The Big Picture

Will Ferrell's basket-goofball comedy Semi-Pro won the top spot this weekend, but with only a $15 million take, making it a somewhat anemic weekend box office. Oscar hangover, we'll call it.

1. Semi-Pro - $15.2 m
2. Vantage Point - $13m
3. The Spiderwick Chronicles - $8.7m
4. The Other Boleyn Girl - $8.3m
5. Jumper - $7.6m
6. Step Up 2 The Streets - $5.7m
7. Fool's Gold - $4.6m
8. Penelope - $4.006m
9. No Country for Old Men - $4.005m
10. Juno - $3.3m

Right before her somewhat awkward appearance on Saturday Night Live (check her wildest sketch here), Ellen Page pulled out of the horror project she was working on with Sam Raimi, called Drag Me to Hell. AICN has the press release, which apparently contradicts an earlier report that she didn't like the last draft of the script.

Either way, I find it somewhat fascinating that Page seems awkward pretty much everywhere I see her. Maybe she's just a little strange, or maybe she's really nervous being thrust into this role of 'movie star,' but she never seems comfortable in her own skin, much less fancy dresses. Juno seems to be the only place where she's comfortable and relaxed. This does little to quell the desire to hug her, which will undoubtedly make her feel even more awkward. Curse you, Catch-22!

Funnyman Tim Allen will be plying his trade behind the camera for Crazy On the Outside, his feature film debut. He'll also be starring as an ex-con who discovers his sister's family is crazier than prison was, which means he'll get to bring his personal jailbird experience to the role as well. He served 28 months for cocaine possession back around 1978, likely when he was still known as Tim Dick.

I like knowing that his real name is Tim Dick.

Anyway, it looks like he might be lining up an interesting cast, including Schnook Ray Liotta, Trinity Carrie-Anne Moss, Frasier Kelsey Grammer (no stranger to law trouble himself) and Ed-lover Julie Bowen. It's supposed to be "adult-themed," and Allen can be amusing when he's allowed to get dirty. There's an outside chance this'll be a fun movie.

Into the Wild: Emile Hirsch's performance as Christopher McCandless, aka Alexander Supertramp, was wrongly overlooked during the big award season. He carries this quiet, meditative film telling the true story of a guy who completely cut himself off from the prison of civilization to live without means. Hal Holbrook certainly deserved his Best Supporting Actor nomination as the old soul who's inspired to live again by McCandless' boundless energy, and who gives the young man a father figure he doesn't have to rebel against.

Things We Lost in the Fire: Early expectations for Oscar contention didn't hold true, but some, like Hollywood Elsewhere's Jeffrey Wells, continued to lament that Benicio Del Toro's performance wasn't considered for Best Actor in this drama about a family dealing with intense grief.

Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium: Somebody obviously thought of that name and tried to force it to be a movie. Emporium is a cool word, but not that cool.

Awake: Jessica Alba and Hayden Christensen join forces to try and act their way out of that paper bag when Christensen remains awake during surgery and is thusly traumatized.

Alison Lohman has stepped in to replace Ellen Page in Sam Rami's return to the horror genre that made him famous, his directorial effort Drag Me to Hell. Page had to drop out due to "scheduling conflicts," so Lohman will be playing the role of the supernaturally cursed woman.

It remains to be seen whether or not this is going to be a true horror film, or something awesome in the style of Army of Darkness.

Rose Byrne has joined Nicolas Cage in a film called Knowing.

Byrne will play the daughter of a woman who buried a 1962 time capsule bearing the dates of the assassinations of historical figures, the hotel fire death of the wife of a professor (Cage) and an imminent world apocalypse. After the professor discovers its contents and alerts her, the initially skeptical Byrne begins remembering strange incidents from her childhood.

It's an Alex Proyas project, who's milieu includes stuff like The Crow, Dark City and I, Robot, and this sounds firmly sci-fi, right in his wheelhouse. National Treasure's Nic Cage must love his history.

I am decidedly not the target audience for this film, but one can't deny its popularity. So I'll refer you to the brand new Sex and the City trailer here on Fancast and the actual fans of the show: gay men. LOGO has an interview with the four lovely large-living ladies: Kim Cattrall, Sarah Jessica Parker, Cynthia Nixon and Kristin Davis.

Choice dish:

Kim Cattrall: Early last year Chris Albrecht [the head honcho from HBO] called me when I was just about to go to Dublin, Ireland to do a thing for ITV. He told me, “I was in a movie theatre watching The Devil Wears Prada, it was absolutely packed and I looked around and realized, ‘We created this audience.’ And I think we really need to do the film.”

Cynthia Nixon: It was wild. My first day was the second or third day of filming, when all four of us were working for the first time. We were back in these outfits, and these heels again. And we'd been away from it, and now there were 200 people and photographers on the street watching, which was very new for us. And we had to re-learn how to walk down the street and walk in unison and not teeter over in our heels, but it kind of felt great. What it felt like was a four-headed eight-legged organism.

Sarah Jessica Parker: The movie doesn’t pick up right where the series ended, it's a few years later, which makes everything—well, in terms of Carrie’s life specifically, there's much more at stake. There’s a lot more time invested in her relationship with Big, and obviously in her friendships, her career and what she thinks is the destination point in her life.

The story—which is like the whole series—is about friendship and growing up and the decisions we make and the triumphs. And it's about the massive disappointment and the mistakes, and what you learn and what you don’t learn when you should learn. A lot of this movie is going to be surprising to people. This is a grown-up movie.

Things happen in this movie that are very… Basically, it's about the despair you feel when you’re 20 versus the despair you feel or the loss you feel when you’re 40, and they are vastly different. And the movie really addresses it, and it really looks at how important your friendships are.

The movie is just so packed with stuff. And something major happens that fundamentally changes who Carrie is. She’s a new person in a lot of ways in this movie, because she finds herself at the crucible for the first time. Everything is different.

Kristin Davis: When people started saying, “They’re really gay men,” we were like, “Wait a minute! That’s a little far-fetched.” I wasn’t trying to play a gay man. But when something hits, people project a lot and at a certain point, you go, “They're going to say what they are going to say.” And you just go with it.

The Reese Witherspoon-produced Penelope didn't fare particularly well at the box office last weekend, but nothing else really did, either, in the post-Oscar letdown. It's also gotten some harsh press that it doesn't deserve, because it's actually a very cute little fable about a girl with a disfiguring curse who learns to accept herself as she is. It's a low-budget fantasy that occasionally betrays that, feeling a little herky-jerky and slipshod at times, but the strength of the performances by Christina Ricci, Catherine O'Hara, Peter Dinklage and James McAvoy all help to make it a good way to spend a couple of hours, especially if you've got daughters to entertain.

Ricci herself has some more reasons why you should check it out, especially since her captor from Black Snake Moan also found it moving. Check out what she had to say after the jump.

Gerard Butler is the latest among actors who are setting up their own production companies. He's called it Evil Twins and its first film will be Law-Abiding Citizen. Written by The Thomas Crown Affair's Kurt Wimmer (who also wrote the upcoming Street Kings), Butler will star in it as a lawyer caught up in a traumatized vigilante's revenge plot.

Insert your own joke about lawyer's kicking a witness in the chest and yelling "THIS! IS! PERJURY!"

The untitled David Goyer project starring Gary Oldman and Cloverfield's Odette Yustman now has a name, Unborn, and a much bigger cast, including the great Carla Gugino, Meagan Good, Jane Alexander and Idris Elba.

Michael Bay, Andrew Form and Brad Fuller are producing writer-director David Goyer's tale of a girl (Yustman) tormented by the soul of a boy who died in the Holocaust. Good ("The Love Guru") will play the girl's best friend, and Gugino ("Spy Kids") has been cast as her mother. Alexander will play a Holocaust survivor whose brother's spirit is returning. Elba ("American Gangster") will play a priest who helps Rabbi Oldman perform exorcisms. Coiro (HBO's "Entourage") is the college professor of Yustman's character, and Cam Gigandet will play her boyfriend.

The biggest problem for any movie isn't coming up with the ideas, but rather figuring out a satisfying ending to the story. I Am Legend had a dark ending with a hopeful epilogue, but the alternate ending has now found its way to the internet, and it's definitely worth a look. It's creepier and makes things much more ambiguous.

Oddly enough, it might be one of the first times an ending has been changed to keep the hero dead instead of implausibly alive. Check it out, then tell us what you think of it.

Confessions of a Shopaholic has just cast its star Isla Fisher's parents with a double-deuce of good comic chops - John Goodman and Joan Cusack, and that triumvirate does seem to lift the project beyond the lamentable title.

The film is described as a woman dealing with financial issues while trying to survive in the New York magazine world. In other words, what if the Carrie Bradshaw actually had a budget?

Superhero movies are all over the place these days, and they've even inspired an unfortunate Leslie Nielsen spoof called, of course, Superhero Movie. They used to be rare events, like Christopher Reeve's Superman or Tim Burton's Batman, alway doubted and dismissed. It wasn't until 1998 when Marvel Comics managed to peek into the fray with Wesley Snipes' modest vampire-hunter Blade. Then the X-Men humbly asked to see if they were invited, which set the stage for Spider-Man to blow the doors wide open for any and all funnybook folks to get their stab at cinematic glory.

The trouble with this arises when people who don't quite get what makes a good superhero movie take cracks at it anyway. You've got guys like Tim Story and Mark Steven Johnson, certified comic-book fanboys, who nonetheless have no real concept of how to put together a successful movie, which results in lackluster efforts like Fantastic Four, Daredevil, its spin-off Elektra and the more recent Ghost Rider. They all have a cool look to them, which is a crucial element, but the actual stories being told often feel too contrived, too slipshod and generally not rich enough in character. You can't blame sub-par writing on a low budget.

Conversely, you've got fantastic filmmakers like Ang Lee and Christopher Nolan, who introduce revolutionary new takes on these classic superhero icons with Hulk and the great Batman Begins, coming up with very interesting dramatic results that nonetheless put all the kids and action fans right to sleep. While Nolan may well remedy that in his sequel, The Dark Knight, Johnson is likely not a good enough filmmaker to learn what not to do.

Then came Iron Man. Helmed by Jon Favreau, an avowed comic fan steeped in nerd-cred who nonetheless cut his teeth making films driven by dialog and character like Swingers, and who is billionaire industrialist playboy Tony Stark but the ultimate swinger?

This was the first trailer we saw for Favreau's Iron Man, showcasing the undeniable talents of Robert Downey Jr. completely nailing the role of suave and cocky arms dealer Stark, but before most of the effects work had been finished. Then came the quick Super Bowl spot which gave us just a little bit more. Now, we've got this new, full-length trailer that shows us the armored avenger in all his glory, not to mention the big, mean bad guy who's going to be throwing down with him.

In what is likely to be her last shoot-em-up action movie (which makes sense given her status as world-mother and UN peace ambassador and what-not), Angelina Jolie gives us that classic Hackers-era Crazie Angie look one more time, full of tattoos and attitude. New stills have been released from her upcoming blast called Wanted, an adaptation of a graphic novel about a world run by supervillains. Odd note: in the book, her character is drawn to somewhat resemble Halle Berry, complete with little Catwoman ears.

So enjoy some stills of Angelina being a badass.

Decades in the making, Alan Moore's genre-changing work Watchmen is finally getting its big-screen adaptation, and director Zack Snyder has sworn to be as true to the graphic novel as he possibly can in an effort to be the one film version of Moore's work to which Moore himself might consider allowing his name to be attached. So far, the only images released from the film have been set pieces and one frame of the hardcore vigilante Rorschach in action. Now, finally, we see the principal characters in their full glory at the official site maintained by Snyder himself.

Check out more after the jump. By the looks of these images, they may be on the right track. The verdict will be rendered on March 6, 2009. One year from now.

To continue the Robert Downey Jr. lovefest I've been having here for the last couple weeks, here's an image from Ben Stiller's next directorial effort Tropic Thunder, a skewering of insufferable actors. True, Hollywood people are easy targets and audiences can get tired of lame in-jokes, but people also have made Entourage a big hit, so it's not impossible to find an audience with this sort of self-referential product. EW's got more details, including some thoughts from Downey himself on playing a pretentious white man playing a black man.

''If it's done right, it could be the type of role you called Peter Sellers to do 35 years ago,'' Downey says. ''If you don't do it right, we're going to hell.''

"At the end of the day, it's always about how well you commit to the character,'' he says. ''I dove in with both feet. If I didn't feel it was morally sound, or that it would be easily misinterpreted that I'm just C. Thomas Howell in [Soul Man], I would've stayed home.''

Downey Jr. plays Kirk Lazarus, a very serious Oscar-winning actor cast in the most expensive Vietnam War film ever. Problem is, Lazarus's character, Sgt. Osiris, was originally written as black. So Lazarus decides to dye his skin and play Osiris, um, authentically. Downey plays one of a team of self-indulgent stars cast in the modern equivalent of Apocalypse Now. Stiller plays an action hero who has just adopted a baby from Asia but worries that ''all the good ones are gone.'' Black portrays a comedian known for performing multiple roles in a single film — his latest is called The Fatties: Fart 2.

So not only is Downey playing a black man, but Jack Black is playing Eddie Murphy. I tend to dislike movies about Hollywood, but this one may have just sold me. And apparently I should finally see Stiller's last directorial work, Zoolander.

I'm not sure what happened to Raven Symone, but it's somewhat unsettling to be around her. She's a strong woman, independent and business-smart, and she's determined to set herself up as a force to be reckoned with in the entertainment industry, both on-screen and behind the scenes. She's avoided not only the scandalous pitfalls surrounding a lot of child actresses, but also the misconception that women must either be rail thin or banished into obscurity for not fitting the mold. This is all admirable and impressive of her, but there's still something that's just... not right about her.

She came into the press conference for College Road Trip with a shade of lipstick so shock red that I honestly thought she was a clown at first glance. This could very well have started my brain off on the wrong foot (er, lobe), since clowns are generally disturbing and can be specifically terrifying. It's possible that she was tainted from the age of 3 by working with the king of camera-mugging Bill Cosby, or by growing up in the Disney Channel school of overacting, but watching her handle questions from the press was a strange experience. She would make eye-rolling half-quips at nearly everything, and she would bust out some kind of challenging 'oh no you didn't' look so often and so randomly that one might think it was a facial tic. She was likely just putting on her act for the press, but it seemed weirdly robotic, or at best awkward.

Perhaps I'm just not familiar with her fan base or her Disney cred. She's a smart young woman who worked as a producer on this film as well as co-starring, so maybe she's just eccentric. Sadly, though, this wacky comedy about an overprotective father (Martin Lawrence) stifling his daughter's collegiate choices doesn't really pack anything remotely resembling laughter for an adult audience, but kids may enjoy the precocious pet pot-bellied pig running around and causing trouble. Written by committee, it's a bunch of disjointed, tired slapstick that everyone has seen before, although it's been a while since I have personally seen the depiction of all teenaged girls as nothing but high-pitched incoherent screamers who jump on beds for fun. Donny Osmond shows up in an over-the-top ridiculous supporting role spoofing his own uber-white-boy image, which is occasionally amusing but eventually gets a bit grating.

The only thing that rang true was the moment where the father has to watch his baby girl leave the nest and he keeps flashing back to her as a kid (although I'm sure enough footage of Raven as a 3-year-old exists that they could've used that instead of hiring a child actor), but even that gets a little overdone. However, it may be enough to poke holes in one's cynicism, at least for a brief moment or three, to ask yourself "where does the time go?"

Then you look at your watch and wonder where your last two hours went.

The Bank Job: Jason Statham leads a team of unlikely thieves to pull off an impossible job in this adaptation of a true-life story about one of the biggest robberies in British history.

College Road Trip: A lackluster G-rated comedy about Martin Lawrence as an overprotective father trying to stifle his daughter Raven Symone's higher-educational choices. There's barely a smirk to be had, although some of the sap may poke through the cynical demeanor.

10,000 B.C.: A ridiculous unintentional comedy from the guy who ruined Godzilla and forced us to settle for Cloverfield. Roland Emmerich needs to concentrate on effects and stop trying to direct. Please.

John Krasinski, Maya Rudolph and Cheryl Hines have signed on to star in a Sam Mendes comedy penned by Dave Eggers and his wife Vendela Vida that currently has no title. The story is about a pregnant couple traveling the country looking for a place good enough for them to set down roots and build a home.

It's overflowing with talent, so we can hope for good things.

The latest chatter is that Leonardo DiCaprio might once again team up with The Departed screenwriter William Monahan to remake a Korean film called The Chaser, much like The Departed was a remake of the Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs.

On the surface, it sounds like a generic action movie, about a cop who goes over the edge while trying to hunt down a girl being held hostage, but there's gotta be more to it if these folks are involved.

Yes, No Country for Old Men finally got them the recognition they deserve, but Joel and Ethan Coen have been making fantastic movies for years now. Here are films you must now seek out if you haven't before. When you rent No Country on DVD next week, grab a few of these, too.

Miller's Crossing: This is perhaps their best work, definitely a cut above their Oscar winners. Gabriel Byrne is Tom Reagan, right-hand man to mob boss Leo (Albert Finney), loyal to a fault, save for the fact that he's caught up in an affair with Leo's Verna (Marcia Gay Harden). When rival boss Johnny Caspar (the fantastic Jon Polito) starts making waves until an all-out mob war erupts over Verna's desperate brother Bernie (John Turturro), only Tom can navigate the twisted web he weaves. Beautifully shot and perfectly crafted, anyone who says the like the