The animated movie Up! has box office receipts headed in the same direction… Up… way up! The Buena Vista release snagged an impressive $68.2 million in its first weekend of release, easily beating all other contenders and all without a memory upgrade for the theaters that hosted the filmed marvel. The per-screen average of $18K per showing was also easily the highest of any film this week.

Night at the Museum: Battle for the Smithsonian fared second-best, ringing up an additional $25.5 million in ticket sales to bring its 10-day total to $105 million, but with a $150 million budget, the film’s still far from reaching black ink territory. Spider-Man filmmaker Sam Raimi’s return to horror with Drag Me To Hell underperformed, raking in only $16.6 million to barely capture third place; Terminator Salvation was close behind in fourth place with $16.1 million. After 10 days in release, Terminator Salvation has raked in barely $90 million against a $200 million budget and is fading fast, meaning the franchise’s first Schwarzenegger-free installment may be a box office bust.

On the opposite end of the scale, Star Trek may have been in fifth place, but it still raked in $12.8 million after a month since its initial release and has crossed already the $200 million barrier, with a domestic total of $209.5 million and an additional $92 million in foreign box office so far, meaning the blockbuster has now crossed the $300 million barrier in global ticket sales. Not bad. (And thanks to a stronger foreign box office, X-men Origins: Wolverine is still just ahead of Star Trek with $315 million worldwide, even though the film’s lost momentum in the US.)

Romantic vampires are all the rage right now. Not only has HBO found a hit in Alan Ball’s adaptation of Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse supernatural mystery novels, True Blood, but the big-screen adaptation of Stephanie Meyer’s four-book epic, Twilight, which is the first of the four installments, was dominant at the box office both last weekend and heading into the Thanksgiving holiday.

Twilight grossed just under $70 million in domestic box office over its first three days, despite a lack of established stars and a modest $37 million budget. On Thanksgiving Thursday, the movie started strong, with $8 million, enough to keep it ahead of all comers.

Quantum of Solace, the strong new Bond thriller with a bulky $200 million budget, dropped to third place on Thanksgiving, behind Four Christmases. The critically-acclaimed Australia opened in seventh place over the weekend and keeps fading. Considering Twilight is a no-sex, no-violence, no stars wunderkind, it is certainly the surprise of the Thanksgiving box office. Hollywood could probably use a memory upgrade to keep in mind the lessons learned here.