(Reporting and video by Marc Price)

Since when did girls start liking guys that stay up all hours at night — drinking? Blood, no less. Since when? Since always. And if a vamp knows how to bite more than her neck, all the better.

Vampire flicks have come a long way since Bella Lugosi, and while we’re a little young to have seen Lugosi in theaters, we do remember Jim Carrey and Lauren Hutton in “Once Bitten” (Today, that would be titled “Cougar Vampire”). We remember “An American Werewolf in London” and “Teen Wolf” — we’re allowed to mention werewolves given “New Moon” and its pack. And we can say, the beasts are doing far better today romancing the gals.

On the the subject of vamps, we note Johnny Depp was named People magazine’s sexiest man of the year (you can read about that here) last week. Johnny Depp? Everybody knows Robert Pattinson is the sexiest man — or is it Taylor Lautner? C’mon you “Twi-hards” (that’s a few of you pictured at the premiere at left), which is it: vampire Edward Cullen or werewolf Jacob Black? Pattinson or Lautner?

The movie smashed weekend box office records with a domestic haul of nearly $141 million (read that here), and we were out there again. We asked women: would they let Robert Pattinson drink their blood? The answer is below.

It’s been a wild year at the box office for Sandra Bullock, whose report card this decade has been middling at best.

The actress, 45, returned to theaters for the first time in more than two years in June with the romantic comedy “The Proposal,” which went on to become the biggest film of her career (before accounting for inflation), with $164 million in domestic ticket sales. But then came her September stinker, “All About Steve,” which was one of her weakest entries with $34 million in ticket sales. She is pictured at the premiere of the latter film, looking happier than she should have been.

Bullock bounced back this weekend with the sports drama “The Blind Side,” which kicked off with $34.5 million, a personal best. The opening was good enough for a distant No. 2 behind “The Twilight Saga: New Moon” ($140.7 million, but who’s counting?).

Critics and fans embraced the fact-based saga of a Tennessee housewife who takes in a homeless black teenager and turns him into a football hero. John Lee Hancock (”The Rookie”) directed from an adaptation of Michael Lewis’ book “The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game.” It scored a 70 percent positive rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, compared to 30 percent for the “Twilight” sequel. Exit polling conducted by CinemaScore gave it an exceedingly rare A-plus across all demographics. There’s even talk of an Oscar nod, which would be a first for the two-time Golden Globe nominee.

“The Blind Side” was produced for $29 million by Alcon Entertainment, which specializes in female-skewing fare like the “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” movies. The company is financed by FedEx Corp Chairman Frederick W. Smith, and it has a distribution deal with Warner Bros. Pictures.

Bullock cut her undisclosed fee to star in the film, but will share in the profits. “She’ll make quite a bit of money on the movie,” said Broderick Johnson, who runs Alcon with Andrew Kosove.

Johnson predicted the movie would enjoy “a remarkable run” in North America, and reach the $150 million level. But how will it play overseas? American sports dramas have limited foreign appeal, and so the marketing will emphasize the human-interest side. The strategy seemed to work in North America, where women accounted for 55 percent of the audience. Johnson said the international rollout will be worked out next week, but it would likely be spearheaded by launches in the Bullock strongholds of Britain and Germany (her late mother’s homeland).

Fans lined up Thursday night at movie theaters to be among the first to get bitten by the “New Moon” phenomenon, the sequel to last year’s “Twilight.” The vampire romance movie ended up setting a box office record of $26.3 million for those midnight screenings by drawing fans like the ones profiled in our Fan Fare video below.

Who will go to “New Moon?” Lots of teen girls, for sure, but also moms who are into the story, young women and the men they drag along on dates. Those groups are expected to snap up tickets to the tune of about $100 million at U.S. and Canadian box offices this weekend. That’s a lot of howling at the “New Moon.”

“New Moon,” of course, has generated plenty of buzz. Tracking firm Trendrr said that in the last three months, more than 100,000 “New Moon” related videos have been added to YouTube.com. Trendrr also said that on Thursday, Twitter.com received more than 91,000 posts related to “New Moon.”

But despite all that popularity, the Vatican is not on-board. This week, an official with the Catholic Church called the film “nothing more than a moral vacuum with a deviant message.” This despite influential film critic Roger Ebert saying that the “Twilight Saga is an extended metaphor for teen chastity.” Who to believe?

For the uninitiated, “New Moon” is the second installment in the “Twilight” franchise based on the books by Stephenie Meyer. In the books and the movies, high school student Bella Swan (Kristen Stewartin the films) falls in love with the vampire Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson). But in “New Moon,” there’s another boy competing for Bella’s affection, and that is werewolf Jacob Black, played by 17 year-old actor Taylor Lautner, photographed above at right. As a result, some fans going to “New Moon” are on Team Edward and some are on Team Jacob. As if any fan support is going to change which way Bella’s vampire-loving heart really leans.

Check out the video below.

Michael Jackson movie “This Is It” has finally come, but it is not quite gone — not yet.

In fact Columbia Pictures, the movie studio behind the film that looks at Jackson’s rehearsals for the London concerts that were to have been his comeback, said on Sunday it would extend the run in theaters.

The movie turned in a solid, if less than spectacular, debut at theaters around the world this weekend. Its total ticket sales since its debut last Wednesday are $101 million — $32.5 million in the U.S. and Canada and another $68.5 million. You can read about the box office here and a review here. And if you want to watch what some moviegoers had to say about “This Is It,” click below.

Director Spike Jonze’s movie adaptation “Where the Wild Things Are” proved naysayers wrong this past weekend with a strong opening at U.S. box offices, making $32.5 million. The film brought Jonze’s hipster ethic to a popular 1963 children’s book, and managed to attract both adults and kids.

Of course, other movies have done that before, including this year’s Disney/Pixar film “Up.” But the doubters were particularly vocal about “Where the Wild Things Are” because early in the production process there were questions about whether the film was too scary for young kids and not scary enough for adults. You can read about some of it here, but none of those past concerns seemed to matter over the weekend.

Other movies that opened this past weekend included the thriller “Law Abiding Citizen,” about an average guy who takes the law into his own hands. The horror movie “Paranormal Activity,” which cost $15,000 to make and has been widened out each week to more theaters, also did well, and has made $33.7 million since it opened in limited release on Sept. 25.

We talked to movie fans this weekend to get their opinions on the latest releases. You can see the video by clicking below.

(video by Marc Price)

The summer movie season is officially over with the end of this weekend and — much like a hazy day in Hollywood –  results were mixed. Box office was up based on higher average ticket prices, but attendance was down, which generally speaking has been the case for years as movies competed with other forms of entertainment.

The expected big hits, “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” and “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” paid handsomely at box offices. Some movies flopped: “Land of the Lost,” “Year One.” Others were big surprises: “The Hangover.” And the indie market did well with “500 Days of Summer” and “The Hurt Locker.”

We were out on the streets in Las Vegas this past weekend, asking people what they they liked and didn’t this summer. Even Elvis gets a crack at our Flip camera. Click below for a quick view.

(video by Marc Price)

Remember the breathless reports concerning the record-breaking opening of “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” in July?

The sixth movie in the fantasy franchise surpassed “Spider-Man 3″ to set new worldwide ($394 million) and foreign ($236 million) records, and its North American tally ($158.0 million) was $18 million higher than that of “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” two years earlier. (Note: Data are slightly different in the link as they were estimates, and the final figures were issued the following day.)

“Phoenix” ended up with $938 million worldwide, the seventh-biggest movie of all time before accounting for inflation. So it was only natural to assume that the new one might have a chance to become the first in the series to crack $1 billion.

Not so fast. It turns out “Spider-Man 3″ ($891 million) was a better benchmark for the film. “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” has earned $905.4 million after opening at No. 1 during the weekend in its last market, Greece. It’s the biggest movie of the year, the third-biggest in the series and the 12th biggest of all time. If it can squeeze out an extra $15 million, it will crack the top 10. BUT, it won’t get to $1 billion.

The North American total of $294.3 million just passed “Phoenix” ($292 million) to trail only the $317.5 million haul for 2001’s “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” which ended up with $975 million worldwide. Its foreign total stands at $611.1 million, but that’s quite a bit short of the $700 million forecast by Variety on the basis of that opening weekend.

Warner Bros. Pictures, which leads the studio field with eight No. 1 openings in North America this year, never publicly issued forecasts and an executive declined during opening weekend to discuss the billion-dollar possibility. Still, when studios trumpet record-breaking launches, boosted by ticket-price inflation, premium-priced IMAX screenings and simultaneous worldwide roll-outs, not even young wizards are immune to market forces for long.

Horror movies scared up big ticket sales at theaters across the United States with the fourth installment of the “Final Destination” series taking the No. 1 spot ($28.3 million) from director Quentin Tarantino’s violent “Inglourious Basterds.” You can read the box office coverage here.

But the “Basterds” landed in the No. 2 spot (R20 million), and it must’ve been heartening for its distributor, the Weinstein Co., which also claimed the No. 3 film with its latest “Halloween” horror flick. We were in front of a megaplex again on Sunday asking people what they liked — and didn’t. Click below for a look.

(Video by Marc Price)

As we’ve said before on the Fan Fare blog, opening weekend box office is not the only predictor of a film’s success and, sometimes, can be downright misleading.

Director Quentin Tarantino’s widely-hyped “Inglourious Basterds” enters its second weekend at U.S. and Canadian box offices on Friday after claiming the No. 1 spot last weekend with a debut of  around $38 million. Tarantino has many loyal fans who can be counted on to show up on the opening weekend, but the second weekend is a bigger question. If fans liked the movie and if their “word-of-mouth” recommendations to friends are strong, then “Inglourious” may be able to retain audiences and beat newcomers “The Final Destination” and “Halloween 2.”

So far, “Inglourious” has scored fairly well with critics and fans. At review site rottentomatoes.com, it receive an 88 percent positive score among critics. At Metactric (http://www.metacritic.com), it received a score of 69 out of 100 among critics and a user rating of 7.8, based on 206 votes. We talked to a few fans who’d seen the movie and got their opinion. You can watch by clicking below.

(video by Marc Price)

There is an old saying in Hollywood when talking to producers or directors of big-budget movies that often claim the box office crown but rarely win critical acclaim or awards. That saying goes something like this: “I’d rather win the Bank of America award,” meaning money is more important in showbiz than little golden statues.

This past weekend’s debut of action-packed, special effects-filled flick “G.I. Joe” won the Bank of America award. After being pummeled by critics who were unable to watch the film in advance, the movie claimed the No. 1 spot at U.S. box offices this past weekend with $56.2 million. Add on another $44.1 million internationally, and in its first weekend, the flashy movie raked in $100.3 million worldwide.

Why? One reason is the film’s target audience is mostly young men and women who are the core market for films. They don’t read reviews, for the most part, but are influenced heavily by advertising and pre-show promotional hype. The marketing budget for “Joe” was huge and fans turned out in droves for “G.I. Joe.”

Compare that to the No. 2 movie, “Julie & Julia,” which stars Meryl Streep as chef Julia Child in a light comedy aimed mostly at adults. It earned a respectable $20.1 million in the U.S. and Canada, based on early buzz AND good reviews. To adults critics still matter, and adults are likely to turn out for “Julie & Julia” in coming weeks, whereas “G.I. Joe” faces huge competition this coming weekend from another special-effects flick, “District 9.”

Watch for “G.I. Joe” to fade quickly from the box office top 10, while “Julie & Julia” will likely have some staying power. Sometimes, you get lucky and get both great reviews and strong box office,  like director Danny Boyle did with “Slumdog Millionaire.” (See picture at left)

We were out in Hollywood again on Sunday, and here’s what some real moviegoers said about this past weekend’s top 2 movies. You can read the box office report, by clicking here.

(video by Marc Price)