I don't know the last time I felt like a kid at the movies, but while watching Journey to the Center of the Earth 3-D this past week, I honestly reverted to my 8-year-old self. That isn't to say the movie is necessarily as good as the movies that astonished me as a kid -- because of the subject matter, I'd think about comparing it to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and The Goonies, both of which came out when I was around that age, and neither to which this film holds up in terms of originality or storytelling craft. But as far as holding onto my sense of wonder, Journey is up there.

Of course, it's necessary to point out that Journey would be nothing without the digital 3-D factor. It's actually the first live-action narrative feature to be shot and released in the new format (the non-fiction concert films, U2 3D and Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour were technically the first live-action 3-D features), and while it's far from perfect, it is a terrific pioneer. I shall continue favoring the look of animated 3-D films, especially those directed as well as Monster House, and I anticipate that James Cameron's Avatar will blow away all live-action 3-D films released prior to its arrival. For now, though, I'm telling you, with the utmost cinemaphilic urgency: you need to see this ASAP.

There was a time in my life when I spent more of my weekends going to concerts than going to the movies. And many of those concerts were fittingly at a venue that had previously been a movie theater. Back then, though, I never thought about the significance of seeing The Mighty Mighty Bosstones in the same place I once watched A Nightmare on Elm Street 4. There was a fine distinction between live music and cinema.

Unlike now, when there's an ever growing feeling that for the exhibition industry cinema is dead, while live music is, umm, live. The signs have been visible for the past year: Garth Brooks selling out multiplexes; a Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus concert coming in at #1 at the box office. But nothing made the future seem as clear as last month's news that National Amusements is going into the live entertainment business.

The theater chain, which also technically owns most of Viacom, has apparently seen enough interest in live entertainment through "experiments" at its fancy Cinema De Lux locations that it will begin operating venues strictly for live entertainment, which will be called Showcase Live! (a name similar to the company's Showcase Cinemas brand of multiplexes). The first is set to open this August, and while it's the only one apparently planned out so far, the company expects to open three to five more within the next few years.

Among my favorite film books is Michael J. Weldon's two-volume "Psychotronic" film guide. The first was published in 1983 and the second in 1996 (Michael hopes to publish a third at some point). Unlike Leonard Maltin's annual book, Weldon doesn't update an existing guide; each new guide is an entirely new volume. If you want to read about Halloween, you need Vol. 1 and if you want to read about Halloween 4, you need Vol. 2. A "Psychotronic" movie can be fairly easy to define. It's basically any of the "lower" film genres, dealing with the more questionable elements of society: horror, sci-fi, bikers, strippers, superheroes, zombies, kung-fu, vampires, comic books, drugs, sex, action heroes, rock 'n' roll, midnight movies, monsters, witches, cults, serial killers, magic, time travel, robberies, heists, contract killers, gladiators, Spaghetti Westerns, mad scientists, murder mysteries, pimps, voyeurs, etc.

On a quiet weekend for new indie films, several stories merit attention. Let's begin with Caramel, a film from Lebanon that our own Kim Voynar quite enjoyed, calling the comedy/drama set in and around a Beirut beauty salon "funny, heartwarming, and sensitive." Distributor Roadside Attractions opened the picture at 12 locations, where it earned a tidy $6,210 per screen, according to estimates compiled by Leonard Klady at Movie City News. That was tops among new limited releases.

Kim also recommended Eric Byler's Tre, a relationship drama. I haven't seen Byler's latest, but I agree with Kim that he's a very talented filmmaker; she says that he's "at the top of his game" with Tre. Playing on just two screens in Los Angeles, the film grossed $1,800 at each for distributor Cinema Libre. I'm hoping more people will get to see it as it opens in other cities in the coming weeks. The official site has a trailer and more information on future engagements in Chicago and San Francisco.

U2 3D got thoroughly dusted by the Hannah Montana phenomenon, but I would imagine there was no crossover in the audiences. And earnings of $12,620 per screen at 61 engagements is nothing to sneeze at -- that's good enough for second place in the overall per-screen standings, though far behind Hannah's $43,550 per-screen juggernaut. Have two G-rated 3D concert documentaries ever been 1-2 like that before? I think not!

Speaking of face-offs, Juno continued its remarkable run, dropping just 28% in its ninth week of release while playing on 2,475 screens. Its cumulative total is $110 million for distributor Fox Searchlight. Meanwhile, IFC Films expanded Romanian abortion drama 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days into 17 theaters where it made $7,176 per engagement, according to Box Office Mojo.

Today, as millions of (mostly) men are watching the Super Bowl, possibly witnessing the Patriots make history (sorry Erik), millions of (mostly) girls are watching Miley Cyrus (aka "Hannah Montana") make history of her own. As you read this, across the country the 3D concert film Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour is selling out its show times for the day. Actually, it's more likely that at many theaters show times have long been sold out.

On Friday, when the Disney release opened, I took a look at the status of the weekend show times in the tri-state area on Moviefone, Movietickets.com and Fandango. Most times were already unavailable. But I had no way of knowing how recently those times had sold out, because tickets went on sale back on December 1, and many people (our own Kim Voynar and her daughter included) bought theirs way in advance. As Kim mentioned last week, Fandango announced that more than 1,000 show times had already been sold out and that theaters were trying to squeeze in more screenings. The online ticketing company also announced that since December 1, the film has been one of its top selling titles and that this past week the film accounted for 91% of all the company's online ticket sales (compared to 1% each for Rambo, 27 Dresses and Cloverfield).

Finally opening in the US after receiving rapturous reviews at Cannes last May and landing atop many critics' top ten lists for the year, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days easily led the field this weekend, according to estimates compiled by Box Office Mojo. Shut out of the Academy Award nominations for Best Foreign Language Film, the Romanian abortion drama nevertheless drew big crowds to the two theaters where it opened, averaging $24,100 per screen for distributor IFC.

Playing on 61 screens, U2 3D scored an impressive $15,508 per screen average. Opinion has been divided as to whether the possibilities of 3D were effectively used, with our own Christopher Campbell arguing that the film is important to experience, while Nick Schager was more critical. And for anyone concerned about the higher ticket prices charged for the 3D experience, Bono told USA Today: "I'm hoping that all the people in high school or who are college-age and don't have the cash to go see us can go see us for a low price with this film."

Reveling in its Academy Award nominations, Juno soared just past the $100 million mark, increasing its weekly take 3.5% while dropping 108 theaters. It's still playing at more than 2,400 locations in its eighth week of release for distributor Fox Searchlight.

Fellow Best Picture nominee There Will Be Blood fared well as Paramount Vantage continued its roll-out. Now playing in 885 locations, its per-screen average was a healthy $5,522. Best Picture nominee Atonement was down a bit ($2,832 per-screen at 1,400 engagements) and No Country for Old Men was up ($2,261 per-screen at 1,107 locations). Playing on just 58 screens, Best Animated Film nominee Persepolis had the fifth-best per-screen average of the weekend ($6,034) for Sony Pictures Classics.

Among other limited releases, Teeth performed quite well, averaging $4,212 at 16 theaters in its second week out.

The popularity and quality of DVDs, the rise of home theaters, the general unpleasantness of the modern cineplex experience -- when pinpointing blame for declining interest in going to the movies, all of these reasons (and a few more as well) likely play a part. Nonetheless, for studios and theater chains, the "why" isn't quite as important as the "how do we turn this awful trend around?" And if the past couple of years are any indication, their prime solution seems to involve trotting out a technology that's more than half a century old, slightly improving its quality, and touting it as some sort of revolutionary step forward. That's right, we're talking about 3D, which began its comeback in exclusive IMAX-only presentations of random major theatrical releases (like 2006's Open Season), and has now begun its full infiltration of the mainstream, most notably with last November's Beowulf, a CG spectacle that -- in nearly a third of all the theaters it was projected -- required the use of advanced red-and-blue glasses to get the full, eye-popping experience.

Now the next phase of the technique's attempted resurrection arrives in the form of U2 3D, the first live-action film to ever be shot completely in 3D. And as with Beowulf, the same inherent positives and negatives persist. Directed by Catherine Owens and Mark Pellington using a wide array of 3D cameras, this document of U2's 2006 stop in Argentina on their Vertigo tour -- including footage from seven different performances -- is a striking up-close-and-personal view of the iconic band running through a greatest hits set list to a raucous outdoor stadium audience. What Owens and Pellington's film provides is an immersive front row seat at a U2 show, which -- with its elongated stage platforms that stretch into the crowd, and an immense, multifaceted screen presenting all manner of graphics and text -- seems to have been custom-designed to be transposed into three dimensions. Attuned to the bass of Adam Clayton in "Where the Streets Have No Name" and the crooning of Bono during a fantastic rendition of "One," the spectators rock, sway and bounce with rhythmic exhilaration, feeding into the titanic ego of U2's frontman and washing over the band's calmly cool guitar god The Edge.

When The Jazz Singer arrived in theaters in 1927, it was far from perfect. In fact, despite heralding the arrival of sound pictures, its audio was quite poor in quality, and it would take many years before the sound in sound films would be accepted as natural. But The Jazz Singer will forever be remembered in the film history books. I'm not so sure that U2 3D will hold the same kind of prestige as that film, but it ought to, because as the first live-action digital 3D film, it is certainly opening the door for a brand new kind of movie experience, one that will likely be the standard in coming decades, if not years.

The problem with U2 3D's prestige could be that it is neither the first 3D movie, nor is it the first digital 3D film. But people have never seen anything like this before, enough that we could consider those early analog 3D films the equivalent of D.W. Griffith's failed 1921 sound film Dream Street, which used poorer technology than The Jazz Singer. And we could consider those recent animated digital 3D movies as the equivalent of the 1926 film Don Juan, which featured a synched soundtrack of music and sound effects, yet no dialogue. Anyway, what I'm saying is that U2 3D must be seen, not necessarily because it's a great film, but because it's an important film, and you can say you saw it when.

Not much of a U2 fan? Well, I'm not either. I've never owned a U2 album (though I will admit to liking most of the band's early singles), and I never had any interest in seeing them live, let alone seeing a concert film of them performing. However, while most concert films are limited to fan appeal -- unless Martin Scorsese or some other great filmmaker shoots them -- U2 3D is obviously different. Plus, it was co-directed by well-known music video director-turned-Hollywood-player Mark Pellington (Arlington Road) and video maker Catherine Owens, who is best known for directing U2's "Original of the Species" video and content for the band's multimedia-filled Zoo TV tour.

It was, as the announcer kept reminding us, "un occasion singular" -- U2 playing the Red Carpet at Cannes before the Midnight premire of their concert documentary U2 3D. Cinematical was there -- in one of the biggest mobs I've ever seen at Cannes.



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