Movie Cricket

Thursday will mark 10 years since Larry H. Miller — car salesman extraordinaire and owner of the Utah Jazz — opened up his first movie theater, the Megaplex 17 at Jordan Commons.

The Megaplex Theatres chain now encompasses 70 screens at five Utah locations — The Gateway in downtown Salt Lake City, the Jordan Commons in Sandy, the District in South Jordan, the Megaplex 13 in Ogden and the eight-plex at Thanksgiving Point — and sets the region's standard for a comfortable, clean theater experience.

The theaters are also consistently setting single-day or opening-weekend box-office records for such franchises as the "Harry Potter" and "Pirates of the Caribbean" films.

The chain's history has not been all smooth sailing, though: There was the infamous 2006 incident in which Miller yanked a Megaplex 17 booking of "Brokeback Mountain" because he didn't cotton to no gay cowboys — while simultaneously allowing the "torture-porn" film "Hostel" to screen.

The Megaplex theaters will celebrate their 10th birthday with a special deal Wednesday and Thursday: For $10, you can get a ticket to a movie (depending on studio restrictions), refillable popcorn, refillable soft drink, and a piece of birthday cake.

Also, fans attending Thursday's Utah Jazz game will receive a gift candy card — worth anywhere from $1 to $100 in concessions at the Megaplex Theaters. (Think of it as atonement for the team's terrible play.)

The Cricket is on assignment. Back to regular postings on Tuesday.

Hollywood doesn't want to compete with "Michael Jackson's This Is It" (which opened Wednesday) or trick-or-treaters, so there are no new studio releases on today's schedule.

There are, however, three movies on the art-house slate — one of them an excellent Halloween treat for grown-ups.

The Korean thriller "Thirst" is a bloody and kinky tale of a depressed priest (Song Kang-ho) who becomes an even more depressed vampire — and falls for an abused wife (Kim Ok-vin). Director Park Chan-Wook ("Old Boy") combines gore, sex and dark humor for a smart, seductive thriller.

French director Cédric Klapisch likes comedy-dramas with many disparate characters coming together into a mosaic of life — movies like "L'auberge Espagnole" and its sequel, "Russian Dolls." In "Paris," Klapisch creates a love letter to the City of Light, starting with an ailing dancer (Romain Duris) who watches the many lives outside his balcony interact: Students and professors, fruit vendors and garbagemen, friends and lovers (one of them played by "Inglourious Basterds' " Melanie Laurent, pictured). Klapisch could have cut a few of his narrative threads, but he gets a charming performance from Juliette Binoche as Duris' love-scarred sister.

"The Other Man" boasts a strong roster of talent: Actors Liam Neeson, Antonio Banderas and Laura Linney, director Richard Eyre ("Iris," "Notes on a Scandal") and source material from author Bernhard Schlink (The Reader). But the glossy drama, about a husband (Neeson) who discovers his wife (Linney) was having an affair with the Banderas character, is ridiculously overwrought and takes some idiotic twists.

The theatrical trailer for James Cameron's "Avatar" hit theaters last Friday, and is finally online.

The good news is that the trailer concentrates on the human characters — including stars Sam Worthington, Stephen Lang, Sigourney Weaver, Giovanni Ribisi and Michelle Rodriguez — and only gives us a glimpse of the blue computer-graphics-created Na'vi.

Take a look:

So what will all those rabid "Twilight" fans do on Nov. 19, as they wait for the midnight screening of "New Moon"?

Apparently, watch "Twilight" all over again, to whet their appetites for the sequel.

Summit Entertainment has announced that the studio will re-release "Twilight" for a one-night viewing on Nov. 19 — the day before "New Moon" hits theaters.