No doubt a lot of “Jackass”-generated cash for Paramount — a new record for this time period, though with constant inflation of movie tickets, even in a stagnant economy, I’m never too impressed by these constantly broken records — comes directly from the 3D bump. It seems clear that the format can still make a big difference for the right movie, and this is obviously a special case. Regular readers know I was born without the gene that makes people enjoy the feeling of being grossed out, but even I get that if seeing something, or someone, squirt out of an orifice in 2D is hilarious, then watching it/him practically fly into your lap in 3D must be completely hysterical. The only fly in the stinky ointment here is that inevitable R-rating. I can only imagine how many younger, mostly male, teenagers and tweens are trying to figure out how they can scam their way into a theater (and the correct glasses) or begging older relatives and/or paying neighborhood winos to take them.

Meanwhile, the cleverly conceived idea of having older actors do what younger actors usually do has proven itself with “RED.” Like “The Expendables” with Oscar winners, the PG-13 action comedy is “tracking” in all of those “quadrants” Hollywood people like to talk about according to Nikki Finke. Not “Jackass” well, but $22 million estimated.

Since the film is tracking best, according to La Finke, with over-30 males, who may take longer to see the movie, it’s reasonable to assume that this week’s #2 film will continue to make money for some time. She also notes that, while the film has a $58 million budget, Summit paid less than $20 million of it, sharing the costs/profits with overseas distributors. That’s good because they’ve already made all their money back, sans marketing costs. On the other hand, I have a feeling “RED” will be very profitable worldwide. A long time ago I worked in a foreign film sales office and the two things we were told the international audience wanted was a strong, simple story and big stars. Action was good, too. Finke mentions that, even though “RED” is based on DC comic book, they’re parent company of Warner Brothers turned down the film, perhaps based on the assumption that a movie dominated with one fifty-something superstar and a bunch of septuagenarian and sexagenarian near superstars couldn’t possibly do well. Big mistake

It’s also worth noting that both of this week’s new movies got decent-to-good reviews. Of course, in the case of “Jackass 3D,” us non-gross-out friendly types have learned to stay away by now. I also have to admit that even I, however, note the presence in the cast of ex-skateboarder and sometime performer Spike Jonze, who in his other life is one of the best film directors around. If I only enjoyed watching people eating things that people should never, ever eat.

In the third and fourth spots, both “The Social Network” and “Secretariat” are holding extremely well. The Aaron Sorkin/David Fincher Facebook flick dropped only by 28.8% in its third weekend for an estimated $11 million. The Randall Wallace-directed tale of a very talented horse rebounded a bit from its unspectacular opening by dropping only a minimal 25% for an estimated gross of just over $9.5 million.

Among limited releases, not at all surprisingly, “Hereafter” did extremely well. Considering that the movie is the second pairing of actor Matt Damon and director Clint Eastwood, it’s a bit of a big-fish/small pond situation with the film easily getting the week’s best per-screen average — $38,500 — for a total of 231,000 in six theaters.

At the other end of the scale, the subject of my Thursday rant, ex-secret Tea Partier Ray Griggs’ “I Want Your Money” didn’t get very much of your money. It also likely won’t be having a major influence on the congressional election, nor will do a whole lot for the career of Griggs’ — who does a Michael Moore-style on-camera turn in the film. In 537 theaters, the anti-Obama documentary dealing with the issue of the deficit — an issue conservatives coincidentally rediscover is an urgent threat to all we hold dear every time a Democrat gets elected president — suffer a possible financial shortfall of its own, with only $279,000 estimated in grosses. I don’t know exactly how much support Griggs got from the very significant conservative media structure in this country, but that $520 per screen average is not good. It wasn’t the lowest per screen. That was $420 for the ninth week of the low budget horror pic, “Piranha 3D,” which is edging closer to the $26 million mark in theaters. There’s a joke there somewhere, but I’m not seeing it.

I guess I should be jumping for joy that a movie — almost any movie — from the provocatively counterintuitive team of Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher is primed to head things up at the box office. Sony’s “The Social Network” has been getting mightily hyped, generating some of the year’s very best reviews and just a bit of controversy over its accuracy. It all spells awards-season hit with the added bonus of a youth-friendly cast and topic — the creation of Facebook, though it’s a big mistake to think only young people use Facebook. In any case, the $25 million or over weekend suggested by both Jolly Carl DiOrio and Ben Fritz seems reasonable.

Here’s the thing: I’ve seen “Let Me In” and while I agree with our David Medsker that it doesn’t do a huge amount cinematically to justify its own existence apart from the outstanding original Swedish film, it benefits from the same creepily heart-string tugging story as the original, which will be totally new to most viewers. Moreover, the one area where the film is an improvement over the original is in its performances, Kodi Smit-McFee and Chloe Moretz are just breathtakingly good and I can’t imagine most viewers not being drawn into the very moving and very creepy twice-told tale.

One obvious problem is that this is a film a lot of older kids will definitely want to see, but it’s rated R and, I have to say, not entirely inappropriately. It’s no gorefest, but it’s violent and bloody enough and it tricks us into sympathizing with some pretty immoral actions by very young people, which is not a bad thing but really kind of the point. In other words, you need a certain level of moral maturity to get what the film is really about. I nevertheless think parents should consider taking more mature tweens who are interested to see it, even if director Matt Reeves juices up the blood and violence just a hair from the original film. It’s still a highly intelligent and thought-provoking tale that definitely de-romanticizes the vampire myth while also being a wonderful metaphor that explains why parents might worry about the kinds of friends their kids make.

More infuriating than the fact that this relatively excellent film being expected to make significantly less than $10 million this weekend, is the fact that it might be beaten by the lame looking, poorly reviewed more adult skewing horror flick from Paramount/Vantage, “Case 39” with Renee Zellweger and Bradley Cooper. We need armies of cinema counselors out this weekend, folks, steering filmgoers desirous of chills away from this and towards “Let Me In” — whose with me? Okay, fine.

There is some action on the limited release front. Yet another R-rated horror film from a company I’ve never heard of called New Films Cinema (aren’t “Films” and “Cinema” the same thing?), “Chain Letter,” is going out unreviewed and all but undiscussed into 401 theaters this weekend according to Box Office Mojo.

We also have a major expansion of the highly buzzed documentary “Catfish” and the highly touted documentary spin-off of a very popular non-fiction tome from Magnolia, “Freakonomics.” My own very mildly positive reaction to it is just a hair better than the overall critical reaction, but there’ll no keeping fans of the book away from it, even if the movie is mainly eliciting a bit of a shrug.

Thanks to the wonders of the ‘net, we have this spot-on parody of the promotion for David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin’s apparently highly dramatic look at the creation of Facebook, “The Social Network,” that ran here and everywhere a few weeks back. If you somehow missed it, watch it via our wayback machine, then come back and watch this.

In my opinion — excuse me, IMO — these guys nailed everything both good and slightly irritating about that earlier trailer. Nice.

h/t /Film

Definitely more Fincher than Sorkin, which will relieve the Sorkin-dislikers — and they are perhaps even more legion than Joss Whedon-skeptics, perhaps not too coincidentally. (Excess cleverness annoys people if they don’t find it clever.) The first part of this reminded me more of a traditional high-end corporate commercial than a typical trailer. The tagline is memorable, but I have a feeling it will get very old, very fast.

One thing, this looks like a possible breakthrough role for Jessie Eisenberg while future Spider-Man Andrew Garfield seems to be in more of a supporting role, at least in this trailer. I do have to say that, by using that choral rendition of Radiohead’s “Creep” and some of those deliberate Fincher camera moves, they get a very somber tone.  I guess that’s okay, but it’s not like anyone was killed in the founding  of Facebook…or were they?

Also, note how they throw in what looks like a totally random shot of an attractive young lady walking away from us in rather minimal panties. It’s important that we know there is a hot girl in panties walking away from us somewhere in this movie.

But seriously folks, I’m delaying tonight’s box office preview slightly, but it should be up VERY early tomorrow.

* David Fincher is really keeping busy. I missed the story late Friday about him putting together a new movie iteration of “Heavy Metal.”

The first attempt to transpose the appeal of the legendary European-based anthology comic magazine is pretty much unwatchable these days — I know because I tried and failed to watch it at Comicon a couple of years back — but that’s all the more reason to give it another try I suppose. Considering that the late seventies and early eighties were pretty much the lowpoint of animation and the high end nature of this project, it pretty much has to be an improvement on most levels.

And that’s not all. Having taken on Facebook with Aaron Sorkin, another upcoming project may possibly involve an equally cinematic undertaking: chess.

* With John Krasinski apparently out of the running for “The First Avenger: Captain America” (a title I’m not fond of, by the way), the Marvel gang has apparently adopted a “nobody excessively interesting” rule in its prospective casting. The latest name being floated: Ryan Phillipe. Still, he played effectively off of Chris Cooper in the highly underrated “Breach,” one of my favorite films of 2007, so perhaps he can do the same with Hugo Weaving here.

* Ben Kingsley and Sacha Baron Cohen are “in talks” to appear in Martin Scorsese’s ambitious, 3-D, meta-film, “The Invention of Hugo Cabret.”  As a Deadline commenter notes, this one appears to be DiCaprio-free, at last. Kingsley and Coehn could make an interesting buddy film.

* Tim Adler of Deadline|London thinks that the success of 3-D screenings of “Avatar” in Europe is funding the growth of digital movie theaters in Europe.

* I’ve said it before, but the career of director David Gordon Green fascinates me. He starts out like an American Vittorio De Sica by way of Terrence Malick with the neo-neo realist “George Washington,” and then transitions to stoner-frat comedies apparently spoofing eighties sword and sorcery flicks. Attention must be paid.

* If you really wanna know more about “penis trauma” and the MPAA ratings system…

* Phrases like “penis trauma” aside, SXSW really does sound like the most fun of the festivals, doesn’t it?