Boxing

WHAT DOES IT TAKE to take down a killer ex-slave? A chainsaw. Movie-studio estimates Sunday show the horror sequel "Texas Chainsaw 3-D" at No. 1 with a $23-million debut. The follow-up to 1974's "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" has masked killer Leatherface on the loose again. Quentin Tarantino 's revenge saga "Django Unchained" held on at No. 2 for a second-straight weekend with $20.1 million, raising its domestic total to $106.4 million. After three weekends at No. 1, part one of Peter Jackson 's "The Hobbit" trilogy slipped to third with $17.5 million.

LOS ANGELES - "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" continues to rule them all at the box office, staying on top for a third-straight week and capping a record-setting $10.8 billion year in moviegoing. The Warner Bros. fantasy epic from director Peter Jackson, based on the J.R.R. Tolkien novel, made nearly $33 million this weekend, according to Sunday studio estimates, despite competition from some much-anticipated newcomers. It's now made a whopping $686.7 million worldwide and $222.7 million domestically alone.

Last week and total box office in millions. Weeks    Per    Rank/Title/Studio Last Week   Total    Out   Location    1. The Hobbit (Warner Bros.) $36.9   $150.1   2   $9,010    2. Jack Reacher (Paramount) 15.6   15.6   1   4,654    3. This Is 40 (Universal) 12.0   12.0   1   4,130    4. Rise of the Guardians (Para.) 5.9   79.7   5   1,947    5. Lincoln (Disney) 5.5   116.7   7   2,410    6. The Guilt Trip (Paramount)

LOS ANGELES - The big deal for Hollywood is not the record $10.8 billion that studios took in domestically in 2012. It's the fact that the number of tickets sold went up for the first time in three years. Thanks to inflation, revenue generally rises in Hollywood as admission prices climb each year. The real story is told in tickets, whose sales have been on a general decline for a decade, bottoming out in 2011 at 1.29 billion, their lowest level since 1995. The industry rebounded this year, with ticket sales projected to rise 5.6 percent to 1.36 billion by Dec. 31, according to box-office tracker Hollywood.com.

It shows up on calendars throughout the English-speaking world. On Dec. 26, an inch over from the biggest holiday on the Christian calendar, there it is: Boxing Day , usually followed by parentheses containing the letters U.K. Those who follow British culture and sports have heard the day referenced obliquely in period dramas and by soccer commentators. It popped up Saturday morning on a live telecast of a Tottenham-Stoke City match being shown in a Society Hill pub. "There's a lot of soccer that day, but I don't know what the significance of it is," said Danny Hayde, 27, from Elizabethtown, Pa., as he watched the game in Cav's Dark Horse on Second Street.

One day shy of the one-year anniversary of leaving her newborn baby on a North Philadelphia sidewalk in a cardboard box, Patricia Crawley learned her legal fate. Crawley, 34, a confessed crack cocaine addict, will be immediately paroled to the New Directions drug rehabilitation program for 11 1/2to 23 months followed by having to report to a probation officer for seven years, Common Pleas Judge Alice Beck Debow ruled Thursday. In addition, the judge ordered that Crawley must perform 80 hours of community service and receive vocational training.

WASHINGTON - Breakfast at Tiffany's , Dirty Harry , and A League of Their Own will be preserved for their enduring significance in American culture by the Library of Congress, along with A Christmas Story and several pioneering sports movies. They are among 25 selections the library inducted Wednesday into the National Film Registry. Congress created the program in 1989 to preserve films for their cultural or historical significance. The latest additions bring the registry to 600 films that include Hollywood features, documentaries, independent films and early experimental flicks.

It used to be that everybody had one: A Polish/Ukrainian/Jewish/Italian uncle who embarrassed you by playing the accordion at family functions. After all, weren't those things just for Mummers? Times are changing: Liberty Bellows, the one-stop accordion shop and school in the Italian Market, is moving in February to get a bigger showroom and a performance space. In the last 10 years, the 64-year-old Acme Accordion School in Haddon Township - yup, there is one - has seen a steady increase in students in their 20s. And as Bruce Springsteen and Arcade Fire incorporate accordions into their repertoire, the squeeze box is turning into a tool of cool.