels. The firm keeps a $16.50 target on the stock.
• Baird believes Polaris's (NYSE: PII) consensus expectations and valuation are too low and that the company will expand beyond powersports. The firm upgraded shares to Outperform from Neutral and raised their target to $37 from $32.
• J. Crew (NYSE: JCG) was upgraded to Neutral from Sell at Goldman.
• Lexmark (NYSE: LXK) was upgraded to Equal Weight from Underweight at Barclays.
• Global Hunter upgraded Big Lots (NYSE: BIG) to Buy from Neutral.

Every few months, it seems, we get an article or two that says Disney (NYSE: DIS) might be a buy. TheStreet.com issued an upgrade on the stock based on several metrics. SmartMoney believes Disney might be a great company for the summertime.

When it comes to Disney, every investor has to be careful. Take every analytical article with a grain of salt. Why? Because even though the fundamentals might be good on the company from a valuation standpoint, Disney's stock has disappointed investors many times in the past. As a long-term shareholder, I know what I'm talking about. And many other pundits have made the same observation: Disney always seems to be cheap to someone at any given time.

It was a busy weekend at the box office. The Memorial Day holiday period is a time when studios try to set a good financial tone for their summer slates.

And it looks like News Corp. (NASDAQ: NWS) is the winner. The media company's Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian project, starring Ben Stiller, grossed an estimated $53 million at domestic multiplexes over the past three days according to Boxofficemojo. That was a good performance. The first Night at the Museum took in $30 million in its first three days of release back in Christmas 2006.

I was surprised that News Corp. came out on top. Did anyone out there think that Terminator Salvation, from Time Warner (NYSE: TWX), wouldn't be number one?

Last week's number-one picture, Star Trek, had to yield to a newcomer this week. Angels & Demons, distributed by Sony (NYSE: SNE), took the top spot this past weekend at domestic theaters, according to Boxofficemojo. The movie is credited with $48 million as of early estimates.

Trek, distributed by Viacom (NYSE: VIA), came in second with $43 million. And I have to say, although I wasn't impressed with the movie's box-office debut, I thought that the second weekend was relatively strong. I expected a better than 50% drop for its sophomore frame. As of current data, Trek only shed roughly 40% of its opening gross. Good job (I still think the opening was weak, though). The film is close to the $150 million mark.

4Kids Entertainment (NYSE: KDE), a producer of children's content that engages distribution and licensing opportunities, has not been a great stock idea. Although shares of the company have perked up as of late, the longer-term trend hasn't been so encouraging. Let's see if the first-quarter numbers might change your mind.

Well, I don't know about your mind, but my mind so far hasn't been changed. Revenues declined by 32%. There was a net loss of 15 cents per diluted share. Now, granted, that was far better than the net loss last year, which calculated out to 48 cents per diluted share. I give the company credit for narrowing the loss, but something tells me that I don't necessarily want to invest hard-earned money in a business that is based on the fickle nature of a very young target audience.

Viacom (NYSE: VIA) came out on top this past weekend with its new Star Trek film. According to early estimates from Boxofficemojo, the picture made roughly $72 million over the three-day period at domestic theaters.

If you include some early screenings, the total is closer to $76 million. Trek beat out such projects as Marvel's (NYSE: MVL) and News Corp.'s (NASDAQ: NWS) X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which came in second place, and Time Warner's (NYSE: TWX) Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, which took spot number three.