Coens, Cops and Tyler Perry Take on 'The Women' in Fall's First Battle Royale

Welcome back to Defamer Attractions, your weekly guide to peaks, valleys and pratfalls among the latest new movies in theaters. And finally, after consecutive weekends when we thought God had up and abandoned us with the feral makers of College and Disaster Movie, we have some real films to write about. So read on for our typically expert preview of what's what at the box office, including Coen surprises, Alan Ball atrocities, potential ladyfights, timely new DVD's and one melodrama to rule them all. As always, our opinions are our own; you simply can't fake this kind of refinement, taste and acuity.

WHAT'S NEW: So Burn After Reading is good — more admirable than likable, really, with the Coen brothers returning to their parched well of overmatched dolts in possession of objects way beyond their ken. This time it's Brad Pitt and Frances McDormand attempting to blackmail a CIA analyst (a bracingly potty-mouthed John Malkovich) whose "memoirs" they've found lying on their gym's floor; Tilda Swinton and George Clooney join in as awkward archetypes of paranoia and aloof, striving America. If we sound glib, that's Burn for you — a plot- and style-allergic screwball comedy that succeeds primarily as an almost-clean break (even Pitt's character is ultimately a red herring) from two decades of recycled Coen tropes.

Alan Ball's New HBO Show About People In Coffins Fails To Grab Viewers

· True Blood's premiere drew just 1.44 million viewers—about a half-million better than Tell Me You Love Me, but 2 million short of what John From Cincinnati managed to score in its slot following The Sopranos's series finale. We haven't watched it yet, because we find vampires annoying. Enough with the biting and the capes, already! [LAT]
· "The expression I use is that a 747 can't make a sharp right turn," says studio head Katherine Pope about the dilemma of attracting new viewers to NBC's Life after the show's truncated first season. However, a 747 can make a sharp downward turn, tailspin, then crash and burn. Let's hope Life doesn't. We liked it. [Variety]
· Patricia Heaton and Treat Williams will star as the real world parents of a child with Tourette Syndrome in CBS MOW Front of the Class. Instead of swear words and racial epithets, however, the student in the TV version will involuntarily shout out Jell-O flavors. [THR]
· Johnny Depp and Gore Verbinksi re-team for Rango, a motion-capture CG animated film about a "pet who goes on an adventure." [Variety]
· Val Kilmer, Armand Assante, and Eric Roberts have been cast in indie thriller The Steam Experiment, about "six people trapped and terrorized in an urban Turkish bathhouse," pitched to investors of "Hostel with shvitzing." [THR]

'Towelhead' Apologies Break New Ground in Studio Cynicism

If it's the last thing it ever does — and it probably will be — Warner Independent Pictures is bound and determined to wring every last bit of notoriety out of the $1.5 million it spent last year on Alan Ball's merde du jour directing debut Towelhead. And almost a full 12 months after the film met its Toronto Film Festival premiere audience with a splat heard 'round the world, the doomed mini-major's quest to culturally salvage what's left of the rape-and-racism coming-of-age drama has tapped into yet another free-publicity boon: The Council on American-Islam Relations finally came around the other day to condemn the title Towelhead and urge a name change. We know nobody saw that coming.

But things got a little sketchier late Wednesday as Ball and source novelist Alicia Erian each issued statements responding to the CAIR kerfuffle, invoking their minority status to deflect the charge that Towelhead is anything but a cynical tug on the pantleg of jaded viewers everywhere. Their two cents is after the jump, along with a few reasons you should see right through it.

'Twilight' Star's Hairy Chest Frightens The Tweens As Alan Ball Preps Hotter, Cooler Vampire Series

'Towelhead' Trailer Conveniently Distills Repugnant Alan Ball Effort to Two Minutes

Alan Ball Drama Gets Early Support For Feel-Awful Film Of 2007

Faster than you can say "Dakota Fanning Rape Project," the Toronto Film Festival screenings of Alan Ball's Nothing is Private should produce a level of buzz-building, pre-acquisition outrage unseen since the first reports that universally beloved/feared child star Fanning's cinematic virtue would be stolen at the 2006 edition of Sundance. Outraged Fox 411 gossip columnist Roger Friedman previews his early candidate for Feel-Awful Movie of 2007, in which Aaron Eckhart, perhaps overcompensating for the guilt of cashing his No Reservations paycheck, returns to the darker In the Company of Men/Your Friends & Neighbors material of his early career:

The movie — so odious that many people have simply walked out during the screenings — shows actor Aaron Eckhart having sex with a 13-year-old girl played by a now 19-year-old actress, Summer Bishil. The actress only turned 19 recently, however, which means that she was just on the cusp of 18 when she made the movie last year. [...]