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What should you go see this weekend? Which new movie will be a hit? Which ones will bomb worse than a film about the Iraq war?

Here’s a look at the four main movies opening today…

Street Kings
Stars: Keanu Reeves, Forest Whitaker, Chris Evans, Common
Quick synopsis: A veteran LAPD officer is falsely accused of murdering a fellow officer.
Prediction: Unless Reeves is being hailed as “The One,” movie goers don’t care about him. Street Kings will perform like a jester.

Smart People
Stars: Sarah Jessica Parker, Dennis Quaid, Thomas Hayden Church, Ellen Page
Quick synopsis: A widowed professor is faced with a new love interest.
Prediction: Less than stellar reviews shouldn’t stop a film with this solid of a cast from raking in the dough.

Prom Night
Stars: Brittany Snow
Quick synopsis: On the night of her senior prom, a student is stalked by a former teacher.
Prediction: Brittany Snow is hot. Horror is still in. Look for a decent box office haul.

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It’s a basic, time-tested movie equation:

Beautiful girl + Screaming + Torn apart clothing = Ch-ching!

With Brittany Snow and the film Prom Night fitting that description perfectly, we expect the horror flick to do well at the box office this week. But does that mean it’s actually any good? Let’s see what a few critics have to say about that…

- The new Prom Night is insistently lifeless, which I think is worse than simply being awful. At least awful has some personality to it…the defanged slasher movement once again lays a rotten egg. – Brian Orndorf

- A snappy teen movie that’s short and as sharp as the blade bloodied by its distinctively featured psychopathic killer. It’s formulaic and there’s nothing new, mind you, but it’s well done and it is our imaginations that are encouraged to create the horror. — Urban Cinefile

- Outside of a brief clip from Can’t Hardly Wait, there is absolutely nothing in Prom Night that is even remotely scary. - eFilmCritic

- It’s tough to be terrified by [Schaech’s] absurdly methodical pursuit of Donna’s friends, who he has no reason to kill besides maybe coveting their seats at the lunch table. — Metromix.com

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Review in a Hurry:  The Rolling Stones and Martin Scorsese—it probably looked great on paper. Oh, sure, the concert scenes in this documentary about the Stones' show in New...

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Review in a Hurry:  This adaptation of a fantastical children's novel is really all about the adults—namely, Jodie Foster, thanks to her scene-stealing turn as a scaredy-cat...

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Review in a Hurry:  Hit me! Whiz kids take the casinos for millions in this based-on-a-true-story thriller that aces the geek-cred test but just barely passes everything else. The...

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Review in a Hurry:  About as unpopular as the war in Iraq are movies about the war in Iraq, but no matter: Director Kimberly Peirce (who made her mark with the intense, devastating Boys Don't...

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The details of Sex and the City: The Movie have been guarded closely. All we can say for certain about the film is that it’s due in theaters on May 30.

However, director Michael Patrick King has told Entertainment Weekly that Fergie just recorded the film’s opening sing.

“It’s called ‘Labels & Love,’” he said. “It’s an entirely new song with lyrics, but it has the Sex and the City theme as the DNA — on steroids.”

Moreover, since this is a film about mouthy divas, Jennifer Hudson (who plays Carrie’s assistant), will lend her pipes to the ballad “All Dressed Up in Love.” It was written by MC Jack Splash and Gnarls Barkley’s Cee-Lo; it plays during the end credits.

“She sings it like nobody’s business,” said King.

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Cinema Blend has published an interesting rumor regarding The Dark Knight.

According to that movie site, a scene has been deleted from the next Batman installment because it too closely reflects the unfortunate passing of star Heath Ledger.

Reportedly, the scene involves The Joker pretending to be dead, photographed in a body bag.

If this rumor is true, we think it’s a mistake by producers. The Joker was Ledger’s final performance. The best way to honor the actor is to showcase the role in its entirety. Don’t panic and cater to overly sensitive, misguided, politically correct-minded people who can’t differentiate between reality and fiction.

What do you think? Should The Dark Knight be edited down due to Ledger’s death?

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On May 16, the follow-up to The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe hits theaters. But what can fans expect from The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian?

The good folks at Moviefone have actually come up with an in-depth Character Guide to help viewers get to know the film and the plot before it comes out. Before you head over to check it out, look over the following description of Glenstorm:

An honorable Centaur (is there any other kind?), Glenstorm is also an astronomer charged with watching the skies for portents. And he’s good at his job.

Glenstorm knows what Caspian will try to achieve before he even attempts it. At the Narnian Council, the centaur encourages the old Narnians to trust in Caspian’s commitment to bring freedom to all.

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She’s one of Hollywood’s fastest-rising actresses, an Oscar-nominee, and a major power player who has worked with the likes of Jodie Foster and Steve Carell. Now, with Hollywood’s newest scandal focusing on her tragic separation from a longtime companion, Abigail Breslin has a question for the media and her fans alike.

Have you seen her doll?

“George was abducted…this is the sad truth,” sighed the 11-year-old “Little Miss Sunshine” star. “It’s very sad, and it’s very upsetting.”

Throughout the 2006-2007 awards season, Breslin was all over red carpets for events like the Academy Awards and Golden Globes, always clutching her tattered, Curious George doll. When I caught her heading into a Globes party last year, she giggled about how her stuffed date and her would soon head home, since it was past their bed time. Breslin even did a photo shoot for the (red) campaign holding George.

“I went to the Polo Lounge, and I was eating lunch,” she revealed to me recently, remembering the sad disappearance of her beloved monkey. “I put him under the table, and I left him, and when we called [afterwards], he wasn’t there anymore.”

If only in an attempt to live out my lifelong dream of being a character in a Dashiell Hammett novel, I want to get to the bottom of this mystery. So, dear MTV Movies Blog readers, if any of you have seen Abby’s doll, please drop us a line at tips@mtvmoviesblog.com. And if you happen to have it in your possession, we’ll arrange safe passage back to her – no questions asked.

“It’s really sad, it’s really sad,” Breslin sighed, before trying to put a happy face on the situation. “But here’s the thing: I found the same [type of doll], and now I have Velvet. He looks like the same George.”

But still, we all remember how sad it was when we lost our favorite childhood toys. And after countless photos seen all over the world of Breslin and George attending Hollywood events, I can’t help but think somebody snagged the doll with thoughts of putting it up on eBay.

“I probably would buy him back,” Breslin said, considering the idea of George popping up on the auction website. “I’d be like ‘Okay, let’s see how could I do this,’ and then I would get it, and be like ‘George! Long time, no see!’”

Abby’s first starring role, in the fantasy flick “Nim’s Island,” is in theaters now. If you have any info about George, please send it in - and maybe we can reunite her with the little monkey on the red carpet at her next premiere.

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James Cameron’s upcoming Avatar ranks as one of the most anticipated film projects in recent memory. The film will mark the Oscar winner’s first narrative movie since Titanic, while also representing Cameron’s long-held dream of melding digital 3-D stereo with epic big screen storytelling.

Below, the director discusses the project with Variety. You can read the full interview here.

We’re seeing that audiences like 3-D and it’s becoming a main driver for adoption of digital cinema systems in movie theaters. But speaking strictly as a storyteller and director, what does 3-D add to the creative side of a project?
I believe that Godard got it exactly backwards. Cinema is not truth 24 times a second, it is lies 24 times a second. Actors are pretending to be people they’re not, in situations and settings which are completely illusory. Day for night, dry for wet, Vancouver for New York, potato shavings for snow.

The building is a thin-walled set, the sunlight is a xenon, and the traffic noise is supplied by the sound designers. It’s all illusion, but the prize goes to those who make the fantasy the most real, the most visceral, the most involving. This sensation of truthfulness is vastly enhanced by the stereoscopic illusion. Especially in the types of films which have been my specialty to date, the fantasy experience is served best by a sense of detail and textural reality supporting the narrative moment by moment.

The characters, the dialogue, the production design, photography and visual effects must all strive to give the illusion that what you’re seeing is really happening, no matter how improbable the situation might be if you stopped to think about it — a time-traveling cyborg out to change history by killing a waitress, for example. When you see a scene in 3-D, that sense of reality is supercharged. The visual cortex is being cued, at a subliminal but pervasive level, that what is being seen is real.

All the films I’ve done previously could absolutely have benefited from 3-D. So creatively, I see 3-D as a natural extension of my cinematic craft.

A 3-D film immerses you in the scene, with a greatly enhanced sense of physical presence and participation. I believe that a functional-MRI study of brain activity would show that more neurons are actively engaged in processing a 3-D movie than the same film seen in 2-D. When most people think of 3-D films, they think first of the gimmick shots — objects or characters flying, floating or poking out into the audience.

In fact, in a good stereo movie, these shots should be the exception rather than the rule. Watching a stereo movie is looking into an alternate reality through a window. It is intuitive to the film industry that this immersive quality is perfect for action, fantasy, and animation. What’s less obvious is that the enhanced sense of presence and realism works in all types of scenes, even intimate dramatic moments.

(more…)

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