Over the three day Friday-Sunday weekend, Summit’s “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse” earned an estimated $69 million according to the Box Office Mojo chart. For the broader and potentially confusing numbers covering the extended movie weekends for the two new major new releases this week, I’ll rely on Anne Thompson’s pal Anthony D’Alessandro. He tells us “Eclipse” earned an estimated $175 million and change, just a few million bucks below the similar six-day frame of 2004’s “Spiderman 2,” though not adjusted for ongoing movie-ticket inflation.

This is the point in the series ordinarily where some might wonder if interest is starting to flag, but this is a long-running movie/book soap opera and a continuing tale similar to the Harry Potter in terms of fan interest/involvement. Also, this entry overall got significantly better reviews than the second film in the series, which might indicate the film itself is more boyfriend friendly for this very female-driven franchise.

D’Alessandro notes a Twilight “halo effect” and it didn’t hurt M. Night Shyamalan and Paramount’s animation adaptation, “The Last Airbender.” The martial arts fantasy is getting horrendous reviews that make the somewhat legendary critical hate mail for “Tranformers: Revenge of the Fallen” look like love letters. However, before someone starts whinging about critics being “out of touch,” the audiences who doled out their hard-earned cash to see the movie (and their kids, of course) gave the film an overall rating of C on Cinemascore’s moviegoer survey.

Still, dole out the cash they did and the film earned a $40.5 million over the weekend and a very nice $70.5 million over its entire holiday period (one day shorter than it was for “Eclipse”). That has the film edging closer to the halfway point of covering its $150 milliion budget — an awful lot for a film that didn’t impress with its effects and without any major stars.

Of course, younger men are driving this film, and I’m sure the fact that it’s a PG-rated version of a TV series aimed at kids makes this a family film, whether or not parents really want to be there at all, isn’t hurting. Still, let’s see if that uninspiring Cinemascore rating and the general feeling that the movie kind of stinks comes home to roost next week. The film did score below average on one metric, which is that its heavily slammed retrofit 3-D accounted for only 54% of sales, which is 6% below the average right now.

Overall, it was just a very nice weekend for big mainstream movies. Disney/Pixar’s  critics and audience beloved “Toy Story 3” earned $30.2 million and “Grown-Ups,” which was hated by critics about  as much as “Airbender,” grossed $19.1 million, and so on.

There was also so decent action in the world of limited releases. Indeed, “Cyrus” managed to become break into the bottom of the top 10 with only 77 screens, earning $774,000 and looking like a real possibility for this year’s break-out indie comedy. It’s less cuddly than a “Juno” or a “Little Miss Sunshine,” which is one of the things I admit to liking about it — though it’s also arguably not as dark as it should be. Still, funny is funny, and it’s very funny.

Other movies looking good according to Indiewire’s Peter Knegt are “Winter’s Bone,” which is looking like this year’s “Frozen River” in more ways than one, and the critically praised and apparently rather sexy Italian drama, “I Am Love.” I admit that one has flown under my radar despite getting very good reviews and the fact that Tilda Swinton apparently learned both Russian and Italian to appear in it.

On the other hand, there is “The Killer Inside Me.” I suggested on Friday that it might continue its trend of underwhelming business, because, I suspect, people are not in the mood for ultra-violence right now, outside of a horror fantasy context, in any case, and I’m not sure even then. Certainly, writer-director Michael Winterbottom’s commitment to making a couple of key scenes as realistically unpleasant to sit-through as possible isn’t exactly the box office come on of the year. But “Kick-Ass,” which was marketed as purely goofy entertainment, was a commercial disappointment to some degree. Could the movie audience have finally hit a wall in terms of pushing the violence envelope, at least outside the very limited extreme horror market? These things tend to be cyclic, an d I have no clue, but I also have no clue as the grosses of “The Killer Inside Me.” It doesn’t seem to have registered.

The other issue might be that indie films need to get a substantial majority of critics to like them to do well. The week’s other big indie disappointment — with a super-meh $49,500 from eleven screens — was the critically dissed Helen Mirren/Joe Pesci/Taylor Hackford collaboration about the early days of Northern Nevada’s legalized prostitution, “Love Ranch.” Sex sells a lot of the time. However, at art houses today, it really helps if the critics are excited.

Well, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that the Pixar formula — i.e., dollops of laughter and heart (what a concept!) and now a dash of 3-D ticket prices — has once again worked wonders and “Toy Story 3” took on all comers, earning an estimated $59 million for Disney in its second weekend. Meanwhile, it was also a good weekend for the eternal appeal of low humor and, it seems Adam Sandler, at least when accompanied by four other comic known quantities of varying degrees of box office hotness. It was clear that the scatological-joke loving masses were only encouraged by, I’m guessing, entirely correct godawful reviews of Sony’s “Grown-Ups.”

Perhaps also reflecting a dearth of comedy right now, the film actually was a personal box office best — not adjusted for inflation — for Sandler, earning $41 million. Personally, though I like him in actual quality films like the, I think, severely underrated “Funny People” and the brilliant “Punch Drunk Love,” I’ve never gotten the comic appeal of Sandler, going back to his SNL days, and can’t even remember gong through a phase where I found farts inherently hysterical, so I can only throw up my hands here.

On the other hand, there is little joy in the five or six buildings the Church of Scientology owns on Hollywood Blvd, as the Tom Cruise (and Cameron Diaz) action comedy vehicle, “Knight and Day” earned an estimated $27.7 million. Not bad, actually, except considering Cruise’s far better past performances back in the day when stars like him could routinely “open” a film and, according to Finke, the budget for the film was either roughly $117 or $107 million, depending on whether you calculate tax breaks. In other words, Cruise’s thetans might take longer to clear.

In other news, I’m happy to say, that things are hopping on the indie scene. The new wartime documentary “Restrepo” and the Duplass Brother’s enjoyable entry into the semi-mainstream, “Cyrus,” are both doing quite well, as are other newish films.

On the other hand, the controversially violent “The Killer Inside Me” appears to be suffering, perhaps, from an older indie audience that might be turned off by the fuss, which some say has been exaggerated to a certain degree and appears to have surprised its skilled, if highly uneven, director Michael Winterbottom. Interesting how an adaptation of a once obscure fifty-eight year old pulp novel can still raise hackles. Also shows that while a perception of too-little blood and guts can harm a horror film, a perception of too much can perhaps harm even a “hard R” thriller/drama. Advice to the suits: know your audience.

As usual, Indiewire has the indie scoop.

* 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.

Say “Sundance movie,” and most film fans tend to think of either social issue dramas and documentaries, or low-key tales of everyday life; when I was there, one writer I talked to said he was having a hard time finding synonyms for “unlikely friendship.” Still, this is not the first time a film to premiere at Sundance caused a ruckus for its violence. In 1992, a highly touted film from a previously unknown filmmaker featured a scene that was said to cause walk-outs at every screening. According to Wikipedia, later festival walk-outs included make-up effects wizard Rick Baker and, most ironically of all, horror director Wes Craven (the original “Last House on the Left” and “The Hills Have Eyes”). Of course, in our post-“torture porn” world, the “Reservoir Dogs” torture scene seems pretty restrained today. It’s still brilliant and not easy to watch — in a good way.

I was actually going to embed the scene here, but I realized at the last minute that every version is “embedding disabled by request” for whatever reason. And so, below is the film’s famed NSFW (for language) opening sequence. You can, however, see the infamous “ear scene” here.