This is my last post at Variety.com. I loved my stint here, but I'm moving on, taking Thompson on Hollywood to its new home.

I'm going independent in more ways than one. Sunday night I'm launching a new Thompson on Hollywood, housed at IndieWIRE, the web-savvy, thriving online indie trade founded by Eugene Hernandez 13 years ago. The site has continued to grow since it was acquired by Ted Leonsis and Rick Allen's innovative documentary site SnagFilms last year.

We will be a good fit. I'm based in L.A, IndieWIRE is in New York. I range over an eclectic mix of reporting and commentary about Hollywood, film fests, business, tech and media. They cover the independents like a blanket. We both believe in writing accurate and fair daily journalism. They're nimble with their news alerts, quick, smart and sharp about the ways of the Internet. I look forward to learning from them as I pursue the indie, improved entrepreneurial Thompson on Hollywood.

I can't wait to exercise my editorial freedom.

And I hope you will follow--whether it's at Thompsononhollywood or the social network of your choice. We're all part of a big global film community that is constantly communicating. I love being part of that stream.

The economy is a ruthless master. Tad Smith is out at Variety parent Reed Business Information, which was put up for sale and then taken off the market due to the unforgiving economy.

Soderbergh provides more details about his planned stint directing a play at Cate Blanchett's theatre in Sydney.

And Focus posts a trailer for the Coens' Toronto-bound A Serious Man.

The annual Comic-Con costume parade last weekend revealed a sizable Twilight backlash. Basically, many comics fans are using Twilight as an example of the studio exploitation of The Con for marketing purposes. What really irked people was that many movie fans missed the panels in Hall H Thursday because the Twilight: New Moon fans staked out the line, forcing other less intensely dedicated folks to miss other panels. Twilight also brings in women, not necessarily the dominant demo at Comic-Con, though certainly well-represented there.

Check out full costume photo gallery on the jump. Here's my (noisy) flip-cam survey of the costume paraders:

The Twilight franchise has a new Victoria. Summit is announcing that in the third Twilight film, Eclipse, Bryce Dallas Howard (Terminator Salvation) will replace Rachelle Lefevre.

UPDATE: When Lefevre protested that a ten day overlap with another project should have been possible for the production to accommodate, Summit sent out a statement Wednesday describing why that was impossible.

Press release and statement on the jump.

The cash crunch is hitting the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which has quietly been letting go of many of its curators. It is now canceling its weekend film program, reports the LA Times. Head programmer Ian Birnie will be shifted to part-time consultant status. LACMA said the program lost $1 million over the last ten years and had failed to build an audience. Sorry, I thought the room was usually packed when I attended. I loved the programming, but it was arcane and eclectic, as a museum's should be, not designed to "build an audience."

For four decades, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has fed film aficionados a steady diet of movie masterpieces -- retrospectives that included works from Roman Polanski, Cary Grant, Ernst Lubitsch and, in a current series, James Mason. But after the museum's weekend film program lost $1 million over the last 10 years and failed to build an audience, LACMA said Tuesday that it was pulling the plug on its cinematic centerpiece.

Before there were local film festivals nearly every week, and mass merchants such as Target stocked art-house hits like "A Room With a View" and "Gosford Park" on their DVD shelves, LACMA's film series was one of the few places area movie lovers could find Hollywood classics and foreign-language standouts.

The museum said that it was not abandoning its commitment to films and filmmakers but wanted to rethink its approach to the art form and would look for potential donors to underwrite an unspecified future film program that is curated like any other part of the museum's exhibits.

BTW, the scrappy survivor in the LA exhibition scene is the American Cinematheque, led by executive director Barbara Smith, recent recipient of a French knighthood. She knows how to woo film fans to two very different locations, Hollywood's Egyptian and Santa Monica's Aero. They work hard to market and get the word out to their fanbase. So does UCLA's Film & Television Archive, now relocated at the Billy Wilder Theatre at the Hammer Museum in Westwood.

UPDATE: Statement from LACMA on the jump.

The Austin Film Society and Fantastic Fest's August 15 dusk-til-dawn Cinemapocalypse marathon in Austin, Texas will screen Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, which played well during Comic-Con last weekend. The writer-director will introduce the film as well his chosen double feature. Clearly, the Weinsteins are chasing the young male demo. The full release is on the jump.

Sony Pictures Classics continues its long tradition of releasing the films of Chinese director Zhang Yimou by acquiring his latest film, a remake of the Coen brothers' 1984 comedy thriller Blood Simple, this time set in a Chinese noodle shop. It will be the 11th Yimou film released by SPC. The official release is on the jump.

Toronto International Film Fest announcements are coming fast. Here are the latest galas and special presentations, including Joel and Ethan Coen's A Serious Man, Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story, and Drew Barrymore's directing debut, Whip It. Full release on the jump:

Everybody's talking about Nikki Finke.

She's a compelling, charismatic, threatening figure. Walter Winchell is a good comparison. (The mighty gossip columnist inspired Burt Lancaster in Sweet Smell of Success.) That's because until now, at least, no one told her what to do. Here's her latest, on not getting the Ben Silverman scoop.

Finke's getting shot at because she has power and because she has done, by herself, what few can do in journalism today: make money. People are taking her seriously because she lured huge traffic to her blog and sold it for unspecified millions. The question remains: will changing her indie maverick status change the factors key to her success? Can you mainstream Deadline Hollywood Daily?

We will soon see how she moves with the changes as she starts her new gig as a cog in Jay Penske's online machine. He was smart to use her as a driving traffic generator for Movieline and Bonnie Fuller's new iteration of Hollywood Life. Finke helped to put Penske's media empire on the map. Now we'll see if she can keep the momentum going on Deadline Hollywood Daily.

Taylor Hackford takes the reins at the DGA.

Attributor has a solution to online content stealing.

By far the high point of the Con for me was EW editor Jeff Giles' interview with Peter Jackson and James Cameron. The two men respect each other enormously. Weta's achievement with The Lord of the Rings' Gollum convinced Cameron that he might be able to forge ahead with Avatar, which had been collecting dust for more than a decade.

Cameron signed up Weta to do the elaborate visual effects on Avatar; Jackson wanted to visit the set but took off to shoot The Lovely Bones just as Cameron was arriving. He came back for the last week of principal photography.

Jackson was making his first visit to the Con. He always sent lovely personal video greetings from Wellywood, full of cool stuff for the fans to see. He clearly understands what goes on at SDCC, and the role the fans play. So it was odd to see him looking so thin, tired and low-key. Jackson made the schlep from Wellywood partly to support his protege Neill Blomkamp whose horror thriller District 9 was the hit of the festival. He candidly expressed his anger over how he and Blomkamp lost Halo, and then made District 9.

Cameron, for his part, seemed energized and mellow, while acknowledging that he and producer Jon Landau have their work cut out for them. (Avatar went over well, but it was not the best-received footage in San Diego. Cameron sets a high bar. And the film plays very sci-fi.) They cooked up the 15-minute free 3D footage stunt set for August 31, knowing that marketing will be key to turning Avatar into the event it needs to be on December 18.

I could listen to these guys all day. I love it that they respect their audience. They make smart movies to please themselves and everyone else at the same time. Which is really hard.

[Thank you, Kris Tapley.]

The audience in Hall H was ramped up for Iron Man 2. They booed moderator Scott Mantz of Access Hollywood, who plowed on. (I had read some Tweets complaining about him earlier today.) Sure enough, he was flustered and not in tune with the Hall H crowd, which is fairly sophisticated.

Jon Favreau knows how to play to the room. So does Robert Downey, Jr., who broke onto the panel in supposed protest of the cheesy Marvel promo piece (conceived by Favreau as just that). Downey got some 6500 people to sing Happy Birthday to Favreau's son Max. "No one cared before you guys," Favreau told the hall. "Roll the other footage. Let's go."

The clip starts with Iron Man, helmet off, lounging inside the Randy's Donut sign. He confesses to not being in touch with reality during a diner scene with a threatening Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury. At a Senate hearing, Tony Stark takes on a nasty Senator (Gary Shandling) who wants to confiscate the Iron Man weapon. It's great fun watching them go after each other as Pepper (Gwenyth Paltrow) tut tuts behind Stark.

Mickey Rourke as Ivan Venko aka Whiplash (two characters from the comics combined) threatens Downey at a race track, whirling his nasty fired up lariat. When Rourke heard that his character was a refugee from a Russian prison, he checked out a Russian prison, Favreau learned from TMZ.

At the panel, Sam Rockwell (who plays arms monger and Tony Stark wannabe Justin Hammer) had no clue how to charm the crowd. (That's one reason he's a great actor and not a movie star.) The crowd roared for Scarlett Johannson as Natasha Romonov, or Black Widow. She dyed her hair red before she took the role, took her training seriously, ate egg white omelettes and insisted on doing her own stunts so that her action scenes would look authentic. For his part, Cheadle had never worked on a movie with this level of scope and effects, he said. The War Machine costume was "heavy." When Rhodes makes his first appearance in the Senate scene, the movie deals with Cheadle replacing Terrence Howard by having him say, "I'm here, deal with it, let's move on." Cheadle asked Favreau to screen the footage again because he had missed it.

The movie wrapped last week, as those following Favreau on Twitter are well aware. He was tweeting and shooting photos from his iPhone from the Hall H stage too. With the sequel, "we wanted to add characters but not too many," said Favreau, "to maintain the same tone and dynamic, adding people to further move us toward the eventual Avengers film still coming."

The story was assembled through an elaborate collaborative process among Favreau, Downey, Marvel's Kevin Feige and writer Justin Theroux (who worked with Downey on Tropic Thunder), with much further improvisation on set. Set six months after the first film, Tony Stark is dealing with the pressures of having declared himself as Iron Man. He's a wealthy industrialist playboy operating on the world stage, but there's more to deal with--like his relationship with assistant Pepper and his old military pal Rhodes. He meets Natasha at his bacchanalia of a birthday party. "I wanted to deal with how he struggles with his own id in the face of being a larger than life character who is in fact saving the world," said Favreau.

The director has another year to go; he hopes to be involved in Marvel's upcoming The Avengers in some way, but that will depend on timing. Zak Penn is outlining the film now. After the panel, Marvel production chief Feige said that Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Nick Fury, Black Widow and the Shields Organization will all be in The Avengers--the characters interacting with each other is key. But they're taking it slow to make it right.

We'll see the final product May 7, 2010. Paramount and Marvel have nothing to worry about.

Here's my Comic-Con interview with James Cameron about how his undersea expeditions informed his return to moviemaking, Avatar. He digs into how he perfected the art of performance capture to allow the warmth of his actors to come through. He wants to do some consciousness-raising with SAG on what performance capture really involves. During Friday's panel with Cameron and Peter Jackson, the two men discussed how resistant actors have been to such acting as Andy Serkis as Gollum.

Here's a taste of Comic-Con. And I haven't even visited the exhibition floor where all the action is. I'm still behind on posting all the material I'm collecting. Stay tuned.

Photo gallery on the jump:

Twentieth Century Fox co-chairman Tom Rothman came down to San Diego to intro James Cameron, who in turn presented 24 minutes of footage from Avatar. The studio has backed Cameron's R & D for the dozen years since Titanic. After earning credibility with the deep sea documentary world with a series of 3D docs, Cameron finally opted to chase the promise of advanced 3-D motion-capture with an original story that had been sitting in his drawer for 14 years. But no matter how fabulous this movie looks--and it wowed Hall H, the perfect target audience for a sci-fi adventure--Fox has to market this movie without major stars, branding and the kind of wide release a blockbuster usually commands. That's why they're showing 15 minutes of footage, free, on Avatar Day on August 21 on 35 IMAX theaters around the world.

The footage shows us a space station, where we meet a tight-necked colonel (Stephen Lang) warning new recruits about the dangers of Planet Pandora, home to an indigenous alien race, the Nav'i. Sam Worthington arrives in a wheelchair. He's a paraplegic whose twin brother has died; he's going to inherit his 10-foot blue, long-tailed avatar, a half-human, half-alien creature that humans can link to and send to explore the inhospitable planet. Cameron vet Sigourney Weaver (Aliens) plays a scientist on a mission to save the planet from degradation and exploitation.

The story is immediately exotic and compelling. But the magic comes from the 3D immersion into the exotic fauna and flora of the Pandora jungle where our hero is saved from certain death by a lovely native girl (Zoe Saldana). She tells him he's like a stupid child stumbling and destroying things. But when he attracts white wood sprites that look like deep sea creatures, she wonders if he might have some spiritual potential and takes him to her people. As night falls the rich jungle becomes as luminescent and brightly colored as a coral reef.

In another stunning sequence, the native warriors challenge Nav'i's new boyfriend to tame a flying pterodactyl-like banshee. He wrestles the creature into submission and flies him into a huge canyon.

The audience roared with support for Avatar, as Cameron, Weaver, Lang and Saldana talked to the crowd, and later, the backstage media. (Worthington appeared via video from the European set of Clash of the Titans.) But the movie is clearly ahead of the curve, which could make it a must-see event. But it's also likely to play best for fans of sci-fi adventure, which could limit it to a degree. Wisely, Cameron says he has no interest in competing with his own boxoffice. He's a filmmaker who wants to pursue the edge of technology and reach millions of people around the world. Avatar will be a must-see when it opens on December 18.

Zemeckis basically admitted he's working on a Who Framed Roger Rabbit sequel, which if it happens, would keep the 2D toons in 2D.

I'm eager to see more of Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, which takes elements from both the Lewis Carroll classic and Through the Looking Glass, including lines and imagery from The Jabberwocky (a poem I know by heart) and "weave it into a story that had movement and emotion to it," Zemeckis said. The 3D footage was stunning, but was basically the same material that already hit the Web. They ran it three times. It was Burton's first Hall H panel; he came six times in the 70s as a fan. The director was anxious to get back to the editing room and finish the movie. He was crawling out of his skin. He's clearly wrestling with all the CG effects--more green screen than he's ever dealt with--"it starts freaking you out after a while" and said this was so far "the most difficult" movie he's ever done. (He's still in the thick of it, listening to a "ticking clock") He doesn't do much mo-cap, mostly "pure animation and using actors in mysterious ways," he said.

Disney orchestrated their Big Reveal and got a HUGE ROAR when Johnny Depp popped onto the stage. He plays the Mad Hatter with red hair and lots of Tammy Faye makeup. Stephen Fry voices the Cheshire Cat.

I'm on the fence about the sequel to Tron, a movie I actually saw and loved when it came out in 1982. Does anyone remember that it was ahead of its time? It was the first film to use CG, when there were no PCs, and was a boxoffice dud. "I feel like Rip Van Winkle," said Steve Lisberger, who worked on the new one too. (Disney launched a viral campaign at Comic-Con.)

Disney & co. have cooked up some nifty looking updates, but why would racing cars on the grid be accompanied by loud motor roars? This makes me nervous. The movie wrapped principal photography last week--using the Phantom Camera at 1000 fps for some shots--and has another year of VFX work to go. Jeff Bridges is back, playing his old and young selves. "This looks so new and fresh," he said, "I guarantee they'll get some pop for this."

About 600 people camped overnight to get into the Twilight: New Moon panel, which started at 1:45 PM in Hall H. Some came from as far away as the Philippines. But first there was a press conference at the Biltmore Hilton adjacent to the gigantic blocks long convention enter, which at 9 Thursday morning was already a sea of jostling people.

I drove down this morning and parked at Petco, grabbed my badge without much fuss, and headed for the Twilight: New Moon press conference. And at 1:45 PM Kristen Stewart, Rob Pattinson and Taylor Lautner said all the same things again. A lot of the conversation was about the difference between working with Catherine Hardwicke and Chris Weitz. Stewart suggested that Hardwicke was more "impulsive" and fast and reactive. Pattinson said she used more fast shooting and hand-held cameras, and said he preferred Weitz's more calm, smooth and "balletic" approach. The actors seemed to appreciate being looked after by a grown-up this time around, and indeed, the footage looked more studio-glossy. (I'll need to see the film.)

Pattinson, Stewart and Lautner form the romantic triangle of New Moon and the next film, Eclipse. Stewart (sporting her Joan Jett look) admitted that she enjoyed the acting challenge on New Moon, as her lovelorn character Bella is left behind by vampire Edward, who is trying to keep her safe. Lautner talked a lot about buffing up to play werewolf Jacob, who takes on the role of protector. He also kept saying how much he didn't want to disappoint fan expectations. In one scene, Jacob (Lautner) teaches Bella how to ride a motorcycle; she crashes when she sees Edward (Pattinson) hovering in the air. (This is how the film deals with is absence for much of the film. "I play a supporting role," Pattinson said, keeping things low-key.) Jacob whips off his shirt to wipe blood off Bella's face. The fans seemed impressed by his sixpack abs, but they really went nuts in the climatic second scene when Bella is rushing to save Edward as he stands pale and shirtless, about to step into the sunlight. The clip ended on the verge of their big reunion, which has already been broadcast across the web by a contingent of Twilight fans on vigil throughout all the filming. "They applaud after every take, like theater," said Weitz. There was something slightly anti-climactic about the proceedings. It's no longer innocent and new. As the actors kept saying, "it's a franchise." The fans screamed when Edward came on-screen, but the roar that went up this morning for Johnny Depp, who made a surprise appearance at Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland panel, was worthy of a real movie star.

I just greeted Avatar director Jim Cameron and producer Jon Landau as they arrived at the outdoor patio area next to the press rooms where the studios are running press conferences and roundtables. The Avatar panel goes on at 3 PM.

UPDATE VIDEOS:

The New Moon stars arrive at the press conference:

Here's the press conference:

Lautner and Stewart talk to MSN's James Rocchi:

Here's the Comic-Con Hall H press conference:

Variety makes educated guesses at the Venice line-up to be announced July 30.

Tina Brown admits that even with 2.1 million unique visitors a month this June, her news site The Daily Beast is still losing money. But that will not always be true, she asserts.

Update: Gawker takes issue with Brown's take on journalists under duress.

One of the memorable moments at SXSW was filmmaker Morgan Spurlock and SnagFilms CEO and widget king Rick Allen sparring on a digital panel over whether filmmakers are making money on digital distribution. Well, they're a lot friendlier now. Spurlock's Super Size Me was the most viewed title shown by SnagFilms in its first year, which it celebrated July 17. Spurlock, who's developing a graphic novel of Super-Size Me along with a Simpsons doc, has executive-produced The Entrepreneur, a documentary by rookie director Jonathan Bricklin about his iconic car inventor father Malcolm, who turned the auto industry on its ear. SnagFilms is releasing the doc online July 24 for one week prior to its TV debut.

Needless to say, premiering online on SnagFilms before a TV run is not your conventional release pattern. Then again, neither is counting up more than 1 billion web page views in one year for free-streaming documentaries. One innovative entrepreneur deserves another.

The only Oscar I ever held belonged to Elliot Goldenthal, who won for his diverse, Mexican-tinged score for partner Julie Taymor's Frida. The New York couple (together since 1984) are equally serious about opera, film and musical theater, which all demand very different skill sets.

The composer on a studio movie plays a delicate role, not intruding too much on the proceedings--coming in late in the production during maximum duress--while reading the whims of the director. Taymor trusts her partner, who has delivered some of his best work on such films as Titus; she lets him fly. Goldenthal did great work on Across the Universe, for example, one of several collaborators on the massive project of reinterpreting 13 songs in the Beatles songbook. (I still listen to that Grammy-nominated soundtrack.) He cleared the air around the songs by using unexpected instrumentation, like glass harmonicas. "But you allow the ghost to be heard," he said. And with new star Jim Sturges, "you never got the sense there was a gap between acting and singing."

Goldenthal's now finalizing the score for Taymor's demi-musical The Tempest, starring Helen Mirren as Prospera and Ben Whishaw as a singing Ariel. The movie uses Shakespeare's own songs. "It's a challenge to find something mysterious and not arcane, and not Elizabethan sounding," he says. "It has to sound like something you've never heard or can categorize. I have to compose around the Shakespeare meter." Miramax is juggling 2009 vs. 2010 release decisions.

Goldenthal happily scored five Neil Jordan movies in seven years, including the Oscar-nominated Michael Collins, and delivered two over-the-top Batman scores for Joel Schumacher. But it took guts (or a forgiving space of 13 years since Heat) to reteam with director Michael Mann, who is not easy. And Public Enemies was a tough assignment: a thoughtful movie set in both folksy Depression-era rural areas and sophisticated jazz-age Chicago that needed all the support and liveliness that Goldenthal could provide. He worked with archival songs by Billie Holiday ("she's hardboiled, not namby pamby or sentimental") as well as Diana Krall and large orchestras, and enjoyed playing with Mann's long silent stretches and montages."You build musical themes brick by brick, mortar by mortar," Goldenthal says, "in a structural building-like way."

Working with clear good guys and bad guys on Batman movies is easier than Mann's fuzzy moral dualities. But Batman was more fun to do the first time, Goldenthal admits. After that it got a little tedious. "I prefer other challenges, when you're not exactly sure what the expectation of the character is," he says. "With Heat and Public Enemies, Michael was drawn to the notion that there are no heroes or villains in the movie. There are gradations of good and bad in the characters. You're not rooting for any of them."

Mann also allows for experimentation. "He's intensely fascinated about music," says Goldenthal. "There are a lot of positives in that. But as the process goes along, the later it gets, the more he he wants to change things. All the discoveries you made earlier, you're not sure whether they will finally be on the screen. He's clear at every moment, but that doesn't mean his feelings won't shift day to day. That's the job. Maybe I'll work with him again 13 years from now."

The composer also talked to Time.

Meanwhile Taymor is working with songwriters Bono and Edge on the Broadway musical version of Marvel's Spider-Man. She talks about her progress here:

As I head to San Diego for my umpteenth Comic-Con, I feel equal parts anticipation and dread. It's fun and I'll learn a lot that I want to know--but it's exhausting, large-crowd, insane circus fun.

USA Today looks at Iron Man 2, as does Coming Attractions. (Director Jon Favreau has been keeping his 113,000 Twitter followers up-to-date all along.)

The big fan sites are King at Comic-Con: AICN is getting many scoops, as is IGN, which debuted the new poster for Nightmare on Elm Street, starring Jackie Earl Haley, and the trailer for Whiteout. Matt Dentler rounds up the usual suspects.

You have to hand it to Tim Burton. As crazy awful as Hollywood can be, this canny visual stylist somehow manages to hang onto his imagination and personal imprint while navigating the studio system with aplomb. And most of his films--even art-house opera Sweeney Todd--are accessibly commercial. (Next up: a remake of my fave childhood vampire soap opera, Dark Shadows.)

Burton is aided and abetted by producer Richard Zanuck, who protects him from much of the noise. Going into Comic-Con, I'm betting that aside from "game-changer" Avatar (see the LAT's ten must-attend Comic-Con events) Burton's latest, Disney's 3-D Alice in Wonderland will be the big pop at Comic-Con. Which means it will be hard to top. It's just about the first thing to show there. It also marks, clearly, the deepest Burton has gone into the VFX/CG universe. He has used CG sparingly, trying to use mechanical effects whenever possible. But this is clearly a trip to that side of the looking glass.

Look at this trailer. Alice in Wonderland looks like an ideal match-up of artist and material.

Post-Twilight, Comic-Con comes of age. And yet, it can be risky to chase after that fan buzz. Memorable duds in Hall H include The Spirit and Zathura. When a movie isn't working, the fans sniff it out. But when it does--300 and Superman Returns are vivid examples--they turn up to see the movie in droves. How it plays in theaters is another matter. Watchmen was a hit in Hall H last year--but the good buzz didn't guarantee a wide appeal commercial movie.

Big announcements are flying pre-Comic-Con: after he completes Spider-Man 4, Sam Raimi will take on the video game Warcraft, a fresh franchise-in-the-making for Warner Bros.

AICN's Harry Knowles liked the new post-Cannes cut of Inglourious Basterds. He announces the Weinstein Co. will screen Quentin Tarantino's latest at Comic-Con on Saturday night at 8 PM at the 250-seat Reading Gaslamp Theater in downtown San Diego. It sure makes sense to take advantage of that prime geek demo. So far TWC seems to be meeting its marketing commitments on the movie, which needs to score at least $50 million domestically and much better than that overseas.

Here's a nifty piece from LAT's Geoff Boucher (who once got beat up in the wild back streets of San Diego during Comic-Con) about hard-boiled graphic novels from Donald Westlake.

Last year at this time I was reporting on the much-delayed Where the Wild Things Are, which will finally open in October. Director Spike Jonze posts about visiting Maurice Sendak.

I want my Beatles Rock Band. I want it so bad, it's driving me mad, it's driving me mad. The LAT takes a first peek. And you can follow BeatlesTweets, for now.

Of course Harry Potter fan Nora tipped me to Hermione (Emma Watson) matriculating this coming fall at Brown, but here's a gaggle of celeb scions at Brown, courtesy of Tina Brown.

As Sony closes in on a Kenny Ortega documentary on Michael Jackson based on 80 hours of tour video footage, the TV special deal fell apart--because the networks weren't being offered any Jackson footage. The Sony movie is set for release Halloween, October 31 2009. And there's no question it's going to be worth the $50 million Sony is said to be paying AEG for worldwide rights. Everyone on the planet will want to see that movie.

In one of the first acquisitions since Peter Rice left Fox Searchlight to run Fox TV, Searchlight co-presidents Nancy Utley and Steve Gilula acquired worldwide rights to rookie director Scott Cooper's Crazy Heart, which stars Jeff Bridges as an aging country star and Maggie Gyllenhaal as a young reporter. T-Bone Burnett supervised a country music soundtrack. The distrib paid low seven figures. "We just liked it," says one Searchlight executive.

There's more to it than that. Until recently, most specialty distribs conservatively pre-bought, co-financed or acquired completed films out of festivals, so this pre-festival-season worldwide acquisition marks a sea change. Searchlight is not alone in seeing more submitted films ahead of fests, now that a North American sale is far from guaranteed. In this case, the main reason for a distrib to pick up a movie like this: an Oscar play for Jeff Bridges. If that were the case the movie would be booked at Telluride or Toronto, which both wanted it. But Searchlight is heading for 2010 release. That's because yes, they do want to put Bridges in play. But they also want to tweak and cut the film--and not show it at festivals until it's polished. The old strategy of throwing a swiftly edited film into a fest and seeing what happens is foolish. People are more wary of taking those chances. "People are more likely to take a bird in had than wait for the bird in the bush," says one studio acquisitions exec. "They may not get one."

The foreign market isn't what it was, and neither is the domestic. Financeers want to make sure they get domestic distribution. That's the only way they'll get their money back.

The good news for Crazy Heart: with engaging stars and an accessible country soundtrack, the movie has commercial potential between the coasts, which makes Searchlight the distrib best-positioned to take that advantage.

The full press release is on the jump.

This fascinating cooperative animation venture could yield many imitators. Among the many new movie ventures going up online, this spiffy site premium TV channel displays HD shorts. It's available on AT & T U-verse.

Upcoming Julia Child movie Julie & Julia is based on Julie Powell's book about trying to cook all the recipes in Julia Child's The French Chef. Now it looks like Nora Ephron's Sony movie starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams is getting in the way of Powell's new memoir, Cleaving: A Story Of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession, which deals with her cuckolding the sweet husband portrayed in the movie, reports the NY Observer.

In celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Moon Walk, I recommend that you watch Philip Kaufman's underappreciated The Right Stuff, based on Tom Wolfe's excellent book. I also loved the sexy Diane Lane/Viggo Mortensen pairing A Walk on the Moon. Here are Life Magazine's best space photos ever and R.E.M. singing "Man on the Moon" (hat tip: Jeff Gordinier):

Lionsgate distribution president Steve Rothenberg lost his eight-month battle to stomach cancer Thursday. He was a respected industry exec, but beyond that, he was a genuinely good guy. Here's Variety and David Poland. Roadside Attractions' Howard Cohen sent in this tribute:

My good friend Steve Rothenberg passed late last week, all too soon at 50, after a valiant fight with gastric cancer. In the distribution, exhibition and festival circles he traveled in for some 30 years, I know he will be sorely missed. He was legendarily well-read, energetic, upbeat and possessed of a discerning taste in film that doesn't always go hand in hand with high level distribution execs. I worked with him at Samuel Goldwyn Company from 1987 to 1993, where we worked together on a great group of films including Henry V, Truly Madly Deeply, The Wedding Banquet and 35 Up. And we remained good friends in all the years to follow. He went on to pioneer at other companies brilliant distribution strategies for The Blair Witch Project and Pi (at Artisan), and in the last five years the Saw and Tyler Perry franchises at Lionsgate. He was a renaissance man in being supremely knowledgeable about all types of film and many sides of the business. In a job known for its rough and tumble, he excelled for almost three decades with the toughness required, yet was unfailingly polite, kind and gracious.

For myself, when I come out of theaters at Sundance and Toronto festivals to come and he is not there to debate, chew on, laugh about, and most importantly champion independent films he loved, I will be very sad.

Beastie Boy Adam Yauch is delaying his upcoming tour and album release in order to fight saliva cancer, which was found in a gland and a lymph node on his neck. He'll have surgery next week, followed by radiation. And he'll continue to run his indie film distribution company, Oscilloscope. He gives the news himself on YouTube, saying, "It's not funny. Dead serious...It's a setback, a pain in the neck." He added that the cancer was "treatable."

While social networks may change some online behavior, blogging is probably here to stay. I use Twitter and Facebook as newsfeeds and delivery systems, and I am an example of a former print journalist who is making a living as a professional blogger, a growing trend.

Scott Rosenberg blogs about all this and more at Gawker's new book club-- to promote his new book about blogging, Say Everything.

While Twilight star Rob Pattinson will not do backstage press interviews at Comic-Con this week for New Moon, he and co-stars Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner will participate in an off-site press conference in San Diego early Thursday morning. That's how Summit is handling huge demand for the film's stars, who will also attend a Hall H panel later Thursday afternoon at the San Diego Convention Center. Fans are expected to line up overnight to gain entrance to that panel.

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World has all the elements of the kind of movie that keeps studio heads up at night: it's literary (based on the Patrick O'Brian seafaring series), period (Napoleonic), expensive (close to $150 million), packed with action (swords, pistols, rifles and cannons) and VFX (ships at sea under fire). That's why, even though the Napoleonic adventure movie looks like a success, grossing $209.5 million worldwide, it was a nail biter for Twentieth Century Fox co-chairman Tom Rothman at the time. (He took on partners in the venture, and had to push back the release to get the FX finished.) The well-reviewed awards contender (nominated for ten Oscars, it won two) barely made its production and marketing costs back. (Here's my NYT story from 2003.)

It makes sense that Russell Crowe (post-State Of Play) would want to return to the juicy role of Captain Jack Aubrey in what should be a big adventure franchise. A script is in the works based on the 11th novel set in the Caribbean, dealing with Aubrey's illegimate son, a priest.

But this sort of heavy-duty period movie about ships at sea is tough to execute: Master and Commander had finicky Australian Peter Weir at the helm. Rothman wooed him by laying a mock captain's sword on his lap and asking him to take command of the HMS Surprise. Weir has been unwilling to return for a sequel.

Fox says it's early days yet, with no deals in place.

New site Bitter Balcony, reports Seattle writer-editor Anne Hurley, "is dedicated to the things that drive us crazy in the movies we love. It's not all negative--the balcony's bitter b/c of the love of movies, and why oh why can Jerry Bruckheimer not say no to that last explosion?" Site founder Jas Nada is a big participant at IMDB and elsewhere, she says, "lives and breathes movies and pop culture, writes screenplays in his spare time. (No wonder he's bitter.)"

I'm a-spreading the word about the site to encourage any and all of you to post, respond, make comments, etc. -- the more dialogue that goes on on the site, the better for all movie fans--agreed? It's brand new so it's a little thin yet, but I know y'all have some things on your mind as you're watching this summer's big hoo-has. AND as you're watching those great gems on DVD--I just saw "Let the Right One In" (loved) and Jeff S. kindly shared a great thread about the subtitle and dubbing controversies of this film-- so feel free to share links and discussions like that on The Balcony as well. And remember, there's no bad movies--just good material.

See you in The Balcony,

Anne

Here's the new poster for Jane Campion's Bright Star, which will follow its strong Cannes debut with likely September fest appearances in Telluride and Toronto. Bob Berney's soon-to-be-named new combine with River Road's Bill Pohlad will launch with this high-brow literary romance. The poster seems designed to showcase the film's gorgeous young lovers (Abbie Cornish and Ben Whishaw play Fannie Brawne and John Keats) in a contemporary way, without the usual ivy trellised period look. What do you think?

This critic-friendly film is a soft lob down the middle for Academy voters, methinks--as long as Berney & Co. tread carefully, deliver a modest hit, and don't make any mistakes. That's a tall order for such an austere, tragic, intelligent, gorgeously crafted British period piece. But if anyone can do it...

I scarfed up Peter Biskind's Vanity Fair cover story on Heath Ledger (which is finally online). It all makes (tragic) sense. Ledger was yet another gifted performer (from Judy Garland on) who was far happier in the zone in front of the camera than anywhere else. He pushed himself too hard. And he sought comfort (and sleep) from drugs.

The people who knew Ledger well loved him. And he had a special bond with director Terry Gilliam. Biskind's story makes me really regret that I missed The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, which played late in the Cannes festival after I left. Gilliam sent me an invite to a screening---in London. The movie still doesn't have a domestic distributor. It sounds like the quintessential Gilliam movie. Gilliam was my first published Q & A in Film Comment in 1981, at the time of Time Bandits.

So I will have to settle for selected footage at Comic-Con next week, and maybe some Gilliam access. And hope that someone steps up to release the movie.

Brad Pitt graces the cover of Wired Magazine's August issue, which just arrived in my morning mail. (The mag hits newstands July 21, and will post on Wired.com Thursday night after E.T.'s broadcast break.) He's frowning at wearing a bluetooth headset, and the coverline reads "With advice from Inglourious Basterd Brad Pitt"---about all the mention his new movie receives in the magazine.

That's because Wired doesn't tend to sell magazines with movie stars. Truth is, with Premiere gone, there aren't many classy monthly magazine covers left for male stars of Pitt's stature. And he's already done the good ones. Tabloids like People, Us and In Touch have taken over the supermarket racks. Old media moguls like Tina Brown and Bonnie Fuller are jumping into the online fray. (Tabloid queen Fuller is joining Mail.com owner Jay Penske's HollywoodLife.com.) Gone are the days when uber-press agents like Pat Kingsley batted off cover requests like flies while demanding deal terms like photographer and writer approval. Pitt doesn't even pay a PR rep anymore.

So what's a matinee idol to do? Several months ago, Pitt had his agency CAA call Wired--Conde Nast's tech-savvy mag with a growing circulation of about 700,000 readers, predominantly male--and suggest him for the cover. Neil Patrick Harris had just turned the magazine down. After much back and forth, Wired confirmed that Pitt really did want to be on their August cover.

The magazine was interested in fitting him into their August package "New Rules for Digital Gentlemen and Other Highly Evolved Humans," but he had to meet their specific needs. In the end, he did it their way. Pitt turned up at L.A.'s Smashbox Studios alone, sans entourage, for a photo shoot with Dan Winters. He was interviewed for the cover story about bathroom text and phone etiquette and offered some advice to Twitter King Ashton Kutcher about posting pictures of his wife's butt, among other things. His cover pull quote is delicious: "Who cares if your Warcraft wife is really a dude. If it's good, don't check under the hood."

This change in star behavior is indicative of an overall sea change in Hollywood. Talking about her plans for Hollywood Life, Fuller told the NYT that celebrity is "not just about movie stars any more." As studios slash budgets, they are reevaluating what stars are worth. That measurement used to be about opening movies: you paid a major star $20 million to put audience butts in seats. All that is clearly not working any more, as robots, reboots and animated characters are selling better this summer than the likes of Eddie Murphy, Will Ferrell and Christian Bale. I see smart star Pitt, 45, recognizing that a cool cover on a cool magazine might sell some tickets to his Quentin Tarantino World War II flick this August. Therefore it was worth chasing--and then going with the flow.

Meanwhile, Wired discovered the advantages of publicizing a cover--in this celeb-crazed internet age--with a star of Pitt's caliber. Besides People and E.T., they nabbed coverage from Perez Hilton, MTV: Hollywood Crush, Us Magazine, PopSugar, X17 Online, The Post Chronicle, Hampton Roads, The Frisky, Towleroad and Kansas City Star.

Scott Macaulay introduces Filmmaker Magazine's annual new faces of indie film, circa 2009. Here they are. The young and the restless.

Comic-Con 2009 is front-loaded. Most of the key movie stuff happens on the first day, Thursday July 23, and Friday, with Iron Man 2 the main play on Saturday. (Here's the EW Iron Man 2 cover-preview.) The trick is to balance the crowded Hall H panels, trawling the exhibition floor, backstage interviews, screenings and parties with actual blogging. Yikes.

Last year I took the Fox City of Ember train down to San Diego, which worked great, actually. I loved not having to worry about a car, but I was staying at the Omni, right across from the Convention Center, so I was spoiled. This year I'm farther away, so I'll drive down at the crack of dawn Thursday to get my pass in time (!) to start off the day with the 11 AM Disney 3-D panel. Tim Burton (Alice in Wonderland) returns to the Con for the first time since college, while Bob Zemeckis (A Christmas Carol ) is coming for the first time. Burton will stay to do some press, Zemeckis will not.

The combo of Disney's 3-D animation panel and James Cameron's Avatar pushed the Comic-Con folks to install 3-D in the 65,000-square-foot Hall H. The Titanic director will attend the Con for the first time to show the first U.S. 3-D footage of Avatar, along with stars Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver and Stephen Lang. (Exhibs in L.A. screen the 20 minutes already shown in Amsterdam at Cinema Expo on Thursday July 16.) Sam Worthington, who debuted at The Con last year with Terminator: Salvation, is stuck in Wales playing Perseus in Louis Leterrier's Clash of the Titans. (Check out the photo: Gerard Butler, watch your back.) Fox will also promote off-site Diablo Cody and Karyn Kusama's horror comedy Jennifer’s Body , starring Megan Fox.

Cameron is participating in another Thursday panel on The Future of Filmmaking with Avatar's VFX czar, Weta chief Peter Jackson, who is also coming for the first time--he usually beams video to Hall H from Wellywood. Attendees are expecting to see Adventures of Tin-Tin footage. Jackson is also pushing his production of the sci-fi thriller District 9 on Friday. He's not involved in LOTR fan site Onering.net's side panel on pre-production of Guillermo del Toro's The Hobbit, which Jackson is also supervising in Wellywood. UPDATE: Word from Jackson's people: it's way too early for a Bilbo announcement.

Another Comic-Con virgin is Disney/Pixar animation czar John Lasseter, who will host an animation panel Friday with Japanese master Hayeo Miyazaki (must-see Ponyo screens Wednesday night), Disney's John Musker and Ron Clements (2-D The Princess and the Frog), and Kirk Wise (Toy Story 3). This is my idea of Heaven.

Thursday's crazy madness will be the Twilight: New Moon panel. Heartthrob Rob Pattinson will appear (reminder: must pack earplugs) with co-stars Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner and director Chris Weitz, but lovelorn vampire Edward Cullen isn't the main character in the movie, so Pattinson won't participate in any backstage interviews. Summit is screening Twilight for the fans with cast members on hand. Summit is scheduled to film the third installment of the Twilight Saga, Eclipse, from August 17 through October 31 in Vancouver with David Slade (30 Days of Night) directing Melissa Rosenberg's screenplay.

To promote Park Chan-wook's vampire movie Thirst (which played well in May's Cannes competition), Focus Features mailed the press a pouch of blood in advance of the Thursday panel, and will screen the intense horror film Friday night.

Some films won't be rating panels at this year's Con, although they may have some viral or off-site happenings or displays on the exhibition floor. Universal, for one, is skipping Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood. Disney is ignoring the live action Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, and Surrogates. Cash-strapped The Weinstein Co. passed on promoting Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, Rob Zombie's Halloween II, The Road (starring Viggo Mortensen), Youth in Revolt (starring Con-friendly Michael Cera), and Piranha 3-D.

Warner Bros. probably isn't bringing Joel Silver's long-delayed screen adaptation of the graphic novel Whiteout because it was promoed last year. Also missing are Ninja Assassin and Zack Snyder’s animated 3D Guardians of Ga’Hoole. It's early days yet for MGM to promote the Joss Whedon/Drew Goddard horror comedy The Cabin in the Wood, but Whedon fans can catch the first three webisodes of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog on Thursday night.

Brian Lowry vets Comic-Con on the TV side.

I was going to leave Saturday, but David Tennant is showing up for a Dr. Who panel on Sunday morning. I may have to stay on.

Those of us who saw Lone Scherfig and Nick Hornby's An Education at Sundance witnessed a remarkable debut: Carey Mulligan was an instant star. With Audrey Hepburn-style class, charisma and smarts, she's well-cast as a brainy and sexy high school kid in 60s Britain aching to break out into the bigger world. Peter Sarsgaard (with a plummy British accent) is the older sophisticate who takes away her innocence and shows her what she's missing. With Sony Pictures Classics at the helm, this movie should go all the way to some major awards:

While the studios will continue to spend $250 million on sure bets like the Harry Potter franchise, they are cutting back everywhere else. The town is feeling the pinch, as production starts decline, budgets are slashed and risks are not being taken. Ask Steven Soderbergh, who sounds depressed indeed in this Guardian interview on Che. (That four-hour Spanish-language money-loser for French financier Wild Bunch is the main source of Soderbergh's Moneyball woes.) For the moment he may direct a play for Cate Blanchett's theatre company in Sydney. Luckily, his Matt Damon whistleblower comedy The Informant! could score at September's Toronto Film Fest.

Here's the line-up for the Toronto Fest, which opens September 10 with Jon Amiel's Charles Darwin biopic, Creation.

Tina Brown can be a demanding boss. So it makes sense that she wanted to import Gabe Doppelt as L.A. bureau chief of The Daily Beast. Doppelt started as Brown's assistant at Tatler and went on to blaze a media career of her own, spending the last 8 years as W's west coast editor.

Hollywood Wiretap founder Tom Tapp put in a brief stint as an L.A.-based editor/blogger for The Beast, but Brown eventually brought in ex-NPR correspondent Kim Masters to cover Hollywood from the business side. The editor wants to increase the Beast's celebrity presence as she builds the entertainment vertical of her Barry Diller-backed site, which has leaned heavily toward politics. Michael Solomon will continue to assign and edit entertainment features out of New York.

I want a Google phone number! I've been patiently waiting. As a user of Google search, images, alert, reader, map, sync, gmail and calendar, I have gotten several emails counseling me that an invitation is in the mail, as it were. I want my Google Voice app now! Basically, Google gives you one number--and all your phones and devices feed into that number. No more leaving messages on cell or home or work or BlackBerry--you get all your calls. And they get answered too.

USA Today explains it all, as does the video below:

Showing the growing power of frank blog-talk, Movie Mom is a movie reviewer with a huge following.

New Line was looking for a new unknown to cast as Freddie in their relaunch of the Nightmare on Elm Street series, until they found Jackie Earle Haley. Twitter has a Friday thing where you confess movies you haven't seen. I've never seen a Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Texas Chainsaw , Saw or Hostel movie. I do love John Carpenter's Halloween, George Romero's Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, Robert Wise's The Haunting, Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho and Brian DePalma's Carrie. It's about style for me.

As LA's Outfest draws crowds and TV's Neil Patrick Harris is confirmed to host The Emmys, The LA Weekly prints a controversial story about why gay talent should stay in the closet.

USA Today launches a headline aggregator. Wave of the future? I rely on Wopular.

Fast Company reports that old media is followed by new media. But new media is catching up on posting original content.

Time doesn't like the idea of subsidized bloggers being paid to cover certain topics. Negotiating access, junkets, review embargoes--those I can navigate if necessary. Being paid to blog about something is not acceptable under any circumstances. One publicist invited me to be part of an early screening program which pays writers to give their opinion on indie films seeking distribution. That was a no-can-do.

It's tough out there for a film writer. Filmmaker Magazine editor Scott Macaulay tells journos to update and modernize and get with the new media program.

Vote for your iconic swimsuit movie moments. Here are the women--led by Phoebe Cates--while Daniel Craig as James Bond leads the men.

I concur on Craig; but my vote for best wet swimsuit in a movie goes to Jacqueline Bisset in The Deep, video below.

On its surface, Drew Barrymore's directorial debut Whip It looks like a Fast & Furious-style look at an exotic world we don't know much about: roller derbies. The film opens in October and stars Barrymore and Juno star Ellen Page as a rebellious, angry teen roller derby contestant.

What every studio wants is a movie with at least one guaranteed target market, plus crossover potential to two or three more quadrants. This movie got made because of its potential appeal to several niches. It's a coming-of-age teen story with some romance, but it's also an action movie with babes attached (think Charlie's Angels, Blue Crush). Some men might even show up.

Mainly, it's an angry woman movie.

And that can be a mighty demo. Hollywood is often taken aback by how well femme bonding movies can do, pictures like Nine to Five, Fatal Attraction, Thelma & Louise, First Wives Club and Waiting to Exhale. Add Diablo Cody's upcoming Jennifer's Body to the list. Not that any of us identify with Jennifer Megan Fox. That's why Amanda Seyfried is in the picture.

UPDATE: Here's the Whip It trailer:

It's a list that keeps on giving: the 50 best movies of all time. With this global critics list at The One-Line Review, at least, the more things change, the more they stay the same. There's Citizen Kane at number one, and having shown the movie to my USC film criticism class, I get why the movie holds on to that top spot, decade after decade. The damn thing holds up. Pauline Kael said it was a comedy and she was right. It's entertaining, funny, unique, utterly timely and resonant today. Kids understand it perfectly. It doesn't age, even in black-and-white.

Much as I admire Vertigo, I prefer several other Hitchcocks: Notorious, North by Northwest, Psycho, and The Birds among them. How telling that there are three Hitchcocks in the top thirteen and two Stanley Kubricks in the top ten.

The other top ten selections are fine, but I would want a Buster Keaton (The General, 33) or Billy Wilder (Sunset Boulevard, 17) or John Ford (The Searchers, 12) or or Howard Hawks (Bringing Up Baby) in there. And Hawks is so out of favor that he didn't make the top 50 at all.

The full list is on the jump.

It's no surprise that as of Monday AM in advance of a Wednesday opening, MovieTickets.com is reporting over 1,300 sold out showings for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince worldwide, including over 950 stateside midnight sellouts.

By 1:30 PM Eastern Time Monday, 93 % of all tickets sold at MovieTickets.com were Half-Blood Prince, which is currently outpacing seven of the Top 10 Total Ticket Sellers of All-Time, only coming in behind No. 1, Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, No. 2, The Dark Knight and No. 4, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

· No. 3 Lord of the Rings: Return of the King · No. 5 The Passion of the Christ · No. 6 Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest · No. 7 Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers · No. 8 Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix · No. 9 Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones · No. 10 Matrix Reloaded

I do recommend seeing Half-Blood Prince on IMAX, because it is so impeccably made that it will withstand that level of scrutiny. In this week's Movietickets poll, among 3516 people voting, 57% will see the movie before it opens on IMAX July 29; 29% plan to see it in both theaters and IMAX, and 14% will wait for the IMAX debut.

With the field for the best picture Oscar broadened to ten, a batch of summer movies are now positioned for possible inclusion. Yes, year-end movies still have the advantage. It used to be that a summer movie had to be strong and the late-season weak for it to make the top five (think Sea Biscuit, Apollo 13, Forrest Gump, Saving Private Ryan, Gladiator). But this year, five summer movies could score a top ten slot, from crowd-pleasers Up, Star Trek and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince to higher-end fare such as Public Enemies and Hurt Locker.

The good news for Public Enemies is that the Academy screening this weekend was packed, probably the best-attended so far this year. But it didn't earn a rousing reaction. Michael Mann, Johnny Depp, Marion Cotillard and director of photography Dante Spinotti did nab a smattering of applause. My guess: it will rack up some nominations by year's end, especially in the acting and tech categories--Marion Cotillard is a front-runner for supporting--but might not go all the way. By then, the $100-million period epic may look like a picture that didn't make its money back. The Hurt Locker, on the other hand, could have long legs indeed, and will look like a movie that overcame considerable obstacles en route to inevitably landing on many critics' ten best lists.

A surprisingly robust Academy possibility is Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. While so far the series has been overlooked for best picture, that will work in this film's favor. Half-Blood Prince, while costly ($250 million), is just about the best-made picture I've seen in many a moon. This Potter is as elegantly designed as a Pixar movie.Its tech credits are outstanding: period production design and costumes, cinematography, and visual effects (the quidditch matches are stunning).

What about the actors' branch? Well, admittedly, like the Lord of the Rings ensemble, Potter's gang of kids won't score any noms, but Michael Gambon as Dumbledore could land a supporting nod, as Ian McKellan did as Gandalf in 2001's Fellowship of the Ring. In this film, Gambon gets plenty of screen time and is aged and beloved, as opposed to charmingly villainous Alan Rickman as Severus Snape.

Harry Potter has similar factors going for it as the third Lord of the Rings installment, The Return of the King (2003). Both films boast complex scale and scope, and period always helps. The Fellowship of the Ring earned 13 nominations including best picture, and won four. The Two Towers was nominated for six and won two. Then The Return of the King swept all eleven Oscars for which it was nominated, including best picture. Finally, it was time for the Academy to overlook the fantasy blockbuster ensemble side of the equation and reward the quality of the filmmaking. Besides, while genre films have long suffered with Oscar voters, those prejudices have been subsiding ever since 1991's The Silence of the Lambs.

Conventional wisdom deems the Harry Potter series as too popular to score with Oscar. So far five films have generated $7.2 billion worldwide in box office and DVD sales. While David Yates may not be Peter Jackson, the Brit director has kept this franchise on track through installments five and six, and brought Half-Blood Prince's craftsmanship to an extraordinary level. He's also set to direct the last two films covering J.K. Rowling's final book, The Deathly Hallows. Warners expects to open the first in November 2010 and the second in July 2011. Academy voters may choose to hold off--The Return of the King was the ultimate LOTR movie. But what if Half-Blood Prince--my daughter's favorite of the lot--marks the series' peak?

If as many as five summer movies make it to the Oscar Ten, the Academy Governors will be very very happy. That's just what they wanted.