Eric D. Snider tried his best to trick me into watching Beverly Hills Chihuahua this week. It didn't work on me, but it worked on millions of Snider acolytes all over North America, who joined forces to give the talking-animals kidflick a strong $29 million, first-place debut. I didn't see it, as I say, so it would be wrong for me to bemoan the decline of civilization that this surely (if unsurprisingly) represents. Feel free to do so in the comments.

Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist opened to $12 million and third place, which I'd have to say is okay for the low-profile, borderline-niche film. That number, though not terribly impressive, is actually a fair testament to Michael Cera's star power, since his presence was literally the only mass-marketable aspect of the movie. So the debut is at least a draw for Sony.

It was an interesting weekend in that there were several films opening in, or expanding into, semi-wide release. The biggest winner of that bunch has to be Religulous, Bill Maher's aggressively anti-faith documentary, which did $3.5 million on around 500 screens for $6,972 per screen. Given the preaching-to-the-relatively-small-choir quality of the film, I don't expect it to hold up too well in the weeks ahead, but this level of interest is a mild surprise. Facing off against Religulous ideologically was David Zucker's conservative spoof An American Carol which, according to the estimates, edged out Religulous with $3.8 million on over 1,600 screens.

Ed Harris's lightweight western Appaloosa expanded to roughly 1,000 screens and took in $5 million -- which is okay, but seems like a missed opportunity. Faring worse were Flash of Genius (1100 screens) and Blindness (1700), with $2.3 and $2 million respectively, both landing outside the top 10. The grim Blindness was a no-sale from the beginning, especially since the critics never got on board, but the unabashedly populist Flash of Genius underperformed. Maybe the ads emphasized windshield wipers too much.

A bit more plus the weekend's top 12 after the jump.

At one end of his career, Neil LaBute was an up-and-coming talent to be reckoned with. He earned a reputation as intelligent Mamet-like artist of uncompromising vision with movies like In the Company of Men and Your Friends & Neighbors, harsh, cynical films that looked under the rock of humanity and found icky, squirmy things. At the other end, there's The Wicker Man, a genuine, "what was he thinking?" movie, and the curious dud The Shape of Things, which couldn't quite reconcile LaBute's stage hat with his cinema hat. In the middle we have Nurse Betty and Possession, two exceptional Hollywood entertainments with gleaming surfaces and dark souls. As with David Gordon Green and his delightful, mainstream comedy Pineapple Express, this type of "compromise" may represent LaBute's real calling.

With his seventh feature Lakeview Terrace, LaBute has once again managed to take a surface thriller and use it to work through some of humanity's ugliest and most hateful issues. It begins with a picture of suburbia, USA. Single father Abel Turner (Samuel L. Jackson) struggles to get his kids up in the morning and off to school, but struggles even harder in relating to them. He knows how to boss them around, but doesn't understand them. (He makes his son change basketball jerseys to reflect "their" favorite team.) Later, he peers out the window and watches the new neighbors move in. He's clearly perturbed that it's a clean-cut white guy, Chris Mattson (Patrick Wilson), married to a beautiful black girl, Lisa (Kerry Washington). We eventually learn that he has his reasons, his own emotional wounds, to explain why and how his buttons have been pushed, but it launches an all-out battle of wills.

Cinematical has received these exclusive photos from the new flick Lakeview Terrace, starring Samuel L. Jackson, Patrick Wilson, and Kerry Washington. The film is a thriller about an interracial couple (Wilson and Washington) who move into their dream home in California; their California dreamin' becomes a nightmare when their next door neighbor, a high-strung cop (Jackson), takes issue with having an interracial couple in the neighborhood. Jackson, the self-appointed neighborhood watchman, increasingly (and intensely, if we know Jackson) harasses them, until the newlyweds decide to fight back.

Take a look at the pics, and let us know what you think about Jackson getting his mean-and-scary on in the flick.

Cinematical has just received this exclusive poster for Lakeview Terrace, starring Samuel L. Jackson, Kerry Washington, and Patrick Wilson. Oh, the watchful eye of Jackson. This time around, he plays one of the creepiest types of bad guys -- a cop who can't be stopped. While a neighborhood like Lakeview Terrace sounds great and all, it becomes anything but when an interracial couple (Washington and Wilson) move next door to Jackson's racist cop. The man in blue starts off subtly -- an annoying light here, an awkward scare there, and then goes into full-on creepy neighbor to get the couple to hit the road. But Wilson will have none of that and crazily decides to take on the imbalanced cop.

Lakeview Terrace will hit theaters on September 19.

This week I've got a quintet of trailers for movies that recall other movies. It's Echoes of Movies Passed on this week's Trailer Park.

House Bunny
I can imagine the pitch meeting for this one starting with a suggestion to remake Legally Blonde, but without all that annoying charm and wit. That theory actually might hold water when you realize the screenplay for this one was written by the same team behind the Legally Blonde script. Anna Faris stars as a Playboy Bunny who, at the age of 27, finds herself kicked out of the Playboy mansion for getting too long in the tooth. With nowhere else to go, she takes a job as house mother to a sorority full of nerds/geeks/dorks, and everybody learns something important (I guess). If there's anything worthwhile here the trailer keeps it well hidden. Here's what Jessica thought.

If you'll permit me to embarrass myself for a moment: I'm the guy who liked Neil LaBute's redo of The Wicker Man. Well, maybe I'm not the only one -- if I recall correctly, Weinberg didn't hate it either. But I'm pretty sure that's it. Any movie where Nicolas Cage dropkicks Leelee Sobieski and then dons a bear suit for an extended stretch is okay by me, but most people seemed to think that LaBute was out of his element in the supernatural thriller genre. In that case, his next project finds him back in his wheelhouse: generating suspense by manipulating and exaggerating everyday social tensions. Lakeview Terrace involves an interracial couple (Patrick Wilson and Kerry Washington) who find an enemy in their new next-door neighbor (Samuel L. Jackson), an LAPD cop who disapproves of their relationship and becomes determined to drive them away.

A trailer for Lakeview Terrace has surfaced on the film's official website, and the movie looks like squirmy, uncomfortable fun -- the kind of material LaBute is most comfortable with. In addition to the racial angle, it looks like the film is going to explore another touchy subject: the near-omnipotence that comes with a police uniform. It takes some guts to make a cop the bad guy without also providing a virtuous foil (e.g. Ethan Hawke offsetting Denzel Washington in Training Day). But if anyone can pull it off, it's Neil LaBute.

[via Comingsoon.net]

Chances are, if you watch any type of indie films, or The Phantom of the Opera, you've probably caught Patrick Wilson. In the last few years, he's been the creep about to get fed some Hard Candy by Ellen Page, Jennifer Connelly's husband in Little Children and he also had a part in Running with Scissors. While he's got the indie scene covered, he hasn't really broke through to the mainstream, but I'm thinking this might help -- he's signed onto the Neil LaBute thriller Lakeview Terrace.

Cinematical has followed the development of this film for a while now. As of March, we had Samuel L. Jackson starring as a racist LAPD officer who has got it in his mind that he has to do anything and everything to remove the interracial couple who live next door. LaBute was in talks to direct (and has since signed) and Ashton Kutcher was being considered for the role of Kerry Washington's husband, forming the couple being harassed. It looks like someone came to their senses (who would want to tread similar ground to Guess Who?). Mr. Demi Moore is gone and Patrick Wilson is taking over. I'd say this is a pretty solid move for the film, and its cred has since jumped up a few levels.

The film starts shooting on Monday. I just wish it was shooting in Toronto. LA (I presume) gets this, and what's the big film shooting in the midst of the Short Film Fest theaters? American Pie sequel 38945793. If that's something that interests you, I walked by the production today. I can tell ya that there are horses and hay as part of their college shenanigans, and if you want to go snoop, they're filming in/near the frat houses north of the University of Toronto. Sigh. It would've been much cooler to walk by some classic Jackson ranting.

Playwright-turned-filmmaker Neil LaBute won me over big time with the smart dialogue and unapologetic characters he wrote for In the Company of Men and Your Friends & Neighbors. He then made a very enjoyable film from a script he didn't write, which in many other hands would have been forgettable. But after that film, Nurse Betty, he hasn't done much to keep me interested. I was especially disappointed with The Shape of Things, a flat, predictable film based on his own play, and finally couldn't even bother to check out his remake of The Wicker Man, which came out last year. He will likely keep me away once more with his next project, if it does turn out to be Lakeview Terrace, a thriller starring Samuel L. Jackson we told you about in January.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, LaBute is in negotiations to direct the film, which was written by Money Train screenwriter David Loughery. And if he gets the gig, he may get to work with Ashton Kutcher, who is possibly being cast as the husband of Kerry Washington -- because we couldn't get enough of his interracial-coupling in Guess Who. Kutcher and Washington would play a husband and wife being terrorized by Jackson's character, a racist LAPD officer who lives next door. If the script could be rewritten by LaBute -- the LaBute of ten years ago -- and feature a lot of scenes with Jackson beating on Kutcher -- really hard -- then Lakeview Terrace could have a chance, but the script is instead being retooled by playwright Howard Korder, and Screen Gems will probably want to keep Kutcher from being too bloodied up.

Some of today's casting tidbits I managed to throw together while watching Breaking Vegas on The History Channel (which immediately depressed me because it made me wish I were smarter):

• Samuel L. Jackson wants to play a bad guy -- either that, or the neighbor from hell. The Snakes on a Plane actor has joined Kerry Washington in Lakeview Terrace, a thriller written by David Loughery in which James Lessiter and Will Smith will produce. Story revolves around a black LAPD officer (Jackson) who isn't too fond of the interracial couple (with Washington as the female half) that just moved in next door. In fact, he's determined to run them off his block in any way he sees fit. Something tells me these folks wouldn't make for great contestants on TLC's Trading Spaces.
• Speaking of The History Channel's Breaking Vegas, Columbia Pictures is currently rounding up a bunch of cool cats to star in the big screen version of the very real-life story explored in Ben Mezrich's Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions. Laurence Fishburne is in negotiations to co-star in 21, while Liza Lapira and Josh Gad have joined Jim Sturgess and Masi Oka in the pic, to be directed by Robert Luketic. Fishburne would play the Vegas security chief placed in charge of tracking down the group of M.I.T. students who, through mastering the art of card counting, raked in tons and tons of cash.
• Rachael Taylor (See No Evil, Transformers) is looking to hop on the horror remake bandwagon -- she's signed on to star in Shutter, a remake of the 2004 Thai film. She'll be playing one half of a recently married couple who are spending their honeymoon in Tokyo when -- holy crap -- images of ghosts begin showing up in all their photos. Hey, it's better than drunken fat guys and middle fingers, right?