Movie Cricket

Director Kenny Ortega — who helmed three "High School Musical" films in Salt Lake City, and will watch his concert movie "Michael Jackson's This Is It" hit theaters Wednesday — has "ankled" (as they say in Hollywood) from directing the remake of "Footloose."

According to Daily Variety, Ortega's departure was "over differences with Paramount Pictures on tone and budget." Variety's sources say Ortega (who choreographed the 1984 original with Kevin Bacon) wanted elaborate musical numbers and a $30 million budget, while Paramount's head of production, Adam Goodman, wanted a budget under $25 million — and "an edgier drama with less emphasis on the musical numbers."

Isn't "Footloose" with less emphasis on the musical numbers like making "Gone With the Wind" with less emphasis on The Civil War? Or "The Godfather" with less emphasis on the Mafia? Or a "Transformers" movie with less emphasis on Michael Bay's adolescent fantasies?

The project apparently will move ahead, with Chace Crawford ("Gossip Girl") and Utah dancer/country singer Julianna Hough in the lead roles.

The question now becomes: With Ortega gone, will the chances of "Footloose" being filmed in Utah — where the original was made, and where Ortega has close ties with the state's film industry and dance community because of "High School Musical" — go with it?

The marketing hype for "New Moon," the second chapter of the "Twilight" saga, will reach a deafening roar by the time the movie opens on Nov. 20.

Some of that hype will come to Murray's Fashion Place Mall.

Fashion Place will be the 15th stop on a 16-city promotional tour, with members of the "New Moon" cast meeting fans, on Saturday, Nov. 14.

Also, Summit Entertainment (the studio releasing "New Moon") says that one of the bands on the "New Moon" soundtrack will give a performance at Fashion Place.

Which cast members? Which bands? The studio isn't saying yet.

Here's the catch: To get into the event, you have to buy something — and you have to buy it at 8 a.m. this Saturday, Halloween morning, at Fashion Place.

• If you go to Hot Topic, buy a commemorative T-shirt, you get a wristband (one per person) that will get you into the event. (Click here for details from the Hot Topic web site.)

• If you are one of the first 75 customers at Nordstrom, and buy $75 at the Brass Plum, you get a VIP packet — which gets you into the event, and lets you have your picture taken with the cast members. (Click here for details from the Nordstrom web site.)

If you're like the rest of us and can't afford such frivolous purchases? Well, that's just too damn bad, isn't it?

In its found-footage premise, low-budget scares and smart Internet marketing campaign, Oren Peli's "Paranormal Activity" has often been compared with "The Blair Witch Project," the come-from-nowhere thriller from 1999.

"Paranormal Activity" may soon have something else in common with "The Blair Witch Project": The studio that owns the rights to it, thinking they have an instant cash cow, may make the ill-advised effort to crank out a sequel.

Paramount Pictures is considering a sequel to "Paranormal Activity," according to The Los Angeles Times' "Company Town" blog.

The numbers would add up for Paramount. The studio spent $300,000 for the rights to distribute Peli's film (which was initially produced for around $15,000), and only $10 million on marketing, the Times' blog says. "Paranormal Activity" has made $62.5 million since its opening — including $22 million this weekend, topping the box office over "Saw VI."

But anyone who remembers the awful "Book of Shadows: Blair Witch II" — which made a paltry $26.4 million, compared to the $140 million the first "Blair Witch" made — knows that it's difficult to recreate the surprise of an original.

One of the year's best movies opens in Utah today — courtesy of the Coen brothers.

"A Serious Man" is serious Coen brothers — not the wacky comedy of "Burn After Reading" or "The Big Lebowski," but not the pure drama of "No Country For Old Men." It's a darkly comic story that tells of Larry Gopnik (brilliantly played by Michael Stuhlbarg), a Midwestern physics professor who's beset with a sea of troubles: A wife (Sari Lennick) seeking a divorce, a brother (Richard Kind) sleeping on the couch, a delayed tenure decision and temptations from a sexy neighbor (Amy Landecker). The Coens mine their own history (Gopnik's Jewish suburb is based on their own upbringing) for a compelling story of a man struggling to find answers through his faith. (Read the Cricket's report from the Toronto International Film Festival, with interviews with the Coens, Stuhlbarg and Kind.)

Nothing else to recommend among this week's new movies.

"Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant" is a clever adaptation of Darren Shan's popular young-adult book series about a teen (played by Chris Massoglia) who falls in with a group of circus freaks — and is turned into a half-vampire by a protective vamp (John C. Reilly). Director Paul Weitz collects a motley bunch of freaks (including Salma Hayek, Patrick Fugit and Jane Krakowski), but Massoglia is too bland at the movie's center.

"Amelia" is a dull but pretty biography of the aviator Amelia Earhart, played by Hilary Swank. The movie doesn't talk much about Earhart's love of flying, but instead concentrates on the mundane love affair with her publisher and benefactor, George Putnam (Richard Gere).

"Astro Boy" is a computer-animated update of the Japanese manga character (previously adapted in a cheap '60s TV series), a robot boy who saves the world on a regular basis. The voice cast includes Freddie Highmore as Astro Boy, as well as Nicolas Cage, Bill Nighy, Kristen Bell and Donald Sutherland. The new story is too dark for kids, and too simplistic for anybody else.

The comedy "Adventures of Power" was partly filmed in Utah, but don't blame us. Blame instead writer-director-star Ari Gold, who portrays a small-town misfit pursuing his dream of being an air-drumming champion. Gold creates some offbeat characters, but can't draw any laughs from them. Anybody who puts Michael McKean and Jane Lynch in a movie and can't find anything funny for them to do is doing something very wrong. (Gold will be in attendance at tonight's and Saturday's 7 p.m. screenings of his movie at the Tower Theatre, for post-show Q-and-A sessions.)

The last movie of the weekend, the horror movie "Saw VI," was not screened for critics. But if you've seen "Saw" through "Saw V," you know what you're getting yourself into.

The programming staff at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival is in the process of watching the thousands of films — features and shorts — submitted for January's event.

But that doesn't mean one of the programming staff, Bridgette Bates, couldn't take a minute to report on the progress — and humorously answer a few questions for nervous filmmakers.

Yes, every disc does get watched at least once. If a disc arrives broken, the programmers will contact the filmmaker to send another one. (Once, a filmmaker deliberately sent a broken disc, to squeeze a little more editing time after the deadline — but now the Sundance folks are onto that scam.)

So far, Bates wrote, the programmers have noticed a lot of movies about horses. (Last year, boxing was a big recurring theme.)

Bribes are not recommended, though the programmers have received some doozies:

The best item we've received this year was a bag of candy corn, which is kind of sad considering that in the past we've received such zany items as a unicycle, a fondue machine, a giant boot that was spray painted gold, and some amazing sneakers that had the word "Hustler" bedazzled all over them.  We ask that applicants not send anything other than their DVD, but we do miss the copious amounts of candy we used to get every week (hint, hint).

The programming staff finished its work around Thanksgiving, and the slate is usually announced in early December.