Fandango pollsters report that their filmgoers most want to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Dark Knight during the summer of 2008.

Here are the results of Fandango.com's online nationwide survey, conducted from March 13 to March 30:

Most Anticipated Summer 2008 Movie:

1. INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL (82%)

2. THE DARK KNIGHT (42%)

3. IRON MAN (38%)

4. THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: PRINCE CASPIAN (37%)

5. THE MUMMY: TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR (30%)

6. GET SMART (29%)

7. THE INCREDIBLE HULK (22%)

8. THE UNTITLED X-FILES SEQUEL (20%)

9. SPEED RACER (19%)

10. SEX AND THE CITY (19%)

I was disappointed by 21, which scored a miserable 32% on Rotten Tomatoes, at the same time that I knew that Robert Luketic had crafted an entertaining male fantasy crowd-pleaser.

21 opened surprisingly well, because it looks like fun. (The NYT's Manohla Dargis was not pleased.)

Coming off a weekend like this: Brit Jim Sturgess (Across the Universe) is a rising star. He's handsome. He can act. He can carry a movie that the critics don't like. He can sing. He can woo a girl. And he can do a credible American accent. Sold. EW's Owen Gleiberman agrees. Here's Lynn Hirschberg's fall profile.

Next up: Wayne Kramer's ensemble drama about immigration, Crossing Over, starring Harrison Ford and Sean Penn, and Kari Skogland's drama Fifty Dead Men Walking, in which he stars as real-life Martin McGartland, a Brit spy who infiltrates the IRA. And possibly Spider-Man on Broadway, with Julie Taymor, who discovered him, after all.

[NYT photo by Alisdair McClellan]

In a publishing universe beset by steep advertising declines, Adweek Media's eagerly awaited annual hot list is the one that tells all: it's about what's working.

Here are some noteworthy tidbits from the 28th edition: For the first time, global newsmag The Economist took the number one spot, jumping from number ten. Other returning titles from last year are Real Simple, More, Glamour and Martha Stewart Living. For the first time in three years, O, The Oprah Magazine, did not make the list. Condé Nast boasts a total of five publications: Vogue, Glamour, Condé Nast Traveler, Cookie, and Men’s Vogue, while Rodale has three titles: Women’s Health, BestLife and Bicycling.

Editor Adam Moss's multi-million investment in revamping New York Magazine is paying off, with a spot in the top ten. New York also grabbed Design Team of the Year for its creative output.

Men’s Health editor David Zinczenko earned the Editor of the Year award, and Men’s Vogue nabbed Startup of the Year.

Despite considerable online competition from celeb sites, People.com, one of the most trafficked magazine-generated sites, grew its audience by 48% in 2007, totaling 6.3 million monthly unique users. People.com won the Magazine Web Site of the Year award.

AdweekMedia’s 2008 Hot List:

Title Circulation Advertising Revenues

1. The Economist 720,882 +24%

2. Real Simple 1,986,605 +22.8%

3. Harper’s Bazaar 729,767 +26.8%

4. More 1,265,999 +25.4%

5. Vogue 1,273,546 +10%

6. Glamour 2,353,854 +18.2%

7. Family Circle 4,011,530 +17%

8. Martha Stewart Living 2,021,934 +24%

9. Condé Nast Traveler 819,683 +22%

10. New York 429,116 +16.3%

Selection to AdweekMedia’s annual Hot List is based on several factors, including: ad page and revenue gains; performance within a magazine’s competitive category; circulation gains; interviews with media buyers and consultants, and AdweekMedia’s own editorial judgment. Magazines must have at least $50 million in advertising revenue and publish 10 issues or more annually.

AdweekMedia’s 2008 10 Under 50 List highlights the top magazines with under $50 million in annual revenue:

Title Circulation Advertising Revenues

1. Women’s Health 907,838 +145.6%

2. BestLife 496,053 +61.1%

3. Men’s Vogue 336,189 +122%

4. Cookie 436,197 +95.9%

5. Everyday Food 918,946 +25.9%

6. All You 843,874 +46.5%

7. Fast Company 749,095 +26.3%

8. Veranda 470,449 +15.2%

9. National Geographic Traveler 738,907 +19.6%

10. Bicycling 416,706 +12.3%

My favorite Richard Widmark performance ever--he's sexy as hell as a tough-guy with a heart--is in Sam Fuller's masterpiece, Pickup on South Street:

Widmark's death last week at age 93 has inspired some terrific obit/tributes from Aljean Harmetz, Richard Corliss, Glenn Kenny, Michael Sragow, and last but not least, the NYT's resident auteurist Dave Kehr--and yes, that critical approach applies to an actor who brought depth and grace to every role, no matter how big or small, mean or creepy. He was always compelling.

Here's GreenCine's wrapup.

And a clip of Widmark in his star-making first role at age 32, as Tommy Udo in Kiss of Death, which won him his only Oscar nom:

It's the HBO way. The fuss is all about the HBO launch--and getting an Oscar nom, natch--not building a successful theatrical release. Marina Zenovich knew this when she made her rich HBO deal for Polanski: Wanted and Desired. The movie quietly slipped into New York for an Oscar-qualifying run, reports Spout and Defamer.

UPDATE: Manohla Dargis' review is in Monday's NYT, for a movie that opened without press screenings--although it was launched to great fanfare at January's Sundance-- last Friday in one theater each in Manhattan and Pasadena. Here are the review's opening graphs.

The Judge, the Director and the Vagaries of Justice By MANOHLA DARGIS

The sharply argued documentary "Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired" isn't about the innocence or guilt of its title subject, who after pleading guilty in 1977 to having "unlawful sexual intercourse" with a minor flew from Los Angeles to London, never again to return to America. Neither is it about Mr. Polanski's likability, his tragic past, morals, short stature, brilliant and bad films, the sleaze factor or your personal feelings on whether there's anything wrong with a 43-year-old man's having sex with a 13-year-old girl. All these elements come teasingly into view here, but really this is a movie about a very different kind of perversion.

"Wanted and Desired," which opened on Friday without advance press screenings, was bought by HBO at the Sundance Film Festival in January. Its one-week theatrical run will make it eligible for Academy Award consideration, though given that organization's often pitiful record when it comes to nonfiction film, it seems unlikely that a movie this subtly intelligent would make its short list. That's especially true because the director, Marina Zenovich, refuses to wag her finger at Mr. Polanski, even when presenting the sordid and grimly pathetic details of his crime, like the Champagne and partial Quaalude he furnished the 13-year-old girl and her repeated nos.

Over the spring break, my college freshman daughter Nora watched Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. And she wants to catch up with all the Indy Jones pics. Raiders of the Lost Ark came out in 1981, long before she was born. So she wants to be up to speed when the highly anticipated first installment in 18 years comes out.

Paramount is well aware. They sent to press around the country a mailer full of posters of all the Indiana Jones movies. They also sent out leather whips. Boomers saw these movies as they came out. They are fond of them, and will take their kids to the new one. Folks all over the world will be ordering the three-pic Indiana Jones DVD set before the May 22 opening --many of them from Lucasfilm's handy-dandy Indy Jones store on the Indiana Jones site, which offers the Young Indiana Jones series on DVD as well.

Paramount has posted the latest Indy 4 TV spot at the Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull website.

The deadline for 146 staffers to accept or reject a handsome buyout offer from Newsweek was March 25. The offer was too good--including a sweetened pension, health coverage until age 65, and two years salary-- for 30-year Newsweek veteran film critic David Ansen to refuse. "It was a good deal," he said. "They didn't want me to leave, which put me in a nice bargaining position. They may have been shocked at how many people took the offer."

While many of the 111 Newsweek employees who did accept it will leave May 30, the 62-year-old Ansen negotiated to continue reviewing for the magazine until year's end, at which point he starts a year-long contract as contributing editor delivering reviews and longer features.

As Newsweek prepares to move its Manhattan offices downtown near Ground Zero, "obviously the climate at newsmagazines is not great," said Ansen. "More cost-cutting, more trimming." Ansen looks forward to writing books, teaching, and "not going out to screenings every night," he said. "I want to watch DVDs of movies I might actually like and read a book or two. Face it, a lot of movies are not that interesting to write about these days."

Radar initially reported the Newsweek buyout.

The current harsh publishing climate has been hard on film critics. Gone from newspaper staff reviewer ranks are The Chicago Reader's Jonathan Rosenbaum, Newsday's John Anderson, The Village Voice's Nathan Lee, The New York Daily News' Jami Bernard and Jack Mathews, The Chicago Tribune's Michael Wilmington and The Atlanta Journal Constitution's Eleanor Ringel Gillespie. Some have retired and some have been pushed out. "It is scary; they're letting a lot of good people go these days," said Ansen. "It's like a return to the hard old days when I was growing up when anybody could be a movie critic, and they'd take somebody off the sports desk."

[Newsweek critic David Ansen, right, with Sidney Kimmel Entertainment's Bingham Ray, at this year's Indie Spirit Awards.]

This Huffington Post report about the various tabloid and celeb mag reports this weekend about the possible New Orleans wedding of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie is fascinating. The New York Daily News, for example, reported Saturday that they were married, citing The Star website. But Sunday, Fox News relies on People Magazine's assertion that it's not true.

I snuck out of work this afternoon for a peek at the Petersen Automotive Museum's new Pixar exhibit, which opens here in Los Angeles tomorrow (March 29). To be honest, I'm not that hot on cars (in general) or Cars (the 2006 Pixar film), but this show really is a perfect marriage: The museum cleared out most of its upstairs Hollywood Room (where the Batmobile, Herbie and the Mach 5 are normally parked) to display the paintings, sketches and maquettes created for the movie Cars.

It's a rare treat for animation fans. Apart from the Museum of Modern Art's big 20th anniversary tribute to the studio (this was back in 2006), much of this art hasn't been displayed off-campus. And as Elyse Klaidman, dean of art and film for Pixar U., explained, those "Art of ..." promo books Pixar releases for each film are compiled and printed too early to include the full spectrum of great work that goes into all these designs.

Elyse further explained that preparation breaks down into three stages — story, characters and environments — and the Petersen arranges them accordingly (it would be fair to add "marketing," the stage that explains the attractions most likely to interest the kids: "life-size" fiberglass replicas of Lightning McQueen and Mater).

Seeing the work divided up this way explains a lot about my reaction to the film: The story felt rather uninspired (a Doc Hollywood redux), the character designs leave the most fun to minor characters, but those Route 66 landscapes, with their hood-ornament-shaped outcroppings and retro Americana flair, totally steal the show.

Watching Cars, you can't help but be distracted by all that gorgeous, high-concept scenery, and an installation like this allows you to take all the time you want exploring the world John Lasseter and company created (maybe a "24-Hour Cars" screening, like the Hirshhorn Psycho exhibit). But there's a tremendous amount of thought that goes into every stage, as we uncovered when Variety first speculated about moving the eyes from the headlights (a la Herbie) to the windshield.

For the MoMA show, Lasseter and Ed Catmull wrote:

Many people don't realize that we have almost as many artists at Pixar working in traditional media — hand drawing, painting, pastels, sculpture — as we do in digital media. Most of their work takes place during the development of a project, when we're working out the story and look of the film. The wealth of beautiful art created for each movie is rarely seen outside the studio, but the finished film we send around the world would never be possible without it.

And now Angelenos have a chance to see some of that great work firsthand.

(Peter Debruge)

I don't remember this scene from Stop-Loss, but don't tell that to Paramount and MTV Films, who'd like you think that the topical Iraq War film is an Abercrombie-style free-for-all. "Stop-Loss is barely registering among potential moviegoers despite generally positive notices," Variety predicts.

Like the marketing campaign (which is selling Stop-Loss like so much canned testosterone but also wants you to take the subject seriously), the movie tries to have it both ways, with patriotism (its characters enlisted to fight terrorism after Afghanistan) and disillusion (when they're ordered back to Iraq after serving their time) literally wrestling over tough questions.

It doesn't star Ryan Phillippe and Channing Tatum, but Sony's 21 looks well positioned to clean up the teen audiences Stop-Loss covets. I haven't seen the film but, like The New Republic's Christopher Orr, I have seen the trailer (he offers a review based on nothing more). I also read Ben Mezrich's book (Bringing Down the House), and the trailer assures me that there's nothing that Vegas, MIT and card counting are the only things the two have in common (what should be an Asian cast is nearly all white, the suggestions of casino debauchery and violence now take center stage, and who the hell know what Kevin Spacey is doing? Wherever there's scenery, the man gets hungry).

That leaves Superhero Movie and Run Fat Boy Run to clean up the remains, although if you're lucky enough to live in New York, do yourself a favor and see Alexander Sokurov's Alexandra instead (it opens in Los Angeles on April 11).

(Peter Debruge)

I went to the "Filming in 3-D Stereo: What You Really Need to Know" panel Wednesday evening at the Clarity Theater, presented by the Visual Effects Society and the PGA New Media Council. 3ality CEO Steve Schklair offered the gathering of producers and technologists a takeaway that took me by surprise: 3-D enabled TV sets are already on the market, though manufacturers aren't promoting the feature yet, and 3-D on Blu-Ray is coming soon.

"Every DLP set Samsung sells is 3-D enabled," he said. "You’re going to start seeing fairly decent releases before the year is over for that set. Mitsubishi is doing the same thing." You'll still need glasses to see the 3-D but "autostereo" monitors -- that is, 3-D without glasses -- already exist.

"The fact is, we’re just about there, the home market is coming. Everybody in this room is going to end up working in stereo."

Me, not so much, at least until Apple rolls out that holographic display they patented a little while back. But now there's yet another high-tech toy to inspire techno-lust. Like I needed that. (D. Cohen)

I'm late to weigh in on the news that the Village Voice had axed film critic Nathan Lee earlier this week (which was neither as juicy nor as surprising as the in-fighting that followed on The Reeler). Word has it that revenues are way, way down at the chain and at least one of our friends at the LA Weekly will likely be pounding the pavements before the week is out.

Grim news -- and this on the heels of the housecleaning 18 months earlier that resulted in Village Voice Media axing a number of its best critics and consolidating them into fewer posts. I must confess, Lee's flip style and breathless rant-rave reviews (riffs, really) turned me off from Day One, as he immediately began to supply the paper with the polar opposite of Dennis Lim's erudite and eloquent analyses.

But the chain didn't let Lee go because he offended the sensibilities of those like me, and the fact that there could me more casualties to come signals the ongoing implosion of our shared profession, at least as far as print is concerned. Over at the The House Next Door, Matt Zoller Seitz predicts, "I think we're fast approaching the point where criticism will become, for the most part, a devotion rather than a job."

For the record, Variety's 30-or-younger critics (that would be Justin Chang and yours truly) concur that the Weekly's Scott Foundas is fast emerging the most important critic of our generation, and the alt-weekly format seems to be the perfect platform for him to champion at considerable length (I hope you caught his excellent Michael Haneke profile) the merits of movies that guys like us are too junior to cover for Variety.

(Peter Debruge)

There was a time when every young actor would've wanted to be the next Tom Cruise, and Miles Fisher may have figured out just the way to turn that notion back into a compliment. Check out this irresistible bit of viral marketing for Superhero Movie:

This isn't the first time director Craig Mazin (who's only other helming credit was the not-so-super-hero spoof The Specials) has taken on Tom Cruise. Some of you may remember how the writer worked a couch-jumping, Oprah-punching incident into Scary Movie 4:

Given the track record for some of these "Movie Movies," it's conceivable that more people will discover Fisher online than see its leading man, Drake Bell, in theaters. In trying to break out of the Nickelodeon box, Bell has certainly taken a different route from his "Drake & Josh" co-star: Josh Peck sells pot, loses his virginity and bares his derrière in the Sundance hit The Wackness.

P.S. Don't miss Gawker's roundup of the best Tom Cruise Scientology spoof videos to date.

(Peter Debruge)

Saw "Shine a Light," the Martin Scorsese Rolling Stones concert film last night. Anne has already written about it so I'll keep this short.

Me, I loved it. However, I saw it in Imax and I found myself thinking that I really don't want to know that much about Mick Jagger's dental work. In fact, I really didn't want to see the inside of his mouth at all -- not at that size, anway. Too much information. It actually took me out of the movie.

Which is, in fact, an ongoing issue with the whole Imax format. Every pore, every blemish, every crow's-foot suddenly looks enormous. It's a great thing if you're in the digital cosmetic enhancement business (and it's already a bigger business than most people realize). HDTV is raising the same issues for TV stars.

That said, I found "Shine A Light" thrilling. I've seen the Stones in concert at the Rose Bowl and Mick Jagger's heat-lightning energy is evident even at from the far end zone. But seeing Keith Richards this intimately is a revelation. If ever a man loved doing what he does, it's Richards. And no one ever looked happier doing it. (D. Cohen)

Today's lead story in Daily Variety on the Anthony Pellicano trial includes this nugget:

In another recording, Pellicano tells his client, director John McTiernan, that he was in the middle of wiretapping producer Charles Roven's phone calls and requests more money for having to sit through hours of "boring" phone calls.

"This guy takes up to 10 minutes deciding if he's miffed or not," Pellicano says. "I'm about to scream listening to this dialogue."

Tony babe, as a onetime assistant to a TV exec, I feel your pain. But if you could get a raise for sitting through your boss's boring calls every assistant in town would be driving a Maybach. (D. Cohen)

The folks at Lucasfilm run a pretty tight ship when it comes to the media. But every so often Mr. Lucas himself gets loose in front of a microphone. This about "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull":

"It's just a movie. Just like the other movies. You probably have fond memories of the other movies. But if you went back and looked at them, they might not hold up the same way your memory holds up."

I can hear the groans from the Presidio all the way down here on Wilshire.

Given his comments to Entertainment Weekly last week...

... we didn't make it bigger and better, we made it exactly the same. So if you loved the other ones, you'll love this one. But if you expect to have F-14s flying under freeways — that isn't there. It's just another period adventure movie with this wacky archaeologist.

... I'm starting to wonder if it's going to be better than "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom." But hey, our intern Libby lists that as one of her three films that mean a lot to her. Kids these days. (D. Cohen)

Because one Eddie Murphy character per film is never enough, the actor tackles yet another multiple-personality comedy in Meet Dave, only this time, he's spared the hours of prosthetics application time demanded by Norbit and The Nutty Professor. Turns out Dave is a human-sized vessel for a bunch of tiny aliens who haven't yet mastered controls of their ship, a concept that reduces to a rather inspired bit of trailer copywriting: "Eddie Murphy in Eddie Murphy." See for yourself:

(Peter Debruge)

Andrew Sullivan's March 16 Sunday Times of London column "Do not adjust your set: TV is about to blow apart" and Michael Hirschorn's article "The Revolution Will Be Televised" in the March issue of the Atlantic ponder the merging of your TV set with the Internet, with all that implies. (h/t The Daily Dish)

My two cents: 1) If U.S. telcos can ever figure out how to make IPTV anything more than a faster, cooler cable TV system, the merger of TV and the World Wide Web could look a lot more like "television" than it does now. But so far, they haven't.

(D. Cohen)

David Cohen here, while Anne Thompson is away for the week. Had lunch recently with tech legend Ray Feeney to talk about what's going on with visual effects, digital production and 3-D. Ray has been saying for a while now that the industry is undergoing it's biggest transformation since the advent of sound. Bigger than color, certainly.

But the question is, what is the industry being transformed into? Ray's argument is that an all-digital pipeline -- everything from cameras to post to digital projectors to mobile video -- isn't just a different way of making movies, it's a new medium. But when every new medium is introduced, people start by doing what they already know how to do. In early movies, they tried filming stage plays. ("The Cocoanuts," anyone?) In early television, they did soaps (borrowed from radio), long-form dramas (like the movies) and variety shows (like vaudeville) until "I Love Lucy" pointed the way to the mega-hit sitcom. That's where we are now with digital moviemaking: using the new tools to make the same kind of thing. We're still waiting for the "I Love Lucy" of the digital age.

Ray says:

I joke with the people on our group who are working with this stuff that when I started in the industry in the ’70s, it was a time when Technicolor was shutting down three-strip stuff and there was a lot of nostalgic looking back on that era, like, 'Wow, as a technologist it must have been really incredible to be around when they were just getting the color in motion pictures and all that.' So when we came along, we were the young puppies and those were the good-old days we would talk to the old guard about.

I tell the people working on our projects that these are the good old days. This (digital) stuff, nobody knows how this should be done. There are no standards and people are trying anything.

Whatever's coming, though, I think one thing's almost certain: It'll be disorienting to Baby Boomers like me whose tastes were formed in the analog age. Videogames are going to have more influence on storytelling and film grammar. Visual effects will be used in more stylized ways, as in "Sin City" and "300."

Personally, I'm looking forward to it. I think. Even if the only thing that would get me to buy a PS3 is the Blu-Ray player.

Anita Busch, who had been a fearless and forthright star newshound reporter at Variety and editor of The Hollywood Reporter, was under contract at the LAT six years ago when she ran afoul of somebody who left a dead fish on her car and tapped her phones and made her frightened and paranoid and took away her livelihood as a journalist. She has always suspected Mike Ovitz of hiring private investigator Anthony Pellicano to intimidate her into shutting up.

The NYT tells Busch's sad story. She will soon testify in the Pellicano illegal wiretapping and information-gathering trial here in Los Angeles. Here's Variety's trial coverage.

When I last talked to Busch several years ago, she was writing an historic novel and trying to make a living not as an entertainment journalist, something she was born to be. Busch on the trail of breaking news was something to behold.

Hollywood has historically been recession-proof. According to Time, summer popcorn movies like Indy 4 and Speed Racer will be just what America needs as it slides into recession. So why am I, the most ardent moviegoer, making more dates with friends to watch DVDs at various well-appointed home viewing rooms? It's partly because the kid I used to go to weekend movies with is in college. It is also the time of year. I have already seen most of the well-reviewed movies in release. I will be as hungry as everyone else for the big summer pics when they finally arrive, and will see them in theaters.

In his latest email, Michael Moore calls on the Democrats to do something about the war in Iraq, please.

So? ... A Note from Michael Moore

Monday, March 24th, 2008

Friends,

It would have to happen on Easter Sunday, wouldn't it, that the 4,000th American soldier would die in Iraq. Play me that crazy preacher again, will you, about how maybe God, in all his infinite wisd