Compare and contrast.

Every year about this time, my thoughts turn to a movie that is actually not very well made. Director Peter H. Hunt apparently had no clue how to turn “1776” from a Broadway musical into a movie back in 1972, but I still love the thing. An incredibly sharp, if still very theatrical, script by original writer Peter Stone (1974’s “The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3″) and really fun performances seal the deal, even if the director can’t. Besides, if the Founding Fathers were great, how much greater would they be singing and dancing their way to freedom from English tyranny? It’s like the “John Adams” miniseries only funnier and with a quasi-18th century beat. Are you with me? Are you??? Well, take a look, anyway.

If you live in the Los Angeles area and this seems like your thing, it just so happens that the American Cinematheque is screening the restored version of the film tonight at Hollywood’s Egyptian Theater, with director Hunt in attendance (don’t tell him what I said). However, if it’s not your thing — and I understand that may be the case — perhaps you’d prefer a more, er, manly retelling of how our nation came to be.

A few odds and ends as we head into the big holiday weekend…

* It’s not really about the reviews (neither film was liked by critics), but as a human being who likes to watch movies about human beings (and anthropomorphic animals, too), I find it somewhat reassuring to report that, according to Variety and everyone else, “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs” edged out “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” $13.8 to $10.9 million.

In other mildly good news for movies that at least attempt to tell actual stories, “Public Enemies” came in an unsurprising third, but performed somewhat above expectations with $8.2 million on its first day. I’ll give you more definitive box office info on Sunday, as usual.

* The Hollywood Reporter says that the very old video game, “Asteroids,” is being turned into a movie. I guess “Pong: The Movie” was already taken. (That joke can’t be original, can it?) Begging the question: Why?????????!!!!!!! I’m not saying it couldn’t turn out to be a fun movie — miracles happen. However, in a world where we have thousand of science fiction novels, comics, and TV shows of all levels of quality to adapt, why use a game only old guys like me remember as an excuse to make a silly sci-fi flick? I don’t see even a small marketing advantage here.

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Thanks to Electric Artists and Food Network PR folks, we’ve had the privelege of interviewing each contestant from “The Next Food Network Star” as they are eliminated from contention every week. This week, we got to ask recently booted Teddy Folkman a few things, but we think he may have become a bit annoyed with our first question, but we had to ask….

Premium Hollywood: Did you feel like you were eliminated based on what happened between you and Debbie last week? (Teddy kind of threw her under the bus at judgment time and later apologized)

Teddy Folkman: Absolutely not.

PH: Tyler Florence referred to your shtick as that of a cartoon character and you seemed to have over-the-top presentations almost every week…or was that your true personality coming through?

TF: Tyler’s line of “you seemed like a used car salesman” really made it hit home to me. I was constantly being told that I “wasn’t being myself” over and over from the judges. But what Tyler made me realize was that I was trying to “sell” my food and advice rather then just talking about it and making it interesting without having to be a cartoon character. It made sense. Immediately in the next challenge, I got to work with one of the best of the presenting contestants, Debbie, and who I really am started to come through. And after the burger presentation and the Intrepid challenge, you could see the change. I am a laid back pub owner with a silly side.

PH: Would you do anything different if you could go back and start over?

TF: First off, I would never have worn that awful orange shirt in the first episode. Ugh. I would have also focused on being who I was rather then who I thought they wanted me to be. It took me too long to realize and ultimately became my downfall.

PH: What’s next for Teddy Folkman and who do you like to win the competition now?

TF: I am going to continue with my restaurants and putting some love into them for a little while. I am also in the process of writing a cookbook for kids and another on Gourmet Bar Food. I would like the opportunity to pitch the Food Network a few ideas I have on shows and continue to pursue my passion and love for everything food.

I was looking for some material on the ol’ YouTube on the late Harve Presnell for my more retro-minded other blog home. I didn’t find much, but I did find this trailer for a film that was for one of Presnell’s few shots at movie stardom, a long forgotten attempt at what Hollywood journos and suits like to call a “four quadrant” film, in that it tries to appeal to both genders and all age groups. So, we get a film with hitmaker Connie Francis, Broadway baritone Harve Presnell, lots of Gershwin tunes, but also rocker’s Herman’s Hermits and Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs, but also Louis Armstrong, the man who practically invented jazz. Oh, and Liberace, too. Check it out.

The movie was “When the Boys Meet the Girls” and it appears it didn’t exactly make a mint for MGM. This was the age when clueless grown-ups thought they could remake an old musical property (the twice-before filmed Gershwin Broadway hit, “Girl Crazy”) and bring people of all ages together in a theater simply by mixing elements appealing to grown-ups and teens of the time. What they didn’t seem to realize was that there was an increasingly acrimonious cultural war raging in the country between young people increasingly hostile to “old people’s music” and “old people” who had never stopped being hostile to rock and roll. About a year or two later they’d be calling it “the generation gap.”

The ironic thing is that, in this “High School Musical” era, the youth of today happily listen to music from all eras — including the pre-rock days — and the angry youth of the past are, of course, now “old people” themselves. In the era of “High School Musical,” as doofy as this trailer might look (though, of course, I kind of dig it…kind of), an approach like this could actually work commercially. Expect a fourth “Girl Crazy” remake shortly.

Like all character actors, Karl Malden never got quite the same level of attention as costars like Marlon Brando, Vivien Leigh, Steve McQueen, Anthony Perkins, Montgomery Clift, Michael Caine, and George C. Scott. Even the seventies TV series he starred in, “The Streets of San Francisco” found him being overshadowed in the eyes of the teenybopper set by his young punk of a male ingenue costar, Michael Douglas. That was largely because Malden was the kind of performer who understood that acting is a team sport. His best scenes were like great duets with near perfect communication between him and his scene partners. The exception were American Express travelers’ checks; those, he wiped off the screen.

Karl Malden died today at age 97, having been more or less fully retired since appearing in a 2000 episode of “The West Wing.” While he was never precisely an A-lister, he was a go-to actor for secondary leads, president of the Motion Picture Academy, and as far as I can tell a universally respected figure among actors and everyone else associated with the movie industry. He was also married to the same woman for seventy years, a rare enough Holllywood achievement to merit it’s own special Oscar. Not a bad life.

Below the fold is a video tribute I found that, from the misspellings, I gather may come from Serbia. (Malden, whose real name was Mladen Sekulovich, was the son of a Serbian father and a Czechoslovak mother.) The image quality could be better and some of the clips are a little too brief, but it does give you an excellent overview of his truly diverse film career, which included work with some of the greatest Hollywood directors including Elia Kazan, John Frankenheimer, and Alfred Hitchcock. It also includes some interesting moments from two oddball spy films, “Murderer’s Row,” which I haven’t seen, and the underrated “Billion Dollar Brain,” which included some pretty amazing scenes between Malden and Michael Caine as his old spy buddy, Harry Palmer, as well as Françoise Dorléac as his treacherous spy girlfriend (though he’s pretty tricky himself).

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With the ongoing box office behemoth that is “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” seemingly devouring everything in its path, the studios are nevertheless allowing two potentially vulnerable major productions to venture out of the nest a couple of days ahead of the big July 4th holiday weekend.

For the family trade, we have a 3-D CGI animated sequel, “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs,” which will be showing on a record number of 3-D screens. (Which I guess means that if you haven’t seen “Up” in 3-D by now, which I finally managed just last night, you may be SOL until at least such time as we start seeing 3-D retrospectives.) In a saner world, this would be the #1 movie this week because of family appeal, I think it’s safe to say. Carl DiOrio of The Hollywood Reporter is calling it at between $45 and $50 million for Friday through Sunday (not counting weekdays), which he thinks will be somewhat below the “Transformers” take based on a very modest 50% drop-off.

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As Hollywood prepares for an early weekend 4th-of-July weekend (which we’ll be discussing in a commensurately early box-office preview, mañana), things are popping. To wit:

* Variety blogger Mike Fleming and Nikki Finke (who is supposedly trying to slow down for just a moment as she retools her site for its new owners and recovers from a virus) are both reporting a major shake-up at Paramount with the loss of a number of gigs for various folks. Just a little more good news for the California economy. As La Finke comments, the timing of this with the “Transformers” sequel windfall might strike some as obnoxious, but that’s show business for you.

* Meanwhile, Finke has also picked up on and “confirmed” a huge sounding Financial Times story about Paramount, Sony, and Fox being in talks to merge their home entertainment divisions. No doubt, this will be spun as a being a case of less-than-meets-the-eye. We’re told it’s mainly about economies-of-scale dealing with the production of DVDs, and that the studios plan to keep their brands entirely separate, which only makes sense. Still, it’s what’s happening below the surface that worries me here.

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The Los Angeles Film Festival ended Sunday and I’m not sure what I want to say about it. I saw several films and wanted to see more, but circumstances, and trying to blog about most of what I did see, kept me to a one or two movie per day average on the days I attended. Most of the films were as good as their buzz at least, but most of them had already screened at Sundance.

For me, the highlights were “Black Dynamite” — which was by far the most fun screening all around despite happening within hours of Michael Jackson’s death (which happened to be a less than a mile from where I was working on my posts) — and “We Live in Public” which was simply the most interesting film with the most interesting post-screening discussion. “Branson” was a highlight of another sort for the electrifying performer/one-man-drama, Jackson Cash. The film geek/native West Angeleno in me went moderately wild for a film I haven’t written about here, Curtis Harrington’s melange of romance and dark fantasy “Night Tide,” which was shot in late fifties Santa Monica and Venice.

Los Angeles is, of course, an extremely large city with strong neighborhoods but no true urban core (which is not to say that we aren’t trying to grow one) and a place where all kinds of movies screen all the time, if you know where to find them. It’s also, of course, the place on earth with the largest concentration of people involved with actually making movies or doing things related to making them. Getting them to spend a lot of time actually watching new films probably requires enticing them to go elsewhere and break their usual, already way too busy, routine.

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Renny Harlin used to be good for the occasional guilty pleasure in the 90s (“Die Hard 2,” “The Long Kiss Goodnight”), but lately, he’s become little more than a go-to guy for genre flicks better off being released straight to DVD. In his latest film, Harlin teams up with WWE Superstar John Cena in an action thriller so ridiculous that its shameless forgery of “Die Hard with a Vengeance” will be the least of your worries. Cena stars as Danny Fisher, a New Orleans detective whose girlfriend (Ashley Scott) is kidnapped by a dangerous terrorist (Aidan Gillen) he arrested a year before. Now, he must play a twisted game with the criminal (lasting 12 rounds, natch) if he ever wants to see his girlfriend again. The idea that someone as threatening to national security could even break out of prison is a bit of a joke, but the story is filled with so many of these silly coincidences that you eventually have to just let it go – especially when Cena’s character is allowed to practically destroy an entire city in the name of saving a single life. The dialogue is terrible as expected, but what will really surprise viewers is just how dull the action scenes are. Cena might not be a good actor, but his previous effort, “The Marine,” at least had a couple of cool set pieces to keep you entertained. Unfortunately, “12 Rounds” can’t even offer that.

Click to buy “12 Rounds”

It would be fair to say that not everyone enjoyed this past Saturday’s episode of “Harper’s Island,” based on Mr. Paulsen’s recent post, but even if you’re in the same camp that he is, I think it’s a safe bet that, if you’ve been watching the series for this long, you’ll still be returning for the final episode next Saturday (July 11th). While I agree that the subjects of this week’s interview probably should’ve made at least a cursory attempt to escape death rather than lunging headlong into their demise (which is, ultimately, what both of them did, even if one did it in a different manner than the other), it can at least be said that neither of the actors had any problems with their exits.

Yeah, you’re right: I guess that isn’t much consolation for a disgruntled viewer.

Oh, well.

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Much like last week’s disappointing selection of high-def titles, today’s pick of the litter isn’t quite as fresh as one might hope. There’s definitely a good variety among the movies available, but there’s nothing here that exactly screams “Buy me.” Still, while my personal collection will remain unchanged for another week, other Blu-ray enthusiasts might find something they’ve been waiting to pick up, or at the very least, take for a test drive.

“Do the Right Thing” (Universal)

I’ve never been a fan of Spike Lee, save for the uncharacteristic crime thriller, “Inside Man.” His fabricated racism is annoying, and it never fails in ruining an otherwise good story. Though it’s admirable to want to address a serious issue like racism through film, the way in which he tries to achieve it is nothing short of scandalous. Take Danny Aiello’s character in “Do the Right Thing,” whose life is ruined when a brawl inside his pizzeria leads to the accidental death of Radio Raheem. Not only is he completely warranted in his actions, but he isn’t even responsible for Raheem’s untimely demise. Of course, Lee wouldn’t have the ending he so desperately needs if he doesn’t lay the blame on Aiello, and instead of pointing a finger at Raheem (who refused to turn off his boom box after being asked nicely) or Giancarlo Esposito’s Buggin Out (the real culprit of the altercation), he decides to cook up a theory that even the much-loved (but still white) owner of the local hangout is a racist. Personal thoughts aside, the 20th anniversary Blu-ray release looks incredible, and the addition of a new retrospective documentary and audio commentary by Lee is a nice treat for fans of the film. You really have to love Lee’s work to want to sit through “Do the Right Thing” more than once, but if you do, you might as well watch it in HD.

“Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li” (20th Century Fox)

Go ahead and file this one under Reasons Why Fanboys Hate 20th Century Fox. It’s not that the studio does a bad job of choosing properties to adapt. In fact, it’s quite the opposite, because they often make movies that no other studio would even bother with. Unfortunately, they don’t put nearly as much thought into the actual making of the film as they do into how much money they might make it if it’s a hit. I didn’t think it was possible to outdo the first “Street Fighter” film starring Jean-Claude Van Damme in terms of sheer crappiness, but “The Legend of Chun-Li” wins hands down. This is a movie that is so determined to ground the world of “Street Fighter” in reality that it loses all connection to the source material except for its characters’ names. The end result is just another generic martial arts movie with some of the worst acting you’ll ever see. It’s difficult to single out just one performance (take your pick), but when all is said and done, Chris Klein is practically guaranteed to walk away with a Razzie. “The Legend of Chun-Li” is a guilty pleasure at best, but unless you’re a fan of the game, and don’t mind seeing your a piece of your childhood ruined, you’d be best to stay away.

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* There seems to be some concern out in the world about just how well Michael Mann’s new Johnny Depp/Christian Bale vehicle, “Public Enemies,” will fare when it’s released on Wednesday. Mixed reviews, like the one posted today by Den of Geek’s Michael Leader seem fairly typical and it’s possible audiences will feel mehish on the project. (The Tomatometer is currently at a fair-to-middling 64%, but even some of the “fresh” reviews don’t read as outright positive.) Anne Thompson specifically wonders about just how Depp’s huge star power will register and Mann’s decision to shoot a period film in digital, though it’s not the first period action film to be shot that way (”The Last Samurai” comes to mind). Those still reasonably jazzed about the nouveau-gangster flick (and that includes me, even though I’m not a super big Michael Mann fan), may want to check out our “Between Good and Evil” feature over at Bullz-Eye.

* Speaking of Anne Thompson, she has a festival wrap-up posted (looks like we saw a pretty different selection of films). I’ll be writing about it one-more time tomorrow.

* Nikki Finke has the “actuals” in from “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.” It’s $390 million worldwide. I guess that’s enough. She’s also upset over some impending Oscar changes, including a rule that might limit the number of “Best Song” entries and having a separate, non-televised dinner for the humanitarian awards like the Thalberg, which I’ll personally miss, because I’m weird.

Confession time: Being a bit sleep deprived and apparently under-caffeinated, I nodded off for probably 10-20 minutes of MTV/Dickhouse’s “The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia.” Therefore, I have to be a bit careful about making any sweeping statements about this documentary from filmmaker Julien Nitzberg, a sort of follow-up to Jacob Young’s 1991 short, “The Dancing Outlaw,” which became a viral cult hit. It’s safe to say that judging from what I heard from the crowd — many of whom were fans of the earlier documentary and/or the “Jackass” TV series (which has some fans in the cinegeek world, though I’ve never been moved to watch it) — I might have been the only person in the theater who didn’t have a great time with the film.

The earlier film deal with Jesco White, a gas-huffing Elvis Presley fan whose brain-damaged schizoid psychology and criminal tendencies tend to overshadow his talent as a “mountain dancer,” a sort of bluegrass forerunner to tapdancing. Executive produced by Johnny Knoxville, “The Wild and Wonderful Whites” deals with the ongoing struggles of Jesco’s extended family, led by super-tough, extremely shrewd, ultra-raspy voiced occasional singer Mamie White and on into the more violent third generation members of the clan. There are some captivating moments, in particular Jesco dancing to music provided live by punk country’s own Hank Williams III and the sugary soda-fueled gyrations of one of the youngest Whites, who just might be a dancing chip off the old Jesco White block.

However, apparently somewhat like Slant’s Nick Shager, I was largely left cold by the portion of the film I managed to stay awake through. I’m not sure I’d be as critical of its moral stance, or lack thereof, on the Whites, but I found myself wondering just what the vignettes about the various family members — who are perhaps too numerous for clarity — and their purportedly fun-loving dysfunction add up to. I’m not sure how I feel about the way director Nitzberg flirts with celebrating a clan whose members abuse themselves and each other to this degree. It’s still possible I might find something more there in a less tired state and, if this sounds in any way interesting, you’d be well advised to check out the not so safe for work trailer.

I should also add that, in terms of a crowd vibe, the mood at the Los Angeles Film Festival screening could not have been a happier or more upbeat one. I spoke to some really nice people there who really seemed to enjoy it and “get” the film a lot more than I — and the post-screening dancing by Jesco White, backed up by a terrific bluegrass trio, was something else.

First things first, if you haven’t watched the most recent episode (”Splash”) then you might want to skip to the next post, because there are major spoilers ahead.

I’ll go ahead and insert a jump here so that anyone who proceeds does so willingly.

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On “The Next Food Network Star” Season 5, there have been some catty moments, and, well, moments of gameplay that border on vicious. So it wasn’t really a big surprise last night when the judges announced who they were eliminating. We’ll get to that in a bit, because this episode had a lot going on, including one of the finest (read: horrific) moments in the show’s history.

The show began with Bobby Flay playing network executive, and telling the remaining seven contestants that they would start off this week’s episode by creating a burger from a specific region of the country (not necessarily where they were from). The winner would have a burger on the menu at Bobby Flay’s new burger joint in Connecticut (book my flight, I want to go there right now). They would then have 30 minutes of camera time to describe their creation.

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Kevin Nealon’s been a familiar face on television since his days as a cast member on “Saturday Night Live,” but in recent years, he’s become more known for his work on Showtime’s long-running series, “Weeds.” Those who can’t afford the premium stations, however, may also see him pop up as the host of TBS’s “World’s Funniest Commercials” specials. Won’t you please join us for…

Kevin Nealon: Hey, Will! How are you doing?

Bullz-Eye: Hey, Kevin, good to talk to you!

KN: Yeah, you, too!

BE: So this is not your first time around the block for TBS.

KN: No, it’s not! It’s starting to add up. (Laughs)

BE: So how did you come to hook up with them in the first place?

KN: Oh, gee, let me see if I can remember. It’s been about…oh, I’m guessing eight years now? Seven or eight years. I think they just kind of came to my agents with this offer to host this show, and I always loved funny commercials. You know, one of the reasons - like a lot of people - that I watch the Super Bowl is for the commercials during it, so I was into that. And, also, I went to school for marketing and learned a lot about commercials then, and I was going to be in advertising, but instead I went into comedy. So there’s a big interest there for me.

BE: Do you have a favorite commercial from this most recent special that really stands out?

KN: Well, there are a couple that I like. There’s one…I think it’s for Berlitz Language School, where a guy’s on the phone and he’s trying to find out how to spell “Def Leppard” because he’s doing a tattoo on somebody’s back. And it’s all in subtitles, but the woman goes, “Do you mean ‘deaf’ as in hearing, or ‘death’ as in dying?” He goes, “Um, I’m not sure.” Then he looks to the person’s back, where he’s just made the tattoo “deaf.” That’s a cool one, and there’s another one for Tabasco that’s from Belgium, where they show a streaker running across a soccer field, the cops are chasing him, and then they stop the action and say, “An hour earlier,” and they show him in a restaurant having Tabasco sauce. They kind of back up the whole thing, from the soccer field leading back up to when he used the Tabasco.

BE: So where did you film this special? I know you film them on location in various places.

KN: Oh, yeah, we’ve done them everywhere! Well, not everywhere, but we’ve done them in California, in Paris, New York. This one happens to be in Chicago, which is great, because I love Chicago.

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When a vampire is driving down the road at an outrageous speed, there’s no other phrase you can use to describe it than “like a bat out of Hell.” Bill’s clearly still enraged over Sookie’s foolish decision to take Jessica at her word and trust that she wouldn’t approach her family, let alone attack them. But can you really blame him? It’s as I said last week: there was no way it wasn’t going to end badly. As it happens, it ended a whole lot better than it could have - like I figured, Bill glamoured them rather than dispose of them in the less savory way that most of his ilk would have - but what was most surprising about his annoyance with Sookie was how concerned he was about the fact that she undermined his authority. Is that the residual effects of having lived through the good ol’ days when women knew their place? (Just kidding, gals!) Either way, when Sookie decided to bail out of Bill’s reaming and walk home, she had a close encounter which resulted in a full-fledged “holy shit” moment.

Actually, that’s underselling it: it was a “holy shit, WTF” moment.

And it only got worse. Those claw marks were awful. Good thing Bill and Eric are pals with a highly knowledgeable physician, but even Dr. Ludwig’s wealth of information could only offer an approximation of how to treat the poison in Sookie’s wounds. (I don’t think it would be exaggerating things much to suggest that the treatment was almost worse than the wounds themselves. I didn’t fight my instinct to turn away from the TV. Ugh!) The long-lived Eric claimed to have no idea what had attacked her, either, but it’s hard to trust that guy. Still, his underlings seemed to be equally mystified.

Can someone please explain to me why the folks at Fantasia keep Ginger employed? Anything she brings to the table can’t possibly outweigh the fact her IQ is somewhere in the low double digits, as she quickly proves by letting slip in her thoughts that Lafayette is chained in the basements. Looks like you were right, Mr. Paulsen: they didn’t actually turn him after the credits rolled last week. You gotta give Sookie credit: not many people would have the either the balls or the unbridled stupidity to smack a vampire of Eric’s strength across the face. Given his reaction, however, one can’t but wonder if the maintaining of Lafayette’s human existence was something Eric did solely because he knew he could trade his life for the favor he’d been needing from Sookie. Either way, after some wheeling and dealing by both Sookie and Bill, Lafayette earns his freedom and Sookie signs up for Eric’s favor, earning a sizable cash influx in the process and providing the best exchange of the night:

Eric: Perhaps I’ll grow on you.
Sookie: I prefer cancer.

With everything going on, Jessica accidentally ends up getting left home alone, and it looks likes she’s going to get into at least as much trouble as Macaulay Culkin. I never particularly dug the song when it first came out, but I have to admit that they made good use of Marcy Playground’s “Sex and Candy” as she strolled into Merlotte’s. What a surprise, however, when it looked as though the usually-belligerent redhead was legitimately swooning over the sweet naiveté of the gentleman who she’d intended as her night’s conquest. The moment when her fangs came out unbidden was pretty funny, her tearful reaction was even a bit sad, and I kept waiting for the guy to say, “Hey, guess what, I’m a vampire, too!” They cut it close enough to the quick that I really did think that she’d bitten him, so when Bill and Sookie broke up their coupling on the couch, I was surprised to see a notable lack of holes in the guy’s neck.

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The news this week is about as simple and unsurprising as you can get: “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” has done some pretty spectacular business, netting an estimate of $201.2 million, just shy of the all-time record $203.8 million “The Dark Knight” earned on its initial five-day release. Could that $2.6 million difference be the difference between outstanding reviews and really bad ones? Nah, but I still wouldn’t be surprised to see a big drop off here, or maybe that’s wishful thinking based on my oft-repeated feelings about this particular franchise.

As per Variety, “The Proposal” came in at the #2 spot, dropping 45% from its opening for $18.5 million in its second week. And this summer’s ongoing audience and critical favorites continue to do outstanding business. “The Hangover” is thought to have taken in $17.2 million in its third week, while “Up” continues to exercise the astonishing power of the Pixar touch in the #4 spot with about $13 million in its fifth week.

This week’s only non-”Transformers” wide release, “My Sister’s Keeper” (referred to by newly rich superblogger Nikki Finke as “simpering,” but which our own Jason Zingale actually kind of liked), came in at the #5 spot with an estimated $12 million. As we mentioned last time, that’s actually a couple million more than some expected.

It also wasn’t a bad weekend on the indie side. The critically acclaimed Iraq war action-suspense drama, “The Hurt Locker,” performed well in its four theaters on the coasts, netting about $3600 per screen. In wider release, the high pedigree prestige comedy, “Away We Go,” perhaps benefited from the TV appeal of stars John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph, and got into the #10 spot with $1.7 million in just under 500 theaters.

Back tomorrow with more on the about to be concluded LAFF…

I suppose that technically rock videos aren’t really movies in the sense of being a theatrical motion picture, but “Thriller” sure feels like a mini-movie, and it’s homages to classic horror — complete with a rap of sorts by Vincent Price — are still scary, even mixed with Michael Peter’s and Michael Jackson funky choreography. Undoubtedly a still strong piece of movie making by John Landis, and one of the late Mr. Jackson’s most important efforts,

I’ll be back with the box office numbers later today, and I’ll be wrapping up my coverage of the Los Angeles Film Festival, which ends tonight, over the next couple of days.