Vote the Movies

1. "Michael Jackson's This Is It" ($7.9 million)
2. "Paranormal Activity" ($6.1 million)
3. "Law Abiding Citizen" ($2.42 million)
4. "Couples Retreat" ($2.38 million)
5. "Where The Wild Things Are" ($1.9 million)

There are ghosts and serial killers aplenty in movie theaters this Halloween weekend, but it appears that moviegoers are looking to celebrate the haunted festivities with none other than Michael Jackson.

The deceased pop sensation is the subject of "Michael Jackson's This Is It," the Sony distributed documentary chronicling Jackson's rehearsals for a massive concert series that never came to pass due to his death. "This Is It" unsurprisingly wound up in first place on Friday evening with $7.9 million, which brings the film's cumulative total to $19.1 million since its opening last Wednesday — but the Jackson documentary hasn't moonwalked all the way to the bank, certainly not in the way that Sony and concert promoter AEG had expected.

Deadline Hollywood Daily has an extensive report on the relatively disappointing financial performance of "This Is It," stating that AEG predicted that the film would rake in "$250 million in its first 5 days." That outcome is extremely unlikely now with "This Is It" slated for a cumulative $32.5 million by Sunday's end, despite overall positive reviews. Still, as the film is currently labeled as a two-week limited engagement, this level of success might be it for "This Is It."

Looking towards the horrifying corner of the box office, it is once again "Paranormal Activity" that stands atop its competitors. The Oren Peli-directed ghost thriller finished in second place on Friday night with $6.1 million, a result of Paramount plugging the film into 400 more theaters this weekend.

The film isn't likely to surpass the similar success of "The Blair Witch Project," as Paramount Vice Chairman Rob Moore told Deadline Hollywood that "[it] will still take a pretty good run from here to get there." Nonetheless, "Paranormal Activity" has had an extraordinary amount of success thus far with a cumulative of $74.4 million based on a shoestring budget of $15,000.

The remainder of Friday's top five consisted of a close race for third between "Law Abiding Citizen" and "Couples Retreat" at $2.42 million and $2.38 million respectively, while "Where The Wild Things Are" finished in fifth place at $1.9 million.

Are you celebrating Halloween at the movie theaters or elsewhere this year? Let us know your plans in the comments section or on Twitter!

USA
Feature Film
Writer/Director: Dito Montiel
Cinematographer: Eric Gautier
Composer: Jonathan Elias
Cast: Shia LaBeouf, Robert Downey Jr., Channing Tatum, Melonie Diaz, Chazz Palminteri, Dianne Wiest, Martin Compston, Peter Tambakis, Adam Scarimbolo, Anthony de Sando

Adapted from his own autobiographical novel, Montiel’s distinctive debut - recounting a few turbulent months from his blue-collar Queens youth; detailing burgeoning and diminishing relationships, dreams of a better life, and a great deal of tragedy - with its poetic mise-en-scène, sound design, and scoring, and some terrific performances (not the least of which coming from the excellent LaBeouf,) proves to be a really rather moving experience. Iain.Stott

I hope you enjoyed this evening's "Ulalume: Howling at New Moon" Halloween special on MTV. I hope you also enjoyed our exclusive clip from "New Moon." The one that "Twilight" stars Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner introduced during the show. For those of you who may have missed it -- and for those who just want to watch it again... and again and again and again and again -- we've got it here for you now. Right below this text, in fact. I somehow doubt you've even read this far. Enjoy, and HAPPY HALLOWEEN TO ALL OF YOU! HAVE A FUN, SAFE WEEKEND!

"Kick-Ass" actress Chloe Moretz was among those tweeting good thoughts to Nicolas Cage and his family following the death of his father August Coppola this week. A literature professor and the brother of director Francis Ford Coppola, he reportedly died following a heart attack on Tuesday.

In other tweets, David Slade slipped a fresh image into his Twitter feed of actor Xavier Samuel from "Eclipse," which he says is the first look at Samuel's character Riley in the film. A couple of "Twilight" actors tweeted last minute contemplations over their Halloween costumes, while Edgar Wright may be giving up altogether and Russell Brand decried jack-o-lanterns as symbols for the season. Check out what they all had to say after the jump. It's in the Twitter-Wood report for October 30, 2009.

Twitter Pic of the Day:
@DAVID_A_SLADE http://twitpic.com/nhqyd - In celebration of wrap first Eclipse cast photo Xavier Samuels between set ups as Riley Biers.
-David Slade, Director ("30 Days of Night," "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse")

@cserratos Halloween is my favorite holiday. So I have a couple costumes. Wild thing. Velma Kelly. Hindu Goddess. Sailor Moon...and the classic Witch.
-Christian Serratos, Actress ("Twilight," "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse")

@Jamiebower Okay kids. Need you to help me decied. Its a toss up between. Edward Scissorhands, a mouse or skeleton jump suit? Help. We don't have long x
-Jamie Campbell Bower, Actor ("RocknRolla," "The Twilight Saga: New Moon")

@edgarwright I am too busy with work to get a Halloween outfit together. I may have to resurrect an old standby and go as Eddie Yorque.
-Edgar Wright, Director ("Shaun of the Dead," "Scott Pilgrim vs. The World")

@tinypinkpoodle God bless Nicholas Cages father and all the Copolas rest in piece god bless
-Chloe Moretz, Actress ("Kick-Ass," "Diary of a Wimpy Kid")

@freddurst Just accidentally walked out of my bfast spot and forgot to pay the check. Oops!! I.O.U ??
-Fred Durst, Actor/Director/Musician ("The Education of Charlie Banks," "The Longshots")

@ParisHilton http://twitpic.com/ngwcp - Found the Perfect Pumpkin! Yay!
-Paris Hilton, Actress ("The Hottie and the Nottie," "House of Wax")

@paul_mcguigan Writer Grant Morrison and I are working on a very interesting project based in Scotland. This man is genius.
-Paul McGuigan, Director ("Lucky Number Slevin," "Push")

@rustyrockets Halloween?Skeletons and pumpkins aren't actually scary,just bone scaffold and a vegetable.You might as well be scared of potatoes and hair.
-Russell Brand, Actor ("Forgetting Sarah Marshall," "Get Him to the Greek")

Don’t forget to follow @MTVMoviesBlog on Twitter for all the latest updates and colorful commentary from the world of movies.

Sure, this weekend's premiere of "Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day" features the return of Connor and Murphy McManus, Il Duce and the rest of Boston's favorite movie vigilantes, but when I asked around for some questions to ask the film's director and stars when they dropped by Movies Blog HQ, there was one element from the first film everyone was asking about for the sequel: the rope.

Fans of the original film will no doubt recall the brothers' oft-quoted, obscenity-laden debate regarding the merits of bringing rope to their showdown with a mob boss—and according to director Troy Duffy and stars Sean Patrick Flanery, Norman Reedus and Billy Connolly, the rope is indeed back by popular demand.

"The rope will make a reappearance," laughed Duffy.

"When we showed it in Boston, there was a huge roar from the audience," added Connolly.

"The rope comes back... in a very funny way," teased Reedus.

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FROM MTV.COM: In the spring, and out of nowhere, Robert Zemeckis exclusively revealed to MTV News that new digital tools like performance-capture technology had him buzzing about finally making a sequel to "Who Framed Roger Rabbit." But there's a big difference between being excited about a project and actually moving forward with it.

MTV News has now exclusively learned that Zemeckis is not only pumped to bring the flustered cartoon bunny back to the big screen after 20 years, but that he has commissioned a script. And guess who's writing it? Original scribes Jeffrey Price and Peter Seaman.

Continue reading Exclusive: 'Roger Rabbit' Writers Working On Sequel, Robert Zemeckis Says

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We've teased the new "Avatar" trailer for you. We've given it to you in Freeze Frame. And now here it is again in Stop Motion, 40 images, frozen in time and captioned for your reading enjoyment. The first pic is below. Click it to be whisked off to the shiny, new image gallery.

As director Oren Peli's "Paranormal Activity" continues its seemingly unstoppable march into the Halloween weekend, it's a good idea for us all to take a step back and consider exactly why it is so successful. The horror genre isn't exactly imperiled, but there are those in the fan community -- myself included -- who contend that so much attention has been brought to bear on delivering lifelike special effects and moment-to-moment thrills that the all-important element of suspense has been cast aside.

There's plenty of evidence to support the theory. Whatever your interest level in recent efforts such as "Halloween II" and "Saw VI" may be, they are clearly not subtle. "Paranormal," on the other hand, is highlighted by a slow-building terror. There's nary a drop of blood nor exposed innard to be found, and yet it's hard to sit and watch without squirming uncomfortably as the demon's tortures grow more overt. As Peli told us in a recent interview, that was the plan all along.

"I knew from the beginning that I wanted to have a very slow build, compared to the current horror movies that... usually start with a big bang and [then] deliver a jump scare every few minutes," he explained. For inspiration, he dug deeper into cinema history than the past 10 years, looking beyond well-regarded efforts like the original "Saw" and "Scream."

"I knew I wanted to break this formula," he continued. "Kind of go back to the way older movies were done, like Hitchcock movies and movies that really took their time to build a premise and give you a chance to get to know the characters." The most effective horror, he reasoned, has you right there with the characters, seeing what they see and fearing what they fear.

"I thought that if you do that, then the payoff later is far better, because you're really invested in the characters," he said. "Also, when you go through the formula, it reminds you that you're watching a movie. I wanted to break that so people would think they're just watching some home video."

With such a profound break from the current norm, one starts to wonder if "Paranormal" can even be referred to as a genre film. Does Peli think so? "In a way, but some people say it's more a suspense/thriller or supernatural thriller, not really a horror movie."

How so? "Although of a lot of scary things happen, it's not a horror movie in the traditional sense of a lot of gore and jump scares and stuff like that. So I don't know if it's really easy to define."

Whatever the recipe is, it's clearly a successful one. With more than $65 million in box office earnings to date, off of a movie that cost less than $15,000 to make, formal concerns such as genre fall by the wayside. Hollywood is a business after all, and "Paranormal Activity" is immensely profitable. However you want to label it, you can bet that studios large and small are going to be looking to repeat that success.

Which elements contribute the most to the success of "Paranormal Activity"? Is it purely in the quality of the film/filmmaking? Does the marketing, which has followed a decidedly guerilla, grassroots approach, have anything to do with it? Is this sort of success some that can even be intentionally repeated, or do you see it more as a luck-of-the-draw success story? Do you think Peli has proven himself as a filmmaker with this debut effort, or will lightning have to strike twice (or more) before you're convinced?