The Daily Mail calls the eagerly anticipated second instalment in the Twilight franchise “disastrous” and “one long pain in the neck“, and gives it just one star out of five compared with four stars for the first film. The Daily Mirror is kinder, saying the movie “effortlessly sweeps you along in a swirl of intoxicating passion.” It goes on to say the film, which hits US and UK theatres on Friday, works better as a love story than as a supernatural adventure.

Whoever you believe in the coming days, when the already speeding Twilight hype machine goes into overdrive, critics’ opinions are likely to have little impact on how the film fares at the ticket booths. The Twilight franchise based on the hugely popular novels by U.S. author Stephenie Meyer is being touted as the next Harry Potter, i.e. billions of box office bucks in the next few days.

As in the original, British actor Robert Pattinson plays Edward, the brooding bloodsucker who befriends Bella, played by Kristen Stewart. And Taylor Lautner is set to become the next heartthrob for his portrayal of American werewolf Jacob Black.

Catherine Hardwicke’s original Twilight movie made $384 million at the global box office. Few would bet against the sequel beating that tally, no matter what the critics think.

It's hard to watch France's political and cultural elite rush to support filmmaker Roman Polanski against extradition to the United States on a decades-old sex charge and not wonder exactly how they interpret the national motto "liberté, égalité, fraternité." It's tempting to ask whether they're defending the liberty to break the law and skip town, respecting the equality of all before the law and championing a brotherhood of artists who can do no wrong.

(Photo: Roman Polanski, 19 Feb 2009/Hannibal Hanschke)

Here in Paris, Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner declared the arrest was "a bit sinister ... frankly, (arresting) a man of such talent recognised around the world, recognised in the country where he was arrested -- that's not very nice." He and his Polish counterpart have written to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about the issue. Culture Minister Frédéric Mitterrand said "just as there is a generous America that we like, there's also an America that scares us, and that's the America that has just shown us its face." Directors, actors and intellectuals have been signing a petition demanding Polanski's immediate release.

Almost all the focus is on the argument that Polanski is a brilliant director, the charge of unlawful sex with a 13-year old dates back to 1977 and the victim herself says she wants the whole issue to be forgotten.  Almost completely ignored is the fact that he fled the U.S. to escape sentencing, which added a crime to the original crime. There is such a widespread assumption that all artists and intellectuals would automatically support Polanski that Paris papers today -- both the left-of-centre Libération and the conservative Le Figaro -- wrote with an air of surprise that Hollywood was not storming the barricades to back him.

The French Greens leader Daniel Cohn-Bendit made headlines by bucking the trend and saying he was "ill at ease" with the rush to absolve Polanski of raping a minor and the culture minister should have been more cautious in his comments.

Across the Atlantic, by contrast, Hollywood's hometown paper, the Los Angeles Times, reviewed the objections by Polanski's supporters and concluded: "Plausible or preposterous, these arguments are eclipsed by a simple fact: Polanski fled the country ... the Justice Department and L.A.'s district attorney are right to seek extradition."

And almost nobody in the media here in France asks the tough questions that Fr. Tom Reese, S.J. (photo at right) did in his Washington Post blog post entitled "Father Polanski would go to jail":
"Polanski's defenders ... argue that he should not be punished. They say that the girl was willing and sexually experienced and she has forgiven him (after receiving a settlement). They even cite his tragic childhood and life as an excuse. And besides, it is ancient history. Such arguments from paedophile priests would be laughed out of court and lambasted by everyone, and rightly so...

"The Catholic Church has rightly been put under a microscope when 4 percent of its priests were involved in abuse, but what about the film industry? The world has truly changed. Entertainment is the new religion with sex, violence and money the new Trinity. The directors and stars are worshipped and quickly forgiven for any infraction as long as the PR agent is as skilled as a saintly confessor. Entertainment, not religion, is the new opiate of the people and we don't want our supply disturbed.

"Is there a double standard here? You bet."

There's a lot to say about the different ways Americans and French approach the law. But let's go right to Tom Reese's question. Do you think Polanski's supporters cut him slack they wouldn't think of permitting for a paedophile priest? Is the entertainment industry setting our values?

Follow FaithWorld on Twitter at RTRFaithWorld

Actor Stephen Baldwin won't be taking any more profanity-laced roles like the foul-mouthed thug he played in the 1990s hit movie "The Usual Suspects."

But the youngest member of the Hollywood acting clan, who became a born-again Christian a few years ago, has taken on some projects that he sees as more "family-oriented."

"I am doing stuff that is more family friendly ... I have a couple of independent films coming out in a little bit," he told Reuters on the sidelines of a summit of self-styled "values voters" in Washington which is an annual gathering of politically-motivated conservative Christian activists who are a key base for the U.S. Republican Party.

"One of the films is called 'To the Wall' which is the story of two young men whose dads served in Vietnam together and how they befriend one another and learn a lot about themselves and their past. And then I have a new picture which I just finished recently called 'Loving the Bad Man' which is the story of a young woman of faith who has a tragedy happen against her and how she is going to stand up and still try to overcome that by befriending an individual who is a criminal who actually was the cause of the tragedy."

He also said he has a project in the pipeline to develop a "whacky, crazy, zany, fun reality show that I host."

Asked if he would again play in roles like the one he had in "The Usual Suspects," he said: "Not where I would play a role that utilized that type of language."

Baldwin, who recently appeared on the TV show "I'm A Celebrity, Get me Out of Here!", now frequently talks about the culture of Hollywood which he believes is promoting sexual promiscuity, drug use and other social ills.

(Photo: Actor Stephen Baldwin arrives for a special screening of the film Mission Impossible III at the Ziegfeld Theater in New York, May 3, 2006. REUTERS/Keith Bedford)

What's that? Jay Leno is moving to prime-time? You don't say!

Frankly, it's hard to remember the last time there was such hubbub about a TV show. It was, after all, the cover story in Time magazine. Not to be outdone, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Reuters, AP, and probably every local news outlet between New York and Hollywood had a story about the talk show host -- more often than not raising the question of whether he's going to save network TV.

(You've got to give it to the public-relations machine on this one. They really worked the story. Of course, their spinning was augmented by a huge marketing effort. Stuart Elliott of the New York Times today estimated that NBC put out more than $10 million in promoting the show).

But there is more to the fall TV season than Jay Leno. The media buyers and planners over at  RPA offer a useful road map to the season in a recent report.

Their take on the fall season is fairly upbeat (maybe network TV doesn't really need Leno to save it).

"For the first time in two years, network fortunes will not be held hostage to the industry's labor problems, but will be determined, as they used to be, by content quality and scheduling... Based on what we've seen, the overall quality of that content looks better than it has in the past two seasons," the report says.

Here, according to RPA, are some things to keep in mind heading into the season:

• The five broadcast networks will debut 21 shows, accounting for 22 percent of scheduling hours.

• Dramas and dramedies (a mix of comedy and drama) will increase from 43 percent to 48 percent of the schedule's hours. Comedies will rise from 10 percent to 17 percent.

• Not a single new fall show is a foreign co-production (which had been looking like a trend until now).

• Medicine is hot, with three hospital dramas debuting this fall and a fourth starting midseason ("Trauma," "Mercy", "Three Rivers," and "Miami Trauma").

• Paranormal is big, too. Four new shows built around that theme will land this fall ("V," "Eastwick," "Flash Forward," and "Vampire Diaries").

Oh, and Jay Leno is moving to prime-time.

Tom Ford has branded as “disgusting” the ban on gay marriage in parts of the United States and elsewhere in the world.

The designer, who is openly gay, used a Venice press conference for his feature film debut “A Single Man” starring Colin Firth to criticize decisions like that in California in November banning same-sex marriage. He did, however, add that his movie, which is in competition at the Venice film festival was not about being gay at all, but about the human condition in general.

“It is, I have to say, quite disgusting that in America and in other countries you cannot have a civil union or something equivalent to marriage,” said the 48-year-old.

“I have someone I’ve lived together with for 23 years. Recently he was in hospital for something. I had to carry papers on me at all times that he had signed saying that I could visit him in his room and make medical decisions for him if anything happened. Our taxes, by the way: if I died tomorrow my estate would be completely taxed and then the remainder go to him whereas if we were a couple his life wouldn’t have to change and my entire estate would move to him. There are things that are wrong with our legal systems in a lot of countries.”

The biggest star at this year’s Venice film festival has arguably been Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Sure, George Clooney and Matt Damon have got the crowds going and can cause a minor media scrum with little effort, but Chavez and his large entourage of aides and guards is another matter altogether.

In town for the world premiere of Oliver Stone’s documentary “South of the Border”, Chavez looked the part on the red carpet and giving interviews at a swanky hotel on the Lido waterfront. Spare a thought for the handful of reporters given a coveted slot with the leader, though. We were originally down to speak to Chavez and Stone at around 5:30 p.m., but, after a series of false alarms, we were moved to a different venue and eventually ended up speaking to them well after 10 p.m.

At one point guests at a party at the plush “Des Bains” hotel (scene of the Visconti classic Death in Venice) were not allowed into the building because of Chavez’s security, but the problem was quickly resolved.

Chavez, looking every bit the movie star, was all smiles and charm, shaking hands with onlookers and reporters who wanted to meet him. Little wonder he looked happy — he will presumably be delighted with Stone’s overwhelmingly positive portrait.

Debt-ridden Hollywood studio MGM, whose library is home to such gems as the Rocky and James Bond flicks, has replaced CEO Harry Sloan, appointing a three person team to run the show: famed turnaround ace Stephen Cooper, motion pictures group boss Mary Parent, and CFO Bedi Singh.

Sloan is out as CEO but the veteran Hollywood businessman, who took the helm a few months after MGM's 2005 buyout by a group of private equity and media investors,  will stay on MGM as non-executive chairman of the studio. The studio has been grappling with a massive $3.5 billion debt load stemming from its 2005 buyout by private equity and media firms.

Along with the debt load, MGM , which has not had a major film release since Tom Cruise's "Valkyrie"  in December, has been struggling like other Hollywood studios with  lining up fresh film financing due to the economic crunch and dropping DVD sales.

Cooper,  well-known for  turning around big troubled companies Krispy Kreme and Enron, has been appointed to restructure MGM's  balance sheet to enable Parent to make movies.

MGM is due next to release a remake of the 1980's hit "Fame" and to start production on "Red Dawn" another remake, in September.

Sloan left a private law practice in 1983 and has been a media executive and investor since. He invested and ran three media companies, including SBS Broadcasting, Lions Gate Entertainment and New World Entertainment.

Movie studios are recognizing the increasing importance of word-of-mouth fan reaction in making successes or failures of their big budget movie releases. Check out the Reuters story on that topic here. Hollywood studios see an opportunity to reach potential movie goers through social networking websites like Twitter, and to market movies in ways other than the traditional trailer/television spot/billboard approach.

Universal Pictures, the company behind the movie “Bruno” that opened a week ago, actually sought to create buzz about the film by not marketing it, at least not right away. Universal delayed the release of its trailer and other advertising material for “Bruno” for a couple months, because it knew that the many fans of lead actor Sacha Baron Cohen would chatter about the movie online, said Adam Fogelson, president of marketing and distribution for the studio. With that delayed approach, the studio allowed fans to lead the talk about “Bruno” and give the subversive movie a cutting-edge feel, by not oversaturating them with advertisements and trailers.

Over at Walt Disney Studios, executives are also paying attention to the growth in importance of word-of-mouth fan reaction. Chuck Viane, president of distribution for the studio, said that to generate the right kind of word-of-mouth, filmmakers are making last-minute tweaks that will get fans reaching for their cell phones, but for the right reason.

“A lot of times, walking out of a theater, the last thing that you want to leave a customer with is a smile, and that’s why (filmmakers) find the appropriate outtakes,” Viane said.

For its alien movie “District 9,” studio Sony Pictures has encouraged the public to call in reports of “non-human activity,” and the studio said it has received more than 20,000 calls a day.

Movies that appear to have benefited from strong word-of-mouth this summer include comedies “The Hangover” and “The Proposal.” Films that have nosedived at theaters after opening strong include “Terminator Salvation” and “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” leading some box office watchers to suggest that audiences told their friends to stay home and not go to those films.

Television studios have used Twitter and social networking for some time to generate word-of-mouth. Hardie Tankersley, an online strategist for Fox Broadcasting, said his company could go further than it has by hitching a live Twitter feed on TV shows to Fox’s website, and including negative comments in the feed.

That can be a daunting challenge from Hollywood’s perspective.

“Shaping the conversation is extremely difficult and probably impossible,” Tankersley said. “People are going to say what they’re going to say. We try to contribute to the discussion but I don’t think we’re so arrogant to think that we can shape the conversation.”

As the film industry looks ahead to box office business after “Harry Potter,” with the lucrative franchise due to wind up in the summer of 2011, one person in as good a position as most to offer an opinion on what may be the next big film series suggests that the “Twilight” vampire romances could fill the void.

“Harry Potter” 1-5 have amassed $4.5 billion at global box offices so far, and with HP 6, otherwise known as “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince”, due to hit cinemas this week, the cash tills look set to go on ringing. HP 7, the final book in J.K. Rowling’s boy wizard series, has been split into two movies, meaning that at the current rate, the 8-movie series could take a cool $7.2 billion.

Last year’s first outing for the “Twilight” series, based on the Stephenie Meyer books, made $380 million worldwide, according to www.boxofficemojo.com, a far cry from HP 1. But the word — and more to the point, the hype — appears to be spreading beyond U.S. shores, and with heartthrob lead actor Robert Pattinson causing hysteria wherever he breathes, the momentum could grow.

Daniel Radcliffe, who plays Harry in the “Potter” pictures, knows how Pattinson feels.

“The thing that’s interesting for me is that it’s the only other franchise really which comes close to ‘Potter’ in terms of the mania that surrounds it and the attention that the leads get and how global it is,” he told reporters in London recently. “So part of me doesn’t actually want to have an opinion on the film.”

Underlining the pressures superstardom can bring, Pattinson was hit by a taxi in New York last month while trying to flee a crowd of hysterical teenage fans. He was not seriously hurt.

Radcliffe is under no illusions about why the girls scream when they see him.

“I go to Japan and they all scream and it all goes mad and it happens all over the world, but that’s a different type of me, that’s the me that’s on red carpets and stuff and that’s who a lot of people seem to be attracted to and fancy and stuff. But the me who sits in a darkened room for eight hours watching cricket with a big bowl of pasta in my socks and underwear is not nearly as appealing to women.”

If Danish director Lars von Trier was out to create a stir with his movie “Antichrist”, he got what he came for in Cannes. After a charged press screening where the movie, in competition at the film festival, was jeered, laughed at and loudly booed, the reviews are in, and unsurprisingly, most of them are, well, diabolical.

Faced with a hostile question during a press conference, the director who won the Palme d’Or in Cannes with “Dancer in the Dark” in 2000, took exception, and said he did not make his film for the press sitting before him or, for that matter, for an audience at all. That only served to wind some members of the press up further, begging the question why he made the film at all.

The explanation appears to be to help von Trier get over a bout of depression. The result is a horror starring Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg as a couple who struggle to overcome the grief of losing their young son. What Gainsbourg’s increasingly deranged character does to her husband, and then to herself is hard for a family-friendly blog page to describe. Suffice it to say that many of the 1,000 people watching groaned and turned away.

Critics have attacked the film for being gratuitously violent and sexual, pretentious and misogynistic. But it also has a handful of reviewers who defended it, saying it is one of the few films in Cannes this year that dared to be different.

Just for good measure, von Trier-the-provocateur told reporters he believed he was the world’s best director. I couldn’t work out if he was joking or not.