Following in the footsteps of Sacha Baron Cohen's title characters in "Borat" and "Bruno," the British actor has unleashed another of his characters upon us, Admiral General Aladeen in "The Dictator."

Instead of a Kazakh journalist seeking Pamela Anderson or an Austrian fashionista seeking fame, Aladeen is a ruthless foreign head of state who, like the others, gets plopped into America. Last month, we got an extended peek at the character when Paramount released the movie's opening scene.

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"Marvels' The Avengers" is racing toward the billion-dollar mark at the box office. The blockbuster beat other films for a second weekend in a row, taking in $103.2 million and raising its domestic total to $373.2 million, according to studio estimates Sunday.

Here's a look at the top five grossing films this weekend, including Johnny Depp's new movie "Dark Shadows," which opened Friday:

1. The Avengers: $103M

2. Dark Shadows: $28.8M

3. Think Like a Man: $6.3M

4. The Hunger Games: $4.4M

5. The Lucky One: $4.05M

Have you seen "The Avengers"? Is it living up to all the hype? Let us know in the comments.

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Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis in a political comedy? The first trailer for "The Campaign," released by Warner Brothers, offers a peek at the film described by Globe critics in our summer movies guide as "either the best idea for an election-year tonic or the worst."

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(AP Photo/Charles Sykes, file)

MTV announced the 36-year-old comedian Russell Brand will host the 2012 MTV Movie Awards on June 3.

Ricky Gervais, watch your back. In a move that recalls Gervais's headline-making turn as host of the 2011 Golden Globes, MTV has tapped another British comedian with an oft-unfiltered mouth, "Rock of Ages" star Russell Brand, to head up this year's MTV Movie Awards.

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On the heels of the record opening for "Marvel's The Avengers," Disney is striking while the iron's hot by already announcing plans for a sequel. The company's CEO Bob Iger confirmed the plans May 8 during a conference call.

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With "The Avengers" still racking up big numbers at the box office, this weekend has one wide release entry (the Tim Burton-Johnny Depp twisted vampire tale "Dark Shadows") and a handful of noteworthy indies, including three foreign films.

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"The Avengers" is a hit. Are you surprised? The movie's weekend gross -- $200 million -- easily shatters the previous opening weekend record, for "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2" ($169 million) last summer. Fifty-two percent of that number came from 3D showings, according to Box Office Mojo, and 8 percent of those showings came from IMAX screens (presumably as poorly presented as the ones in the Boston area).

What does this mean? That five years of hardcore studio marketing plus a film that delivers on enough of that marketing's promise will pay off. Nothing more and nothing less. I guarantee you that this record will fall within the year, maybe even when "The Dark Knight Rises" comes out in late July. It's, when all is said and done, a non-event, but bully for Marvel and Disney for making a decent movie and selling the living hell out of it.

Less of a non-event and barely noticed in the noise of "Avengers"' victory lap was the death on Friday of Adam Yauch of cancer at 47. Yes, he was a Beastie Boy; yes, he fought for your right to party. He also, in 2008, formed a company called Oscilloscope Pictures and started distributing movies that no one else would touch. Without him, films like the Oscar-nominated Woody Harrelson drama "The Messenger," the brilliant Banksy prankumentary "Exit Through the Gift Shop," the staggering Holocaust archival project "A Film Unfinished," Kelly Reichardt's "Wendy and Lucy" and "Meek's Cutoff," and the controversial Tilda Swinton drama "We Need to Talk About Kevin" likely wouldn't have seen the light of theater and home screens. Yauch and his partner, David Fenkel, brought us the dark Chilean psycho-drama "The Maid," the revolution-in-the-streets documentary "Burma VJ," So Yong Kim's "Treeless Mountain," and the uncategorizable, very wonderful "Bellflower." They dug up a long-lost silent film by the early Hollywood heartthrob Sessue Hayakawa and put it out on DVD.

In other words, Yauch and his company were a force for everything movies can be and should try to be, as opposed to "The Avengers," which is only what most people think movies are. Sure, there's room for all kinds of films, but it's sadly ironic that on the weekend that saw the triumph of Marvel's will, we lost a guy who was dedicated to breaking hearts and expectations rather than box-office records.

More overviews of Yauch's film career are here, here, and here.

One of my former BU students emailed me last night to say that he read my earlier posting on the shamefully poor projection practices at your average movie theater chain, but only after his own shabby experience. He writes:

I caught an afternoon showing of "The Avengers" today at the AMC Common, and boy does it make me want to invest in my home entertainment system. Not only was the framing a little bit off (lopping most characters at the hairline), they never bothered to turn on the subwoofer in the theater. That's right. Two and a half hours of explosions and the Hulk, and no low end or rumbles. One (matinee) ticket, a small coke and a small popcorn come to $19.75--I'd like to think that for that, I ought to get the full picture and sound! I suppose the really disappointing part is that I wasn't entirely surprised.

When I asked him which particular theater at the Common, he responded:

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If you were blinded by the glare of "The Avengers" this week, which backed up high hopes by landing a solid three-star review from Globe critic Wesley Morris, you may have missed the release of another movie that packs a powerful, albeit far different, punch.

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"May the 4th be with you" is the punny, "Star Wars"-inspired phrase that circulates on this date every year. May the fourth... may the force... you get it? This made us wonder: how many times do they actually say "the force" on screen during George Lucas's epic six movie franchise? Turns out we weren't the first to wonder such a thing. Watch in the video below as 91 utterances of "the force" have been painstakingly spliced together (though something tells us a final count from the films could be even higher than that). Has anyone ever watched all six movies and kept count? Let us know in the comments section below.

Greg Vellante, an excellent young movie critic for the North Andover Eagle Tribune, is up in arms about how lousy "The Avengers" looks at the Regal Fenway -- and let's be honest, how almost every movie looks at almost every multiplex across the land. His piece, drolly titled "Critic Smash," describes the experience of watching the superhero extravaganza at a press screening with projection that rendered the movie a depressing monochromatic washout.

In Vellante's words: "Captain America posed in a costume that appeared to be more of a rusty red, dark gray, and blackish blue rather than the expected, bright colors of our American flag. The typically blinding red cape of Thor (Chris Hemsworth) looked to be anything but, and the Hulk -- who should be a vibrant, violent shade of green -- looked more like a large collection of feces with muscles."

And this is at a press screening. You think they'd want to get it right for the critics, right? Well, maybe not, since a half decade of "Avengers" hype has primed audiences to accept anything the studios and theater chains dish out; reviews in this particular case are very much beside the point. (And if they're negative, Samuel L. Jackson will only try to have you fired, not killed.) When your potential audience's pop-cult buttons have been pushed so long and so well, quality control goes out the window.

An example: The free public preview of "The Avengers" held at the Boston Common a half week after the press screening Vellante attended. He couldn't get into this one for insane bureaucratic reasons detailed in his piece -- and, really, how dare he try to see the best possible presentation of a movie before he writes a review for his readers? -- but he didn't miss that much. The venue was the Common's faux IMAX screen (or as my friend Brett calls it, "Lie-MAX"), for which customers pay an extra $6 per ticket. The theater was packed with fans; the opening credits were applauded. Every ironic one-liner was met with delirious laughter; every climactic donnybrook with cheers.

Did anyone notice that the projection framing was so off-kilter that all the actors' heads were cut off just above the eyebrows in every shot? Did anyone care that they were seeing only about 70 percent of the movie they'd been awaiting for years?

Nah. No one noticed. And that's why AMC, Regal, and the other chains will keep charging you exorbitant fees for movies that are under-projected, mis-framed and otherwise presented so poorly their makers would weep if they knew. Why should the theaters bother to do it right? They know audiences don't care, that they're too mesmerized by the 3D digital bread and circuses on the screen to understand that they're being ripped off. I wrote about this issue last year, and while some projection practices at the Common have since improved (and others have remained), the underlying problem is the same: Not enough people at the individual theater level care -- or are in a position to be able to care -- about how a movie appears to the people who are paying money to see it.

Kinda makes you want to stay home and fire up your 42-inch plasma screen with the surround sound, doesn't it?

(Jon Palmer/Boston.com Correspondent)

By Jon Palmer, Boston.com Correspondent

Comic book movie fans geared up for tonight's midnight premiere of "Marvel's The Avengers" with The Ultimate Marvel Marathon at AMC Loews' Boston Common 19 and other theaters around the country.

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The awards have been handed out for the just concluded IFFBoston. Here's the press release:

"The 2012 Independent Film Festival Boston (IFFBoston) came to a close on Wednesday night, May 2nd, with a sold-out screening of Lauren Greenfield’s THE QUEEN OF VERSAILLES. Roughly 100 guest filmmakers and celebrities were in attendance at the festival including Ira Glass, Julie Delpy, Todd Solondz, Denis Leary, Bobcat Goldthwait, Wayne White, and numerous others. Films were shown in Boston, Brookline, Cambridge, and Somerville over a total of 8 screens. This was the festival’s 10th year.

The jury and audience award prizes have been announced and are as follows:

Narrative Feature:
Grand Jury Prize Winner: THINK OF ME directed by Bryan Wizemann
Special Jury Prize Winner: GAYBY directed by Jonathan Lisecki
Audience Award Winner: FAIRHAVEN directed by Tom O’Brien

Documentary Feature:
Grand Jury Prize Winner: DETROPIA directed by Heidi Ewing & Rachel Grady
Special Jury Prize Winner: HIGH TECH, LOW LIFE directed by Steve Maing
Audience Award Winner: HOW TO SURVIVE A PLAGUE directed by David France
Karen Schmeer Award for Excellence in Documentary Editing: BEWARE OF MR.BAKER edited by Abhay Sofsky

Short Film:
Grand Jury Prize Winner: DONALD CRIED directed by Kris Avedisian
Special Jury Prize Winner: BLANCHE FRAISE directed by Frederick Tremblay
Audience Award Winner: MONDAYS AT RACINE directed by Cynthia Wade"

Congratulations go to the filmmakers, the festival organizers, and to Boston audiences for giving this event the support it deserves. See you all next year.

With "The Twilight Saga" coming to an end in November when "Breaking Dawn - Part 2" is released, the career makeover for star Robert Pattinson continues. Yesterday, news broke that Pattinson has been cast to play the man who led the capture of Saddam Hussein in "Mission: Blacklist," based on the book "Mission: Black List #1" by military interrogator Eric Maddox with Davin Seay. It's the latest in a series of roles Pattinson has selected to set himself up for a legitimate post-"Twilight" acting career, including playing Salvador Dali in "Little Ashes," working with Reese Witherspoon in "Water For Elephants," and manning the lead in director David Cronenberg's buzzworthy upcoming drama, "Cosmopolis."

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With "The Avengers" opening at midnight Friday, May 4, interest in the movie is peaking. Apparently the film is living up to its hype. In his review, Globe critic Wesley Morris writes, "There’s almost nothing to dislike; it’s as close as a movie can come to the fantastical reality of a good comic book."

Take our quiz to find out which Avenger you share the most in common with, check out scenes from the movie's premieres, and take a look at other comic book movies. And watch Globe critics Ty Burr and Wesley Morris discuss "The Avengers" below:

Are you excited about "The Avengers"? Are you planning to see it at midnight on Friday?

A teaser for a movie trailer -- isn't that basically a trailer for a trailer? Yes, and it's becoming an increasingly popular promotion method for films, with movies like "The Hunger Games," "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2," and "The Dark Knight Rises" posting quick clips.

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This spring's blockbuster "The Hunger Games" and last summer's gross-out comedy "Bridesmaids" lead the pack of 2012 MTV Movie Awards nominees with eight nods each, including head-to-head match-ups for movie of the year, best cast, best female performance (Jennifer Lawrence; Kristen Wiig), and breakthrough performance (Liam Hemsworth; Melissa McCarthy). Before the June 3 show, tell us: Who should be taking home golden popcorn statues in the major categories?

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"The Avengers" may be preparing to assemble onscreen this week, but the team behind another superhero is already revving up moviegoers for its film's release. Batman fans hoping to get a peek at the latest trailer for "The Dark Knight Rises," which is slated to open July 20, don't have to wait until the preview debuts in theaters as a coming attraction before "The Avengers," which opens on May 4, thanks to a photo scavenger hunt social media campaign yesterday that asked the public to help the Gotham Police Department track down the sought-after hero.

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It appears none of the big boys wanted to take on "The Avengers" in its opening week. Instead we get a handful of art-house openings to pair with the hopeful blockbuster, including the very British "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel" and the poignant documentary "This is Not a Film," by and about the Iranian director placed under house arrest for planning to cover the protests after the country's 2009 elections.

Note: This is a tentative list of local releases that is subject to change. Check our movie listings before you head to the theater for showtimes.

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Did you go to the theater this weekend? Let us know which movie you saw and whether or not it met your expectations. Here's a snapshot of this weekend's box office, according to IMDB.

"Think Like a Man" lead with $18 million in its second week in theaters, followed by "The Pirates! Band of Misfits" and "The Lucky One," which brought in $11.4 million and $11.3 million, respectively. "The Hunger Games" and "The Five-Year Engagement" tied with $11.2 million each ("The Hunger Games" has grossed $372 million after six weeks in theaters).

Any surprises?

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