'Think Like a Man' stays ahead of four new releases

Four new wide releases opened this weekend, but all of them underwhelmed. The winners were holdovers, especially Think Like a Man. The ensemble romantic comedy, which features a primarily black cast, dropped by half to earn $18.8 million, making it the most successful movie to open this April. Audiences' foreknowledge of comedian/author Steve Harvey probably helped distinguish this feature from similar offerings, and the thumbs-ups from audiences in exit polls last week likely drove their friends to the box office this week.

British animation company Aardman Entertainment has never opened a film above $20 million in the U.S. However, since it's been two months since a new animated film graced the screen, many were hoping Pirates! The Band of Misfits could open above $11.4 million. It didn't, and audiences gave the stop-motion animated 3D film a so-so "B" rating in exit polls. Still, the family-friendly feature has earned over $60 million overseas, so the totals stateside are just one piece of the pie.

The Five-Year Engagement was trounced by the holdover romantic comedy Think Like a Man, debuting to just $11.1 million. Universal expected the Jason Segel-Emily Blunt vehicle to open close to 50% higher. While there are a lot of reasons flying around for this discrepancy, age and exit polls are the biggies. 57% of viewers were over thirty, while younger people are more avid moviegoers, indicating the plot may have turned off younger audiences. Exit polls gave the movie a "B-" rating, not surprising since it was billed as "from the producer of Bridesmaids" while being quite a bit different from that raunchy comedy.

Safe opened on the low end even for a Jason Statham movie, finishing with $7.7 million. Core Statham fans, older-skewing males, did turn out, but they were lukewarm on the action outing, giving it a "B+" CinemaScore.

The Raven, which finished with $7.2 million, generated some of the most creative critical put-downs I've seen in some time. My favorite was this Gawker headline, "I Fell Asleep 17 Times During The Raven." The only people who seemed to think this Edgar Allan Poe-tracks-down-a-serial-killer-who-quoth-his-stories tale was cool were under the age of 25. I think it’s fair to say that audiences still showing their IDs for R-rated movies are more easily wowed.

Bernie, a dark comedy starring Jack Black, opened amazingly well with a $30,000 per-screen average on three screens. Despite a lot of indie street cred, Sound of My Voice had a more tepid debut, averaging $8,000 per screen in five locations.

The Avengers will kick off the "summer" movie season this Friday. No other studio dares open a film against this superhero extravaganza, which will set the tone for summer 2012.

'Five-Year Engagement' aims for date-night audiences

By heavily marketing The Five-Year Engagement (2,936 theatres) as "from the producer of Bridesmaids," Universal hopes to draw in audiences looking for raunchy, original humor as well as traditional rom-com viewers. Writers Jason Segel (who stars) and Nicholas Stoller (who directs) guarantee at least some appeal to the male crowd, especially those who took a shine to the duo after Forgetting Sarah Marshall, which shares many similarities with the current project. In my review, I call it a "notch above," but it's nothing more than a reasonably fun way to spend a Friday night. Plus, unlike many more stereotypical romantic comedies, you won't leave with a bad taste in your mouth. Prognosticators expect an opening at least in the teen millions.

The first animated offering in two months, The Pirates! Band of Misfits (3,358 theatres) will release in 3D. The "inspired nonsense" of a story makes for "endearing drollery," according to FJI critic Rex Roberts. The Aardman Entertainment production is filled with typical British humor, which could dampen grosses a bit, but the feature should still land somewhere at least in the teen millions.

A kind of mix of the revisionist fantasy The Grimm Brothers and From Hell, The Raven (2,203 theatres) follows Edgar Allan Poe as he tries to track down a murderer who is using Poe's books for inspiration. The "lamebrain concept" failed to entice critic David Noh, who described the suspenser as an "endless, tireless cartoon." An opening somewhere north of $10 million is in the forecast.

"The best Jason Statham outing in some time," according to critic Daniel Eagan, Safe (2,266 theatres) promises to "[hurtle] viewers along its twisting, sordid storyline." Despite this rave from Eagan, the action thriller is expected to earn just below $10 million, though Eagan feels it could "grab a wider audience through word of mouth."

On the specialty front, indie darling Brit Marling plays a cult leader in the "taut and unnerving" Sound of My Voice (5 theatres), which critic Erica Abeel gave a thumbs-up. Jack Black is the highlight of Bernie (3 theatres), a black comedy about a man who murders an elderly woman, and is based on a true story. Finally, Elles, a sex-filled French tale about a journalist who investigates college students moonlighting as prostitutes, should excite stateside audiences, though male viewers may "[leave] the theatre disappointed that Freud’s famous question, 'What does a woman want?' remains profoundly unanswered," Roberts reflects.

On Monday, come back to see if audiences bought the "Bridesmaids spinoff" pitch and if families turned out for a fresh animated offering.

Universal gathers its stars at CinemaCon

Of the six studio product previews at CinemaCon in Las Vegas, Universal Pictures (which sat out last year's inaugural show) brought in the largest star contingent. The Thursday afternoon program, very capably and genially hosted by chairman Adam Fogelson, offered yet more proof that this is going to be a very big summer at the movies.

The session began with a smartly assembled reel marking Universal's 100th anniversary, which reminded the audience just how many iconic classics the studio has produced in the past century, from its 1930s horror legacy to the Spielberg parade of hits to the current Bourne action series. Then it was on to the first industry trailer, for Battleship, which has already made $150 million in overseas markets prior to its mid-May domestic premiere--an unusual release strategy. The trailer cheekily includes skeptical comments from The Hollywood Reporter, Slash.com and Stephen Colbert about the board game adaptation, before establishing its action bona fides. After the clip, stars Taylor Kitsch (late of John Carter) and Brooklyn Decker came out to vouch for the film's military muscle, courtesy of our very own Armed Forces.

For my money the most entertaining celebrity to appear on the Colosseum stage was Charlize Theron, who accompanied Twilight star Kristen Stewart, director Rupert Sanders and producer Joe Roth to promote Snow White and the Huntsman. Fogelson asked her what persuaded her to play the Evil Queen, and the statuesque blonde recalled stating that if she was going to sign on, "we gotta go balls to the wall." A few risque jokes later, Theron revealed that her interpretation of the Queen was inspired by Jack Nicholson in The Shining. That's the kind of statement, she joked, that gets you thrown out of studio casting sessions and back doing independent films "for dirt and water."

Stewart acknowledged that the phenomenal success of her Twilight series has been "really unique," and called the role of Snow White "the perfect choice for me." The combination of the cast and the vision of first-time feature director Sanders (a top talent in the world of commercials) led her to choose the project "from the gut."

Fogelson told the audience that his July 6 release Savages, Oliver Stone's gritty tale of young American marijuana dealers who must deal with a vicious Mexican cartel, is the Stone we know from movies like Natural Born Killers. Stone appeared on stage with three members of his cast: Kitsch (again), Salma Hayek and John Travolta. The veteran director approached the project as more than just an action thriller (though the trailer certainly promises nasty thrills), striving for an authentic portrait of California's desire for weed clashing with Mexico's crime epidemic.

Travolta said he had wanted to work with Stone for over 25 years, and that their first project together reminds him of his 1994 triumph, Pulp Fiction.  The cast also includes Blake Lively and Aaron Johnson (Kick-Ass), and Travolta found it especially gratifying working with "beautiful and decent people doing awful things."

No doubt the biggest thrill for many in the audience was the chance to see and hear from "Family Guy" creator Seth MacFarlane. who is making his feature directing debut this summer with the R-rated comedy Ted. MacFarlane also provides the voice for the titular teddy bear who comes alive thanks to a lonely child's wish and grows to irresponsible adulthood along with his human best bud, Mark Wahlberg.

Fogelson seemed generally nervous about what might come out of MacFarlane's mouth, and indeed at one point a dare by the comic auteur threatened to take this CinemaCon ceremony into NC-17 territory. But both MacFarlane and co-star Mila Kunis (who turned up earlier in the week to promote Disney's Wizard of Oz prequel) agreed that MacFarlane's outrageous comic sensibility also possesses "a very sweet backbone."

In any event, Fogelson confided that he's never heard his boss Ron Meyer laugh so hard at a Universal picture, and the trailer for Ted had the CinemaCon audience exploding with laughter too.

The final celebrity sighting of the program was CinemaCon Male Star of the Year Jeremy Renner, who's taken over the Bourne franchise from Matt Damon. Renner professed no hesitation about succeeding Damon, mainly because he liked the material and director Tony Gilroy and there's no point trying to anticipate people's reactions. Like his Mission: Impossible--Ghost Protocol co-star Tom Cruise, Renner insists on doing many of his own stunts, since he feels authenticity is crucial to the Bourne series.

The Universal program generously also included first glimpses of projects that are far, far from competion: the musical Les Miserables, the Tom Cruise sci-fi thriller Oblivion, the supernatural cop comedy R.I.P.D., The Fast and the Furious 6 and a rare Universal 3D project, 47 Ronin, which Fogelson described as like "300, The Matrix and The Last Samurai picking up swords and beating the shit out of each other."

Earlier on Thursday, 20th Century Fox also previewed its upcoming slate, and though the program featured only one filmmaker, the lineup still impressed. Ridley Scott's Prometheus looks like a sensational return to the science-fiction horrors of his classic Alien; the bizarrely high-concept Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter has a most tantalizing trailer; Ice Age: Continental Drift seems a sure bet to continue the huge run of that animated series; Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn and Jonah Hill appear poised to overcome the problematic title of their alien-fighting comedy Neighborhood Watch; Taken 2 looks like it has all the elements to bring out fans of Liam Neeson's previous action hit; and the Viola Davis-Maggie Gyllenhaal drama Won't Back Down, about the inequities of our school systems, seems to have real substance to go with its inspirational message. And for Christmas, Billy Crystal and Bette Midler may experience a comedy comeback, judging by the laughs for their Parental Guidance trailer.

Fox Filmed Entertainment co-chairmen Jim Gianopulos and Tom Rothman also ran down a list of future movies with familiar elements: A Good Day to Die Hard, Wolverine, a Percy Jackson sequel, a new Planet of the Apes chapter, Ben Stiller and Kristen Wiig in a remake of the Fox chestnut The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, and the return of comedy duo Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson in The Internship.

The lone talent appearance was by director Ang Lee to introduce two sequences from his ambitious 3D production Life of Pi. Like Hugo by his fellow CinemaCon panelist Martin Scorsese, this is a big-scale fantasy film that proves 3D is being taken very seriously as an artistic tool by some of the world's leading moviemakers. The two scenes, involving a fierce storm at sea and a later onslaught of flying fish, are truly unlike any 3D imagery you've seen before--visionary depictions of Yann Martel's tale of a teenage boy trapped at sea on a small boat with a Bengal tiger. After each sequence, Lee charmingly reminded the audience, "That was unfinished," and he described his efforts to conquer "a new film language." "I hope it doesn't feel like a gimmick, but an attempt to put you in an emotional space."

Tribeca doc 'High Tech, Low Life' offers a window into little-seen areas of China

Spanning the 2008 Olympics in Beijing to the fallout of the social media-driven Arab Spring in 2011, Tribeca documentary High Tech, Low Life is a stunning, moving gem that follows the lives of two Chinese bloggers: the young , brash Zola and the established, measured Tiger Temple.

Zola is a child of the '80s who likes the fame and danger that comes with being a citizen journalist. Expert in matters of having multiple SIM cards and phones, he represents the new era of Chinese bloggers. For him, jumping over The Great Firewall, China's censorship of the Internet, requires just a little knowledge of code and IP scramblers. He appeared at a Q&A after the screening yesterday in the East Village with director Stephen Maing. Zola was clearly thrilled at being in NYC, which he described as "awesome" with a huge smile.

The doc shows just how awesome it must be to Zola, who comes from a rural village where his parents cook food over an open fire and admonish him to find a wife and have a son. Putting on hold his parents' plans for him to be a vegetable seller, Zola travels to a small village where rumor has it the son of an official raped and murdered a teenager, throwing her body into a river. Everyone in the town seems to know what really happened, but at a press conference held a week later, they report that the son was doing push-ups on the bridge with the girl when she suddently stood up and announced she didn't want to live anymore and jumped. It's a bizarre, totally implausible cover-up that reflects the nature of Chinese bureaucracy. As Zola clarified in the Q&A, covering events like these may bring visits and monitoring from the police, but it's still legal and tolerated by the government. The most dangerous thing to write, according to Zola? Political jokes. The bloggers are in a different category from political dissidents like Ai WeiWei, but they still have their posts removed by the government. For regular Chinese citizens, these blogs provide a valuable counterpoint to the perpetually optimistic state news.

Tiger Temple, who lived through Mao's Cultural Revolution in the '60s and '70s, is in his fifties and estranged from his family. He travels by bike thousands of kilometers to rural sites. He helps out older farmers whose rivers are filled with detergent and feces from the town upstream. His readers give donations to his website to help out the homeless in Beijing. His style is calm and wise. He understands how Chinese bureaucracy works (a lot of it is about self-preservation), and uses it to his advantage. He's also clever, narrating a video from the point-of-view of his cat in hopes that censors won't take down a video of a talking cat. He's right.

Whereas most Americans worry about things like factory conditions in China, these bloggers focus on issues in rural areas, which many feel have been forgotten as the government focuses on its cities instead of agriculture. The recent hubbub over supposed terrible working conditions in Apple plants (as described in the play The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs and the subsequently retracted "This American Life" piece), compared to what the Chinese themselves feel are the unjust parts of their life,  shows how little Americans understand China. This documentary offers a perspective on China that will challenge American assumptions.

Maing, the director, does an excellent job of fleshing out the personalities of these two bloggers. Having them do little things like describe all their tools and equipment yields funny, interesting results (Zola takes along traveling chopsticks and a spy scanner, which he ends up never using). They aren't pushy or outraged, as many American journalists are wont to be, and their matter-of-fact manner makes the injustices they expose all the more moving.

When Zola travels to Beijing for a story, he overhears a man singing a song about the government. "I was shocked to hear someone sing that in the open," he says later. "I thought all the people in Beijing were loyal party-lovers." High Tech, Low Life offers similar revelations for its viewers, who should seek out this eye-opening view of life in China.

Lasers, 3D, Scorsese and Lee highlight day 3 of CinemaCon

Day 3 at CinemaCon in Las Vegas featured two special highlights: an early look at the visual possibilities offered by a prototype of laser projection equipment, and a talk with two Oscar-winning directors about their experiences with 3D.

In a morning session, Todd Hoddick, VP of Barco's North American Entertainment Division, hosted a screening of content utilizing Barco's prototype DC 4K laser projector. The first clip was an excerpt from director Ron Fricke and producer Mark Magidson's globe-spanning, non-narrative documentary Samsara, which Oscilloscope Pictures releases in New York and Seattle on August 24. The footage encompassed an unidentified landscape dotted with exotic reddish-orange structures whose colors really popped on the 70-foot Harkness Unity matte white screen installed at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace, sharply detailed aerial shots of skyscrapers, and time-lapse photography of pulsating traffic. The clarity and brightness of the laser technology make an ideal medium for Fricke's dazzling images. Even more awesome was RED Digital's 2K, 48-frame-per-second 3D footage of a helicopter aloft against a cityscape backdrop; one could almost believe the sharply delineated copter was hovering inside the theatre above the audience's heads.

Hoddick listed the many advantages of this evolving laser technology: improved color, higher contrast, uniformity up to the edges of the screen, unlimited dimming of 3D, low power consumption and, of course, greater brightness.  But he also expressed caution about the roadblocks ahead: removing archaic FDA restrictions on lasers, bringing down costs, and finding a business model that would make yet another expensive hardware upgrade appealing to exhibitors.

During a panel discussion immediately following the demo, Jim Reisteter, digital cinema general manager at NEC Display Solutions, assured the audience of exhibitors that this all was still in the exploratory stage and that manufacturers aren't about to pressure theatre owners who are just finishing their transition to digital projection. "Get comfortable with what you have," he urged. Michael Esch, senior director of entertainment solutions at fellow projector company Christie, concurred: "We're not trying to bombard you with technology for technology's sake."

Wim Buyens, senior VP of entertainment at Barco, said he considered it his company's "duty to come up with an upgradable solution," rather than start a laser projector from scratch. Anything else "would be disrespectful" to exhibitors, he believes.

Hoddick expects a "commercially viable" laser projector will be appearing by the end of 2013. Laser technology is yet another scary leap for the movie theatre industry, but this session proved that it can reap many tantalizing benefits (particularly on the 3D brightness front) and is well worth exploring.

The issue of 3D brightness was addressed by Martin Scorsese at a lunchtime Filmmakers Forum, moderated by Hollywood Reporter chief film critic Todd McCarthy, which also featured director Ang Lee. Scorsese warned the audience that if screens "are too dark and you can't see, why should [audiences] come back and watch another 3D film?"

Scorsese, who received the RealD Innovation in 3D Award at the lunch for his groundbreaking work on the Oscar-winning Hugo, said his interest in 3D was related to his fascination with the deep-focus shots (using wide-angle lenses) of the great cinematographer Gregg Toland of Citizen Kane fame. "In a sense, it's like 3D," he opined. Scorsese also noted that interest in 3D dates back to the early silent days, and that Russian master director Sergei Eisenstein had a book on 3D open nearby when he died in the 1940s.

Self-effacing Lee, who's preparing his first 3D film, Life of Pi, admitted that working in the format has been a difficult learning process. "It's its own thing," he said. "It's a new form of art, and we haven't gotten there yet." Lee's Pi cinematographer, Claudio Miranda, shot the 3D Tron and "he walks around like he knows," the director confided. "But we're all novices when it comes to 3D."

Before filming Hugo, Scorsese screened '50s 3D classics like House of Wax and Dial M for Murder for his crew, and decided the "stage play" look of Dial M was the way he wanted to go. His attitude toward his first 3D project was "Let's push it, let's see what happens... I kept asking for more [3D impact]."

Scorsese believes that when actors' faces lean out toward the audience in 3D, "I'm more interested in them, I'm immersed in them. It's like a moving sculpture of the actor."

The much-lauded director of Taxi Driver and Raging Bull invariably finds links to his life as an asthmatic child in New York's Little Italy. For him, 3D is like those old Viewmaster toys that "transported you to another world." Perhaps it's not so surprising after all that this enthusiastic convert to 3D finally made his first children's film.

Tribeca seeks romance with 'Your Sister's Sister' and 'Take This Waltz'

Boy loses brother. Girl offers boy summer home to recuperate. Boy meets girl's sister, sparks fly. Complications ensue. Tribeca selection Your Sister's Sister has some great moments of comedy and truth. It's also moves quickly to the "complications ensue" part. Some twists and turns you don't ever see coming, and will have your mouth hanging open.

Mark Duplass plays Jack, who is still grieving a year after the death of his brother. His friend (who was also his brother's ex), played by Emily Blunt, offers him a family home to stay in. When he gets there, her sister (Rosemarie DeWitt) is mourning after a breakup with her longtime partner. Though she's a lesbian, the two hook up, and are totally unprepared for the other sister's arrival the next day. Did I mention Duplass' character may have a bit of chemistry with Blunt's character, even though she dated his brother and he just had sex with her sister?

One of the things I loved most about Your Sister's Sister was the setting, a beach house in the San Juan Islands, a few hours and a long ferry ride from Seattle. It's a beautiful, remote, and austere location that perfectly fits the narrative. Having been there a few times myself, I felt both sentimental and grateful for the refreshing change of pace--no Martha's Vineyard or the Hamptons! Lynn Shelton, who received accolades for 2009 film Humpday, directs.

Your Sister's Sister does have some sections that lag. The (improvised) dialogue is real, but that also means it sometimes goes in circles or off in odd directions before moving forward. Still, this one is a "recommend" for indie film lovers because of one particularly satisfying twist and its interesting ending. It's already been picked up by IFC Films and will release June 15.

Take This Waltz also employs a love triangle, but its moments of drama and romance outweigh those of comedy. Michelle Williams plays a woman who's unhappily married to Seth Rogen, and has started to feel an attraction to her neighbor (Luke Kirby). The drama had one of the oddest narrative structures I've seen in some time. I kept waiting for the movie to end, only to realize after some time that in fact I was waiting for the second act to end--we still had a third! With an incredibly lagging middle (see the "waiting for the movie to end" part), this was a film that provoked a lot of frustration but had such a sensational point to make in its ending I forgave the movie's shortcomings. Writer/director Sarah Polley (Away From Her) doesn't make it clear if Williams' character is going through the normal boredom of an established relationship or if she's truly unhappy and a bad match with her partner. Her character doesn't seem to know, and neither does the audience. But as her character pursues a new relationship, we get to see a relationship cycle repeat itself. By the end, I was in possession of a strong opinion about Williams' character.

Although it has big-name stars, Take This Waltz has huge continuity problems that drove me mad. Williams' hair changes colors and styles between scenes. I spoke to someone in the screening who didn't notice, but I was amazed that such a huge lapse could not be addressed and fixed somehow. Now I know why so many film productions make their characters wear wigs! Take This Waltz has also been picked up for a post-festival release through Magnolia on June 29.

Check back for more Tribeca updates, which will conclude early next week.

Warner Bros. and Disney host exciting previews at CinemaCon

If the goal of the CinemaCon convention in Las Vegas is to heighten anticipation for the studios' upcoming movie slates, then mission accomplished. All six major studios are represented at the show this year with product previews, and on Tuesday it was Warner Bros. and Disney's turn to show off their wares.

In 2011, Warner Bros. celebrated its third year in a row tallying $4 billion in global box office, and the upcoming movies it highlighted augur another tremendous year. First up was Tim Burton to present the extended trailer for Dark Shadows, which looks like an awful lot of fun. Burton recalled running home from school to watch the original supernatural daytime TV soap opera, which he blamed for "a generation of bad students" neglecting their homework. He admitted that he and eight-time collaborator Johnny Depp share "a strange love of weird cult phenomena," and then brought to the stage a reticent-looking Depp, who said all of two words: "Have fun."

Next was Dark Knight Rises writer-director Christopher Nolan, who recalled his visit to CinemaCon predecessor ShoWest in 2010 to preview Inception, which he humbly admitted must have seemed like "high-end gibberish" at the time. Nolan's $2.5 billion track record at the worldwide box office has allowed him to "craft a large-scale conclusion" to his Batman series, and to "finish it in the biggest way possible." "We're partners in putting on a show," he told exhibitors, offering the equivalent of "many thousands of live performances." For the CinemaCon audience, Nolan prepared a montage of scenes from The Dark Knight Rises that promised a movie filled with both action and stunning visual spectacle.

Rock of Ages director Adam Shankman began his intro confessing he wanted to be Chris Nolan. "You fucker!" he marveled at the preceding montage. "That's badass shit!" Shankman then described going to the Broadway production of the hit '80s hard-rock musical and noticing that every straight man in the audience was singing along and knew all the words. He predicted Rock of Ages would be the first movie musical that straight men will take their girlfriends to see.

Jay Roach, director of the Austin Powers and Fockers franchises, is back with The Campaign, a comedy co-starring Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis as rival candidates for U.S. Congress who get down and dirty. Judging by the raucous reaction to the trailer, this looks like a potential comedy blockbuster. The timing in this election year is perfect--perhaps too perfect. As Roach noted, during the making of the film,"we kept checking the Internet to see if we were still as funny as the real-life stuff."

Greeting the audience on tape was Baz Luhrmann, director of the new 3D version of the F. Scott Fitzgerald classic The Great Gatsby, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire and Carey Mulligan. This may not be a literary adaptation for purists, but, like Luhrmann's wild take on Romeo and Juliet, it looks like a lavish, ultra-stylish treatment that fully justifies the unexpected third dimension for a romantic drama.

Warner's preview ended with a moment of movie history: ten minutes of scenes from Peter Jackson's The Hobbit, the first digital 3D feature shot at 48 frames per second (versus the standard 24 frames). The New Zealand landscapes were incredibly sharp, and more intimate scenes looked hyper-real. (In fact, I overheard some viewers griping that the images looked more like high-def TV than a movie.) The 48 FPS future is nearly here: The enhanced Hobbit opens in select engagements this December.

Tim Burton was back for the Disney preview event, showing a very amusing classroom scene from Frankenweenie, his 3D stop-motion feature version of his own early live-action short about a young boy who reanimates his dead pet dog a la Dr. Frankenstein. And so was Johnny Depp, accompanying producer Jerry Bruckheimer to talk up The Lone Ranger, which also re-teams them with Pirates of the Caribbean director Gore Verbinski. This time, Depp had just a few more words to say, admitting that Jay Silverheels, the original actor who played the Masked Man's Indian sidekick Tonto, might not approve of Depp's interpretation.

Depp and Bruckheimer's appearance was preceded by a surprise visit from Kermit the Frog on a cardboard horse, putting in his bid to play the Lone Ranger, and Miss Piggy emerging from the opposite end of the stage to demand a role in Disney's Oz: The Great and Powerful. Disney production president Sean Bailey told them the roles were already cast, but reassured them with the official news that there will be a Muppets II.

Talking up Oz were director Sam Raimi, producer Joe Roth, and stars James Franco and Mila Kunis. Roth, a onetime Disney chairman and producer of the mega-hit Alice in Wonderland, called Oz "more Disney than any film I can remember." The prequel shows how the Wizard, the Wicked Witch and Glinda the Good Witch evolved into the characters we know from the 1939 classic, with Kunis turning bad after she's dumped by Franco's character, a con man/magician. "A woman gets her heart broken and she goes craaazy," Kunis told the crowd.

Pixar co-founder and Disney Animation chief John Lasseter took over the final portion of the program, first previewing a highly original and delightful-looking new feature from Walt Disney Animation, Wreck-It Ralph, which explores the secret lives of videogame characters. Ralph, voiced by John C. Reilly (who also appeared on stage), is an 8-bit villain from the dawn of videogames who longs to break out of his designated identity and do something good and heroic. Directed by Rich Moore of "Futurama," this looks like a major crowd-pleaser.

Lasseter also gave us a first glimpse at the 3D version of Finding Nemo, which looked sensational with the added dimension--like a giant fish tank up on the big screen. The 3D trailer for Monsters University, the prequel to Monsters Inc. (also getting a 3D reboot), earned big laughs, and Lasseter revealed that Pixar's dinosaur project (due May 30, 2014) finally has a title, The Good Dinosaur, and that there's a new project in the works about the eerie Mexican holiday called Dia de los Muertes, from Toy Story 3 director Lee Unkrich.

As a final treat, CinemaCon got to see the first half-hour of Pixar's next release, the Scottish adventure Brave, and it's another meticulous and masterly effort from this remarkable studio. In related news, Dolby revealed that Brave will be the first feature to go out with its new, highly immersive audio format Dolby Atmos, on 15 test screens.