Movie Cricket

The first-day box office figures for the concert doc "Michael Jackson's This Is It" were "solid, not spectacular," Deadline Hollywood Daily's Nikki Finke quotes Hollywood insiders as saying.

Wednesday's figures were around $12 million in the United States, though Sony won't release its official numbers until later today. With that kind of business, the movie is expected to take in between $40 million and $50 million for the five-day Halloween weekend.

The movie is faring better with America's movie critics, with some exceptions. "This Is It" scored an impressive 81 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Metacritic, which compiles ratings from the nation's most prominent critics, scores the movie a 65 out of 100 — with plenty of raves (Roger Ebert, Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman) and a few pans (notably Lou Lumenick at The New York Post).

It would have been one helluva concert.

That's what the evidence shows in "Michael Jackson's This Is It," a fascinating documentary cobbled together from rehearsal footage and pre-taped segments of the King of Pop's never-achieved London comeback concerts.

Director Kenny Ortega — who was shepherding Jackson's concert extravaganza before his death on June 25 — pieces together segments of Jackson in performance, to give a fair semblance of what the concerts would have looked like. There are high spots (the sharp choreography of "Beat It" and "Thriller," modeled on the classic '80s videos) and a few low ones (like the self-indulgent environmental/world peace message of "Earth Song"), but all of it interesting.

Ortega also pays the highest tribute to Jackson by letting us see the process, as Jackson works through dance moves and song cues to hone his performance. Jackson was a perfectionist, and this movie shows that he was driven to practice over and over again to get it right.

(Here's the full review.)

Salt Lake City filmmaker Jared Hess, the guy who directed "Napoleon Dynamite," is taking on another icon beloved by Utahns: Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight" saga.

New York magazine's Vulture blog reports that Hess, at a Q-and-A following a Big Apple screening of his new movie "Gentlemen Broncos," took a shot at the special effects of the next "Twilight" movie, "New Moon."

Hess was asked about the deliberately low-rent special effects of "Gentlemen Broncos," in which Sam Rockwell portrays the wild-man hero of a fantasy world created by a home-schooled teen (Michael Angarano). "We didn't really have the money to make it look too awesome," Hess answered. Then he joked: "I don't know which looked more real, the new wolves from 'New Moon' [or the animatronics in his film]."

If there is a battle between "Gentlemen Broncos" (which opens Friday in New York and L.A., and elsewhere — including Utah — on Nov. 6) and "New Moon" (opening galaxy-wide on Nov. 20), New York magazine notes that there will be one man caught in the middle: Mike White. The actor-screenwriter plays Angarano's creepy "guardian angel," and he's old pals with "New Moon" director Chris Weitz, having co-starred with Weitz in the mega-uncomfortable comedy-drama "Chuck & Buck" back in 2000.

(Photo of Angarano, Hess and Rockwell, from left to right: Getty Images.)

Scratch a movie critic and you'll find a geek underneath.

That's why this idea — to turn your Halloween pumpkin into the Death Star — pushes all of the Cricket's glee buttons.

According to the web site Fantasy Pumpkins, all it takes is a large pumpkin (the rounder the better), the usual knife and spoon (to scoop out the pumpkin guts), a flexible tape measure (like one used for sewing) and between four to 10 hours of time. (Here are the instructions.)

(HT: Sci-Fi Squad)

The hottest movie property in Hollywood is being filmed right now in Utah.

The New York Times' Michael Cieply reports on the furious bidding war for "Area 51," a UFO-themed thriller being made for a $5 million budget in Utah. The Times reports that IM Global, the international sales agency that is representing the film, is looking for bids in the $10-million neighborhood — which is a nice neighborhood to be in.

Why does "Area 51" have bidders swarming like UFOs around an unsuspecting redneck? Because its writer-director, Oren Peli (pictured), made "Paranormal Activity," the little thriller made on a shoestring budget ($15,000 initially) and has made $62.5 million so far at the box office.

Very few people are talking on the record about the bidding war for "Area 51." The only on-the-record source Cieply cites about the bidding is a spokeswoman from one studio that isn't in the hunt: Paramount Pictures, the studio now releasing "Paranormal Activity."