Maybe I missed something, but since when did releasing films on a Wednesday become a commonplace strategy? I know, for years and years, several titles have opened mid-week, albeit typically on a handful of NY/LA screens or to capitalize on a holiday weekend.

But due to some recent moves, every Wednesday in August now has at least one wide release opening on it instead of Friday. On the 6th, we have Pineapple Express and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2; the 13th brings us Tropic Thunder; the 20th, The Rocker; and then Traitor on the 27th.

There are at least three other wide releases on the last three Fridays of the month, but I see no distinct point at which a two-day head start would make any great deal of difference (although I presume that Pineapple still wanted to have seven days on Tropic instead of five when it comes to their similar target demographic).

Was there a holiday I overlooked somewhere? Is it now cooler for kids to go to the movies on a school night once classes are back in session? Do you guys have any theories, or will you still wait for the weekend to catch any of these regardless?

It seemed too strange to be true. Only a handful of months after I watched Jessica Yu's excellent Protagonist, a Euripides-based story about four very different men and their manifestations of obsession, another one of her films was hitting Toronto. But it was nothing like the previous piece -- it was a fictional, comedic narrative about ping pong playing. Talk about drastic twists in themes! Ping Pong Playa' was an entirely new arena for the Oscar winner.

Now The Hollywood Reporter posts that the film is finally hitting big screens outside of the festival circuit. IFC Films has picked up the US rights to the comedy, and it will head into a limited release on September 5. While you might have run the other way from Balls of Fury, Playa' is definitely worth another glance.

The film is a cute look at a basketball-obsessed slacker named C-Dub (Jimmy Tsai) who ignores his family's ping pong inclinations -- his mom runs a ping pong store and his brother is a champion. However, when both of them are injured in a car crash, he has to not only take over his mother's classes, but also put two jerky pongers in their place. It's a story we've seen before, but it's also fresh, sweet, and refreshingly smart and diverse. (Check out a review, some interviews, and the trailer.)

In a perfect cinematic world, you'd be able to watch every movie you wanted to watch as soon as it was released on a big screen with good sound and projection and an appreciative audience. In the real world, we're always making compromises: my friends don't want to see what I want to see tonight, that new indie movie is only playing in New York and may never play in my town, the woman sitting next to me in the theater keeps talking to her friends.

Mad Detective opened on Friday, but as noted by Eric D. Snider in his latest Indie Spotlight, only in New York. I have no idea if it will ever play in Dallas, where I live, but based on recent history, chances are, it won't. I'm a huge fan of Hong Kong filmmakers Johnny To and Wai Ka Fai, who co-directed, and Lau Ching Wan, a great, underappreciated actor (Beyond Hypothermia, Big Bullet, A Hero Never Dies), but I've been reluctant to spring for the import DVD, which would set me back nearly 20 bucks. (The trailer's available to watch at Moviefone.)

So I compromised and spent $5.99 to watch Mad Detective via the "IFC in Theaters" video on demand (VOD) service on my cable system. That's comparable to a matinee showing at a local arthouse -- I paid $6.75 to see The Wackness on Saturday afternoon -- but the experience is, obviously, not the same. For one thing, "IFC in Theaters" is only available in standard definition, so the picture looks only so-so, even on my 26-inch high-def monitor.

I was just re-watching Eugene Jarecki's terrific documentary Why We Fight the other day and wondering, "man, how did this not win an Oscar?" Both its ineligibility and the strength of the 2006 feature documentary category aside, it's a really great visual essay on the problems of the U.S. military -- particularly the allowance for the military industrial complex to grow so large -- since the mid-20th century. If you've never seen it, you should. It'll bring you up to speed right up to the Iraq War (and feel free to make it an informative double feature by following it up with Charles Ferguson's No End in Sight).

For his next feature, Jarecki is sticking to the subject of war, though he's going back and focusing on Vietnam, specifically the evacuation of U.S. troops from Saigon in 1975 (maybe it can parallel an exit from Iraq? huh? maybe?). He and screenwriter Jesse Wigutow (It Runs in the Family) are basing the doc, titled Irreparable Harm, on former CIA agent Frank Snepp's book "Irreparable Harm: A Firsthand Account of How One Agent Took on the CIA in an Epic Battle Over Free Speech," which details the author's struggle with the federal government after he published his Saigon evacuation document, "Decent Interval."

Jarecki's film, which is being produced for HBO Films, will be more about Snepp than on the history, and hopefully that won't get him in trouble with the feds too. Also, here's hoping that Irreparable Harm at least makes Jarecki eligible to be nominated for the Oscar he deserves.

This is turning into one long tease. All the Boys Love Mandy Lane debuted to generally good reaction at the Toronto film festival nearly two years ago. (James Rocchi called it "the best modern slasher flick since Scream.") Senator Entertainment picked up distribution rights after The Weinstein Co. / Dimension unexpectedly dumped it shortly before its scheduled release one year ago. Since then, we've been waiting ... and waiting ... and waiting.

In the meantime, director Jonathan Levine moved on to his next film, the well-received The Wackness, and Senator Entertainment surprised us by releasing ... a new poster. (OK, we take what we can get.) At some point they also made a new trailer, which you can view at the trailer website for Fantasia, Montreal's amazingly awesome genre festival. They have a good write-up on the film, too, and you'll see James' review quoted on the page. (Sorry, you've already missed the two screenings there.)

The Senator trailer doesn't look markedly different from The Weinstein Co. trailer, but, to its credit, it spells out even less than the previous one. The most irritating thing is probably where it promises to be out "This Spring." The poster promises "This Summer." Is that "This Year"? We do know that UK film lovers can buy it on DVD in just a few days; I'm not holding my breath much longer for this one.

[Thanks to Bloody Disgusting.]

Poised to debut in its native land today, a Korean Western is also making plans to conquer the United States. The Good, the Bad, the Weird has been acquired by IFC Films for US distribution, according to CJ Entertainment, the film's Korean distributor.

As noted by the Korean Film Council, advance ticket reservations are unprecedented for what's been described as South Korea's most expensive production (US$17 million) to date. Directed by Kim Jee-woon, The Good, the Bad, the Weird debuted at Cannes in May. Kim Voynar said it is " a crazy, busy Western that centers around a map to a treasure happened upon by a (seemingly) bumbling fool, who ends up being pursued by a good-guy law-enforcement type, a wicked bad guy dressed in black, and, at one point, an entire army. It runs a little long, but it's funny and sharp, with a spectacular chase sequence near the end and a nice final payoff."

The film will have its North American Premiere at Toronto and then open in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and three other major cities in the first half of 2009. The director most recently made the terrific horror flick A Tale of Two Sisters and crime drama A Bittersweet Life. but he also made the wrestling-themed comedy The Foul King and the very darkly humorous The Quiet Family. You can watch the trailer, check out the posters, stills, and more at the Korean-language official site.

[ via Twitch ]

And you thought Wall-E was political. JibJib, the interactive e-card site founded by brothers Evan and Gregg Spiridellis, have returned to the scene that originally brought them fame. The duo first received national notice during the 2004 presidential campaign, when their riotous spoof This Land presented the two candidates (and a variety of secondary players) as rotund heads on animated bodies spouting rhetoric in rhythmic harmony. Since then, the JibJab site has placed more focus on the e-card business, but now it's back to the good old days with Time for Some Campaignin', a jolly tune to set the stage for the Obama/McCain face-off in the weeks to come.

The new video is similar to This Land in that it opts not to spoof either candidate more than the other, instead focusing on the larger campaigning process. It's hard not to laugh at the goofy visuals and smartly composed lyrics (especially those involving the Clintons), but it seems to me that the Spiridellis' work will never attain the degree of insight offered by the satire on The Daily Show (or The New Yorker, for that matter) because of this resolutely non-partisan approach. What do you think?

Twentieth Century Fox has changed the release date on the Rainn Wilson comedy The Rocker again, but I think this move might be for the best. Maybe. We'll see. What do I know?

The flick, in which Wilson plays a former rock drummer who gets a new chance at stardom when he joins his teenage nephew's band, was originally slated for Friday, Aug. 1. Then they decided a Wednesday was better, so it became July 30. But now Fox has announced that it's been pushed back three weeks to Wednesday, Aug. 20.

Why the shuffle? Fox didn't say, but I would guess it's to avoid the raucous comedies Step Brothers (due on July 25), Pineapple Express (Aug. 8), and Tropic Thunder (Aug. 13). A July 30 release would have put it in the middle of a comedy war zone, and The Rocker -- which got so-so reviews (including my own) when it played at CineVegas and doesn't have nearly as much star power as those three -- would have gotten trampled. It would have been a PG-13 David against three R-rated Goliaths.

By Aug. 20, Step Brothers and Pineapple Express will have already done most of their box office damage, leaving Tropic Thunder as the only big-name comedy competing with The Rocker. I think it's smart to stick with a Wednesday, too, as three more comedies -- The House Bunny, Hamlet 2, and The Longshots -- open on Friday, Aug. 22.

What do you think? Is there too much comedy competition between now and Labor Day? Or are the films different enough that they won't be stealing each other's audiences?

While there have been a lot of interesting summer movies to check out this year, from Indy to Wall-E, there are only three that have inspired me to make opening night plans. The first is this week's The Dark Knight, followed by August 8th's Huey Lewis-themed The Pineapple Express, and finally, the wonder that is Tropic Thunder. And now you can rejoice! The Ben Stiller comedy is coming to us earlier.

Ignore that "15" on the wonderful poster to the right, because DreamWorks has moved the comedy up two days to the 13th of August. Sure, it's not a whole bunch of time, but it does cut the wait by a few days. And really -- DreamWorks can't bump it back a week, because then it would be in direct competition with the stoner flick. This new date will give the film a head start on its weekend competition -- Mirrors and Star Wars: The Clone Wars, although I think it will find more competition from the Rogen-led Express.

Do you think this is a good move for the film, and are you ready to change your Wednesday the 13th plans?

Maybe you've seen them, maybe you haven't, but French thrillers are making a comeback in North America. That's good news for people uninterested in art houses solely for the sake of watching foreign films: You don't have to be a Francophile to appreciate smart, meticulously generated suspense, and that's exactly the appeal of several French movies hitting American theaters this year. A steady mixture of warm reviews and positive word-of-mouth appears to have helped Guillame Canet's breathlessly entertaining drama Tell No One land an impressive $240,858 at 18 locations. Earlier this year, veteran auteur Claude Lelouch, long known for his cinematic explorations of eroticism and lawbreaking, remained thematically consistent with a delightfully complex story of double-crossing novelists and dysfunctional families called Roman de Gare. The movie made over $25,000 on two New York screens when it opened in late April, and eventually pulled in more than $1.5 million after expanding to theaters around the country. It's not hard to argue that Tell No One and Roman de Gare put most recent American thrillers to shame. North America, once the haven of film noir, appears to be outsourcing.

As journalist Erica Abeel recently observed in an interview with Canet, "French filmmakers are currently making the best old-style Hollywood thrillers." It's not the first time for a country that has a long history of borrowing from American cinema, and often improving on it. At the beginning of the French New Wave in the early 1960s, former Cahiers du Cinema critics like Jean Luc-Godard discovered Hollywood genre films and decided to make their own loopy versions. The results were often strangely philosophical and experiment works, ranging from Godard's Breathless to François Truffaut's ambitious Shoot the Piano Player.

In my recent celebratory rant about the new Latin American cinema classics, I failed to mention any films from Chile. This was not my intention, but admittedly I am not familiar with that country's film production, as most Americans are not. The most well-known contemporary Chilean filmmaker is probably Raoul Ruiz (or Raúl Ruiz), who is likely more associated with French cinema and is considered even more generally to be an international filmmaker. Like Ruiz, a lot of Chile's filmmakers left their country 35 years ago when Pinochet came to power. Fortunately, since Chile became a democracy again in 1990, film production there has been on the rise and will fortunately one day be as big as neighboring Argentina's film industry.

Chilean cinema could have a boost thanks to Lionsgate, which has just picked up Rodrigo Ortuzar's All Inclusive for U.S. distribution. The film, about a family trapped at a resort when a Hurricane hits its Yucatan location and co-starring Street Kings' Martha Higareda (pictured), is set in and was co-produced by Mexico, which is fine considering the association allows the film to be lumped with recent partially Mexican films like Under the Same Moon and the Spanish-language work of Guillermo Del Toro. Lionsgate also handled distribution for last year's U.S.-produced Spanish-language film Bandoleros, Lionsgate has yet to announce a release date for All Inclusive.

When it comes to Hollywood movies, Chinese censors have always been a little strict. Case in point: The State Administration for Radio, Film and Television tells Variety that the upcoming release of The Mummy 3 Tomb of the Dragon Emperor is still pending until Universal makes unspecified changes to the flick. The censors didn't give any details about what would have to be cut from the film, but speculation has it that the source of the problem is "usually themes involving ghosts are taboo in China".

Emperor sets the new and improved O'Connell family (Brendan Fraser, Luke Ford, and Maria Bello) smack dab in the middle of another adventure battling a tyrannical emperor (Jet Li) and his legion of undead armies. Universal already made some concessions to the Chinese government in exchange for permission to shoot on location. According to Variety Universal was urged to make the film, "less political and more focused on fantasy than real history" -- Less political? Now that's a word I would have never associated with the Mummy franchise.

A flack for Universal has already released a statement saying, "Universal does not anticipate any obstacles to clearing the film for China and looks forward to releasing "The Mummy: Tomb of The Dragon Emperor" in the country where it was set and shot." Translation: We just spent $145 million bucks on this movie, and we want some of those Chinese box-office dollars. Emperor is just the latest Hollywood production to get a rough deal from Chinese censors, but at least they are in good company. On the upside, I guess the Chinese will never know what they're missing.

The Mummy 3 Tomb of the Dragon Emperor opens on August 1st, 2008.

In case you haven't heard: the airline business is in serious trouble. Of course, airline bankruptcies have been part of the American landscape for years and years, but currently everyone but Southwest Airlines is really hurting -- shrinking schedules and grounding planes, charging for food and even soda, imposing a fee on all checked baggage, etc. I'm a bit concerned about, among other things, my fall film festival travel plans. But the airlines' latest cutback measure is even more relevant to Cinematical: U.S. Airways is getting rid of all in-flight movies on domestic flights, which will save on hefty licensing fees paid to studios.

The optimistic attitude from studio executives quoted in the Hollywood Reporter piece is that this won't be a trend because U.S. Airways is in particularly serious trouble, and because airlines will "continue to offer entertainment to their passengers, even in the extremely difficult environment of rising fuel costs." Well, maybe. I think that once airlines start charging for sodas and checking bags, all bets are off. One possibility is that they could make passengers pay for movies -- either by charging for those little headsets they distribute (which some airlines have been doing for a while) or, in planes that have personal screens, charging people for using them. Of course, in-flight movies aren't like liquids or checked bags -- people could easily do without movies once prices start to rise. Another possibility, I guess, is only showing the movies in first or business class, but I'm not sure that would save them any money.

Don't mess with a man's best friend! I'm borrowing that phrase from our own Eric D. Snider, who used it to describe the plot of Red, a thriller starring the great Brian Cox as a man on a mission to avenge the death of his beloved dog at the hands of a bunch of teenage punks.

As Eric noted, Magnolia Pictures picked up distribution rights for the movie and planned a late summer release. Well, it must be later than we thought, because Dread Central now tells us that Red will be unleashed to theaters in New York and Los Angeles on Friday, August 8, followed by a "slow rollout" to more theaters nationwide.

"An emotionally gripping if slightly overwrought drama," is how Eric described Red in his review from Sundance, where the film premiered. Later he called it "a solid B-minus effort, and Cox's performance makes it eminently watchable." In addition to Cox, the cast includes Tom Sizemore as a bad father, Kim Dickens as a TV reporter, and Robert Englund and Amanda Plummer as white trash parents of one of the juvenile delinquent kids responsible for the death of the titular dog.

I've loved Brian Cox in many roles (Braveheart to Manhunter to 25th Hour to X2: X-Men United to Zodiac), so I have to believe he's a major plus for audiences looking for something a little different in August. How about you? Do you have any interest in seeing the Cox-avenging Red?

Imagine you're a green alien living happily among other green aliens on a tiny planet somewhere. Then one day an astronaut from Earth shows up and starts terrifying everyone. And he has the voice of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson! Except maybe contractual stipulations demand that he not be called "The Rock" anymore. Still! Scary!

That's the premise of Planet 51, a computer-animated comedy that has finally, after some shuffling, been acquired by Sony and scheduled for a Thanksgiving 2009 release. The voice cast includes Johnson, Gary Oldman, Justin Long, Seann William Scott, John Cleese, and Jessica Biel. The directors are a trio of video game programmers named Jorge Blanco, Javier Abad, and Marcos Martinez, and the script is by Joe Stillman, who co-wrote the first two Shrek films.

As we reported last November, Planet 51 was originally picked up by New Line and would have been that studio's first CG release. Then New Line was folded into Warner Bros., so the film became that studio's property, and they planned to release it next summer. But according to Variety, Planet 51's producers wanted it to come out this November instead -- and that didn't work for Warners because they're already releasing a Harry Potter film in that slot. So they let the film go, and now Sony has it. The producers will get their November release date, but it'll be 2009, not 2008. Presumably, everyone's happy now.

But should they be?