Pixar Floats Over Hell En Route to Box-Office Heaven

Welcome back to Movieline Attractions, your regular guide to everything new, noteworthy and three-dimensionally soaring to South America at the movies. This week, Pixar reasserts itself as Hollywood's Golden Child, Sam Raimi reasserts himself as horror's auteur nonpareil, and a cluster of holdovers vie for both titans' table scraps. Survey the battlefield after the jump.

WHAT'S NEW: Already having usurped Star Trek's place as the best-reviewed movie of the summer (our own David Bourgeois wasn't that impressed at Cannes, but still), all thats left for Up is to find a surge of commercial approbation on opening weekend. Beyond the Pixar touch and the critical plaudits, it has the more distinct advantage of IMAX/3-D admission prices at a healthy chunk of its 3,700 theaters. So that helps, though it might be a wash if viewers still trying to catch up with last week's glut hold off on the story of an old man and a Boy Scout sailing away in a house tied to balloons. I mean, Dance Flick isn't going to be around forever, people. Look for Up to draw about $64.6 million by Sunday night.

Universal nicely counterprogrammed the weekend with Drag Me to Hell, another well-received wide release that returns Sam Raimi to his spooky, spunky horror origins. Alison Lohman plays a bank lender who throws the hammer down on the wrong destitute gypsy; curses and frights follow (read Seth's rave here), all of the box-office-friendly PG-13 variety, which won't necessarily save second place for Uni. But with $27.5 million for the weekend, it will be a close call between Hell and Night at the Museum 2.

Also opening: This year's Oscar-winner for Best Foreign-Language Film, Departures; the Steve Coogan/Hilary Duff journalist-mentor drama What Goes Up; and, in New York only before expanding out, the Canadian horror entry Pontypool and the acclaimed African revenge/friendship drama Munyurangabo.

THE BIG LOSER: As excited as Warner Bros. is for next week's release of The Hangover, it must first watch Terminator Salvation plunge to its death in a bloody week two. The only question left is how far and fast will it drop; some estimates have it at 60%, but even with that extra day of screenings last week, this congested market suggests something a little worse. If it breaks $15 million, I'll be the first to tip my cap Monday morning.

THE UNDERDOG: The competition documentary is just about played out, but congratulations to Pressure Cooker co-directors Jennifer Grausman and Mark Becker for finding what may be the last frontier of that movement: Culinary arts. Not the splashy reality demonstrations of Iron Chef or Top Chef, though any of high-school teacher Wilma Stephenson's pupils could someday emerge from their humble South Philly roots to triumph on those stages. For now, though, Grausman and Becker follow a handful from sun-up to sundown, charting their progress under Stephenson's irascible tutelage. As the end of their senior year approaches, and they refine their skills and character to take on any kitchen, the kids' scholarship showdown becomes quite the third-act intrigue. But Pressure Cooker is nothing if not consistent -- gripping, funny and ultimately touching throughout, a feel-good story without the sticky, saccharine residue. For the first time in a long time, a competition doc genuinely surprised me. Go with an appetite, and treat yourself to the same. (Opens today in NYC; June 5 in L.A.)

FOR SHUT-INS: A sloooowww week on the DVD front includes the Renee Zellweger bomb New in Town, the Jessica Biel-strips drama Powder Blue, the director's cut of Hal Ashby's long-lost Lookin' to Get Out, and, in anticipation of next week's adaptation, the complete series of Land of the Lost.