One of the most towering achievements in cinema this year, Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood, finally opened in New York and Los Angeles on Christmas Day and was rewarded with a per-screen average of $91,300 over the weekend, the best average of the year, according to Pamela McClintock of Variety. Of course, the film only played at two theaters, but still, that's mighty impressive. Nineteen cities across the country also hosted a midnight screening on Saturday; no word yet on how those screenings were received. I thought this was an astounding film when I saw it at Fantastic Fest and I can't wait to see it again.

Cinematical's Scott Weinberg has been raving about The Orphanage since he saw the Spanish ghost story at the Toronto film festival (check his Top 10 list), and the film grossed a very healthy $12,260 per screen at 19 engagements, according to estimates compiled by Leonard Klady at Movie City News. That's just slightly more than the French-language Persepolis, the animated tale about a little girl coming of age during the Islamic Revolution in Iran, which earned $12,160 per screen at seven engagements. James Rocchi reviewed the film at Cannes, and Erik Davis recently posted his interview with directors Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud.

When it played at the Toronto festival, Monika Bartyzel called John Sayles' Honeydripper "a simple and plainly executed ode to the start of rock 'n' roll." Movie City News pointed to Stephen Holden's "withering notice" in The New York Times, which provoked Ira Deutschman of distributor Emerging Pictures to respond: "Do people show their own ignorance–and even racism–when they have a kneejerk reaction to a story that, while set in a certain time and place, is trying to get to something a little different from what is expected?" The picture made just $2,400 per screen at four locations in New York and Los Angeles.

(Note: This interview was originally conducted back in October when Persepolis was screening at the New York Film Festival. We are publishing it now to coincide with the film's theatrical release this week.)

Based on the popular graphic novel, Persepolis tells the story of a young girl coming of age during the Islamic Revolution. The film was France's selection for the best foreign language Oscar, and Persepolis was just recently nominated for a best foreign language Golden Globe. Originally written by Marjane Satrapi (based on her own life growing up), the brilliant adaptation was penned by Satrapi and her best friend Vincent Paronnaud, both of whom also directed.

On screen and in the books, Marjane comes off as a lively gal full of questions and good-natured spirit. In real life, she's exactly the same way; she speaks fast, with passion and brutal honesty, and makes sure to remind you that she's an artist first and foremost. Cinematical sat down with both Satrapi and Paronnaud shortly after France announced Persepolis was their Oscar submission, and what follows is our conversation. Keep in mind their accents are thick (Paronnaud spoke only in French, which was then translated for me by Satrapi), and so the transcription is a bit rough around the edges.

Cinematical: Congrats on being selected by France as their submission for a best foreign language Oscar. How does that feel?

Marjane Satrapi: Well, it was incredible. Out of the fact that you're always happy you're movie is selected, it's very nice. It also means this border -- this line between who is French and who is not -- it becomes more international in a way. If you live in a country, you can come from a different background and still be French. Which I think is a very good thing. In this time of life when everyone is extremely nationalist, and you know, is going back to the roots, it's very archaic in a way to have countries deciding that even if a movie doesn't happen in their country, it can come from their country. This is a very good thing.

Cinematical: How did the graphic novel originally come about? Why the decision to write about your life in that form?

MS: It's not so much about my life, you know, I use myself as a basis to talk about the other one. If I didn't use myself, it would become like a political or a sociological or a historical statement, and I'm none of that. I'm just one person, and you see what I saw. It's not a statement. This is an artistic work. The graphic novel form became an obvious choice because words are not enough for me. I love to use the image -- ya know, I make art school. And why not? So yeah, it was an obvious choice.

Okay, is this not one of the coolest posters you've seen all year? I simply love the color scheme for this film, and since I'm seeing it tomorrow -- and interviewing writer-directors Vincent Paronnaud and Marjane Satrapi on Friday -- this poster just totally puts me in the mood for, what some are calling, a shoe-in for an Oscar nod in the Best Foreign Language category. Persepolis, which won the Jury prize at Cannes earlier this year (where our own James Rocchi called it a "masterpiece"), was France's Oscar submission, and rightfully so -- those of us in the Cinematical camp that have seen it will not stop raving. Sony Pictures Classics has sent over the exclusive poster for Persepolis (click on the image for a larger version), which is based on Satrapi's own autobiographical best-selling graphic novels featuring an outspoken Iranian girl who finds her unique attitude and outlook on life repeatedly challenged during the Islamic revolution.

In her Telluride review of the film, Cinematical's Kim Voynar had this to say: "Marjane's story could have been told in a live-action dramatic narrative film, or a documentary, but the choice to stick with this highly stylized animation approach works very well, and has the effect of removing a layer of ethnicity, thereby making the story more universal. This isn't the story of an Iranian girl, it's the story of a girl who lived through eight years of war and societal changes, who happens to be Iranian." Apart from also screening at the Toronto International Film Festival, Persepolis was chosen as the closing night film for this year's New York Film Festival. The film arrives in theaters on Christmas Day.

Marjane Satrapi grew up in Iran, living through the end of the Shah's regime, the revolution that overthrew the Shah, and the establishment of the fundamentalist government that imposed increasingly strict rules upon the Iranian people, especially girls and women. In Persepolis, the film adaptation of her popular graphic novels, Satrapi acts as a historian of sort of her own life, visualized in stark grayscale animation that brings the novel to life on the big screen.

When we first meet Marjane, she's a nine-year-old would-be punk rocker running about in her jeans and Adidas sneakers; we follow her through her early coming-of-age and rebelliousness during the transition after the Shah's government was overthrown, during which her parents, concerned for her safety, sent her to school in Austria. She was supposed to stay with a friend of her mother's, but the friend tired of having her after only a couple days, and dropped her off at a boarding school. A series of moves followed, as Marjane struggled to fit into her new culture. She'd left Iran in part because of religious fundamentalism and intolerance; in Austria, she found intolerance of a different sort, and was hindered by assumptions her fellow students had about Iran and Iranians. She found a way to fit in, and even fell in and out of love, but ultimately missed her family and moved back to Iran for a few years before finally leaving her home country for good.

Will the star power of Sean Penn lure you to see Persepolis on the big screen? How about Iggy Pop? Marjane Satrapi grew up in Iran in the 1970's and her autobiographical graphic novels provided the basis for the animated film that premiered at Cannes. Cinematical's James Rocchi described it as "a fresh, moving, out-of-the-gate masterpiece -- a work of animation that manages to be artistically brilliant, politically rich, morally engaging and emotionally overwhelming." As we all know, though, great reviews aren't enough to prompt North American moviegoers to see a (mostly) black and white cartoon about Iran voiced entirely in French. No, we don't want to read subtitles! And we want Hollywood stars!

I can concede the point about subtitles when it comes to animation, especially since Persepolis is set (mostly) in Iran. According to Variety, Satrapi works in French; since she co-scripted and co-directed (with Vincent Paronnaud), the original version is French. So an English-dubbed version is no more of a compromise than the original, linguistically speaking. Chiara Mastroianni and Catherine Deneuve will reprise their voice roles as Marjane and her mother, respectively, while Penn will step in as her father and Pop -- who's done The Rugrats Movie and other voice work -- will play her uncle. I'm trying -- and failing -- to imagine the voices of Deneuve and Penn as a married Iranian couple. Will Penn adapt a French accent to match Deneuve? Sacré bleu! I know Penn is a "name," but I wonder how much his vocal abilities will actually help the film. Sony Pictures Classics acquired North American distribution rights more than a year ago. Work on the dub will finally start this summer, with the hope that it will be completed in time to be shown at the Toronto film festival. Matt Bradshaw found the unsubtitled French preview, which looks really good.

For the weekend:

• There's a really interesting animated film premiering in France next month, that will hopefully make its way across the ocean and give us some animation that's not about bugs, penguins or any of the other hot, animated creatures of the moment. The film is Persepolis, and you can find a trailer and clips over at Cartoon Brew (It's cute, but unfortunately not in English. However, it's fairly easy to get the gist). The film is adapted from Marjane Satrapi's comic memoir of her experiences growing up in Tehran, and the clips have recognizable pop references from Julio Iglesias to Michael Jackson. To sweeten the deal further, both Catherine Deneuve and Gena Rowlands have lent their voices to the movie. If only we could get more cool rocker chick movies, and less kooky animal ones...
• Sophie Marceau has a bunch on the up and up, so I thought I'd fill you in. While her projects aren't as mainstream as some of her previous work, like Braveheart and The World is Not Enough, she's been clocking time both behind and in front of the camera. She's currently in Cannes for her second directorial feature, Trivial -- a thriller that takes place in and around Deauville's Hotel Normandie, which will hit French screens next week. In front of the camera, she's playing a resistance fighter in the WWII thriller, Female Agents. And once all that is done, she's going to work on her third feature directorial stint. Variety quotes her as saying, or rather purring as they put it: "I don't want only to satisfy other people's desires. I have desires of my own, and making my own films satisfies them." Here, here!
• This September, the U.K.-South Africa co-production treaty will finally be taken advantage of with Anthony Fabian's Skin. It sounds like a pretty interesting story -- it's based on a black girl who was born to white parents in South Africa, who obviously had a heck of a hard time dealing with discrimination under previous apartheid laws. The movie will star Sophie Okonedo, who starred with Don Cheadle in Hotel Rwanda. I wonder if we'll ever get the story of the black and white twins and some point, too?