• Many Films Have Reason for Oscar Dreams
• Only in the movie business can losing a contest jump-start a career.
• Craven preps "Alice" as computer-animated feature
• 'Rings' Lifts Hollywood To Big Finish
• Ron Perlman to play "Star Trek" villain
• Star Wars named the best movie soundtrack... ever
• As soon as 2002 arrives

Craven preps "Alice" as computer-animated feature

"American McGhee's Alice," the adaptation of the popular action fantasy video game from director Wes Craven, will be produced as a computer-animated feature for Dimension Films.

In an interview with news service Sci Fi Wire, Wes Craven said the project will be "very close" to the video game.

"Everything that we can take from the game we will steal, and then we'll bring even more to it," he said.

The game, released by Electronic Arts last year, is a dystopic variation on Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland," and pits a gothic, grownup Alice against the Mad Hatter, an emaciated Cheshire Cat, a bloodthirsty Red Queen and other sinister characters.

"It's like Wonderland seen through the eyes of post-21st century America," said Craven.

American McGhee, the creator of immensely popular shoot-'em-up franchises "Doom" and "Quake," has a first-look deal at Dimension, the genre division of Miramax Films.

Craven, whose "Scream" trilogy has grossed more than $350 million domestically, also said Dimension hopes for a PG-13 rating for "Alice," which could be hard to achieve, considering the violent nature of the material. Dimension and Craven's reps at the William Morris Agency were not immediately available for comment.

'Rings' Lifts Hollywood To Big Finish

The fabled denizens of Middle Earth battled to the top of the box office heap again this weekend.

New Line's "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" led a strong box office field with an estimated $37.4 million in its second weekend. The performance boosted the PG-13 fantasy's 12-day haul to $154.5 million, putting the first of three "Rings" movies on track for at least $250 million in domestic box office.

Warner Bros.' family fantasy "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" will fly well past the magical $300 million mark. The film's total reached $286.1 million after a 61% uptick to $11.5 million in its seventh weekend, good for sixth place on the session.

It remains to be seen whether "Rings" can do as well; New Line has been saying from the start that the picture will impress more as a box office marathoner than a sprinter.

The latest frame saw two wide openers -- Sony's "Ali" and Miramax's "Kate & Leopold" -- finish third and seventh, respectively, with $15.3 million and $9.5 million over the three-day weekend. Both pictures bowed on Christmas Day.

Industrywide, the weekend's $170 million in total grosses represented a 22% increase over the same three days last year, according to data from B.O. tracker ACNielsen EDI. Distributors penciled in particularly strong estimates for Sunday grosses over the most recent frame, because most students and many workers are off Monday.

In any event this weekend clearly showed more box office vigor than the pre-Christmas frame. A notable five pictures among the session's top 10 marked bigger grosses than in that previous session. Those included the weekend's second-ranked "Ocean's Eleven." Warner's ensemble crime caper was up 18% with an estimated $17.4 million in the frame.

Elsewhere, the Tim Allen-starrer "Joe Somebody" from 20th Century Fox and the urban comedy "How High" from Universal fell from the top 10 in their sophomore sessions. "Joe" grossed an estimated $5.6 million, "High" $5.2 million.

Fox executives were scratching their heads at the failure of "Joe" to corner a share of the family market. But it may be notable that the Disney/Pixar tooner "Monsters, Inc." managed a 71% jump this weekend to $6.5 million in ninth place.

The failure of Warners/Castle Rocks' "The Majestic" to generate Yuletide biz was another surprise, with the Jim Carrey starrer sinking to No. 10 in its sophomore session with an estimated $5.6 million.

The disappointments come amid a crush of competition at the box office this holiday season.

Sony marketing and distribution president Jeff Blake said the opening week for "Ali" was "a great start." He predicted that kudos attention will help the biopic sustain its momentum.

The Michael Mann-helmed production carries an estimated negative cost of $105 million, split evenly between Sony and foreign-rights partner Initial Entertainment Group.

Miramax marketing VP David Kaminow insisted the $17.1 million in box office that "Kate & Leopold" accumulated over its first six days was "obviously good." But he acknowledged the studio hopes the Meg Ryan-Hugh Jackman starrer can gain more momentum in subsequent weeks.

"There's some tough competition our there right now, but we're the only romantic comedy for the next few weeks," Kaminow observed.

New Line marketing president Russell Schwartz expressed satisfaction that "Rings," an adaptation of the classic J.R.R. Tolkien novel, seemed to be playing well with ever-broader demos.

But Schwartz said the picture's mushrooming success wouldn't goose merchandise revenue appreciably just yet. Sales of "Rings" figures and trinkets should pick up prior to the second of the planned film trilogy, he added.

"The merchandising wasn't supposed to be a big thing with the original," Schwartz noted. "We didn't expect that to take off until sometime between the first and the second pictures. And it may happen more quickly now, with the success of the first 'Rings."'

1. "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring," $37.4 million.
2. "Ocean's Eleven," $17.4 million.
3. "Ali," $15.3 million.
4. "Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius," $15 million.
5. "Vanilla Sky," $11.5 million.
6. "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," $11.46 million.
7. "Kate & Leopold," $9.5 million.
8. "A Beautiful Mind," $7.2 million.
9. "Monsters, Inc.", $6.5 million.
10. "The Majestic," $5.6 million.

Ron Perlman to play "Star Trek" villain

"Star Trek: Nemesis," the 10th installment in the sci-fi film franchise, has landed a beastly new villain, with Ron Perlman signing on to play the Romulan Viceroy.

Perlman, best known for his TV work on "Beauty and the Beast," also recently appeared in the recent WWII movie "Enemy at the Gates."

Perlman joins the reunion cast of TV's "Star Trek: The Next Generation," including Patrick Stewart and Jonathan Frakes, in their fourth film. It is scheduled for a November 2002 release via Paramount Pictures.

In the film, the crew of the Enterprise is diverted to the planet Romulus when the longtime Federation foes signal they are willing to begin peace negotiations. Once Picard and the gang arrive, they uncover a threat to Earth.

"Nemesis" is produced by Rick Berman and directed by Stuart Baird ("Executive Decision"). John Logan ("Gladiator") and Berman penned the script.

Star Wars named the best movie soundtrack... ever

John Williams's swooping score for Lucas's space-opera has been voted cinema's most memorable soundtrack Not content with cornering the market in most polls of the best movie ever made, Star Wars has also topped a radio poll to find the best film soundtrack in the history of the world... ever. The familiar score by John Williams emerged top of a poll of 43,000 phone voters conducted by Classic FM. Max Steiner's score for Gone With the Wind finished in second place, while James Horner's sudsy Titanic soundtrack placed third.

Proving he is no one hit wonder, Williams also has three other scores in the poll's top 30, all for Steven Spielberg films. His haunting orchestration for Schindler's List was ranked at 15, his dashing sountrack for Raiders of the Lost Ark was at 24 and the winsome sounds of ET squeaked in at number 29.

As soon as 2002 arrives

As soon as 2002 arrives, the thoughts of every Hollywood producer must surely be focused tensely on the Academy awards, and next year will roll out some big performance vehicles for the heavyweight contenders.

In January Kate Winslet and Judi Dench will star in Iris, directed by British stage veteran Richard Eyre, about the novelist Iris Murdoch and her touchingly devoted husband, Professor John Bayley. Young and old casting for that part - Hugh Bonneville and Jim Broadbent - looks inspired. The film is much admired in the US, and the odds are shortening rapidly on Dame Judi getting another nomination to add to those she got for Chocolat and Mrs Brown - and, of course, the winning nod for Shakespeare in Love.

Cate Blanchett is emerging as Hollywood's most commanding, distinguished beauty, and unlike Nicole Kidman she can smile and laugh without looking goofy. She is back in Charlotte Gray, the second world war spy drama from the Sebastian Faulks novel, directed by Gillian Armstrong.

Kevin Spacey, one of America's most popular stars, returns in The Shipping News, about a smalltown newspaper writer who finds love and modest professional fulfilment. This also has Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett in it, and Julianne Moore as the love interest, but warning bells sound at the news that it is directed by Lasse "Chocolat" Hallstrom, the maestro of middle-brow emotional gooiness.

Spider-Man is the obvious blockbuster scheduled for 2002, a film with its own footnote in history as it featured a sensational sequence of the villains' getaway helicopter being caught in a web strung between the World Trade Centre towers. That very expensive sequence has had to be scrapped. The star is Tobey Maguire, someone whose dopey "sensitive intellectual" facial expression always makes him look one antenna short of the full arachnid.

And what of the British prospects next year? Our capo di tutti capi is Sam Mendes, due to present The Road to Perdition, a 1930s thriller with a screenplay by Patrick Marber and David Self from the graphic novel by Max Allan Collins. The rumour is that it will be premiered at the Cannes film festival, but wherever it makes its entrance it will be the white-hot ticket of 2002.

Hugh Grant, riding high after his cracking performance in Bridget Jones's Diary, will return to take the lead in the screen version of Nick Hornby's About a Boy, directed by the Weitz brothers of American Pie renown. This has reportedly gone down well at UK test screenings, and Grant may well show that he is extending his range as a screen actor all the time.

On the arthouse front, Nanni Moretti's The Son's Room is released in 2002, about a middle-class Italian family coping with the teenage son's death. It deservedly won the Palme d'Or at Cannes this year, and it is a very beautiful and moving picture.