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With the summer crashing in a fiery heap this weekend, burning away all memories of blockbusters like leaves curling in a bonfire, it's time to bid adieu to the most popular season of the movie year and turn our attention to the fall, the season of festivals and award-worthy cinema. It's already begun, of course. Eugene Novikov has been sending in fine reports from the Telluride Film Festival, which is the unofficial starting point of the race for next year's Oscars, the Venice Film Festival is in full swing, and the Toronto International Film Festival kicks off on Thursday.

Before we get out a tissue, we ask that you share with us how you spent your Labor Day weekend. Via Twitter, I know many film fans were celebrating the start of the college football season (Texas and USC romped, Oklahoma got upset, and Ohio State narrowly escaped), and some people were rooting for their division-leading baseball teams, while "family" types were spending time with their loved ones, playing and basking in the warm sun, grilling burgers, or building a closet bookcase to house hundreds of DVDs and finally get them out of moving boxes (which is what I did).

What about the movies, though? Did you bravely venture into Gamer (William Goss had a mixed reaction) or All About Steve (Jeffrey M. Anderson was disappointed)? Or did you try Extract (Jette Kernion didn't love it as unreservedly as I did, but still thought it was "much funnier and more fearless" than other grown-up comedies she's seen this year)? Or catch up with one or two indie or other limited releases? Or watch DVDs? Take our poll and let us know!

The latest comedy from Mike Judge, Extract, seems at first to be more conventional than his previous films, Office Space and Idiocracy. However, as the story becomes more complicated, its characters show hidden depths and the plot provides the type of bizarrely comic situations we've come to expect from the writer-director of Beavis and Butt-Head and King of the Hill.

The movie focuses on Joel (Jason Bateman), who owns a small extract factory in southern California. He and his wife Suzie (Kristen Wiig) are having trouble maintaining interest in one another, and he's considering the possibility of an affair. His potential lover is the mysterious Cindy (Mila Kunis), who has just arrived to work at the plant as a temp, but who is really a seasoned con artist with some other payoffs in mind. Joel confides in his bartender friend Dean (Ben Affleck), who tends to recommend medication for everything, legal or not. However, his suggestion about what Joel can do to not feel guilty about having an affair involves not pot or pills, but a trap for Suzie.

I've noticed that when I talk about writer-director Mike Judge with various non-film-geek friends and acquaintances, I usually have to explain who he is -- even here in Austin, his hometown. And depending on the type of person, different types of projects trigger recognition. The high-tech crowd gets excited over Office Space, of course, but it's surprising how many of them can quote Idiocracy lines at me too. ("It's what plants crave!") Nearly everyone nods in recognition if I bring up Beavis and Butt-Head, although I do believe my mom winced a bit until I mentioned King of the Hill as well. And now that Judge has made what may be his most traditionally commercial comedy to date, Extract, I wonder if I'll have to explain who he is to fewer people. I hope so.

Certainly more people are aware of Extract than Judge's previous film, Idiocracy, which Fox slipped into a handful of theaters with virtually no publicity of any kind. Miramax is giving Extract plenty of publicity for its September 4 wide release, and Judge agreed to do some interviews. I was fortunate enough to get to sit down with him for a little while and chat about past and future projects as well as Extract. (The above photo is from the Austin red-carpet event later that evening.)

One of my most bittersweet memories of the days I spent at my first dot com job at a now-defunct video game website was the day I came in to the office after I'd been laid off and watched Office Space with my friends who were waiting for the axe to fall. In what was our former Axis of Video Game Nerdery (a room with every console, some "debugged" thanks to a soldering iron and some help from the guys in Chinatown, high-end PCs, and several TVs), we hunkered down in the dark and cheered as Peter, Michael, and Samir go crazy on the printer with baseball bats.

As it turned out, everyone got the axe by August, and since it was 2001 and we were about a block from the World Trade Center, it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. I'm still friends with many of those folks, especially because of moments like that (and a variety of others that were probably HR violations).

In honor of my colleagues, the two lucky college kids who got scads of VS cash to party it up '90s style and run a company into the ground, and the newest Mike Judge movie, Extract, I present to you my favorite Office Space moment. Well, one of many. Video after the jump. (Naughty language, ahoy!)

Last week's scream-off finished with the new Final Destination flick beating out Rob Zombie's Halloween sequel by about $11 million. Here's the top five:

1. The Final Destination: $27.4 million
2. Inglourious Basterds: $19.3 million
3. Halloween II: $16.3 million
4. District 9: $10.3 million
5. G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra: $7.7 million

Three new releases this week, two looking for laughs and another providing futuristic thrills.

All About Steve
What's It All About: Sandra Bullock stars as a love-struck crossword puzzle designer who falls obsessively in love with with a news camera man played by Bradley Cooper.
Why It Might Do Well: The film gets points for having Thomas Haden Church in the cast.
Why It Might Not Do Well: I'm sorry, but this looks just dreadful.
Number of Theaters: 2,000
Prediction: $12 million

Extract
What's It All About: Jason Bateman plays the owner of a flower extract plant whose life begins going to hell when an injured employee sues the company.
Why It Might Do Well: Mike Judge of Beavis and Butthead and Office Space is behind the camera. Bateman is joined by Ben Affleck (who still rocks despite some career killing over exposure) and the lovely Mila Kunis.
Why It Might Not Do Well: People seem to either love or hate Judge's Idiocracy. Might this new film have the same polarizing effect?
Number of Theaters: 1,600
Prediction: $8 million

In the new movie Extract, writer-director Mike Judge includes an uncommented-on visual joke that speaks to America's TV and home-theater obsession. In the tiny living room of a small, rundown house owned by a pair of trucker-cap wearing, rusted-pickup-driving, Texas-drawling losers is an absolutely enormous flat-screen television. Their furniture is crap, their clothes are torn, and they probably can't spell ... but they have the biggest TV that'll fit through the door, placed about three feet from their stained sofa.

It instantly reminded me of all the people I've visited over the past year who have ginormous televisions -- people who don't make much more money than I do or live considerably better than me, but who made the decision to fill one wall of their home with a TV monitor. I've yet to make that leap.

I admit to occasionally feeling like a home theater Luddite. My DVD player's about eight years old, and occasionally refuses to play discs out of sheer elderly cussedness. My Sharp 27" TV seemed huge when I bought it six years ago, upgrading as I did from a 17-inch model. When I moved a few months back, I wished for the first time that I had a fancy flat-screen, mainly because it would have been easier to carry and would have taken up a lot less space in the van.

Indie Roundup reviews the past week of news from the independent film community and provides a peek at what's coming soon.

Festivals. Canada will be hosting hundreds, if not thousands, if not mllions (only a slight exaggeration, I'm told) of visitors when the Toronto International Film Festival opens on September 10, which is next Thursday! Look for intensive coverage from the Cinematical team on the ground; those of us not lucky enough to go will be following the news eagerly from afar to gauge the critical reaction to many hotly-anticipated titles.

Deals. Courtesy of our friends at indieWIRE, we learned that Mother, the latest picture by Bong Joon-Ho (The Host), has been acquired by Magnolia Pictures, along with the Korean director's first effort, Barking Dogs Never Bite. Mother debuted at Cannes and is headed for festival dates in Toronto and New York, with a theatrical release planned for early next year; it's already been selected by Korea as their entry for this year's Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Barking Dogs, originally released in 2000, did not reach North America theaters.

Film Movement has picked up Geralyn Pezanoski's warm-hearted Mine, which examines what happened to the pets left behind in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. In my review for another outlet, I wrote: "Even if you're not a dog lover or a pet owner, [Mine] may churn your emotions. ... once the true essence of the story becomes apparent, it's difficult to turn away from the screen." Film Movement plans a brief theatrical release before it hits DVD and VOD.

What is judicially inclined, comes in a bottle, and is very, very funny? Find out in Indie Weekend Box Office, after the jump.

You have to feel a bit sorry for Jason Bateman, Mike Judge, and anyone else who walked the red carpet -- or worked it, for that matter -- before the Extract world premiere in Austin on Tuesday night. It was triple-digit weather, the red carpet was outdoors, and even in the shade at 7:30 pm it was impossible not to be sweaty. Or glowing, as polite people say. Still, Bateman, who stars in the comedy, and Judge, who wrote and directed it, smiled and posed for photos and granted short interviews to any number of TV stations and news outlets.

I had interviewed Judge earlier in the day, which was a lot of fun and which I'll share with you when Extract opens in theaters on September 4. Therefore I spent my red-carpet time taking photos. I was pleased that we were able to get Bateman and Judge to pose together. Peter Martin, who attended the Dallas premiere the next night, has some great quotes from Judge's Q&A that evening, if you can't wait to hear more about the film.

Following a packed advance screening of Extract, the new comedy by Mike Judge, in Dallas, Texas last night, the writer / filmmaker / animator was asked about his previous effort, Idiocracy. He admitted his disappointment that the film was so little publicized for its limited theatrical release three years ago: "When it opened in, like eight cities, someone told me that you couldn't look it up on Moviefone under its title," he related. "[The studio] didn't even want to pay the eight bucks or whatever to get a listing, so you had to search for 'Untitled Mike Judge Film' to find out where it was playing." Our own Jette Kernion wrote about the lack of publicity at the time.

Fortunately, Judge noted that Idiocracy has sold well on DVD, and Extract should be much easier to find when it opens on Friday, September 4. If I describe it as Judge's best work so far, it's not because he's "grown up" or "become more mature"; the film features some of his darkest comedy yet. Extract is very much a part of the Mike Judge Universe, where decent men enjoy working for a living but dream of escaping some day (Jason Bateman), where good women sometimes go bad (Kristen Wiig, Mila Kunis), and where most everyone is good-hearted but dumber than a pet rock (Ben Affleck, J.K. Simmons, Clifton Collins, Jr.). In other words, Extract is another funny, unpredictable comedy featuring recognizable, everyday people, like the guy who's sleeping on your couch right now, drinking two-liter bottles of Pepsi and watching TV all day.

More tidbits from the Q&A after the jump.

Above: An exclusive image from Mike Judge's upcoming comedy Extract

Everyone loves a free movie ticket, right? Well what about a free ticket to a red carpet premiere in Los Angeles? We here at Cinematical are hella excited to be a part of this particular contest, because not only are we big Mike Judge fans, we're also really looking forward to seeing his new film, Extract, which officially hits theaters on September 4th. But why wait in line on September 4th with all the other weird, smelly locals when you can attend the red carpet premiere of the film alongside its stars on August 24th at the famed Arclight Theater in LA.

That's right, Cinematical has 10 pairs of tickets to give away for the Los Angeles premiere of Mike Judge's (Office Space) new comedy Extract, starring Jason Bateman, Mila Kunis, Ben Affleck, Kristen Wiig and J.K. Simmons, and, like with all our ticket contests, all you have to do is leave a comment letting us know why you'd like to attend the Extract premiere on August 24th and we'll randomly pick 10 winners to attend along with a guest of their choice.

Now, you must leave your comment by Monday, August 17th at 12pm EST, and Cinematical will not be responsible for transportation to and from the theater -- which also means you need to live in or around the Los Angeles area in order to attend.

Head after the jump to watch the film's trailer and read the official rules for this contest ... then sound off below.