In any case the $150 million or more total for the vampire romance’s first five days that jolly Carl DiOrio has confidently predicted seems like a good guess, especially with Nikki Finke‘s report of a promotional strategy involving 20 cast members fanning out across the country to intro the movie in area theaters.  This can’t hurt. Go to any revival screening in L.A. at a venue like the American Cinematheque or the L.A. County Museum of Art, and you’ll be lucky to see a half-full house. Advertise that a famed cast member will be speaking, and you often get sell outs. Never underestimate the appeal of a live celebrity appearance. If it works with film snobs, it’ll squeeze some more repeat viewings from the Twi-hards.

There’s actually another new genre film debuting this week. It’s the more kid-and-geek-male friendly, PG-rated “The Last Airbender” from M. Night Shameicantspellhisname. The Indian-American director has been pilloried by Asian groups for casting the tale, adopted from an animated series with a definite Asian flavor, with primarily white actors. It’s also been a long time since he’s had a hit, or even a movie that anybody liked much. It gets worse because “Airbender” is getting some of worst reviews of the year, with critics like our own Jason Zingale taking a moment to criticize the film’s retrofitted 3-D as even worse than the film as a whole. Even so, the martial arts fantasy got off to a decent start at midnight screenings Thursday morning with $3 million in the coffer for Paramount.

Still, if word gets out that this film is the stinker it sounds like, rather than the franchise-starter it’s supposed to be, it could do very disappointing business. With a $145 million budget, that’s not good tidings for the director or the studio. On the other hand, fans of the animated series could pull the film towards a solid, but certainly hugely distant, second. In any case, it seems clear that the massive and assuredly leggy success of “Toy Story 3” will be nipping at its heels. One thing is certain: the film originally titled “Avatar: The Last Airbender” will not be emulating its former namesake commercially over the long haul.

Among other limited releases this week, we have “Love Ranch,” which is the first film starring Helen Mirren to be directed by her husband, Taylor Hackford (“Ray,” “An Officer and a Gentleman”). Sadly, it’s getting very bad reviews. That is not good for a limited release, even if Joe Pesci is also in the cast. Amazing that a film about murder and legalized prostitution in Nevada is considered dull, but making movies is an uncertain business. Right?

“The Killer Inside Me” starring Casey Affleck as a brutally psychopathic cop is dividing critics in the kind of way that indicates it’s either an honorable near-miss or a cult film in the making. The adaptation of the pulp novel by novelist and Stanley Kubrick screenwriter Jim Thompson, which has a couple of scenes of very brutal and graphic violence that have generated a ton of ink and bloggy pixels, though its admirers tell us there’s lot more to the movie that that, will be expanding significantly from four to seventeen screens this weekend as per Box Office Mojo’s theater counts,. If you want to see it in a theater, I suggest you do so quickly. I don’t think all that many people are in the mood for this kind of thing right now.

UPDATE: Nikki Finke has the Thursday box office which indicates both “Eclipse” and “Airbender” are on track for their respective expected strong performances. Still, I’m curious to see if word of mouth catches up with the latter.

* As of tonight, corporate raider Carl Icahn appears to be a majority stockholder in Lionsgate.

* I’ve never been a fan of the seventies movie of the silly seventies film version of “Logan’s Run,” but with Carl Erik Rinsch directing, my interest in the new film perked up considerably. Now, Alex Garland — who wrote and produced the not-entirely-unrelated upcoming version of “Never Let Me Go” which I discussed yesterday — has jumped on board, making it even more interesting. Better, they’re approaching it as a new version of the book, not a remake of the film. In the 1976 film, by the way, no one in the futuristic society was permitted to live past 30. In the novel, it was 21.

* Sam Raimi has been confirmed as the director of “Oz: The Great and Powerful.” Apparently Robert Downey, Jr., who just formed a new company with his producer wife, Susan Downey, is the most likely Oz at this point.

* Be sure and check out Will Harris’s terrific interview with one of the best, Isabella Rossellini. Easily one of the most fascinating  actresses of the last thirty years or so, with quite a backstory behind her. Don’t miss it.

*Though Ms. Rossellini seems perfectly at home in a very humorous way with her fifty-something status, that is not really always the case for actresses. This month’s conversation between Jason Bellamy and Ed Howard at the House Next Door underlines that point as the cinephile thinkers discuss two of Hollywood’s greatest show-biz based films, “Sunset Boulevard” and “All About Eve,” both released in 1950 and both dealing with actresses who struggling with this whole passage of time thing.

* That film geek Ahab, Quint, manages to capture the elusive Ridley Scott and discusses “Alien” stuff, specifically the proposed 3-D prequels and Scott’s attitude towards the process, not to mention the brilliant advertising campaign for the original film.

* The White Elephant Blogathon has taken place. It’s a deeply sado-maschistic ritual in which film bloggers fob off films they wouldn’t inflict on their worst enemies to other film bloggers, and then have to review one such film themselves. Dennis Cozzalio caught the “Mannequin 2: On the Move,” and let’s just say the results border on the psychedelic.

*If Tom Tyker’s Wachowski-produced film version of the novel “Cloud Atlas” ever gets made, it’s likely going to be big.

* I’ve had some obvious mixed feelings about Nikki Finke since starting this here gig, but director Joe Carnahan’s idiotic attack on her confirms my initial unflattering hunches about him. I never understood why his film “Narc” got the praise it got. I found it merely irritating.

* One of several reasons I’m scaling back the blogging fairly radically for a couple of weeks is so that I actually would like time to catch some movies at this year’s Los Angeles Film Festival. Karina Longworth and the gang at the L.A. Weekly are helping me to make some selections.

* RIP film scholar and freelance writer Peter Brunette, who died suddenly at a festival in Italy at age 66. Glenn Kenny has a nice remembrance up.

* The trailer for “Bagman,” retitled from “Casino Jack,” is anything but promising. Also, isn’t it time for an indefinite moratorium on the use of “Gimme Shelter” in trailers and even movies? I’m talking to you too, Mr. Scorsese!

Even though I had my quibbles, it seems pretty likely that “Casino Jack and the United States of Money,” also about the Jack Abramoff affair, will prove to be the better film.

* I think Leo the Lion just digs torturing fanboys and fangals.

* OMG! OMG! It’s the dark Miley!

* If you haven’t absolutely nothing better to do, you can watch the new Smurf  movie’s teaser trailer. It’s looking like a real clustersmurf to me.

* Michael Winterbottom’s “The Killer Inside Me,” based on a the ultra-ultra-dark novel by Jim Thompson, has been the talk of the festival circuit for some time because of some scenes of extreme violence (just how graphic they actually are remains slightly unclear, though their emotional impact is clearly extremely strong) that have raised some hackles. Over at the the Daily Beast, Allen Barra marks its release by taking a look at Thompson’s works and wondering if they’re ever truly been filmable.

* Speaking of films that made their names with a single scene of violence against a woman, Wednesday was the 50th anniversary of “Psycho.” While there is no doubting that Hitchcock’s film is a hugely important milestone and its first forty minutes or so are a kind of perfection. Louis Vertel at Movieline is absolutely correct that it’s not his best — I’m not sure who thinks it is, except for people who haven’t seen many other Hitchcock movies. In fact, I’d rank it significantly lower than Vertel does. For me, it’s not even in Hitchcock’s top 10, though that less a knock on it than praise for a number of truly great films by of one of the real geniuses of the movies. It is, however, one of Bernard Herrmann’s very best scores.

On a separate note, if you’re a real movie geek, make sure you don’t miss another chapter in the long running Glenn Kenny v. Jeffrey Welles moviegeek smackdown, this time over “Psycho” and, wait for it, aspect ratios. Both enlightening and entertaining if a bit more polite than usual.

And, okay, “Psycho” is kind of amazing.

This is far from the first time Thompson’s work has been on the screen. Stanley Kubrick was famously impressed with The Killer Inside Me, which came out in 1952. Thompson wound up working on two Kubrick classics, “The Killing” and “Paths of Glory,” but his cult fame had to wait until after his death  in 1977, the year after the first film version of The Killer Inside Me was released to not much interest.

This time, though, that’s looking to be a very different story. Other notable Thompson adaptations include Stephen Frears’ memorable “The Grifters” with John Cusack, Angelica Huston, and Annette Bening from 1990, “The Getaway” (filmed by Sam Peckinpah in 1972 and Roger Donaldson in 1994), and Betrand Tavernier’s haunting 1981 “Coup de Torchon.” None of those were what you’d call family films, but it’s safe to say that this will be by far the most controversial of the bunch.

UPDATE: I just stumbled over an earlier European trailer which is really interesting and a bit more blackly comic. It’s courtesy of a 5/5/10 post made by Simon Dang at the Playlist. Dang also offers that the he thinks the violence has been played up perhaps a bit more than is the case — and this wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened. In any event, the other trailer is after the flip.