Welcome back to Movieline Attractions, your one-stop guide everything new, noteworthy and/or not-so-earth-shattering at the movies. This week brings us an awkward collection of studio also-rans overshadowing a fairly busy, competitive bundle of limited releases and Oscar fare; sort it all out with us after the jump.
WHAT'S NEW: It's cooling off outside, the leaves are changing, and baseball pennant races are at their height. So why does it feel like late August again all of the sudden? Blame Hollywood, whose three major offerings this week boast all the stale, fallow appeal of gas station crumb cake: Take Surrogates for starters, featuring Bruce Willis as a cop investigating the murders of the titular robots in a world where people have machines doing their communicating for them. Give Touchstone credit for a stylish, provocative marketing blitz (Jennifer's Body could have used ridden even half of this to a top-three gross last week), but that's right about where the imagination seems to stop. Plus the film faces unexpected competition from Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, which is holding its own on the word-of-mouth front and could cross over to an older audience in week two. I still think Surrogates can lock up first place at $21.5 million, but it'll be close.
MGM is finally getting around to opening a film this year, introducing a remake of the 1980 semi-classic Fame to a new generation for whom stardom is more accessible than ever. Alas, they've softened the original's rough, salty edges all the way down to a PG rating, and its seeming lack of conceptual ambition -- which director Alan Parker brought plenty of to his original -- has turned off more than a few critics. That said, the studio has squeezed its campaign through a candy-colored prism of pretty much every talent show on TV, and it's tracking better than expected -- probably well enough to pull in $15 million and a toehold in the top three.
Also opening in limited release: Michael Moore's just-about-average new screed Capitalism: A Love Story (it blows up wide next week); Audrey Tautou's tasteful quasi-fashion biopic Coco Before Chanel; Clive Owen's moody, tear-jerking Oscar bait The Boys are Back; Tucker Max's polarizing gross-out sex comedy I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell; and in New York only, John Krasinski's directorial debut Brief Interviews With Hideous Men and Stanley Tucci's Theo Van Gogh remake Blind Date.
THE BIG LOSER: Overture's sci-fi thriller Pandorum isn't necessarily going to bomb this weekend, but as the 129th R-rated pseudohorror entry of the last two months, I doubt it can coax weary audiences with either its stars (Dennis Quaid, Ben Foster, Cam Gigandet) or its plot (amnesiac astronauts awake from a long hypersleep, only to find their ship is beset with aliens). And what the hell is a "pandorum," anyway? I'm getting tired just writing this... must... finish... $7.5 million... zzzzzz...
THE UNDERDOG: So Paramount begins its Paranormal Activity experiment today, unveiling the $12,000 ghost-surveillance indie in college markets from Austin to Boulder to Columbus and about 10 others. Even facing competition from football (Lincoln, Nebraska? Really, Paramount?), I like its chances to harness a bit of buzz and a healthy per-screen average around $10,000. Moreover, I'm just encouraged to see a studio try anything relatively different in a total bloodbath era of distribution; I can definitely wait to see it if it means someone tried something new-ish that actually works.
FOR SHUT-INS: New DVD releases this week include Seth Rogen's underachiever Observe and Report, Matthew McConaughey's overachiever Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, the notable animated failure Battle For Terra, Paul Schrader's drama Adam Resurrected, and complete-season sets of 30 Rock, Ugly Betty, Castle, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and, finally, Taxi.