It's no surprise that as of Monday AM in advance of a Wednesday opening, MovieTickets.com is reporting over 1,300 sold out showings for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince worldwide, including over 950 stateside midnight sellouts.

By 1:30 PM Eastern Time Monday, 93 % of all tickets sold at MovieTickets.com were Half-Blood Prince, which is currently outpacing seven of the Top 10 Total Ticket Sellers of All-Time, only coming in behind No. 1, Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, No. 2, The Dark Knight and No. 4, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

· No. 3 Lord of the Rings: Return of the King · No. 5 The Passion of the Christ · No. 6 Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest · No. 7 Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers · No. 8 Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix · No. 9 Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones · No. 10 Matrix Reloaded

I do recommend seeing Half-Blood Prince on IMAX, because it is so impeccably made that it will withstand that level of scrutiny. In this week's Movietickets poll, among 3516 people voting, 57% will see the movie before it opens on IMAX July 29; 29% plan to see it in both theaters and IMAX, and 14% will wait for the IMAX debut.

It was utterly predictable. On the strength of audience curiosity stoked by Universal's mammoth (and expensive) global marketing campaign, Bruno opened to a solid opening day, followed by a dramatic drop-off due to catastrophic word-of-mouth.

Reviews were mixed (55% on Metacritic). Some critics appreciated Sacha Baron Cohen and Larry Charles' confrontative shock tactics that pushed moviegoer buttons. The Voice's J. Hoberman addresses both Bruno and Lynn Shelton's micro-budget indie flick Humpday. The Guardian analyzes Baron Cohen's sexual neuroses, while the NYT checks out his costume designer. But At the Movies' mainstream Two Bens were typical: neither recommended that audiences "see" the film.

Anyone who has ever been to an exhibitors' convention like ShoWest knows that while American moviegers have a huge appetite for raunchy comedies, they are made extremely uncomfortable about sex unless it is really really funny in a way that relieves anxiety. Americans tend to be skittish about explicit sex (Showgirls, Striptease). Up-close man-on-man sex, real-life swingers and sado-masochism don't fall inside their comfort zone. Finally, the Puritan ethic lives on.

Unfortunately for Bruno, its opening weekend was its one shot--the fall from grace will continue. Besides, audiences will be distracted by some very pleasant summer nights at the movies. With just-about universal appeal, Wednesday opener Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (see clips below) could dethrone the mighty Transformers:ROTF (although that is tall order) and on the specialty front, Fox Searchlight's anti-romantic comedy 500 Days of Summer will score, pushing Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt into the rising stars category.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen has passed the $300 million in 14 days. The sequel is so hugely successful that it encourages the studios to keep pursuing the same dispiriting tentpole dream. It's not a question of Michael Bay being a crap director. He's clearly in the zone of knowing what audiences want to see. I just worry that the studios will neglect creating original franchises in the first place, which demand creativity and imagination.

Paramount's press release is on the jump. UPDATE: Along with a later release announcing that thanks to Transformers: ROTF and Star Trek the studio is the first to pass the domestic $1 billion mark.

Inflation is a huge factor in figuring out the best box office performers of all time. Bloomberg's new inflation-adjusted chart places Gone with the Wind at the top of the U.S. top box office list, along with Star Wars, The Sound of Music and E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial. Where's the mighty number one b.o. grosser of all time, Titanic? After The Ten Commandments. Years ago, Variety's late A.D. Murphy told me the same thing: adjusted for inflation, Gone with the Wind handily beats every challenger.

Full Bloomberg b.o. chart is on the jump.

This reminds me of my current revelations on Flickchart, a new ranking site that doesn't ask you to rate movies with stars. No, it asks you to pick one movie over another. Most of the time it's easy to pick a good movie over a bad one, but as you play, you sometimes have to pick between two bad ones (hence The Da Vinci Code was high on my list at one point) or worse, between two good ones. How do you pick between Citizen Kane and Casablanca? I tend to be obsessive about this sort of thing. What if someone saw my chart with The Goonies or The Illusionist at number one? Toy Story recently beat out Braveheart at number one; it stayed there until Flickchart asked me to choose between Toy Story and something even better--Goodfellas.

I'm struck at how fast the entertaining blockbusters are moving up the chart--Pixar, James Bond, Spielberg, Burton, Zemeckis, Cameron, Hitchcock and The Godfather films. It doesn't surprise me that Lean, Kubrick, Welles, Kurosawa, the Coens, Scorsese and Wilder are strong, but The Exorcist and Zodiac are surprisingly high. Someone tweeted that Flickchart is like crack for movie addicts. Film School Rejects can't get enough. Neither can AICN's Mr. Beeks. Somebody stop me.

Here are Flickchart's top rankings, led by The Dark Knight over second place Star Wars.

Here's the Flickchart trailer:

Buried in this Kim Masters story about Sony bringing over George Clooney's production deal is a juicy nugget: Clooney wants to take over playing Jack Ryan in the Tom Clancy franchise. That is, if Paramount ever gets its act together and puts the next movie back on the front burner. It's been years since Ben Affleck took over from Harrison Ford as a younger Ryan, and acquitted himself well in The Sum of All Fears, which grossed $193 million worldwide in 2002.

The studio didn't go ahead and make another one with Affleck because his prime supporter, studio chief Sherry Lansing, was on her way out the door, and the movie did not score in overseas markets. In the past seven years, Affleck has gained some gravitas as a writer-director (Gone Baby Gone), but his star is not on the rise as a leading man (see State of Play, He's Just Not that Into You). When constant management shifts brought the studio a series of production heads, nobody seemed to recognize that the dormant Clancy series could be a valuable tentpole. With Affleck out, Clooney is perfect casting for a more mature Ryan.

After a lazy holiday weekend, I herewith share with you my gleanings of what's been going on.

At the boxoffice, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs battled nasty reviews to virtually tie with holdover Transformers:ROTF over the five-day holiday weekend. UPDATE: Transformers 2 barely won the weekend with a preliminary $42.4 million over Ice Age's $41.6 million in slightly fewer runs.

Public Enemies proved that Depp as Dillinger is a solid b.o. draw. Sandra Bullock vehicle The Proposal dropped only 31% and has grossed $94.2 million. Kathryn Bigelow's intense Iraq thriller The Hurt Locker continued strong in limited release. So far agitprop Food Inc. is outperforming costume romance Cheri.

Here's the first eight minutes of The Hurt Locker.

Todd McCarthy favorably reviews the sixth Harry Potter installment, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. The most grown-up and thrilling of the bunch, the film will be one of the highest-grossing of the year, he predicts.

Here's the trailer.

Cynthia Littleton tributes The Hollywood Reporter's late international reporter Steve Brennan.

Marc Andreessen is starting a venture capital fund. UPDATE: All Things Digital talks to him about going to the dark side..

Beleaguered The Weinstein Co. is pushing its animated feature Escape from Planet Earth back to 2011, reports the LAT.

Beatles and Rolling Stones manager Allen Klein died at age 77 after fighting Alzheimer's.

As I head off for an unplugged holiday weekend--to a pal's Idyllwild hideaway with no wifi (thanks Lili)--here are some weekend links.

We will see how Michael Mann's Public Enemies fares: usually, if the highbrow critics on Metacritic grant a movie a 71 ranking and the masses at Rotten Tomatoes vote with 58 %, that's a bad sign for playability, even if Johnny Depp gets folks on the first weekend. Time Out asserts that Mann is running on empty. And Michael Phillips shares my concerns with the film's HD approach. Patrick McGavin begs to differ.

Mann's movie is based on the well-known Bryan Burrough book, which covers bank robber John Dillinger and his various cohorts at length. The Daily Rumpus offers a must-read "Dead Sea Scrolls" for Dillinger aficionados. Patrick Goldstein fills in details on how the ever-finicky Mann spent some of his $80 million Public Enemies budget.

The Independent asks, What ever happened to the great American film director?" I explained the problem in one of my late lamented Variety columns, entitled Studios wary of big-budget auteurs. Meanwhile The Guardian bemoans the low quality Hollywood schlockbusters.

For your viewing pleasure, The Guardian has the trailer for Pedro Almodovar's Broken Embraces. Cinematical posts an amusing spoof of the New Moon trailer.

As much as I want to see the Steven Soderbergh/Brad Pitt version of Moneyball, reality needs to return to the movie business. Soderbergh himself occupies a strange nexus within Hollywood. He once told me that he didn't want to direct movies out of the back seat of a limousine. And he is willing to play studio ball or indie ball, as he sees fit. At the same time, like all gifted directors, he wants to push himself, and the art form. But he often loses interest in what movie audiences might want. (UPDATE: On Soderbergh's upcoming Warners' agro-business comedy The Informant!, starring Matt Damon, which is set to debut at September's Toronto Film Fest, the director was eager to be "audience friendly," says co-financeer Groundswell CEO Michael London.)

Sony chief Amy Pascal (who explains herself to the LAT's Patrick Goldstein) has every right to pull the plug on a movie that started to look too risky for a $57 million starter budget. Add marketing costs and the movie would have to score at least $100 million theatrically, and the DVD cushion isn't there anymore. (The NYT reports its Moneyball analysis here. And the WSJ reports on Paramount's efforts to outsource some home entertainment back office operations.)

That's the real reason that reality has set in. Soderbergh has also stated that the economics of the movie business are out of whack. He's right. A correction is long overdue. But I hate to see worthy movies going by the wayside. It would make sense for more filmmakers to step into the "specialty" side of the business and make these risky movies for a price.

Of course the Soderberghs and Michael Manns of the world want to express themselves as artists. And ride the studio gravy train. But the studios are not going to indulge their whims anymore at high budget levels. I'd hate for Public Enemies' mixed reception to give the studios an excuse to not make movies like this anymore. I also don't want Universal execs to abandon their willingness to try out-of-the-box movies that sometimes work (Wanted, Mamma Mia!) and sometimes don't (State of Play, Duplicity). The last thing we want is for them to make more movies like Land of the Lost!

Kim Masters examines Mann's movie m.o..

Because it's only going to get tougher for smart movies for adults to get made, moviemakers who land a chance at bat need to hit these films out of the park--and connect with audiences. Now is not the time for navel-gazing and experimentation at big-budget levels. That's the deal.

Here's what I learned on my rounds at the Transformers: ROTF premiere Monday night:

Transformers 2 cost north of $200 million, plus $150 million in global marketing. That's $350 million going in. It could outgross the last one ($708 million worldwide) and score $1 billion around the world. There's no question it will open. (The record to beat for a five day weekend is Spider-Man 2's $152.4 million, reports Variety.) The anxiety is about what the second weekend drop-off will be--will it play, in other words. I think so.

The movie is critic-proof, and needs to be, the reviews will suck. (The NYT uses the word "cretinous.") It's a nonsensical, eye-rolling macho fantasy--it's about Megan Fox running in slow motion, and artillery fire, and giant roiling robots desecrating ancient pyramids, and rows of pointy-nosed fighter planes taking off in formation. But there are sequences--one where the Decepticons attack and sink an aircraft carrier comes to mind-- that are stunningly beautiful. Bay has the gift of visual poetry--as well as chaotic pixel excess.

The problem is, when movies like this do so well, it encourages the studios to keep thinking in terms of big-scale brand-names. At the after-party, Paramount chairman Brad Grey admitted that the studio will keep chasing these movies. It's where the money is. (And they'll probably keep passing on iffy ventures like Steven Soderbergh's resolutely uncommercial Moneyball--even with Grey pal Brad Pitt attached. The back end was still a problem, even with Pitt's upfront price slashed. The movie would have had to make $100 million. And that wasn't likely to happen.)

What made the Transformers sequel so expensive was ILM's robots, which are ingenious. (So is the sound design, which helps to make the characters more distinctive and cut through the clutter.) I prefer the little gremlin-like robot characters, partly because my brain can comprehend them. Producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura (who came out clean in Michael Cieply's NYT profile) says there are about three times more transformers in this one--the last one had about 13--and they're best viewed in big-screen IMAX. Here's an interview with ILM genius Scott Farrar. And EW runs a Megan Fox layout and interview.

Pay boosts are another added sequel expense. Shia LaBeouf, who hung with Emile Hirsch at the Transformers street party as Linkin Park rocked out, almost didn't make the sequel when his manager demanded $20 million. LaBeouf had made a deal for $750,000 for the first two films. After the first one scored, Paramount offered $3 million for the next two. They wound up settling for $5 million each. LaBeouf talks to Kim Masters about his wild, wild life.

Michael Bay wishes he had one more week to edit the picture, which everyone, including him, agrees is too long. It could use a trim. Paramount's new production chief Adam Goodman, who supervised the movie, asked Bay to cut it, but he wouldn't, partly because they ran out of time. Paramount wants another installment to go real soon, on a slightly smaller-scale. Bay has other plans. He says he wants to do something else first. Clear his head a little.

As Overture Films lines up their 2009/2010 slate--hoping for a breakout--Wednesday they announced development of Celeste & Jesse Forever, a divorce rom-com co-written by and co-starring Rashida Jones (I Love You Man, Parks and Recreation) and Will McCormack (Must Love Dogs, Syriana). Team Todd (Austin Powers, Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland) is producing. (It's odd that Overture announced without a director in place.)

Overture CEO Chris McGurk and COO Danny Rosett have slated for release: Sundance screenwriting award-winner Paper Heart, starring Charlyne Yi and Michael Cera (August 7); horror-thriller Pandorum, starring Dennis Quaid and Ben Foster (September 4); and the untitled Michael Moore Wall Street greed expose (October 2). Set for the first quarter is the F. Gary Gray thriller Law Abiding Citizen, starring Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler.

The company recently acquired The Men Who Stare at Goats, a war satire starring George Clooney, Kevin Spacey and Ewan McGregor, which is in post-production and not yet dated, and pre-bought Ron Nyswaner and Catherine Hardwicke's contemporary remake of Shakespeare's Hamlet, starring Emile Hirsch, which is casting.

Of these titles, the Michael Moore and Law Abiding Citizen boast the most potential to become breakout hits. So far, DeNiro/Pacino thriller Righteous Kill is Overture's biggest grosser at $40-million. Espionage thriller Traitor and heist comedy Mad Money grossed $24 million and $21 million, respectively. Rom-com Last Chance Harvey scored $20 million worldwide. Art-house acquisitions The Visitor and Sunshine Cleaning fared modestly well. But Sleepwalking, Nothing but the Holidays and Henry Poole Is Here lost money.

This is not an embarrassing track record. With Starz and homevideo, all these pics generated more numbers. What McGurk and Rosett need is a breakout like Twilight.

First the media touted the uptick in 2009 theatrical business, now they're pointing to a downturn compared to last summer's b.o., a few big flops and the absence of blockbusters. "Through Sunday, summer B.O. revs stood at $1.46 billion, compared to $1.47 billion last year," reports Variety.

Hold on folks, it's early days yet. Everyone knows what the blockbusters will be (besides Up): Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Disney's pairing of Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds in The Proposal should yield strong returns with the femme demo. But word is that neither Universal's Bruno nor Public Enemies will break out huge. And Sony's Year One and Paramount's G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra (which had a disastrous preview) look soft indeed.

Here are some summer lessons:

2. Origin myths sell. Star Trek skipped behind the other ten movies and went back to the beginning. Director J.J. Abrams found the right balance for Trekkies and newbies alike. Gross to date: $233 million so far.

3. Smart R-rated dumb male comedies sell. Always have, always will. The Hangover is the summer's sleeper hit, grossing more than $110 million in its first two weeks. The best news for Warner Bros: no talent profit participants. The bad news: they have to share with partner Legendary Pictures.

4. R-rated dumb male comedians don't sell in family movies. Universal miscalculated by starring Will Ferrell in $100-million remake Land of the Lost. The studio pulled the second weekend print ads on the picture, an unusual move. Gross to date: $36 million.

5. Eddie Murphy without makeup doesn't sell. I rest my case with Imagine That. Put Murphy under pounds of makeup playing a character, and they show up. Give him a role playing someone close to himself and audiences stay away in droves.

6. Lackluster sequels sell--but don't break out big. The key with these tentpole franchises is keeping up the quality.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which cost $150 million, opened huge and dropped off drastically. That means Fox's massive marketing budget pulled the core comics fanbase, but the movie failed to broaden. Gross to date: $176 million domestic, $353 million worldwide.

The sequel to The Da Vinci Code, Angels & Demons, also scored big overseas ($415 million) but did middling business stateside ($124 million). To my mind Ron Howard delivered a better E-ride this time. But the book and the movie lacked the compelling Christian scandale that the first one had. This movie was (expensive) standard-issue.

Despite McG's $200-million budget, Terminator Salvation failed to improve on its predecessors and seemed oddly retro. The highlights were not Christian Bale, who seemed to be channeling Batman, growl and all, but supporting performers Sam Worthington and Anton Yelchin. Gross to date: $115 million, plus $100 million overseas.

Americans who are cinching their belts and making do with less flocked to cinemas over the weekend to watch a group of grown men exercising no restraint whatsoever. The Hangover was the perfect antidote to a nation on a fiscal diet.

Let's be honest: this trailer will be hard to beat as best of the year.

With marketing like that, how could the R-rated comedy not open? And it played well for most folks, because the movie upticked enough at weekend's end to beat the formidable Up on the second go-round. (And this was the movie Wall Street loved to hate because it was about an old guy and lacked merchandizing potential.) Nora and her pals went to see Up but it was SOLD OUT. When does that happen anymore? So they went to The Hangover instead--and LOVED IT.

Two male buds and I checked out some shiny vintage cars at The Grove after chuckling--not guffawing--through The Hangover. Ed Helms was the best thing in it--his piano solo alone was worth the price of admission--although Bradley Cooper looks just fine with his shirt off. But how could any movie live up to that trailer? Impossible. There was no way for the movie to pay off the mystery of how a baby, a chicken, a tiger and a missing tooth ended up in a Vegas hotel room. As the movie unspooled, it was mildly diverting, with diminishing returns.

And why wouldn't Warners green light a sequel in advance? It cost nothing, there were hardly any profit participants--co-financier Legendary comes out ahead on this one. I've never understood why the studios, with hundreds of millions at their disposal, don't pay for more cheap high-concept comedies and see which ones stick, because when they hit, they churn out profits. The answer: American comedies without established stars tend not to make money overseas and the studios would rather hedge their bets, all the time. They also tend to aim for the fences and lose more money when they strike out. See: Universal's Land of the Lost, in which Will Ferrell jumps out of his R-rated comfort zone into family terrain-- and bombs.

Universal, which had been zagging against most studio trends and getting away with it, got cynical about delivering a commercial summer hit, and belly-flopped. Now they're saying--oh, we're just going to make comedies and tentpoles, just like everyone else. Damn, Universal was making the most interesting movies out there. (Wanted, the Bourne series, Drag Me to Hell, Coraline, Duplicity, State of Play, Mamma Mia!, Changeling, Baby Mama, Hellboy II.) And I don't want them to stop. Hate to say it, but unless they deliver some serious hits this summer, co-chairmen Marc Shmuger and David Linde will likely jettison someone as a scapegoat for their current woes. Not sure if it will be marketing, distribution, or production, but watch someone get the boot if one or more of their summer slate-- Bruno, Funny People or Public Enemies-- fails to score.

Every once in a while I am reminded that my taste is not the same as the mass audience. I can usually call a blockbuster like 300 or Star Trek--in other words, I ignore the tracking and opening weekend predictions to insist--THIS MOVIE IS SO GOOD IT WILL DO BUSINESS. Sometimes, thank God, word-of-mouth counts for something, so that a movie becomes A MUST-SEE.

But occasionally I really like something--often beloved by critics as well--that just doesn't catch moviegoers' fancy. Take, say, the two-part Tarantino/Rodriguez Grindhouse. Both movies were simply too arcane, too close to their pulpy cinephile roots. But what was arcane about Drag Me to Hell, which earned a whopping 83 on Metacritic? But opened to $16 million? And is getting creamed by the competition? What makes this Sam Raimi movie a tweener? Well, the fact that it's a horror/comedy hybrid, for one. (See Slither.) It looks like you can't have a fun scary gross-out E-ride rated PG-13: that way you lose both the family and the horror crowd. (And there's a Fright Night remake in the works.)

That's Dennis Cozzalio's theory (scroll down). He hosted a fun gathering at the Mission Tiki drive-in last Saturday night, complete with hearse and Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule T-shirt giveaways. Was this film freak gathering a bad sign for the movie? Well, most of the drive-in's business that night was over on the side showing Pixar's Up. Other folks have criticized Universal's marketing, which failed to distinguish Drag Me to Hell enough. Debuting it at SXSW was the right move, but the message that the movie was really fun somehow didn't come across.

It's easier to recognize a smart-house tweener that isn't going to do any business. Focus Features' Away We Go, which has all the indie cred bonafides in the world, from Dave Eggers and Sam Mendes to TV comedy stars John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph and movie actress Maggie Gyllenhaal, just doesn't cut it. Mainly the two rom-com leads are not interesting enough, forming a warm mushy bowl of boredom in the middle of the film. We know they love each other. So?

Secondly, the film is a road movie, always a risky narrative structure (see: My Blueberry Nights, also with a non-pro, Norah Jones, at its center). Third, beware of smart sophisticated filmmakers who are making fun of US for being one or more of the following: idiotic, alcoholic, leftie, bourgeois, self-involved, or lousy parents. The movie might as well be called BOOBS ARE US. One of my favorite New Yorker cartoons shows one couple saying to some pals, "Did you see Honky Tonk Freeway? It ruined our August." That ill-fated 1981 John Schlesinger comedy also looked down on ordinary American folks who weren't as cool as the filmmakers. IFC's David Hudson rounds up Away We Go's bad reviews; 56 on Metacritic isn't going to get this pic very far.

Ex-Variety reporter Ben Fritz has moved on to the LA Times as a staff reporter and Company Town blogger. He'll write the boxoffice reports, and did a good job today on the Terminator Salvation back story. It's smart of the LAT to hire someone with web savvy.

Meanwhile, Chris R. Morris is taking over Fritz's Variety game and tech blogs.

And super-busy Variety.com editor Dana Harris is hanging up her blogging spurs for now: no more H.A.L. Blogging takes time.

Star Trek will open huge, and some prognosticators are heralding the year's first $100 million weekend. That's not what the advance tracking shows, which is trending toward older males, or what Paramount wants anyone to believe. But word travels fast. And I will bet that the movie will outpace expectations. Even if the "brand"--everyone's favorite word these days--is damaged. Admittedly, my own daughter-of-a-Trekkie, Nora, 19, is not the slightest bit interested in plunking down her ten bucks.

Early raves suggest that the film could disappoint hardcore Trekkies, reports The Onion:

Running against the pack, NY Press's Armond White has posted a critical pan entitled "Where Young Boys Have Gone Before." And Philadelphia critic Carrie Rickey talks to the original Lieutenant Uhura, Nichelle Nichols.

As of noon E.T. Wednesday, MovieTickets.com reported that Star Trek accounted for 83 percent of their ticket sales, and had sold out 387 performances. Here's their pre-release poll:

STAR TREK PRE-RELEASE POLLING According to female ticket buyers polled at MovieTickets.com Apr. 21 to May 3:

· 52 percent are aware of the film “Star Trek” · 63 percent of those aware of the film intend to see “Star Trek” opening weekend. These are the highest pre-release polling numbers at MovieTickets.com in 2009 amongst female ticket buyers polled the week before a film’s release. “Star Trek” is tracking well across all age groups at MovieTickets.com, save 60-plus. According to the same Apr. 21 – May 3 poll at MovieTickets.com, over 70 percent of three different age groups aware of “Star Trek” say they intend to see the film opening weekend. Here’s a breakdown: · 58 percent of Under-25s · 70 percent of 25-34s · 76 percent of 35-44s · 78 percent of 45-59s · 11 percent of 60-plus

These days, many of the people who aren't interested in what's playing at the multiplex are checking out the new movie opening on HBO instead. Hollywood only has itself to blame. Ignore the adult audience and they'll get out of the moviegoing habit, rent DVDs and subscribe to HBO. This weekend many folks watched the opening of Grey Gardens, starring movie stars Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore (both strong Emmy contenders for Big and Little Edie) instead of going out to see new movie State of Play (which earned a barely respectable 63% on Metacritic to Grey Garden's 77). There was a time when Grey Gardens would have been a theatrical release. Now it's an HBO film--reviewed by the Two Bens on At the Movies:

State of Play, which opened soft to about $14 million, and the upcoming The Soloist, which is unlikely to drop 'em dead at the b.o. next week either, share the same weakness. (Here's Variety's Soloist review.) They're 'tweeners. You can see the problem. Working Title's Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner want to make studio-level smart-audience movies with decent budgets and movie stars. With State of Play, they started out with Brad Pitt and a high-quality supporting cast and wound up with no Pitt on the eve of the Writers Strike, hastily replaced by Russell Crowe. He's wonderful as a stocky long-haired Saab-driving muckraker of the old school, pitted against his old college chum, an ambitious Congressman (Ben Affleck), his editor (Helen Mirren), contending with the forces fighting against the survival of newspapers, and a young blogger (Rachel McAdams).

For its part, The Soloist boasts Robert Downey, Jr. and Jamie Foxx—-who are not guaranteed marquee draws. (Nobody is, anymore.) Both movies remind us of why we need to pay for good journalism. State of Play works as a Washington corporate intrigue thriller, while The Soloist was designed as a high-minded topical headline drama, its Oscar hopes dashed by Paramount when it was pushed back to spring release. But this movie is creakier, less steady on its feet, through no fault of the actors. It might have worked better on HBO, where it could have had the courage of its convictions. It's simultaneously too dark and too light. It's overwrought to such a degree that even though it's based on a true story, the homeless man is too disturbing, and the drama, too uplifting.

Finally, both films are based on old models that just don’t work anymore. But it’s not the adult drama that should be blamed here. It’s studio execs willing to lavish spending on movies--State of Play's $60 million budget was partly funded by Relativity Media--that are unlikely to recoup.

Instead of trying to inflate these movies by pumping them up with mainstream commerciality, the studios should hand them over to indie subsidiaries able to produce them on more a modest scale. At which point, Crowe and Affleck and Downey and Foxx would get paid a lot less. And their movies might make their money back.

Here's the Grey Gardens trailer:

As Fast & Furious does better at the weekend b.o. than it has any right to do--the weekend was up 75-80% from last year-- Entertainment Weekly's Mark Harris sees the first casualty of the recession: ambition. If all audiences want is escape, he worries, that's all the studios and TV networks will give them. "Stop the inanity!" he pleads.

Back in 1940, for example, Twentieth Century Fox acquired the rights to John Steinbeck's great Depression novel The Grapes of Wrath, hired John Ford to direct, Nunnally Johnson to write and Henry Fonda to star as Tom Joad. The results: two Oscar wins (for Ford and Jane Darwell) and money in the bank.

The NYT's Dave Kehr looks some Paramount Depression era DVD releases.

We're reading The Grapes of Wrath for my book group this month. Here's the trailer:

While a recession-fueled box office boom is lifting most boats, one notable exception is Tony Gilroy's Duplicity, which boasted the earmarks of a commercial Hollywood vehicle--big budget, exotic locations, thriller genre, two sexy movie stars--but may have been too costly for what was really a smart-house play. (It earned strong reviews, but only $27 million so far.) Part of the problem: Universal paid Julia Roberts $20 million.

Most studios are backing off of these ridiculously out-of-date price-tags--especially at a time when audiences are not demonstrating star loyalty. Hell, even critic-proof Will Smith lost his star magic with Seven Pounds this Christmas. The Wall Street Journal reports that first-dollar gross deals are history.

There's also the issue of Duplicity stars Roberts and Clive Owen's ability to pull in audiences. They are not alone right now. Few stars are delivering on that model these days. And even those who do deliver movies that are within their fans' expectations--like Nic Cage--get slammed for it anyway. (I did chuckle at EW's exploration of Cage's career hair changes.)

I'd also argue that Duplicity hit the zeitgeist slightly wrong. Greenlit before the recession, the movie painted a portrait of rapacious uncaring corporations and workaholic ambitious untrusting spies that may have cut just a little too close to the bone at a time when anxious Americans are seeking escape, fun and comfort. Gilroy is a smart cookie whose next film I look forward to seeing. While he has every right to chase Hollywood budgets and status, I'd prefer to see him go back to the Michael Clayton model: lower budget, stars at a cut-rate price, and the freedom to throw off the shackles of trying to please the suits.

Sacha Baron Cohen knows how to work the web with Bruno.

The LAT addresses problems with the Warner Bros. studio succession.

More from Sharon Waxman on Nikki Finke.

While it got the worst reviews of the trio leading the weekend boxoffice, sci-fi actioner Knowing is looking at a strong $25 million weekend--and will beat bromantic comedy I Love You, Man and romantic thriller Duplicity. UPDATE: Here's Variety's Sunday weekend b.o. report.

All three of these pics are crowd-pleasers appealing to different demos. Knowing plays to geeky males, while I Love You, Man has a younger appeal to both sexes; it makes sense that Universal would want to build an audience for Duplicity, which tilts toward smart adults.

Word-of-mouth will eventually tell the tale with these pics. Which ones will hold? With more people going to the movies, playability and b.o. legs are key.

Duplicity's Julia Roberts gets up close and personal on MTV News. Part One. Part Two.

While Watchmen delivered a robust opening of about $55.7 million in North America, it came in lower than expectations--and much lower than Snyder's last film, the blockbuster 300--both domestically and overseas. Finally, Watchmen works best as the narratively complex, visually dazzling comics series from Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. Originally published in 1986, the graphic novel is flying off the shelves. I hope people do read the book, which instantly draws you in with its compelling, never confusing storytelling, deepening and peeling new layers as it goes. The movie, on the other hand, is hard to fathom, boasts too many characters, and doesn't add up to much. Set in the 80s, Zack Snyder's film deals with the Vietnam and Cold War, and the end of the world via nuclear attack, but supplies a new ending with strange shades of 9/11. Moore always did insist that his comics were unfilmable.

The Brits are unhappy with Barack Obama for the way he treated Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who may be the ultimate workaholic policy wonk but lacks a few volts in the charisma department. His countrymen are even complaining about Obama's gift to Brown of the AFI set of 25 DVDs.

Gold Derby reports that the Academy is delivering Heath Ledger's Oscar to Michelle Williams.

Ray Pride and Jamie Stuart celebrate the 10th anniversary of Stanley Kubrick's death. Here's a wonderful 2001 Kubrick special on Charlie Rose featuring Kubrick's wife and producer and Martin Scorsese:

Watchmen's Thursday midnight screenings grossed $4.6 million, reports Variety. Here's the boxoffice forecast. We know the comics epic will open huge. The question is, how will it play, not just here, but around the world? Here's my story in The Daily Beast. (I must say I enjoyed writing a full-length column again. I'd been missing it.)

The Wrap wraps up Watchmen. So does Rotten Tomatoes, where the critics' consensus is at 64%--the RT critics' base is wide and includes many online critics. UPDATE: The Guardian has issues with the way women make the transition from comic to screen.

Now that more of you have seen the movie, do you agree with me that it is disappointing and perhaps unfilmable as an action tentpole? And should have been done as a sophisticated, sexy, violent 12-part HBO series?

Well, the movie industry doesn't mind that audiences are returning to theaters in droves during a recession. It's obviously good news all around. But David Poland debunks the NYT's recession "hype." While the studios may have been smart enough to not only give the audiences what they want but market the hell out of Paul Blart: Mall Cop and Taken, there's no question that these movies are doing better than they would ordinarily do. And the NYT stat that admissions are up by almost 16% is staggering.

But strong theatrical numbers still don't fix the studios' real bottom line: DVDs sales are down 30 %--mainly from disappointing tentpole titles.

A WGA panel Sunday night addressed these issues and other industry ills, reports John August's blog:

Yes, but movies are doing well, right? Box office receipts are on the up and up.

True, but the motherships (Time Warner/GE etc.) suck out that revenue and use it to prop up other flagging sectors. So that money doesn’t go back into development or the pockets of writers. Also, Navid McIlhargey notes that while theatrical has made a comeback, DVD sales have dropped by roughly 30%. That means four things:

The financial models studios look at before greenlighting a picture are skewed. (Depending on various factors, DVD revenue used to be equal to or greater than domestic theatrical revenue.) The projections for break-even are falling short on movies that might have been easily greenlit a few years ago. One way to counter that is by exploiting the international marketplace, which translates to more big action, (male) star-driven movies.

How refreshing that escapist moviegoers are showing up in droves to see not-so-great movies in movie theaters. But while it's nice to think that the movie business is recession-proof, boffo ticket sales are not enough to keep the studios in clover. Just because the president's weekend boxoffice set new records doesn't mean that the overall Hollywood economy is strong. That's because theatrical b.o., once the lion's share of the studios' worldwide revenues--55% in 1980-- now accounts for about 20% of the domestic revenue pie, and some 45% of the worldwide total. Burgeoning DVD sales expanded the revenues the studios were pulling in, allowing budgets and star salaries to skyrocket. Well, those salad days are over.

So not only are the studios' parent companies hurting from the economy, but DVD sales are in decline--and not just because of the recession.

Coraline producer Bill Mechanic, ex-chairman of Twentieth Century Fox and ex-Disney homevideo czar, explains here.

Without those extra DVD dollars coming in, production and P & A budgets go down. The studios are trimming their sails.

Yes, it's that time of year when studios release second-tier pictures, ones for which nobody has high expectations. Some are mediocre (Pink Panther 2), others are terrific but not overtly commercial, like Henry Selick's stop-motion Coraline.

And yet, some of these movies (like Paul Blart Mall Cop) are doing better than anyone expected. This weekend women flocked to He's Just Not That Into You, which despite mixed reviews is yet another chick flick hit. And Coraline earned solid $16 million opening off critical raves. Maybe we all just want to have fun?

Here are the Variety numbers.

Fun reads: At Film.com, Tim Appelo begs Brad and Angelina to save the Oscars, while Mark Harris explains at The Observer that the Academy is not, contrary to popular belief, a monolith. Film Experience examines the fates of the 2004 Vanity Fair Hollywood cover girls.

When my family and I saw the trailer for Paul Blart Mall Cop over the holidays, we all knew it would be a hit. But this big? New York Mag defines a new genre: the Blart. And Stephen Schaefer commends both new comedy star Kevin James and employable Oscar contender Mickey Rourke for recent smart career moves.

Some friends of mine are so afraid of Google they refuse to use it. Slate defines yet another Google triumph: Google Gear.

Steal this: Online retail giant Amazon is selling DVDs of 900 new indie and foreign films, priced from $5.99.

Twentieth Century Fox badly needed a winner this Christmas season, and got one with Marley & Me, a shamelessly heart-tugging commercial dog movie. (Here's Variety's weekend boxoffice report.) But let's give credit where credit is due. While Fox co-chairmen Tom Rothman and Jim Gianapoulos will happily take credit for this win, it does not necessarily lift them out of the doghouse. The real winner is Fox 2000 chief Elizabeth Gabler, who year in, year out, consistently delivers strong modestly-scaled commercial features. She made director David Frankel's The Devil Wears Prada, too. 27 Dresses grossed $160 million worldwide. Alvin and the Chipmunks was a huge hit at $360.5 million worldwide. So was Oscar-winner Walk the Line. There were some clinkers over the years, but at this point Fox 2000 is making more money than the big studio.

The good news for MGM/UA: Valkyrie opened pretty well, $30 million over four days. It's off to a good start. MGM/UA turned around the bad press that was launched about a year ago with ill-advised photos of Tom Cruise in a Nazi uniform wearing an eye patch. There are two versions of how that photo got sent out: One says UA marketers sent out the photo and said, "Don't worry, they'll get used to it;" the other says UA didn't want to release the photo and Cruise insisted it would be fine. In any case, under new prexy Mary Parent MGM/UA has made some smart moves. They brought in marketing consultant Terry Press and hired her old DreamWorks partner-in-crime Mike Vollman away from Paramount. The studio pushed up Valkyrie's release to December, not only to qualify for the expiring Showtime Pay-TV deal, but to capitalize on the prime-time adult-moviegoing holiday period.

It helped that Valkyrie is a commercial thriller and earned decent reviews (62% on Rotten Tomatoes) for Bryan Singer's direction and Tom Cruise's lead performance. They weren't the kind of money reviews that would have positioned the movie for awards consideration, though. But MGM/UA smartly didn't go for that, saving themselves both money and grief. (I hear Cruise went along with this, while Singer was disappointed.) Will the movie make it's money back? With a negative cost from $90 to 110 million, plus a hefty P & A spend of some $70 million domestic alone, the picture will have to keep building strong WOM---and do very well overseas.

Here are interviews with the Valkyrie principals by the LAT's Rachel Abramowitz and the LA Weekly's Scott Foundas.

[Photo of Chris McQuarrie, Tom Cruise and Bryan Singer courtesy the Los Angeles Times]

The movie my family and I went to see on Christmas Day was chosen by many others over the holiday: Marley & Me, a cannily crafted family film starring a restrained Owen Wilson, a charming Jennifer Aniston and a series of delightful rambunctious Labrador retrievers as the titular dog, Marley. My family made fun of me for crying so hard.

Written by Don Roos (The Opposite of Sex) and Scott Frank (Get Shorty) and directed by David Frankel (The Devil Wears Prada), this movie delivers both a romance between a handsome couple plus their relationship with their dog. This well-calibrated studio tear-jerker doesn't go overboard on the sentimentality, hews close to the original material (the bestselling memoir by newspaper columnist John Grogan) and keeps the performances natural. Both stars are well-matched to their roles and each other; Wilson gives his most mature performance to date. (Here are diametrically opposed reviews by Todd McCarthy and Stephen Holden.)

Also doing well over the holiday, after Marley & Me, was The Curious Life of Benjamin Button, which also drew opposite reviews from Scott (a rave) and the LAT's Turan (a dismissive pan). Its Metacritic average was 70%. That's just ok, but it should score with Oscar voters for its sheer technological virtuosity in any case.

EW's Dave Karger reviews the post-Christmas Oscar landscape. Needing a serious boost from critics was Revolutionary Road, reviewed Friday. The LAT's Turan loved it. Rotten Tomatoes' top critics give it 80%, which is good, but Metacritic is at 71%. I'm not feeling the Academy love for this movie, except for Kate Winslet, who could win the best actress Oscar for the double whammy of Road and The Reader. And Michael Shannon has a shot at a supporting actor nom.

What's interesting about this weekend's match-up is that one star who is off his game is starring in a role that is inside the audience sweet spot. That's Jim Carrey in Yes Man (which grabbed 35% rotten on Rotten Tomatoes so far). The other, Will Smith, is starring in a movie, Seven Pounds (which earned 33%), that pushes the edge of what audiences want to see him do. (UPDATE: The NYT's A.O. Scott eviscerates it.) Here's Variety's b.o. forecast.

And, continuing another trend, the animated movie The Tale of Desperaux could do better than the films starring expensive movie stars (it scored 41% on the Tomatometer). But while Will Smith is getting his $20-million price these days, at this point, Jim Carrey is willing to take his money on the back end--and will likely earn a pretty penny. Moviegoers like Carrey best when he's funny. Duh. It's when he goes dark that he tends to get into trouble--Cable Guy, for example, The Number 23, The Majestic. Stars are usually rewarded for doing what their fans want them to do--until they get tired of the same old same old.

Just to make sure he keeps folks guessing, Carrey also has some artier movies on tap, such as I Love You, Phillip Morris, in which he conducts a prison affair with Ewan McGregor. (CAA is selling it at Sundance.) Here's Carrey's profile in The Atlantic.

Here's Fandango's latest poll:

64% of moviegoers on Fandango say they will see Seven Pounds’ Will Smith in any new movie, regardless of the subject matter;
72% say that The Dark Knight was the film “most overlooked” by today’s SAG Awards nominations for the Best Ensemble Cast category;
53% say they’re more likely to watch the 81st Annual Academy Awards with Hugh Jackman as this year’s host.

Despite the bad reviews on the remake The Day the Earth Stood Still, I am still going to see the movie tomorrow night for one reason: Keanu Reeves. He isn't the best actor in the world. One set story I heard about Reeves had him saying, "I suck, I suck," after every take. But he doesn't always suck. He can be very good, from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure and Speed to Little Buddha and The Matrix. (To be fair, you could do the same thing that Vulture does here with any actor. But it's funny.) And the footage I saw at Comic-Con looked promising. Moviegoers seem hot to see it.

The movie is tracking to score big at the boxoffice this weekend. As we all know from Four Christmases to Sex in the City and Mamma Mia!, there is often a disconnect between reviews and ticket sales.

Well, Australia's second-weekend drop indicates that it isn't doing well enough with adult audiences to ever make it into a success here.

Here are some of the reasons this movie couldn't make it.

The heart of the movie--the part that works--is the story of the half-breed Aborigine boy (Brandon Walters). But in order to make a Hollywood epic of big-budget scale and scope, Baz Luhrmann had to embellish that core, adding a western cattle drive, a bodice-ripping romance, wicked villains, an air battle and CG effects. How could any movie sustain all that?

Australia proves yet again that it's dangerous for a studio to back art-film epics. Remember Memoirs of a Geisha? Zodiac? The Assassination of Jesse James? Australia is the sort of movie that supervising exec Peter Rice would have known how to do--or not do--at Fox Searchlight.

I don't want the studios to give up on making these risky movies. But there is certainly an argument for not taking the risk on the big-budget version of them.

Another problem, as Patrick Goldstein pointed out in the LAT, is that the movie starred Nicole Kidman. The ads actually stressed Hugh Jackman, more than Kidman, one of our great actresses, but not a movie star. Never has been. She's made some hits. But she's not the reason people go to a movie. She doesn't put butts in seats. But just to make it clear: nobody does these days. (Seven Pounds, a tragic romance a la Love Story, will be an interesting commercial test of the one star we do have, Will Smith, who seems to be able to open anything.)

Truth is, Jackman's stardom is based on his he-man role as Wolverine. He's a one-franchise guy who isn't worth as much when he leaves that role. He can do anything, and I am thrilled that he might do a musical (as Mark Antony in Steven Soderbergh's Cleo). But stardom is about the persona audiences want to see.

Big art-house movies require another thing. Reviews. Many critics killed this movie, which earned 52% on Rotten Tomatoes. (Here's David Denby's New Yorker slam.) That won't get you into the Oscar race. Technicals are all they can hope for, which won't boost box office.

The other thing that went wrong was the marketing. The movie looked old-fashioned, period, tonally confusing. Was it comedy or tragedy, western or romance? Moviegoers like to know exactly what they're getting.

But Luhrmann also dive-bombed Fox's chances of making Australia a success by not handing the movie in early enough. This trend of directors hanging on to their movies until the last minute and studios letting them get away with it should stop. This was not the kind of movie that could be sold in one weekend with ads. It needed longer careful nurturing. But when movies cost $120 million or more, studios talk themselves into the notion that the only way to make their money back is to go out big with lots of P & A. Not always true. The smaller, less chaotic version of this movie might have had a better chance. Too bad.

One solution suggested by a friend of mine: Australia the musical. Fox should put the Broadway show into development forthwith.

Sometimes when so many things are going wrong, some things do go right:

Like retail holiday sales getting off to a robust start.

Like a strong holiday weekend at the boxoffice, well up from last year.

Like the best-reviewed two movies, Milk and Slumdog Millionaire, doing great in limited release over the weekend. Like Slumdog and Hunger picking up three awards apiece at the British Independent Film Awards.

Like Australia playing well enough with adults so that studios like Fox won't regret taking risks like that on other crazy-bet movies. We want studio co-chairman Tom Rothman to keep hosting Fox Legacy, my current fave TV show, where he actually gives intelligent and often passionate background analysis of what made some of the studio's classics so great. It's hard to imagine the studio green-lighting movies like Love is a Many-Splendored Thing or Gentleman's Agreement these days. But by golly they did make Australia, which is in itself a many- splendored thing.

For once, women are dominating movie theaters. That's because there's more than enough for them to see. (OK, they're not going to see Transporter 3.) Usually, though, they're starved and I hope Hollywood takes the lessons of 2008 to heart, from Sex and the City and Mamma Mia! to Twilight and Australia, all movies designed to appeal to women. Lots of women.

The studios always act surprised when movies for women score big. Truth is, they like to make movies for men because they're more predictable and reliable and less finicky and demanding than women. Also, the femme audience can be relied on to go see movies about men, who are less likely to cross the line for a chick flick. Girls like to scream at horror picks. Men would rather die than go to a romantic comedy--unless it stars Seth Rogen, Vince Vaughn or Adam Sandler. Judd Apatow figured out that making rom-coms for both sexes was the way to go.

At the Thanksgiving weekend boxoffice, Four Christmases will do fine, I suspect (despite dismal reviews, although the NYT's A.O. Scott liked it) because it's the kind of rom-com that plays to both sexes. (Here's Pamela McClintock's weekend boxoffice preview.)

Australia will feed the hunger for romance and melodrama and sheer entertainment--while mixed reviews indicate that Oscars are not in its future. Twilight will pull repeat business and curiosity seekers checking out the phenom.

And for the art-house gang, Danny Boyle's must-see Slumdog Millionaire (92% on Rotten Tomatoes) is expanding (and gaining ground in the Oscar derby), and Gus Van Sant's Milk is a critics' fave, also earning 92% on Rotten Tomatoes. Sean Penn is already the one to beat in the best actor Oscar race.

Disney's animated Bolt nabbed good reviews (85% Tomatometer), while the vampire romance Twilight did not (48% Tomatometer ). It won't matter. There are plenty of excited teenage girls and their moms to keep the theaters noisy the opening weekend. (If you don't want to be distracted by screaming hordes, wait a week.) The movie works for what it is, and Kristen Stewart and Rob Pattinson are strong leads. Ken Turan's review gets it. So does Kim Voynar.

UPDATE: Twilight is outperforming even the most exuberant projections at the boxoffice, proving yet again that yes, women can open a movie. And Summit is greenlighting a film version of the second novel in Stephenie Meyer's vampire series, New Moon, they confirmed Saturday.

While Charlie Kaufman's films Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Adaptation were art-house hits in Israel, his directorial debut Synecdoche, New York is being unceremoniously dumped by its Israeli distributor.

Guillaume Canet's unexpected French hit Tell No One, a twisty thriller that was overlooked by bigger stateside distribs and released by upstart Music Box Films, has now grossed over $6.2 million in the US, which makes it the highest-grossing foreign-language film of the year so far.

The DVD and Blu-Ray are due in the first quarter of 2009.

Here's the trailer:

Tell No One could wind up on a lot of ten best lists. Critics' groups tend to give one film a year a best foreign film prize. For me, so many of my fave films this year come from abroad, where filmmakers have the freedom to make small-scale dramas with great actors and unexpected stories that dig into the human condition in a way we don't. Even indie movies, these days, are striving for commercial acceptance (Steven Soderbergh and Charlie Kaufman aside).

Another foreign import that could be rewarded by critics is Let the Right One In, a Swedish vampire film that is artfully made in a way that rarely happens here. While it's about vampires, with horrific but not sexy elements, it is an art film, not a horror thriller:

What was New York critic David Edelstein thinking when he disclosed the big reveal in the doc Dear Zachary, which I knew going in was a tear-jerker about a guy who died, but did not have the sordid details. (He has apologized and posted SPOILER ALERTS online.) As you watch the movie, the lack of professional distance on the part of the filmmaker is obvious, and somewhat disconcerting---until the truth-is-stranger-than-fiction plot twist. The movie is devastating. (Metacritic ranks it 81%.)

I'm not driven to see the new mainstream Hollywood pics this weekend. Now that Nora is in college, I don't have to go see animated movies unless I want to. And Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa just doesn't lure me like a Pixar movie would (it's getting 62% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes). Jeff Katzenberg knows how to play for the wide audience better than anyone. But he doesn't always add that extra poetry for adults. I did like Kung Fu Panda.

The guys seem to be going for Role Models, which is 74% fresh. I'm not convinced. Didn't David Wain make The Ten? I loathed that movie. I'm not eager to see Soul Men (44% Tomatometer) either, fond as I am of the late Bernie Mac and Samuel L. Jackson.

So I will catch up on screeners for foreign films. Friday night some pals and I watched Otto Preminger's hugely entertaining black and white drama Advise and Consent, based on the 1959 bestseller, which we read in my book group this month. That's yet another movie that wouldn't get made any more. Here's New Yorker critic David Denby's splendid profile of Preminger.

This weekend's High School Musical 3 (63% Tomatometer) scored even bigger than expected with teen girls, and Saw 5, which was not screened, played to the guys. (True confession: I have never seen a Saw movie. Not my idea of a good time.)

For grown-ups, Changeling delivered a strong per screen average on its opening weekend, while Gina Prince-Blythewood's The Secret Life of Bees pulled ahead of Oliver Stone's W. on their second weekend. Here's Variety's weekend b.o. wrap:

“W.” dropped 49% to $5.3. Cume for the George Bush pic is $18.8 million, with a gross in the $25 million range likely after a post-Election Day exit.

This is a classic case of too much competition on the second weekend after a strong opening supported by a big ad spend and Oliver Stone's ubiquitous media presence. After I had just seen him on Charlie Rose, CNN's Larry King Live and Shootout and heard him on NPR, I did a phoner with him at NY's Four Seasons Hotel. Stone had just spotted one of the characters in his movie, ex-CIA chief George Tenet, in the restaurant. "Did you go over to him?" I asked. "Oh, no," Stone said.

Did he feel that he had to open the $30 million movie before the election? Was the timing right for this? He could have pushed it back if he wanted to, Stone says: "Let's be clear about this. I had the right to hold. It was a good faith effort to try and make the October 17 date. I had final cut, I could have delivered in December for a January release." But he was into the rhythm of finishing it in time, opening it this fall before the election.

Stone knows the downside of being rushed into opening a picture too soon--Alexander was not finished when it opened; the sober re-edited DVD version is far superior. Stone left thousands of feet of film on the edit-room floor on Alexander. By contrast, W. was shot fast on a tight budget; there was no waste. He shot on 26 locations in 46 days and edited in seven weeks. "There were no reshoots," he says. "We rehearsed with a great repertory company, nobody was making mistakes. We got what we needed." Only a few deleted fantasy scenes will make it to the DVD.

It's hard to calibrate timing with a topical movie like this, Stone admits. He had no idea George W. Bush would be so down and out when the movie opened. He had thought the White House might come after them, fighting, but "Bush is defeated," he says. "He is weakened now. We could not have foreseen that then. He's hated now. Will people be interested?"

Would waiting until after the inauguration have been better, as "he's leaving office, and we're exorcising the ghost?" he asks. Stone would have taken that course "if it had not fallen in, if we needed reshoots." Finally, the momentum was moving fast toward an October opening and he was ready to open the movie on schedule.

The Secret Life of Bees did better than W. on its second weekend on fewer screens (1630) with a higher $5.9 million weekend gross and a total of $19.2 to date. Searchlight worked hard to achieve these results, chasing not only fans of the bestseller--which is hugely popular--but literate women in general, and African-American audiences. They're building buzz on an $11 million movie.

"We were judicious in our spend," says Fox Searchlight COO Nancy Utley. "We were scared to death of reviews." That's because older women tend to take reviews more seriously, and sure enough, they were mixed (58% on Rotten Tomatoes). But some key critics were fans, including Roger Ebert, USA Today and People. And Oprah Winfrey devoted a show to the film.

Utley comforted herself with the fact that some movies hit without reviews, like Ya-Ya Sisterhood. On the other hand, Denzel Washington's Antoine Fisher had not scored with African American audiences, but it was less of a known title. Bees was a "faithful straight-on adaptation" of an "extraordinary book," Utley says.

And Bees had no ordinary ensemble either--Queen Latifah, Alicia Keyes, Jennifer Hudson, Dakota Fanning, Sophie Okonedo. Searchlight targeted book clubs and the morning talk shows, bought TV spots on BET and Desperate Housewives, and took advantage of some faith-based endeavors. The distrib booked the movie in areas where not only African-American pics had scored but literary films like Atonement.

Definite recommends in the exit polls were A or A+ across every demo. Searchlight's own poll was 90%. Among African Americans, it was 91% and non-African Americans, 86%. "It's a color-blind movie," says Utley. 'We're hopeful."

[Photo of Oliver Stone by Jeffrey Wells]

The weekend boxoffice will probably be lead by Max Payne, a welcome commercial entry for Fox, which has suffered a long slow stretch. Here's Variety's forecast. Videogame adaptation Max Payne is a test of Mark Wahlberg's stardom--will audiences turn out to see him in a badly reviewed movie? He can be hit or miss. Shooter, for example, didn't play at the b.o., but did score well in DVD sales.

Second place will likely be held by Oliver Stone's timely political biography of the president, W, which is so far nabbing 61% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.

Sex Drive, which I have not seen, earned 57%. I am not the target demo for this or Max Payne.

I hope that people who liked the Sue Monk Kidd book will go see The Secret Life of Bees, which is 1) a women's picture and 2) exactly the sort of conventional sincere heartwarming period ensemble movie that (male) critics do not like. It's earning 46% on Rotten Tomatoes. UPDATE: Here's Richard Corliss in Time.

According to Fandango, 18% of some 3,000 surveyed moviegoers who were planning to see W on opening day classified themselves as “conservative,” and 6% thought the film might have an impact on how they would eventually vote in the presidential election.

The results, as of 2 p.m. PT Thursday:

* 51% are male; 58% are 25-49;

* 23% classify themselves as liberal; 18% as conservative; 22% as moderate;

* 34% say they voted for George W. Bush in a previous election;

* 27% say they will vote for McCain; 53% say they will vote for Obama;

* 67% want to see it because of Oliver Stone’s reputation as a controversial filmmaker;

* 10% say the presidential and vice presidential debates have made them more interested in seeing the movie;

* 6% say the film might impact how they vote in the upcoming presidential election.

Fandango Five – Ticket Sales (as of 10/16/08 2:00 p.m. PT)

Movie Fandango User Rating % Fandango Sales

High School Musical 3: Senior Year “So-So” 56%

W. “So-So” 12%

Max Payne “Go” 9%

The Secret Life of Bees “So-So” 8%

Beverly Hills Chihuahua “Go” 4%

Paramount is saving some money this fourth quarter--making your numbers means a lot to Viacom chief Sumner Redstone, especially in these turbulent times on Wall Street. The studio will save some $60-70 million by pushing back to 2009 its P & A spends on The Soloist, the DreamWorks/Working Title would-be Oscar contender starring Robert Downey, Jr. and Jamie Foxx, that will now bow in March, and Ed Zwick's Defiance, starring Daniel Craig. Here's our story.

The fact that The Soloist was a mere month away from opening November 21 is shocking. Paramount had a trailer out (on Eagle Eye), TV spots had already run, and more were scheduled, which the studio may have to pay for. DreamWorks is not happy but there isn't a lot they can do. Paramount will lobby heavily for their Iron Man star Downey's supporting role in Tropic Thunder, and is clearly betting that Sam Mendes' Revolutionary Road and David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button are its big Oscar plays.

Zwick's holocaust drama Defiance starring Daniel Craig was supposed to open December 12 and will now have a late-December qualifying Oscar run, with a wider release January 16.

Several bloggers address the Body of Lies boxoffice debacle in a number of different ways. Peter Bart says that the problem lies in its stars, like Leonardo DiCaprio, who don't know how to behave like identifiable brands. Patrick Goldstein suggests that today's stars aren't carrying their weight. And Stephen Schaefer suspects that Iraq War movies are musts-to-avoid.

We have plenty of gifted movie stars--and we need them. Movie stars can boost any movie--as long as they don't cost too much.

What was Warner Bros. chief Alan Horn thinking when he greenlit a $100 million Iraq War movie in this climate? He was ignoring the marketplace, blinded by movie stars. He thought he was making a bet on a damned good movie--so confident that he didn't take a partner. He assumed moviegoers like me would overlook the subject in favor of the stars. I showed up. But many other folks did not.

Horn was the same guy who banked on family film Speed Racer with the Wachowskis. And paid Jim Carrey full freight to star in the costly period drama The Majestic. I'm all for studio heads taking chances. Just not foolish ones. Because then it becomes more difficult for other people to take even smart, calculated risks.

[Photo by Richard Burbridge for the NYT Mag]

"We're in the money," sang Ginger Rogers in the escapist musical Gold Diggers of 1933. Luxurious Busby Berkeley musical comedies were big hits during the Depression.

It will be interesting to see how Hollywood calibrates the current economic crisis in terms of the movies they will make. Warners' $100-million CIA thriller Body of Lies proved to be too downbeat and Iraq-centric to lure mass audiences. The opening was decidedly weaker than it should have been. (Here's Variety's weekend boxoffice wrap.) As a counter-example, this summer's escapist musical Mamma Mia! scored big all over the world: it's global gross is $520 million. If I were a studio head I'd start greenlighting a bunch of light escapist movies--fantasies, musicals, comedies, romances. The NYT's David Carr checks in with some studio execs.

It's no longer a given that people will flock to the movies during an economic downturn. (Boxoffice has been steady, BTW, and was up 18% this weekend.) Back in the Depression there was no entertainment competition and movies were cheap. Will people still buy $20 DVDs when they're worrying about their frivolous spending? Or rent instead? I argue that given the chance to laugh their heads off and escape into another magical world, they will go out to a movie theater and join in that communal experience. But they won't go there to be depressed further.

In Sullivan's Travels, Preston Sturges took a sincere Hollywood filmmaker (Joel McCrae) and put him on the road with hobos where he learned how much laughing at cartoons means to people. Who's going to be this decade's Marx Brothers or Berkeley? (Check out the Busby Berkeley Disc.) NPR's Bob Mondello looks at the Marx Bros. classic, Duck Soup.

Here are some more examples of what played during the Depression:

We're in the Money:

Jimmy Cagney sings and dances Shanghai Lil in another Berkeley pre-Code classic, Footlight Parade:

And Groucho Marx is Rufus T. Firefly in Duck Soup:

On AMC's Shootout this week, Peter Guber and Peter Bart address the issue of whether audiences will support the crop of political movies coming up, including W. They talk to Oliver Stone and James Cromwell:

While it's a crowded weekend at the boxoffice, there isn't that much worth seeing. Body of Lies should score: the power combo of Ridley Scott, Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe in a commercial thriller will trump mixed reviews.

While I am a big fan of animator Gil Kenan (Monster House), advance footage of the family fantasy City of Ember led me to expect a movie that was more visually exciting than narratively compelling. This young director is gifted; he admits that he missed the freedom of working in a CG environment, so I hope he goes back to that. Ember rates 59% on Rotten Tomatoes.

The must-see this weekend is Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky. Leigh's unique brand of cinema verite works its charms yet again, as he and Brit actress Sally Hawkins create an unforgettable character, Poppy, who remains perky and cheery no matter what horrors are going on around her. Here's my interview with Leigh from Telluride, in which he talks about his remarkable method, as well as a passion project he has not been able to get financed: a biopic of the great landscape painter Turner. Happy-Go-Lucky's rave reviews (82 on metacritic, the same score as The Dark Knight) will help Miramax launch an Oscar campaign.

If you haven't caught up with them yet, other must-sees are the critically-hailed Appaloosa, Ballast, Choke, Frozen River, Trouble the Water and Man on Wire.

The younger generation--even smart cinephiles--doesn't like westerns anymore. The period is just too far away for them, they don't relate. It's a genre that isn't surviving. It had its place in American history: basically, western tropes have been absorbed into other genres like action adventures and sci-fi fantasy.

All hail the folks who want to keep this aging genre alive, and actor-writer-director Ed Harris is one of them. I went into Appaloosa with the general impression from Toronto and various reviews like this one from Todd McCarthy, that it was an okay, respectable western, slow-paced, nothing great.

Well, I adored it. Why? It's for grown-ups. It's well-plotted, based on the book by Robert B. Parker, and Harris directed the hell out of it. He and Viggo Mortensen have a wonderful, deliberate, subtle time hanging out as two "lawmen" in a world where actors actually have something to do. I'm sorry, but western heroes (and anti-heroes) are sexy.

Many critics have taken issue with the Renee Zellweger character. Clearly, she's not your ordinary Western babe. (Any western involving a significant female character is a plus.) Obviously, we have a bromance here between two men, and the woman presents a challenge to their bond. The men will never doubt each other.

Their triangle is set within the strange warped milieu they live in: uptight Puritan morality on the one hand, wild, lawless frontier on the other. In those days if a woman wasn't a virgin, a wife, a squaw or a whore, what was she? These smart actors have a fine time playing with the genre within a naturalistic context. Of course the bad guys are real bad: Jeremy Irons and the great Lance Henriksen. Actors should love this movie. Harris and Mortensen continue to amaze. Other mature sensibilities--movie critics--appreciated the pic to the tune of 74% on Rotten Tomatoes. But will anyone go see it?

This weekend's movie lineup was a bizarre to say the least. Family comedy Beverly Hills Chihuahua (Tomatometer, 46%), about cute talking dogs, beat out everything else.

Liberal gadfly Bill Maher's Religulous (Tomatometer, 64 % did just okay on 500 screens, while David Zucker's anti-Liberal American Carol went to more than 1600 and came in ninth at the B.O. (Largely unscreened for critics, the reviews came in late and good: 75 % on the Tomatometer.)

Maybe moviegoers aren't seeking to be offended by polarizing political content. (Clearly, NY Observer Press critic Armond White doesn't.) Religulous is funny. Maher whisks us breathlessly through his whirlwind tour of the world's religions, riding roughshod over any pretension to serious doc journalism. It's coarse comedy. But Maher can't help but condescend to stupid people who actually care about these unbelievable things. When he runs up against someone smart who can hold their own with him it works better. There might have been a way to make his arguments with a defter, lighter hand.

Am I the only one surprised by how well Burn After Reading is doing at the boxoffice? Remember, before No Country for Old Men, the Coens were hit or miss at the boxoffice, mostly miss. They were lucky if their pics got to $25 million! So why is this nihilistic nasty little movie doing so well? Even those who figured the CIA comedy would open on star power and marketing prowess didn't think it would actually play with audiences. But clearly, it is--prognosticators expect the movie to score this weekend, again!

Several theories explain this unexpected b.o. phenomenon:

1. It's the stars, stupid.
Brad Pitt, Brad Pitt, Brad Pitt. He's hilarious in the trailers and TV spots. And he and George Clooney--as a womanizer, just the way women want him--are playing bumbling fools, just like the rest of us. The range of hideous hairdos may have been another factor. Tilda Swinton joked at the Burn After Reading press conference in Toronto that she was chasing the Javier Bardem bad haircut prize--but that Pitt had won it. Face it, the Coens grabbed a money cast.

2. If you make them laugh, they will come.
Again, the movie is funny, which was clear in all the marketing materials. And as Colin Firth confessed to Peter Bart re: Mamma Mia, all the stars in this movie seem to be having a grand old time. No one has had more fun spewing f-words than John Malkovich.

3. The Fran McDormand factor.
Audiences love her, as demonstrated by another surprise hit, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day. She warms up the place. She gives the freezing cold Coens some heart, a little light in the darkness--even if she does set the whole crazy plot in motion because she wants plastic surgery.

4. Audiences like filmmakers to break the rules.
This movie violates more conventional Hollywood rules and regs than I can tell you--mainly, it keeps killing off people you've come to like. And nobody seems to mind. Hollywood studios, take note.

5. No Country for Old Men widened the Coen's fanbase.
Clearly, adapting Cormac McCarthy's genre-friendly modern western and going all the way to the Oscars to the tune of $74 million made the Coens more of a household word. The movie hit the zeitgeist just right with Javier Bardem's implacable force-of-darkness villain. And somehow Burn After Reading is hitting it too. As institutions crumble all around us and few authority figures seem to have any reasonable solutions, the movie's message that nobody knows anything--nor cares--is right on target.

6. It's the best movie out there.
Burn After Reading opened against a particularly weak field of competitors, from the remake of The Women (which only made Focus Features target the femme audience more fiercely) to the DeNiro/Al Pacino pairing, Righteous Kill. BTW, Focus spent a small fortune marketing this baby.

All of which helps to explain why Burn After reading still looks strong heading into the weekend. Lakeview Terrace is a movie I have no desire to see (it just seems too unpleasant, and scored a 29% Rotten Tomatoes rating) and Dane Cook and Kate Hudson in the R-rated and not-screened My Best Friend's Girl is another must-to-avoid. I hear good things about Ghost Town (tracking 80% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes), especially Ricky Gervais, but it's not expected to open strongly. Nor is Ed Harris's Appaloosa (64 % on Rotten Tomatoes), which I missed in Toronto and can't wait to see (Viggo Mortensen is in it). There aren't too many of us western fans left, and we must support the cause.

Fandango Five – Ticket Sales (as of 9/19/08 11:00 a.m. PT)

Movie Fandango User Rating % Fandango Sales

Igor “Go” 15%

Burn After Reading “Go” 13%

Fireproof “Go” 11%

Lakeview Terrace “Go” 11%

My Best Friends’ Girl “So-So”

And the Fandango Weekly Poll (as of 9/18/08 9:00 a.m. PT):

Samuel L. Jackson stars this week in Lakeview Terrace. Of the Jackson's movies below, which is your favorite?

Pulp Fiction 41%

A Time to Kill 16%

The Long Kiss Good Night 14%

Star Wars: Episode III 13%

Jurassic Park 9%

The Incredibles 7%

[Posted by Steven Gaydos]
This week's boxoffice reporting in Variety, Hollywood Reporter and L.A. Times talked about nearly every film in the top 10, EXCEPT the one that had hung in the top five for weeks, after opening to $31 million. It's on track to bust through $100 million and will outperform Don't Mess with the Zohan at a lower cost of any hit comedy this summer outside of Pineapple Express. So it had a bigger opening weekend gross than Pineapple and Thunder (if projections hold) at half the cost of Thunder and still, it's like the crazy uncle in the attic - no one wants to acknowledge its presence in the marketplace, let alone its success.

All this hate and just because of a little brother skin on the ol' drum skins!??!

There's been a lot of talk about insensitivity and discrimination. Thunder has gotten heat for maligning minorities and the developmentally disabled. But far more insidious is the root cause of this news blackout on Step Brothers.

I blame this on anti-brother descrimination.

As the youngest of four brothers, and someone who has experienced the heartbreak and pain of stupidity, selfishness, immaturity, greed and infantile acting-out behavior on the part of grown men, I am looking for others to join my cause and meet me on the picket line.

I will be out there as soon as I finish watching this John Stamos STV pic I've been looking forward to.

[Posted by Peter Debruge]

Variety may have started the game of reporting box office, but brainiacs with vector-drawing skills have cornered the market on crazy new ways to display it. Last February, the New York Times unveiled a stream graph in which major hits of the last two decades stand out as spikes over time (or blips, depending on your worldview). Now, xach.com's Zach Beane invents a week-to-week variation on the same concept, in which individual films unspool like so many colored ribbons as their performance gradually dwindles. That rainbow coloring actually comes in handy, since it's easy to spot when a movie is still holding strong among new releases (the way No Country for Old Men and Juno stand out in early March). The University of Texas grad in me will be cheering the burnt orange Dark Knight's stranglehold on coming weeks.

Wouldn't it be great if stars were penalized for making flops, and were paid based on their actual marquee value? Of course, it takes all kinds of stars to fuel Hollywood movies. All stars are not created equal. Despite what this Forbes chart says, Will Smith is still worth a great deal. Many movies would not get made without the guarantee of a star--which means serious coin when there aren't enough of these special talents to go around.

This Forbes list basically penalizes the top-paid stars. So those who get paid less, like Vince Vaughn, who Forbes claims brings the best star value for the price, get a leg up here. This chart mixes apples and oranges anyway. Tobey Maguire means one thing when he's Spider-Man, and another when he's not. Ensemble movies like the Oceans series are not comparable to star vehicles, etc.

But all in all this is a fun corrective to the Hollywood madness: the warped, inflated, broken economic model that is disintegrating before our eyes. The agencies and producers know it. Hollywood studio execs and filmmakers are probably still in denial. But the good old days are over.

It's a strange high-low time, as industry folks batten down the hatches in the face of tighter credit and an unresolved de facto SAG strike. There's unemployment, fewer movies being made, agency attrition, layoffs across many companies, and yet the summer b.o. is going strong, and breaking records.

Despite its grim take on the world and two and a half hour running time, The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan's follow-up to Batman Begins, broke b.o. records: its estimated $155 million gross was the best three-day opening ever, beating Spider-Man 3's $151 million in 2007. (It scored 94% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, narrowly beating Iron Man's 93%.) Another funny thing happened at the summer boxoffice: movies that nabbed good reviews lasted longer in theaters than the ones that got creamed. There is hope for us yet.

The Top Ten boxoffice cumes to date this summer, with Rotten Tomatoes scores, are:

1. Iron Man $314.4M 93%

2 Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull $312.5M 76%

3. Kung Fu Panda $206.5M 88%

4. Hancock $191.5M 38%

5. Wall-E $182.5M 96%

6. Dark Knight $155.3M 94%

7. Sex and the City: The Movie $149.8M 51%

8. Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian $139.3M 66%

9. Incredible Hulk $131.7M 67%

10. Wanted $123.3M 73%

Clearly, Hancock, starring fluke zone star Will Smith, is the 2008 exception that proves the rule.

Meanwhile women and Abba fans gave the musical Mamma Mia! a respectable $27.6 million opening estimate. Thanks to strong holdover business from Journey to the Center of the Earth, Wall-E and others, the weekend broke the record for a non-holiday gross with a total $250 million. Hellboy took a hit from direct fanboy competitor Dark Knight, declining 71%.

Here are weekend b.o. reports from Variety and Fantasy Moguls, which argues the case for a best picture Oscar for The Dark Knight:

Everyone seems to lament the ever-eroding ratings for Hollywood's biggest night. They blame the host and the length of acceptance speeches, but the real reason, in my opinion, is the obscurity of some of the selections. One role of the Oscars is certainly to champion smaller films, but the awards should also recognize the year's best popular entertainment. The Dark Knight and Wall-E are both Oscar caliber movies in my mind. Last year, there should have been a Best Picture slot for The Bourne Ultimatum (Universal). If the industry wants a return to its rating glory, voters should not narrow their list of nominees exclusively to small, well-reviewed art films.

I suspect The Dark Knight will wind up with many Oscar nominations, mainly in the technical categories, as well as Heath Ledger's supporting actor slot. Best picture? I don't know about that. As for Pixar's lauded Wall-E, here's why the animated film will find tough sledding en route to a best picture Oscar.

When Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight opens Friday, it will be huge. $130 million huge? That's a high figure for a two-and-a-half hour movie.

And many of those ticket sales are being made in advance. MovieTickets.com, for example, reports that over 700 performances of Dark Knight are already sold out in North America, including over 270 performances in Los Angeles and New York City. The Dark Knight is outselling three of the online ticket seller's top-performing films of all-time at the same point in the sales cycle, including Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, Spider-Man 3 and The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Over at online rival Fandango.com, over 500 showtimes of The Dark Knight are already sold out.

MovieTickets.com’s Top-10 Performing Films of All-Time
1. Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith

2. Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

3. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

4. The Passion of The Christ

5. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest

6. Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

7. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

8. Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones

9. Matrix Reloaded

10. Spider-Man 3

Fandango's weekend ticket sales (as of 7/15/08 2:00 p.m. PT) :

Movie Fandango User Rating % Fandango Sales

The Dark Knight “Go” 90%

Mamma Mia! “Go” 3%

Hellboy II: The Golden Army “Go” 2%

Journey to the Center of the Earth “Go” 2%

Wall-E “Go” 1%