'New Moon' to bring fangirls to the box office

By Sarah Sluis

The Twilight Saga: New Moon will open in over 4,000 theatres at midnight, 600 more screens than the first Twilight. Movietickets.com reported that over 2,150 screenings of the vampire romance have sold out, and the film has surpassed franchise films like Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter to become their #1 advance seller of all time. The reviews are coming in, but it's doubtful the fan base will even care. This movie is all about reliving the book with the added visuals of Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner, and the swoons and shrieks of your friends and fellow audience members. Plus, the sequel combines Vampire-mania with Werewolf-mania, throwing heroine Bella into a love triangle between the two man-creatures.

The Blind Side, which many have called Precious with a white, Republican savior (and thus appealing to that demographic) will open in 3,100 theatres. Sandra Bullock is in top form, but critic Michael Rechtshaffen wished that "Oher [the black homeless teen Bullock's character and her husband took in] had been presented as something other than essentially a large prop." Further separating itself from a movie like Precious, The Blind Side sticks to "proven inspirational sports-movie/fish-out-of-water

formulas while holding the inherent sociological issues to the

sidelines," despite the fact that "there also was room for more thought-provoking substance."

Planet 51 (2,600 theatres), a kind of E.T. in reverse, revolves around an astronaut who has landed in a suburban alien town. Grade-school joke: they think he's the one who's funny looking. The "Sci-Fi Lite" movie, according to critic Kirk Honeycutt, has "gentle jokes and cornball battles," and is geared more towards children than the adult-children mix more frequently seen in today's animated movies.

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans opens in 27 theatres, and if you are near one--you need to see it. Genre-wise, it's a story of a corrupt cop (Nicolas Cage) in love with a prostitute (Eva Mendes), but director Werner Herzog takes this story places you have never even imagined. The screening I was in prompted several moments where everyone broke out in shocked laughter--whether it was because Cage was so outrageously bad, mad-scientist crazy, or because the movie did things you just aren't supposed to do on film, including alligator point-of-view shots.

Also moving into theatres on Friday is Red Cliff. Directed by John Woo, the American version compresses the two-film arc into one historical epic critic Daniel Eagan called "teeming with characters and plot twists," but "told in such a direct and vigorous style that it is never confusing."

New Moon is the hands-down winner for this weekend, but its narrower fan base is always a liability. Everyone will be watching to see how much the film drops Saturday and Sunday after its Friday open. Precious and Fantastic Mr. Fox will be expanding this runs, and Planet 51 needs to bring in audiences before The Princess and the Frog opens over Thanksgiving (though, thankfully, in a limited run).