'Hangover Part II' goes on 5-day, $137 million bender

By Sarah Sluis

Since its release Thursday at midnight, The Hangover Part II has collected $137 million from moviegoers' pockets. The repetition from the previous installment may have irked critics, who gave the film just a 37% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but fans turned the comedy into a hit, with 94% of Rotten Tomatoes users giving the film a "fresh" rating. I'm with the audience on this one. Any movie that makes me laugh out loud gets at least one thumb up, and in some instances the repetition helped the comedy build humor from one installment to the next. With this kind of opening, there will surely be a Hangover 3. The only single member of the wolfpack is Zach Galifianakis, so my bet is that the third film will center on his wedding.

Kung Fu Panda 2 has totaled $68 million since Thursday, but since its $47 million weekend total was less than the first film's $60 million weekend, DreamWorks stock went spiraling downward. The same thing happened last year when How to Train Your Dragon opened on the light side, so I'm not worried about DreamWorks Animation. Their films have been better and better, and Variety's top online story is the fact that Kung Fu Panda 2 broke box office records in China. A good animated film will have a long, long shelf life, and the film's positive reception (80% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes) will ensure it finds an audience.

On the specialty circuit, Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris launched into the top ten with $1.9 million while playing in just 58 locations. Terrence Malick's long-awaited The Tree of Life opened with a per-screen average of $93,000, just $6,000 under Allen's film's debut last week.

In the top ten, Bridesmaids fell just 20% for the second week in a row, earning $16.5 million. One spot ahead, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides did not fare as well, doing a typical tentpole drop (56%) to a still-hefty $39.5 million. The math on Bridesmaids is pretty impressive. If the comedy had done the "usual" and dropped 50% every week, it would have ended up with $52 million. With just two weeks of 20% drops, the comedy has already totaled $90 million. Using my trusty Excel spreadsheet, I calculated that Bridesmaids could go on to gross over $170 million if it continues to drop just 20% a week. That exact figure is unlikely, but it shows that staving off big drops can pay off in a huge way. I love comedies like Bridesmaids, because they prove that a film's worth can be measured well beyond its opening weekend.

This Friday, X-Men: First Class has the new release marquee all to itself, and The Weinstein Co. will begin to show off its quirky coming-of-age picture Submarine.

'Hangover Part II' set to flykick over 'Kung Fu Panda 2'

By Sarah Sluis

If the midnight screenings are any indication, The Hangover Part II (3,615 theatres) is going to bring in at least $100 million over the four-day Memorial Day Weekend. Late night patrons gave the comedy a $10.4 million head start, with an additional $30 million projected for Friday screenings. Critic Kevin Lally summed up the film as "less a sequel than a remake," but predicted that the R-rated flick will "[deliver] enough outrageousness to satisfy summer audiences who don't mind some dj vu in their debauchery." Like the original, The Hangover Part II has laugh-out-loud moments and its mysterious plotline helps preserve the sense of surprise that worked so well for the first movie.

Kung Fu Panda 2 (3,925 theatres) is the first 3D, CG animated movie since Rio came out six weeks ago. The long weekend should bring extra eyes to the movie, which critic Frank Lovece called "truly beautiful to behold." Lovece remarks that "each successive DreamWorks animated feature looks more beautiful than the one before," and Kung Fu Panda 2 is no exception, showing incredible range in its "watercolor-like landscapes, shadow puppet-inspired flashbacks, and jangly, hard-edged anime." That kind of attention to artistry is enough to please both kids and adults. Panda earned $6 million from screenings yesterday, and the animated sequel is expected to top out below $100 million.

While director Terrence Malick's films have always had a cinephile following, The Tree of Life (4 theatres) is truly an art film, valuing poetic images and meditations over an actual plotline. Critic A.O. Scott of The New York Times gave an optimistic, fitting description of the film, positioning Malick among the "visionary company of homegrown romantics like Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Hart Crane and James Agee. The definitive writings of these authors did not sit comfortably or find universal favor in their own time...This is precisely what makes them alive and exciting." Brad Pitt and Sean Penn add their star power to the film, but I remarked most upon Jessica Chastain's screen charisma. She is that newcomer who will make a smashing impact when all her films over the past few years, some delayed, will release in quick succession. This summer we'll also see her in The Debt and The Help. I find her to be a less annoying Bryce Dallas Howard (sorry, fans), and look forward to seeing more of her performances this year.

On Tuesday, we'll tally up The Hangover Part II's weekend spoils and see if Kung Fu Panda 2 brought in families and matinee crowds in force, and if audiences are willing to venture to see Malick's oddest film yet.

First look at 'The Descendants'

By Sarah Sluis

Let it be known: Embarrassment and humiliation can be funny. However, this kind of humor is also a divider. One of the worst experiences during a comedy is cringing at something (a fall, a turn of phrase, a rejection) that's supposed to make you laugh. The best comedians and actors make you feel okay about laughing at them, and the worst ones make you feel sorry for them, annoyed, or frustrated. In Alexander Payne's films, he often manages the near-impossible feat of having you have laugh at and empathize with his characters at the same time. After watching the trailer of The Descendants, I feel strongly that he's pulled off his trademark tonal mix yet again.

Set in a residential Hawaii, The Descendants spotlights George Clooney. When his wife is hospitalized after a boating accident, he's unexpectedly thrust into full-time fatherhood after being the "back-up parent." His daughter (Shailene Woodley) also informs him that his wife has been cheating on him. I was impressed with Woodley, who has a few seasons under her belt starring in "The Secret Life of the American Teenager" but hasn't made it to the big screen yet. Payne's writing/directing projects have always blended dark humor with personal drama. Election, Sideways, and About Schmidt have characters that stick in your mind, along with a strong sense of place. The Descendants appears to do the same.

The trailer ends with "coming soon," but Fox Searchlight had previously announced that the film would release December 16, 2011, smack-dab in the middle of awards season. As a great appreciator of Payne's work, especially Election, I know he can show me a character whose life is falling apart and looking like this, and I'll still leave the theatre with a mixture of laughter and empathy.

Osama Bin Laden Movie picked up by Sony

By Sarah Sluis

American citizens may not ever see the real pictures of Osama Bin Laden after he was killed by American special forces, but they'll be able to see the movie next year. Director Kathryn Bigelow, who won an Oscar for her depiction of soldiers defusing IEDs in Iraq in The Hurt Locker, has been working on the picture for years. Without the ending, that is. The project, dubbed Kill Bin Laden, originally centered on the quest of Navy SEALs to hunt down Bin Laden, but now that the non-cave dwelling Bin Laden is dead, the script will be able to go out with a bang.

I'm bullish on the prospects of the Bin Laden movie. Unlike United 93, which revisited an incident in American history that many people couldn't bring themselves to watch (I don't want to cry in an action movie!), people actually want to see the end of the leader of Al Qaeda. Much of what went on was top-secret, and I for one want to know more about the stealth helicopter. So that's what our tax dollars are going towards.

Bigelow is directing the film and Mark Boal, who wrote and produced The Hurt Locker, is finalizing the script. Aussie Joel Edgerton has signed on to lead, and now that Sony has picked up the project, they've given it a release date: Q4 2012. Awards season.

The successful killing of Bin Laden adds another twist to Boal's script. The movie was supposed to be about the Navy SEALs' attempt to kill Bin Laden, not their success. The Hurt Locker ended on an ambivalent note, but Bin Laden's death tacks on a "happy" ending to Bigelow and Boal's story. Or will it? If their original concept was about failure, about the lack of closure, perhaps there will be a note of subversion or anti-war commentary thrown in. However, The Hurt Locker toed the line, never coming out for or against the war. In The New York Times review of The Hurt Locker, critic A. O. Scott notes "The filmmakers' insistence on zooming in on and staying close to the moment-to-moment experiences of soldiers in the field is admirable in its way but a little evasive as well...[the movie] depicts men...who are too stressed out, too busy, too preoccupied with the details of survival to reflect on larger questions about what they are doing there." Under the supervision of Bigelow and Boal, Kill Bin Laden will be anything but a broad, unnuanced recreation of events, and there might even be another Oscar or two for the duo.

First look at 'Hunger Games' set, as Lenny Kratitz joins the cast

By Sarah Sluis

I'm two-thirds of the way through the Hunger Games series, and I can't wait for the movie. Unlike the Harry Potter books, which have so many unique subplots and details that the movie must pick and choose what to include, The Hunger Games is incredibly lean. It even reads like a novelization of a screenplay. While I've never liked the Harry Potter movies as much as I liked the books, The Hunger Games will make a great movie. Even while reading the books, I wanted to see the action sequences and environments off the page and on the screen.

Today, some blogs have posted two pictures of District 12. The book takes place in a futuristic America that is ruled by a capitol, with twelve districts that provide agriculture, fish, textiles, etc., to the district. Our heroine Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) lives in District 12, the coal mining district.

The first photo is probably of the Hob, an old warehouse where people go to sell black market goods like bootleg liquor and game from the surrounding, forbidden forest.

The second is a more generic picture of a coal railway car--it's not of any significance to the story, but it helps you get a feel for the Appalachia location.

Lionsgate also announced the casting of Lenny Kravitz, who is going to be absolutely perfect for the role of Cinna. People in the Capitol dress kind of like Lady Gaga, and as a musician Kravitz knows how to rock some weird looks (the photo below proves this point). Cinna becomes the confidant of Katniss, and he also uses his role as dressmaker to subvert the Capitol's intentions.

As The Hunger Games begins filming in order to make its March 23 release next year, there should be more set photos and some final casting announcements. One last reason I'm excited about this movie is director Gary Ross. A big part of The Hunger Games is the transition from the parched, dismal environment in District 12 to the modern, wealthy Capitol region, and then again to the Games. Ross pulled off a similar transition in Pleasantville (you know, the one where they go inside the TV and then turn from black-and-white to color), and I'm confident he will imbue The Hunger Games with that same satisfying sense of transformation.

Cannes Best Director Refn propels stylish action with 'Drive'

By Kevin Lally

FJI correspondent Daniel Steinhart concludes his series of reports on thehighlights of the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.

What at one point felt like the Cannes edition that would be remembered for Lars von Trier's "I'm a Nazi" comments will more likely be remembered as the year that Terrence Malick's ambitious The Tree of Life walked off with the Palme d'Or. True to form, the resolutely public-shy director wasn't on hand to accept the award at the closing ceremony, further enshrouding the film and its maker in mystery. Headed by president Robert De Niro, the competition jury spread the prizes widely across divergent work.

The Dardenne Brothers' The Kid with a Bike and Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Once Upon a Time in Anatolia split the Grand Prix, a gesture that brought attention to a pair of worthy films that were at risk of being overshadowed by the peculiarities of this year's edition. By mid-festival, appreciation of The Kid with a Bike seemed to dissipate amongst movies about planets forming and colliding and von Trier running off at the mouth.

Scheduled as the penultimate film in competition when festival fatigue had set in, Ceylan's strong but glacially paced police procedural was a challenge at nearly two hours and 40 minutes. But it's a sensitive work about power, the rules of conduct and life on the steppe, shot in painterly widescreen. The movie also contains one of the most striking scenes of any competition film, in which an angelic mayor's daughter serves tea by candlelight to an investigative team, reducing the accused to tears. In addition, Mawenn's overstuffed Poliss won the Jury Prize, which felt more like a token award.

The Best Actress Prize was granted to Kirsten Dunst for her unraveling in von Trier's Melancholia, which also stood as the vindication of an actress who risked becoming collateral damage to the director's "persona non grata" status. Frenchman Jean Dujardin claimed the Best Actor Prize for his silent performance in Michel Hazanavicius' The Artist, a crowd-pleasing and often clever homage to Hollywood's transition-to-sound era.

Joseph Cedar's Footnote deservedly took home the Best Screenwriting Award for its father-son character study, which injects the world of Talmudic Studies with all the intrigue of a taut thriller. Finally, the Best Director Award was given to Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn for his assured hand in Drive, one of the great pleasures of the festival.

With its pedal to the metal, the abstract crime film arrived like a muscle car. As good movies often should, the beginning economically lays out the rules of story and style. A getaway driver (Ryan Gosling) arranges a heist job by phone. Without a word, he picks up two masked burglars and eludes the police with amazing stealth. All the while, a Los Angeles Clippers game plays on the radio, a seemingly incidental detail that eventually pays dividends. By the time the opening credits roll, we know we're in the hands of expert driving, direction and screenwriting. From here, the film tracks the Driver, who, by day, works as a mechanic and stuntman and, at night, a wheelman. When he helps out an ex-con who moves back in with the neighbor he's fallen for (Carey Mulligan), the Driver finds himself chased down by the mob. Although based on a 2006 novel, the film recalls several car action movies from the 1970s, above all Walter Hill's The Driver, another Los Angeles-set caper about a getaway man known only as the Driver.

One of the pulpiest of contemporary European filmmakers, Refn has taken on drug dealers, prisoners and Vikings. With Drive, the director-for-hire works in similarly lurid territory, but here his characteristic bravado transforms into a cool confidence matched by the Driver's calm, most apparent during the near-wordless, smoldering scenes between Gosling and Mulligan. But Refn is also capable of unleashing moments of virtuosity, such as car chases and a love-cum-fight scene staged in an elevator that becomes a master class in tonal shifts.

It's curious that this film was selected for the competition, not that it didn't deserve to be; it did. But Drive recalls the B-westerns and crime pictures that Hollywood churned out in the '40s and '50s and then the artful action program movies of the '70s and '80s. Perhaps now that Hollywood has focused more of its attention on tentpoles instead of smaller genre work, these kinds of films are finding a home in the festival world. But the French have always recognized Hollywood's "low art"�often made by Europeans�and elevated them to "high-art" status.

Another vision of the United States through the lens of a European came from Italian director PaoloSorrentino's This Must Be the Place, an uneven mix of road movie, revenge tale and rock film (music and cameo by David Byrne). The film tells the improbable story of Cheyenne (Sean Penn), a retired American rock star living in Dublin with his firefighter wife (Frances McDormand). With the death of his Jewish father, he sets off across the mythic space of America to hunt down his dad's Nazi tormentor.

As with his previous films The Family Friend and Il Divo, Sorrentino builds an extravagant tapestry around a grotesque figure suffering from a kind of arrested development. Here, the character evokes various true-life aging rock stars: the glam styling of The Cure's Robert Smith, the haggard physicality of Ozzy Osbourne, and, probably inadvertently, the biography of Kiss' Gene Simmons, an Israeli-born son of a Holocaust survivor. Penn gives a strange and alienating performance, full of ticks, giggles and feeble mannerisms. Fascinating in their eccentricity, both acting and film ultimately are in need of being reined in.

In the Un Certain Regard sidebar, the jury, headed by Serbian filmmaker Emir Kusturica, split its main prize between Kim Ki-duk's Arirang and Andreas Dresen's Stopped on Track (the latter I missed.) In Arirang, the Korean Kim presents a quasi-fictionalized video diary of his retreat from a prolific directing career into a reclusive existence, in which he drinks, sings and works through his "director's block." What some called brave and others tediously self-indulgent, the film stands as a naked portrait of failure. The Special Jury Prize was given to Russian filmmaker Andrey Zvyagintsev's well-observed Elena, about the lengths that a mother will go to support her children.

The Directing Prize went to Mohammad Rasoulof for his B omid didar, a claustrophobic portrait of a woman subjected to and trying to escape from the heavy hand of Iranian authority. Critical of the Iranian regime, Rasoulof and colleague Jafar Panahi, whose newest work This Is Not a Film was snuck out of Iran to play the festival, have been sentenced to six years' imprisonment and banned for 20 from producing films and leaving the country. These two directors' presence onscreen and absence off were sobering contrasts to the dissonance of Cannes, where one often moves from watching serious-minded, harrowing films out into the circus of the sunny Croisette. The work and lives of these filmmakers brought home that in some corners of the world, what happens on-screen and off can have a direct and devastating impact on each other.

'On Stranger Tides' sails to first

By Sarah Sluis

One sign of an incredibly successful franchise may be when the $90 million debut of its latest installment�the highest recorded so far in 2011�is considered unexceptional. That's the fate of Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. The first movie opened to $46 million, the second to $135 million, and the third to $115 million, and the fourth movie's $90 million haul is a sign that Captain Jack Sparrow no longer holds quite the same allure for American audiences. The same cannot be said across the high seas, where the movie has performed exceptionally well. With $256 million already in the bank overseas, Pirates is the kind of broad action movie that draws foreign moviegoers to the box office.

In second place, Bridesmaids held exceptionally well, dipping just 19% to $21 million. Even last year's megahit comedy The Hangover fell 27% in its opening weekend. If the female-driven comedy continues to hold its audience, it will perform on par with a movie that opened to $40 million, or even higher�this from a comedy that debuted with $26 million. In a marketplace so driven by first-week gross, Bridesmaids could easily end up topping $100 million, but it will take time and continued positive word-of-mouth.

Elsewhere in the top ten, horror mash-up Priest plummeted 70% to $4.6 million. Most of the other titles in the top ten, including Thor, Fast Five, and Jumping the Broom, averaged drops around 50%, making Bridesmaids' performance even more impressive.

Woody Allen should be celebrating, since Midnight in Paris averaged an incredible $96,500 in each of its six theatres, enough to launch the City of Light-set film to twelfth place. Since Allen can be a spotty filmmaker, fans responded to critics' positive reviews, coming out of the woodwork to catch one of his better films.

This Friday, The Hangover Part II will hit theatres. The comedy sequel has high levels of anticipation and awareness, so it will likely see blockbuster results. For a younger crowd, animated Kung Fu Panda 2 will take advantage of the three-day weekend, and Palme d'Or-winning The Tree of Life will grab arthouse audiences.

'Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides' maps out a first-place weekend

By Sarah Sluis

It's been eight years since Johnny Depp first donned black eyeliner in his memorable portrayal of Captain Jack Sparrow. Now, the fourth film in the series, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, will splash into 4,155 theatres. 65% of the theatres will show the film in 3D, along with a record-breaking 257 IMAX screens. The past two Pirates movies have debuted well over $100 million, but a softer $90-100 million opening is expected for the latest installment, which "confirms that the series' charm has worn off," according to FJI critic Ethan Alter. The film's action sequences lack that trademark mix of "combination of thrills and laughs" that initially won over audiences," he says, and in general the movie is "plodding and heavy-handed when it should be breezy and light."

Bridesmaids (2,937 theatres) has been ahead of Thor (3,924 theatres) since Monday, due to its strong word-of-mouth endorsements. On Monday, the female-driven comedy earned just 5% more than Thor, but by Wednesday Bridesmaids pulled in 28% more than the comic book film. Based on these results, Bridesmaids should be a shoo-in for second place.

The specialty film to watch this week is Midnight in Paris (6 theatres). Woody Allen's "Parisian fantasia" has won over critics, which have given the time-travel movie a 90% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Some have called it his best film in years. Owen Wilson stars as a writer entranced by the city of light, and the film is studded with well-known faces like Rachel McAdams, Kathy Bates, French First Lady Carla Bruni, Marion Cotillard, and Michael Sheen. These reviews should give the movie a lifetime gross closer to Vicky Cristina Barcelona's $23.2 million than You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger's $3.2 million.

On Monday, we'll see if the performance of Pirates ensures a fifth installment, and if Bridesmaids maintains its audience in its second outing.

Provocateur Lars von Trier brings 'Melancholia' melodrama to Cannes Fest

By Kevin Lally

FJI correspondent Daniel Steinhart reports on the new film fromcontroversy magnetLars von Trier and more from the Cannes Film Festival.

The Cannes Film Festival continued into its second leg with the reliably controversial Lars von Trier. Much attention has been paid to the Danish director's bouts with depression and his attempt to sort out his gloom through his films. Previously with Antichrist and now Melancholia, depression seems to have been both a tonic and promotional talking point for his filmic output. At the film's press conference, though, it was some provocative comments made by the sometimes-petulant filmmaker that sent the more headline-driven press into sensationalism overdrive and the festival into damage control. What he said isn't worth detailing here, but it was curious that von Trier wondered out loud if maybe his newest film was "crap." Well, it's not.

Set to Wagner's sweeping Tristan and Isolde, the film preludes with a sequence of slow-motion tableau vivant, likely inspired by German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich, intercut with images of a planet crashing into Earth�a felicitous juxtaposition to the universe's formation still fresh from Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life. Once again, something big is afoot.

What follows is a twofold structure. In part one, the film focuses on Justine (Kirsten Dunst) at her wedding reception, trying her best to keep it together but unraveling emotionally, much to the guests' concern. The assembled looks like a reunion of past von Trier stars, with Charlotte Gainsbourg as Justine's sister Clare, John Hurt as their father, Stellan Skarsgrd as Justine's boss, and Udo Kier as the wedding coordinator. There's also a nice performance from Kiefer Sutherland as Clare's fussy scientist husband.

Part two helps fill in some of the gaps, as the film turns to Clare, who takes into her home her no-longer-betrothed sister, paralyzed by depression. This time, Clare unravels as she tries to care for Justine while growing increasingly anxious over the news that the planet Melancholia is heading towards Earth.

The planet Melancholia could be read as a rather barefaced and grandiose metaphor for the all-consuming effects of depression, with one sister resigned to them and the other trying her best to ignore them. While the film has traces of the dread found in von Trier's Antichrist, Melancholia is a melodrama on an epic scale, from its intense interest in reaction over action to its use of emotion as devouring force. Strangely, though, the film is not his most emotionally involving, but it's nevertheless an inspired vision.

I've gathered that amongst the international press corps, there's a sense that the typically high representation of underwhelming French films in the main competition is included to appeal to notions of nationalism. Certainly, Mawenn's overstuffed cop drama Poliss seemed to confirm this bias. Attempting a more ambitious approach than her previous investigations of family and performance, she develops a mess of tangled subplots that is more suited to the vast wasteland of French TV. Similarly, Alain Cavalier's Pater seemed a minor work. Mixing his more personal video diaries with a series of fictional vignettes, the film feels half-baked. But in all fairness, I slipped out of the screening early, hoping for an improvement with Naomi Kawasake's Hanezu No Tsuki. Though fleetingly scenic, the film is ultimately flat.

Bertrand's Bonello's beautifully twisted House of Tolerance, however, was an exception to the rule. Set in a fin de sicle Parisian brothel, the film follows the idle days and long nights of a group of prostitutes. Like in Bonello's 2001 Le pornographe, which portrayed the life of a middle-aged pornographer, the new film is interested not in the eroticism of the sex trades, but in the details of the work. Here, the film lingers on the women's attention to hygiene, back-room gossip about clients, inevitable jealousies, and their never-ending debts, which, in effect, make them bound to their madam. The film presents these women as a kind of collective protagonist, but the subjective center of the narrative belongs to a woman named the Jewess, later titled the Woman Who Smiles after a client slits her cheeks, leaving her with a gruesome Joker's sneer.

Judging from some of the film trades' critics' polls, the movie has been one of the least liked�probably owing to its nebulous structure and, as some argue, gratuitously provocative imagery. But the film has a mesmerizing quality which is hard to pin down, arising somewhere out of its drifting camerawork, lush colors and at times anachronistic music. There's been little in Cannes as bold as watching these women mourn the loss of a co-worker by dancing to the sound of The Moody Blues, in what comes off as a moving image of solidarity.

Although technically a French film, Le Havre has all the signature trademarks of Finnish director Aki Kaurismki: deadpan humor, rock 'n' roll, and a cast of lovable losers. In the titular French port city, shoeshiner Marcel Marx harbors a runaway African refugee boy. Under the watchful eye of a neighbor (Jean-Pierre Laud) and a tenacious gumshoe, Marcel carries out a risky gambit to get the boy to his relatives in London. This is the director's second film set in France, but unlike in his previous La vie de bohme, he exchanges an outmoded view of French society for one that takes stock of more contemporary concerns. Tackling immigration, an issue that is as fraught in France as it is across Europe, Kaurismki works with a welcome humanism and lightness of touch.

When there's time, it's always worth escaping the hustle and bustle of the Cannes Festival for a walk down the Croisette to the much calmer la Semaine de la Critique, now celebrating its 50th anniversary. Organized by the French Union of Film Critics, the parallel section emphasizes new work from emerging filmmakers. Although the few films I've taken in have not been the kinds of harbingers that signaled the talents of past participants such as Bernardo Bertolucci, Wong Kar-Wai or Gaspar No, they have brought attention to some unique voices. Winner of the section's Grand Pix, Jeff Nichols' Take Shelter details a Midwestern man's descent into schizophrenia while tapping into a checklist of U.S. anxieties, including terrorism, health care and doomsday weather. Receiving a special mention prize, Justin Kurzel's Snowtown examines a young man's association with notorious Australian serial killer John Bunting, which develops into an involving and brutal social critique about vigilante justice.

Along with the forceful Mexican film Miss Bala, a couple of strong contenders have emerged from the Un Certain Regard pack. Bonsai from Chilean director Christin Jimnez explores the long-range causes and effects of a relationship between two bookish university students by cleverly jumping back and forth across an eight-year gap. In Oslo, 31 August, Norwegian director Joachim Trier (no relation to Lars, although from a filmmaking family) offers a portrait of a 34-year-old recovering addict who goes on leave from his rehab center to Oslo, where he faces the ruins of his past: estranged friends, absent exes and their lovers, squandered opportunities, and temptations at every turn. Introduced by the filmmaker as a movie about loneliness, this perceptive film proves that sometimes on a small-scale, the examination of the most universal themes can be every bit as effective�if not more so�than the outsized ambitions on display elsewhere in the festival.

Would you see 'Titanic' again in 3D?

By Sarah Sluis

I was a teenager when Titanic came out in theatres, part of the movie's core Leonardio DiCaprio-obsessed demographic. I saw it in theatres, twice, in a packed house full of people crying into their popcorn and gasping in delight. The movie was the talk of the school. One girl I knew had seen it in theatres seven times. Now, director/writer/producer James Cameron has announced that the movie will return in a 3D version in theatres April 6, 2012, roughly coinciding with the hundred-year anniversary of the ship's sailing. But I don't know if I want to see it.

I caught a few minutes of Titanic on television a month ago, and I was surprised that the dialogue I found so suspenseful and heart-wrenching came out as plain cheesy. Even back in the day, the movie's pull lessened once it was on VHS. Though I rushed out to buy the two-volume set upon release, the movie languished on its shelf. The film was too emotionally draining to pique interest when I was in a movie-watching mood, and the three-hour, fifteen-minute running time required too much of a commitment. I feel the same way about seeing it again in theatres. Though I could see a team of my friends getting together for a middle school rehash, and of course I have a professional interest in seeing the 3D conversion, I'm not sure if I want to "go back to Titanic." But younger viewers might.

In the press release, Cameron remarked that "there's a whole generation that's never seen Titanic as it was meant to be seen, on the big screen." I think younger viewers, particularly teenaged Twilight fiends, will respond well to Titanic. In comparison, I look to the remastered version of Star Wars. The 1997 re-release hit theatres when my younger brother was in elementary school, and the series became one of his favorites, an experience that was shared by his friends. Plastic figurines from the movie migrated into our house, and the boxed set trilogy became his go-to choice during sick days. Like Star Wars, Titanic has the ability to speak to a new generation. Just as in my family, younger viewers may be shepherded into the theatre by their parents. They remember the impact these movies had on them, and want to share it in a darkened theatre over popcorn and, this time, wearing 3D glasses.

Michelle Williams to play Glinda in 'Oz, the Great and Powerful'

By Sarah Sluis

2010's uber-successful Alice in Wonderland created a fairy tale frenzy among the movie studios. The surest sign that there's a bubble is the two rival Snow White adaptations (Relativity's The Brothers Grimm: Snow White and Universal's Snow White and the Huntsman), which are both set to release in 2012. Disney, which released Alice in Wonderland, is also seeking to replicate its success with Oz, the Great and Powerful. The film will take the characters in the Wizard of Oz in an entirely new direction. Glinda, the Good Witch, teams up with a snake-oil salesman (sounds kind of like the Great Oz to me) and battles her two evil sisters for control of the kingdom. Michelle Williams has just been cast as Glinda, which is as perfect a choice as I can imagine. James Franco is the snake oil salesman, and Rachel Weisz and Mila Kunis are the raven-haired evil sisters. Variety reveals that the movie could hit theatres as soon as fall 2012, which would sandwich the movie in between the two Snow White adaptations.

While Oz has an all-star cast of Oscar nominees, winners, and those that have appeared in Oscar-nominated films, the crew has a more variable pedigree. David Lindsay-Abaire may be a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, but he's still in the doghouse after writing Inkheart, one of the worst children's movies I've seen. The other credited writer, Mitchell Kapner, has very few writing credits but counts the successful mob comedy The Whole Nine Yards among his credits. The biggest signal of success on this project is Sam Raimi. He left the latest Spider-Man sequel in frustration, so this project should have his full attention and devotion.

I'm curious if the movie will be rated PG-13, like Spider-Man, or PG, like Alice in Wonderland. Despite its family-friendly rating, Alice drew many adults, in part because it came from director Tim Burton, who is known for his darker perspective. Fractured fairy tales are one way to convince adults to revisit familiar stories of their childhood. And when the next generation grows up, Hollywood may innovate by going back to classic fairy tales.

Success of 'Bridesmaids' dispels some Hollywood myths

By Sarah Sluis

In many ways, Bridesmaids is a pretty typical movie. It bears the hallmarks of the comedies from producer Judd Apatow: a reliance on improv, an R-rating, and grounding in realism. But there's one thing that's different about Bridesmaids: women. To get a sense of how much Bridesmaids ruffles the status quo of Hollywood, one need only look at the numbers. The Kristen Wiig-starrer was originally predicted to earn in the high teen millions. After earning $7.8 million on Friday, THR posted an updated weekend prediction of $21.5 million. When the Monday estimates came in, Variety and THR both reported numbers in the $24.6 million range--much better than expected. Then the Monday actuals came in. The little comedy that could brought in $26.2 million. All told, the film earned 50% more than expected.

Occasionally, a movie will confound tracking, and it's often one that appeals to an audience that doesn't attend movies frequently. Bridesmaids had great reviews from critics and positive word-of-mouth, but insiders didn't have confidence that these indicators would lead to an overflowing box office. Bridesmaids led to a lot of chatter and enthusiastic recommendations in social networks. It was also a "group" movie, and the extra friend or boyfriend people dragged along probably added to the overperformance.

Hollywood is often criticized for not releasing enough movies that appeal to women, star women, and that really flesh out their characters. The success of Bridesmaids also shows that Hollywood has lacked the "sensors" to find the type of people who were excited about this kind of film. Insiders underestimated the support the film would get not only from a female audience, but a male one: 33% of the audience was male, refuting the industry adage that women will go to see a movie starring men but men won't see a movie starring women.

Bridesmaids' performance will undoubtedly inspire a number of female-driven comedies. Stale, packaged romantic comedies, with few exceptions, have been doing dismally at the box office, yet somehow these movies still get a green light. Bridesmaids also has something in common with 2006's surprise hit The Devil Wears Prada--it was a comedy about women that featured romance as an insignificant subplot.

Some Bridesmaids spinoffs might not get the entire message. I'm a little skeptical of the new Anna Faris vehicle, for example, What's Your Number?, which was billed as a "new kind of comedy" in a New Yorker profile of Faris. It's "raunchy" (Faris' character fears she has slept with too many men and revisits all her exes and one-night stands), but it also reads as a typical romantic comedy. The trailer makes it clear that the audience can count on the unfolding of a particularly painful, trite clich, that of "the Mr. Right who was right in front of you all along." It's the kind of thing that makes the audience roll their eyes in frustration.

Wiig's career should take off now that Bridesmaids is a verified success. She had the highest debut of any "SNL" cast member in a feature film, beating Will Ferrell's feature debut in Old School both in revenue and attendance, according to Box Office Mojo. Apatow will surely produce more female-centered comedies, and it looks like he already has one in his back pocket: IMDB lists the project Business Trip, which centers on a group of women goofing off on corporate excursion. Apatow's wife Leslie Mann is attached, and the script comes from Stacey Harman, a green screenwriter whose only other credit is an adaptation of an irreverent how-to book called The Hookup Handbook. Even if there's no Bridesmaids II, the film's $26.2 million weekend means audiences can look forward to some female-driven comedies that focus on friends and work, not finding true love.

Enigmatic 'Tree of Life' divides viewers in Cannes

By Kevin Lally

FJI correspondent Daniel Steinhart reports from Cannes on the premiere showing of the mystery-shrouded new film from Terrence Malick.

On Monday at 8:30 a.m., Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life, for many the most anticipated film of the festival, had its very first screening. Walking past more than the usual number of hopefuls holding up signs reading "Une invitation SVP" and through lines of a pushy press corps on edge to get a good seat in the arena-sized Grand Thtre Lumire, it felt a little like heading into a rock concert. Such is the atmosphere at Cannes, where the auteur can produce rock star-like devotion amongst film followers.

Since his second feature Days of Heaven (winner of the Best Director prize at the 1979 Cannes Festival), Malick has primarily built his films not around the cohesive scene, but around the fragmented sequence, often held together by voiceover narration or the musical score. The developed scene in a Malick film comes sporadically, often to deliver a bit of exposition or advance a piece of action. In The Tree of Life, Malick virtually dispenses with scenes and constructs a two-hour and 18-minute film around fractured sequences. The effect is a little like watching a big-budget, feature-length experimental film, full of trippy planetarium-style cosmology, the play of light and nature, and balletic camera movements (DP Emmanuel Lubezki's work here is superb). I like to imagine that this is what the late Stan Brakhage might have come up with as a director-for-hire had he been given a multi-million-dollar budget, some Hollywood stars, and a crack special-effects team.

The film's story is rather schematic: A boy named Jack lives with his two younger brothers, a doting mother, and a tough, overbearing father (Brad Pitt in a nice, lived-in performance) in a small Texas town in the 1950s. Unfolding across roughly four parts�or maybe movements is a better way to conceive the structure�the film opens with glimpses of both Jack's infancy and modern-day adulthood (here played out by an all-too-fleeting Sean Penn) before taking us into the most audacious segment of the film: a brief history of the cosmos. Then we settle into a kind of memory piece of Jack's childhood, captured in evocative impressions: snippets of small-town life, the play of brothers, the gentleness of a mother, and the tirades of a father who expects nothing but respect and discipline. Finally, we return back to the present only to be transported to what might be taken as an afterlife vision, played out on beach shores and salt flats.

Along the way, we are given few guideposts for meaning and connections amongst the different parts. (As expected, the ever-elusive director was absent from the post-screening press conference, probably in part to avoid addressing these issues). But early on via the movie's voiceover, we are offered two opposing forces�the way of grace and the way of nature�which seem to work their way through the contours of the film and the character of Jack. Perhaps it would be easy to equate the mother with grace and the father with nature, but the film seems too slippery to get very far with this sort of binary thinking. Certainly, the film demands audiences to work hard to connect the pieces while also succumbing to its fugue state.

The press screening was met with a fair amount of catcalls, an early sign that this is a divisive work. At Cannes, however, the detractors always seem to be the ones that need to be heard the most. While there's plenty of material on the screen to arm the non-believers that this is a pretentious and preposterous work, this same material could arm the faithful that this is a masterwork. But the film is too ambitious in scope and Malick is too important a filmmaker to merit quick, hyperbolic reactions. Although this may not be the best film of the festival, it is one of the few that truly aims to play with cinema's paint box. For that, it commands both attention and respect. And to help settle all the Internet speculation, yes, there are dinosaurs.

Cannes 2011 highlights: Woody Allen, Lynne Ramsay, the Dardennes Brothers and more

By Kevin Lally

FJI contributor Daniel Steinhart offers the first of several dispatches from the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.

The Cannes Film Festival is many things to many people. For some journalists, programmers and distributors, Cannes is the preeminent showcase of international cinema. For producers, sales agents and film offices, the festival is a bustling film market. For celebrity hunters and those just wanting to be seen, Cannes is the place to be. Perhaps French director Agns Varda put it best: "Cannes is both the pinnacle of cinema, a film fair and a big, slightly vulgar bazaar." Whatever it is, Cannes is back, running May 12-22.

Since the early days of the festival, Cannes has had an ambivalent relationship with Hollywood, at times oppositional (promoting an alternative to the industry), but more often symbiotic (tapping Hollywood for attention-grabbing premieres and celebrities). So in a way, it was fitting that the festival opened with Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris, a Franco-American collaboration that recalls postwar Hollywood films such as Moulin Rouge, Funny Face and Gigi. Like these pictures, Allen's new film captures the City of Light while paying homage to French culture. Gil Pender (Owen Wilson), an American screenwriter turned novelist travels to Paris with his uptight fiance (Rachel McAdams). Smitten with the city, he takes to late-night flnerie, which (SPOILERS afoot!) transports him back to 1920s Paris, where he meets a who's who of the Lost Generation (Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Gertrude Stein) and begins to reevaluate his life.

This is a film of cameos: real-life celebrity cameos (France's First Lady Carla Bruni), historical celebrity cameos (Cole Porter), and celebrity playing celebrity cameos (Adrien Brody as Salvador Dali). But not just a mere gimmick, these appearances make up a solid comedy of foils, in which these figures bring Gil's foibles into relief. Insecure about his prose, he seeks advice from a cocksure Hemingway. And uncertain if he should reveal to a charming artist's model (Marion Cotillard) that he's from a different time and place, he raises the issue with Dali, Buuel and Man Ray, who mistake him for a fellow surrealist. The amusing results feel a bit like a cultured all-star talk-therapy session.

Much has been made in the press about last year's absence of films by female directors in the main competition and this year's stronger showing (four out of 20 films). Kicking off the competition was novelist-turned-director Julia Leigh's Sleeping Beauty, a venture into the dark side of sexuality about an Aussie college student named Lucy, who takes a job letting men have their way with her body while she's sedated. Unfolding like a nightmarish fairy tale, the film takes an oblique strategy to storytelling, giving the audience only the barest of details: We see her juggling multiple jobs, frequenting a high-end bar where she may or may not prostitute herself, and visiting her sick friend Birdman. By design, the fragments don't make up a cohesive whole or an easy answer for why she takes up her deviant trade (aside from the easy money), but they do create an evocative mystery, in which the details�a medical experiment, narcotics, a berry tree�resonate through repetition. The film is also a study in the loss of agency as we see Lucy relinquish control of her body, an act that implicates our own viewing.

It was with great interest that Scottish director Lynne Ramsay offered We Need to Talk About Kevin, her first film in nine years. With two excellent features (Ratcatcher and Morvern Callar) to her name, her new movie re-confirms her status as a first-class filmmaker. An adaptation of Lionel Shriver's novel, Kevin explores the relationship between a mother (a very good Tilda Swinton) and her son, who's accused of carrying out a high-school murder spree. Jumping back and forth between past and present, the film examines whether this veritable demon child is a product of nature or nurture. Rendered in expressive Pop Art colors and carefully composed widescreen images, the film depicts parenting as a fever dream.

A different sort of parent-child relationship is explored by the ever-reliable Dardenne Brothers, who revisit familiar territory with Le gamin au vlo. Coming off like a sequel to their Palme d'Or winner L'enfant, the film follows a boy who, in the process of trying to track down the father that abandoned him, is taken in by a hairdresser, who tries her best to tame this wild child. From film to film, the Dardennes have become so good at eliciting and capturing gutsy physical performances and developing scenes of unexpected suspense and emotion that I can't help but think there's something a little rote in what they're doing. Still, any Dardenne film is welcome one.

Following up his war movie Beaufort, Israeli director Joseph Cedar presented combat of another kind with Footnote. In the rarefied world of Talmudic Studies, an academic superstar has long surpassed the modest accomplishments of his professor father, a source of tension between the two. But when the father is awarded the illustrious Israel Prize for his research, the egos and rivalries of father and son come to a head. Against a background of shadowy libraries, cramped windowless offices and clandestine committee meetings, Cedar stages the film like a taut intrigue picture, in which research claims become territorial fights capable of ripping apart family ties.

Alongside the main competition has been the Un Certain Regard sidebar, which opened with Gus Vant Sant's Restless, a minor work that returns the director to the role of journeyman. Here, he's at the service of performance and a twee script about a romance between a girl dying of cancer and an orphaned boy with an imaginary friend. In look and feel, this seems like run-of-the-mill Sundance fare.

For this stringer, the standout of the sidebar has been the Mexican film Miss Bala from director Gerardo Naranjo. When Laura, an aspiring Miss Baja California, witnesses an execution-style massacre, she finds herself coerced into assisting a violent gang. For the film's entire running time, Laura is shuttled from one vehicle to another, from one crooked plot to the next, always hunted down whenever she tries to escape. The film elicits both surprise and suspense by planting us within Laura's experience. We know as much as she does, so that the murky layers of corruption induce paranoia at every turn. And when gun battles break out�often shot in bravura long takes�we, like Laura, see the action from the floor of a truck or from under a bed. The effect is both visceral and harrowing.

The film ends with a coda about the toll that Mexico's ongoing drug wars have taken on its population, a point that raises another function of Cannes: that of a diplomatic forum. Playing to packed rooms of international journalists, topical films can spread their message in ways that even some rights groups might have trouble doing.

FJI contributor Jon Frosch is also reporting from Cannes. Check out his blog here.

Will 'Bridesmaids' ruffle up the box office?

By Sarah Sluis

This weekend is something of a box-office test for a female-driven R-rated comedy. Bridesmaids (2,917 theatres) comes from producer Judd Apatow (Knocked Up), a veteran of risqu comedies, and stars Kristen Wiig, who co-wrote the screenplay. As the latest "SNL" veteran to cross over to feature films, "Wiig creates a portrait of a woman at loose ends that is simultaneously poignant and rib-tickling," critic Kevin Lally affirms. The comedy is already showing strong interest among females over 17, but Universal's biggest struggle will be convincing men that Bridesmaids is their kind of movie. Given these difficulties, the movie's target is an opening weekend in the conservative high teen millions, lower than other Apatow openings. With a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 91%, however, it will be a crime if this movie doesn't do big business.

Even after coming down from its $80 million opening weekend, Thor should be able to hold its first-place spot. A 60% drop would put the film at $32 million, a number out of reach for Bridesmaids. Fast Five, too, should continue a strong showing and remain within the top five.

The residual effect of these tentpoles should not dampen Priest (2,864 theatres), a religious-inflected horror movie that will also collect premiums for being in 3D. Critic Ray Bennett panned the "short, dour and stodgy creature feature," which borrows heavily from classic films from every imaginable genre. He hopes it will be the end for Priest: "The blatant set-up for a sequel after the climactic battle appears almost pitiable."

Will Ferrell plays an alcoholic whose life is imploding in Everything Must Go (218 theatres). Despite "mixed results" due to a reliance on "feel-good platitudes," critic Wendy R. Weinstein praised Ferrell, who "delivers a nuanced, sympathetic lead performance in a rare dramatic role."

Also hitting theatres is Lionsgate's low-budget teen dance film, Go For It (218 theatres). Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays a motherless boy's anti-savior in Hesher (40 theatres), "[undoing] a lot of goodwill he inspired with his sweet leading-man qualities in (500) Days of Summer,' according to critic David Noh. National Geographic Entertainment releases based-on-a-true-story tale The First Grader (3 theatres), which centers on an 80-something man who enrolls in first grade in Kenya. The heartwarming story is "a textbook case of what happens to a good story when it's poorly directed," according to critic Maria Garcia.

When the weekend is over, the big question will be "Did Bridesmaids succeed?" If the answer is yes, a number of copycats will hit the market next year. If the answer is no, I actually think Hollywood will keep trying. Bridesmaids identified a gap in the marketplace, and it's just a matter of time before someone hits the jackpot.

A new kind of getaway scene: 'Drive'

By Sarah Sluis

I'm not really into car chases. They require a suspension of disbelief that bores me and makes me tune out. Car chase sequences that really broke ground, like the one in 1968's Bullitt, have been so copied that watching the original feels like "same old." The only car sequence that truly freaked me out in the past decade or so wasn't even a car chase, but that out-of-the-blue car crash in Adaptation. That felt incredibly real and scary.

For this reason, I wasn't that excited about the indie movie Drive. Ryan Gosling plays a professional driver who moonlights as a getaway car driver. After a job goes wrong, a contract goes out for his death. He runs away with the girlfriend of one of his crime associates (Carey Mulligan), and presumably there's some smooching involved.

The FilmDistrict film is a selection at the Cannes Film Festival, and the festival website just posted a clip of Drive that's truly stunning. It's chock-full of suspense without going over 40mph. Car chases generally involve lots of crashing through intersections, high speeds, and improbable moves like going off a ramp on a pier and landing on a barge in a river (just riffing here). Drive takes the rare step of doing something simple and realistic like pulling over to evade the cops. I almost fainted from excitement.

I don't know if the rest of the movie will be able to pull of that level of suspense, but I also like that the first look of the movie wasn't a trailer, but a brief clip The director, Nicolas Winding Refn, has written and directed seven low-budget action/thrillers that get distributed by the likes of IFC, First Run, and Magnolia. He hasn't ever had the chance to prove himself with a larger budget or well-known stars. But within the low-budget realm, he created Pusher, so successful it was turned into a trilogy and inspired a remake. This man must be doing extremely well in the rental/DVD arena.

Drive will benefit from the support of newbie distributor FilmDistrict, which has been performing strongly. One of its first releases, the horror movie Insidious, has earned $50 million in the U.S. alone off a reported $1.5 million production budget, making it the most profitable movie of 2011. A while back, Drive was given a release date in the fall, where it can take advantage of the post-summer slump.

For a closer look at the Cannes Film Festival, check out Film Journal contributor Jon Frosch's Cannes blog.

From Cannes, two more romantic comedies look for foreign backing

By Sarah Sluis

Last Mother's Day weekend brought two romantic comedies: Something Borrowed did just "meh," pigeonholed as just another Kate Hudson rom-com (It wasn't!). Jumping the Broom took in just a couple million dollars more but is considered a big success--and it earned a thumbs up from our critic David Noh. This Friday's Bridesmaids may change the development game if it succeeds, opening the doors to bawdy films centered on female friendship.

One of the reasons why I liked Something Borrowed is that it had a believable obstacle to romance for the main character--the guy she desired was her best friend's fianc. Responsible Adults takes that a step further. Wouldn't it creep you out if your boyfriend used to be one of the kids you babysat? Conversely, a guy might get a kick out of dating his babysitter since it's kind of a tweak on the "hot for teacher" model. Surprisingly, this upcoming indie rom-com has cast none other than Katie Holmes in the role of a thirty-year-old who meets the perfect guy, Chace Crawford ("Gossip Girl"). He's twenty-two, and the two quickly find out she was his babysitter. John Poll (Charlie Bartlett) is directing from a script by the actor Alex Schemmer. This could be just another romantic comedy--or it could be sarcastic and racy with a little touch of Knocked Up.

Also in the works is A Little Something for Your Birthday, which has a clich-ridden premise: A clothing designer (upscale, urban professional with dream job) has trouble finding love (ding!) after her thirtieth birthday (ding! ding! ding!) Malin Akerman will play the clothing designer, and James Marsden (27 Dresses) her love interest. Anonymous Content, the production company behind films like The Beaver and Seeking a Friend at the End of the World--both of which have much more entertaining plot descriptions--is producing. Michael Engler is directing from a script by Susan Walter. Both have extensive TV credits and a smattering of film credits. Walter's script was part of the 2009 Black List, which means there might be more to the screenplay than comes across in the plot description.

There's sure to be plenty of pickups and new film announcements at Cannes, so stay tuned.

'Gotti: Three Generations' lands Al Pacino, Joe Pesci

By Sarah Sluis

I think I've been a little suspicious of the project Gotti: Three Generations ever since they tried to cast Lindsay Lohan in one of the main roles. Lohan's career is so far off track she can only get recruited for the indie-est of the indies--right? Then there's the Gotti family itself. Way back when, I saw all of twenty minutes of the reality show "Growing Up Gotti," and was totally horrified. The family was awful. And this is coming from someone who likes "Jersey Shore." It was kind of like that scene in Goodfellas when Karen (Lorraine Bracco) marvels at the tacky, poorly dressed women around her who hit their kids and complains about how rotten they are. The Gotti family fits right into that sequence.

But now, Gotti: Three Generations has lined up an impressive cast. They have Al Pacino, who people will come to see if only for the hope of seeing a hint of the iconic gangster he played in Scarface. Joe Pesci, of "I'm funny? How am I funny?" fame in Goodfellas, has also signed on, as has John Travola, his wife Kelly Preston and Lohan. Barry Levinson, who won a directing Oscar for Rain Man, will direct, and Leo Rossi, an actor who also has writing credits for projects like Mafioso: The Father, the Son, is writing the screenplay. Sounds much better.

The rights for the project were acquired from John Gotti Jr., and the story will center on his relationship with his father. I thought there was some kind of law against profiting from the story of your crimes, but Wikipedia informs me that prosecutors were never able to successfully convict him on racketeering charges and announced they wouldn't pursue the case any further.

Americans have always loved gangsters and a real-life gangster story, and the popularity of these stories abroad will only add to the international appeal. I'm changing my opinion of the project to tentatively positive. Filming starts this fall (which I'm sure will end up being a source of Lohan drama) with plans to release the film in late 2012.

'Thor' strikes down 'Fast Five'

By Sarah Sluis

The (pre-)summer box office continued to heat up with this weekend's release of Thor. The comic book-based action extravaganza easily soared to $66 million, beyond timid estimates that put the movie at $50 million or so. Compared to Fast Five last weekend, Thor attracted a younger audience, but a less ethnic one. The car-centered sequel has a diverse cast, while Thor's comic book and swords-and-sandals elements made it popular among younger viewers.

Fast Five ran low on gas its second week, dropping 63% to $32.5 million. These kinds of drops are the price movies pay for opening at $86 million, however. With over $300 million worldwide in two weeks, I'm sure no one at Universal is complaining.

Romantic comedies Jumping the Broom and Something Borrowed both overperformed, coming in at $13.7 and $13.1 million, respectively. Jumping the Broom, centered on two African-American families, had an added boost from faith-based audiences. One of the executive producers, Bishop T.D. Jakes, heads a megachurch, and the leading lady reportedly finds love after embracing abstinence. Both films attracted audiences around 70% female.

This weekend was a bad one for specialty films, with no release posting over a $5,000 per-screen average. The moody "will-they-or-won't-they" cheating film, Last Night, opened to just a $3,200 per-screen average. Mel Gibson may unleash a tirade over the performance of The Beaver, which opened to a $4,700 per-screen average. There Be Dragons, a Spanish Civil War-themed thriller, did the best of the bunch, averaging $2,660 per screen but earning $689,000 by releasing on 259 screens.

This Friday, Bridesmaids leads in hype, promising a female version of The Hangover. Vampire horror flick Priest (3D) will feed horror fans and Will Ferrell will make a blip in the dark indie comedy Everything Must Go.

Can 'Thor' outrace 'Fast Five'?

By Sarah Sluis

Last week's record-breaking Fast Five debut jump-started the summer box-office season. Many are betting that the success of the Diesel-driven sequel brought hibernating moviegoers back, readying them to return for more fun summer films. If so, Thor (3,955 theatres) could easily attain the $50-60 million that industry experts predict for the comic-book adaptation. With over 70% of the screens showing the film in 3D, and over 200 IMAX locations, Thor will be able to take advantage of more box-office premiums than Fast Five. Thor's getting fairly positive ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, and earned the endorsement of Frank Lovece, who dubbed it a "comic-book romance for grown-ups." Non-comic book lovers will enjoy the funny scenes of Thor, exiled to New Mexico, experiencing loss of power for the first time. It's a welcome relief after an opening with one of those tired video game-style slaughters, in which 100 against one simply provides 99 more opportunities to kick-punch/knife/flail someone to death.

If the preview screening I attended is any indication, Something Borrowed (2,904 theatres) will be filled with receptive female audiences. I think it's one of the best "traditional" romantic comedies out in a long time. I had almost forgotten how nice it is to leave the theatre filled with giddy warm fuzzies. Critics slammed the film with just a 12% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but I suspect that these critics must not have a receptor for giddy warm fuzzies. David Noh begrudgingly noted the film is "a bit more than passable," and singled out Kate Hudson's "amusing portrait of an egomaniacal frenemy." However, the TV commercials I saw for the film were just plain terrible, so I wouldn't be surprised if the romantic comedy doesn't break $10 million.

The other romantic comedy on the plate this week is Jumping the Broom (2,035 theatres), which centers on the wedding of a wealthy bride and a working-class groom. Their families, predictably, do not get along. The "talented, really gorgeous cast goes a long way toward making it a highly watchable, pretty damned good time," according to Noh. Like Something Borrowed, this coupling-centered comedy should land somewhere over or under the $10 million mark.

In "a role that seems to summon his private demons," according to critic Rex Roberts, Mel Gibson talks through a toy puppet in The Beaver (22 theatres). Gibson's "earnest" performance, along with "Jodie Foster's able direction," make for a "genuine original" film. Grindhouse tribute Hobo with a Shotgun (2 theatres) offers a "pitch-perfect recreation of the brutal, low-budget crime films of the '70s," according to critic Maitland McDonagh. The link between diet and chronic disease is explored in Forks over Knives (6 theatres), which I found "scattered" but thought-provoking and good for after-movie discussions.

On Monday, we'll see if Thor struck down Fast Five, and which romantic comedy beckoned more audiences.

Studio behind 'Coraline' animates zombie pic 'ParaNorman'

By Sarah Sluis

The Portland, Oregon, studio Laika suffered a big blow last year, when Coraline director Henry Selick defected to Pixar. Not that I blame him--Pixar is just about the coolest place to work, and it helps to be part of a team that's producing hit after hit. But that doesn't mean Laika's over and out. The studio has a couple of projects in the works, including ParaNorman, a dark stop-motion animated picture that's sure to entice adults and scare lots of kids.

ParaNorman centers on a boy (voiced by Kodi Smit-Phee of horror pic Let Me In) who can speak with the dead, which in this movie includes zombies and ghosts. He must use his powers in order to save his town from a hundred-year curse. In a kid movie nod, he must deal not only with the undead but clueless grown-ups. Chris Butler, who has been working as a storyboard artist, character designer, and sequence director, will make his directing debut with the movie. Apparently Butler is big on the lecture circuit. A good communicator = good director in my book. The voice cast includes such well-known names as Casey Affleck, John Goodman, Anna Kendrick, Leslie Mann, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse.

Like Coraline, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and other spooky kids' movies, Laika's latest feature will definitely not be an all-ages hit like Pixar movies or the current worldwide success, Rio. But that's okay. Focus, which is the indie arm of Universal, will distribute the film as part of a two-picture deal with the budding animation studio.

Stop-motion movies take a notoriously long time to make, but fans of dark animated tales can rejoice: ParaNorman has set a release date of August 17, 2012--in 3D, no less.

'The Dictator' casts Anna Faris opposite Sacha Baron Cohen

By Sarah Sluis

The idea of turning Saddam Hussein's memoir into a comedy, a mainstream studio comedy, is a risky choice in the vein of director Ernst Lubitsch's awesome Nazi comedy To Be or Not to Be (which coincidentally did terribly since it was released right after the U.S. entered WWII. But I digress). As previously announced, Sacha Baron Cohen will adopt another foreign accent for The Dictator. He will play a Saddam Hussein-ish character who goes to New York for a United Nations meeting, only to be usurped by a look-alike sheepherder (also played by Baron Cohen). Anna Faris, a funny girl who was recently the subject of a flattering profile in The New Yorker, will play his love interest, the owner of an organic food store.

Deadline has some of the backstory around the project, which has a relatively high budget of $58-65 million, including $20 million for Baron Cohen. In a move that seems more suited to "Entourage" than real life, Paramount sent goats wearing Paramount t-shirts to Baron Cohen and his agency's executives, encouraging them to sign on instead of choosing three other interested studios. And sign on they did, reportedly in a cushy contract that will give Cohen the near-extinct perk of first-dollar gross.

I thought Baron Cohen's Borat and Bruno were both hilarious, though Bruno fell short at the box office. Baron Cohen's characters have always felt and read like impersonations and used the mockumentary style. The Dictator preserves Baron Cohen as an impersonator, and perhaps it will even be shot in a mockumentary style. But it's more grounded in reality: The story and character are riffs on Saddam Hussein. Like To Be or Not to Be, however, this project will be incredibly vulnerable to current events. News like the death of Osama bin Laden could change the national mood and make people less receptive to seeing something so fresh skewered. Still, I applaud Paramount for taking on a comedy that feels truly risky and exciting.

Wes Anderson grabs stellar cast for 'Moonrise Kingdom'

By Sarah Sluis

Focus has announced that it will distribute Moonrise Kingdom, writer/director Wes Anderson's latest project. The low-profile movie has already started filming, with a pretty incredible cast. Anderson film veterans Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman will appear, along with Tilda Swinton, Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, and Frances McDormand. I'm particularly excited about seeing Willis in an Anderson movie. I think he should be able to rein in Anderson's quirk and provide a good foil for the other characters.

Set in the 1960s, the action starts with a 12-year-old couple (fresh faces Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward) who decide to run away together. The folks in their small New England town (which is also on an island) notice, predictably. Willis plays the sheriff orchestrating the search, and McDormand and Norton play the kids' parents. Anderson knows how to use ensemble casts. Even Fantastic Mr. Fox was filled with a menagerie of rats, weasels, badgers, and otters. Anderson has also created memorable child characters, from the flashbacks to the Tenenbaum children to the incredibly human Max Fischer in Rushmore. Like Fantastic Mr. Fox, this film might be another chance for Anderson to shed his title as "Most Imitated Director in Student Films."

Since 2005, I've been convinced by this Slate essay that Wes Anderson's best work came when Owen Wilson co-wrote his screenplays, giving the work a more common touch and grounding the quirk. For Moonrise Kingdom, Anderson has teamed with Roman Coppola, who co-wrote the screenplay for The Darjeeling Limited. Wilson may make his mark on the film, but probably in a cameo, since he's been a bit cagey about his involvement in the press.

Anderson's previous three films were distributed through Fox Searchlight, so this will be the first chance for Focus to take a crack at marketing to Anderson's audience. Since the film's already in production, it will come out in 2012 at the latest, giving Anderson fans plenty of time to hope that his next film will be a home run, and not some of the doubles and triples he's been hitting lately.