It’s mostly getting not-great reviews:

What if Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) spent the last days of his life trying to nab a serial killer who’s been using macabre ideas from Poe’s short stories to off his victims? “The Pit and the Pendulum,” anyone? OK, “The Raven” sounds like a TV series that gets canceled soon after its debut. But it has compensations, chief of which is John Cusack, who plays Poe with just the right blend of romantic longing and tortuous doubt.

Sequels on the way:

The movie debuted with a staggering $207.4 million from U.S. and Canadian theaters over the weekend, the biggest debut in film history. Globally, the film has pulled in $702.2 million.

The film unites Marvel superheroes including Iron Man, Black Widow, Thor and The Hulk in a battle against a villain out to destroy the Earth. Stars include Robert Downey Jr. and Scarlett Johansson.

The second “Avengers” movie will follow a previously announced “Thor” and “Iron Man” sequels coming in 2013 and a new “Captain America” movie in 2014, Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger told industry analysts.

From the premier:

I like this one the best:

The Beast titles this piece by Ricky Gervais as his thoughts on “throwing away $1 Billion”

What did I learn from this mistake? Nothing at all. But later I made The Office. It was the first thing I ever tried my hardest at. And I obviously reaped rewards. But I wouldn’t be any less proud of The Office if it hadn’t been successful all over the world and won BAFTAs and Emmys and Golden Globes. The real lesson I learned was that trying your hardest is the reward in itself. That and getting final edit. If it turns out exactly how you meant it to, then nothing else matters.

RICKY GERVAIS’S CAREER ARC:

1983 While a student in college, forms a pop group called Seona Dancing. They have one hit—in the Philippines.

1999 Comes up with an idea similar to Night at the Museum, but doesn’t follow through.

2001 The Office debuts in England and becomes a worldwide phenomenon (and inspires a U.S. version with Steve Carell).

2005 Mocks the movie industry with his HBO series Extras.

Or someone who works there is just a Silence of the Lambs fan

Why, why, why is it still necessary for every single DVD that I buy to have the F.B.I. warning at the beginning? Why can’t they just put the warning on the DVD box? Oh wait— they already do. So why, EVERY TIME I want to watch a movie or TV show that I legitimately purchased, do I have to spend 30 seconds being told yet again that, if I choose to copy the DVD, the F.B.I. is going to come after me?

It’s an odd way of saying, “Thanks for buying this DVD.”

Incidentally, I live in Canada. The F.B.I. can’t do anything to me anyway. Still, the warning is on every disc I buy.

VHS tapes had this warning, too, but at least you could fast-forward through it. With DVDs, you can’t skip or even fast-forward through the warning. You have to watch it every single time you watch the disc. Click Menu during the warning, and you’re told that “this operation is not available.” If I fall asleep watching a movie, and the DVD player shuts itself off, I have to watch the warning all over again. If I buy a DVD set of a 24-episode TV show, I have to watch the warning 24 times (unless I watch multiple episodes in one sitting).

It’s a good thing the music industry doesn’t do the same thing. Imagine if every time you wanted to listen to a CD or a song from iTunes, you had to sit through an announcement about the consequences of illegal sharing.

Okay, I exaggerated the “no more to say” part cuz Pogue does add this bit which I’ve been saying for at least a decade:

I don’t understand why some movie studio doesn’t decide to become the Good Guys of the industry. Get rid of all those annoyances, all the lawyer-driven absurdities, and market the heck out of it. Be like the breath-of-fresh air new airline (as JetBlue was in its day) or cellphone company (like T-Mobile, the only company that drops your monthly rate after you’ve repaid the subsidy on your phone). Dare to be different — and win a lot of customer loyalty as a result.

But M. Night Shayamalan is, er, also of Indian origin. sooo… isn’t it the rule in America that we never call anyone non-white a racist? so like. wtf is going on then?

Here’s the trailer:

I’d rather watch this movie:

That’s my position. I know it’s heresy to the biz side of show business. After all, 3-D has not only given Hollywood its biggest payday ($2.7 billion and counting for Avatar), but a slew of other hits. The year’s top three films—Alice in Wonderland, How to Train Your Dragon, and Clash of the Titans—were all projected in 3-D, and they’re only the beginning. The very notion of Jackass in 3-D may induce a wave of hysterical blindness, to avoid seeing Steve-O’s you-know-what in that way. But many directors, editors, and cinematographers agree with me about the shortcomings of 3-D. So do many movie lovers—even executives who feel stampeded by another Hollywood infatuation with a technology that was already pointless when their grandfathers played with stereoscopes.

That’s the summary and it’s really all you need, but if you’re thirsty for more detail you can go read the heretics’ case, point by point.

Ebert acknowledges that Avatar was awesome in 3D-IMAX but points out what I’ve been saying on that in how it was a movie made mostly on computers specifically for the purpose of being 3D. When movies add 3D as an afterthought, it sucks horribly, and its not a medium that is suited to anything other than kids and action films (Ebert brings up Fargo, Casablanca and Precious as “can you imagine that shit in 3D” examples).

The article contains info that explains the details of things like the darker picture in more complex ways:

Lenny Lipton is known as the father of the electronic stereoscopic-display industry. He knows how films made with his systems should look. Current digital projectors, he writes, are “intrinsically inefficient. Half the light goes to one eye and half to the other, which immediately results in a 50 percent reduction in illumination.” Then the glasses themselves absorb light. The vast majority of theaters show 3-D at between three and six foot-lamberts (fLs). Film projection provides about 15fLs. The original IMAX format threw 22fLs at the screen. If you don’t know what a foot-lambert is, join the crowd. (In short: it’s the level of light thrown on the screen from a projector with no film in it.) And don’t mistake a standard film for an IMAX film, or “fake IMAX” for original IMAX. What’s the difference? IMAX is building new theaters that have larger screens, which are quite nice, but are not the huge IMAX screens and do not use IMAX film technology. But since all their theaters are called IMAX anyway, this is confusing.

confusing indeed.