• • October Starts Strong, Ends on Down Note 
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Atlas Shrugged movie  |Atlas Shrugged  |Egoism  | The title for worst wide release of the month belongs to Atlas Shrugged: Part II, which earned less than $3.3 million through 20 days in theaters. In a embarassing feat that really didn’t seem possible, it’s actually going to earn less than its predecessor, which was a disaster with just $4.6 million. Clearly Ayn Rand’s legion of fans aren’t interested in seeing a lukewarm, stretched-out big-screen version of her seminal work, and it’s hard to imagine any self-interested financiers coughing up the cash for Part III.  

• • • ‘Atlas Shrugged: Part I’ derails? 
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Atlas Shrugged movie  |Atlas Shrugged  | Atlas Shrugged: Part I was the top-grossing limited release of the weekend, generating $1.7 million at 299 single-screen locations. For a pure independent release, Atlas Shrugged: Part I’s opening was fine. But for the first-ever adaptation of Ayn Rand’s influential mega-selling 1957 novel that had far more media hype than any other independent movie could dream of, it was disappointing.  

• • Weekend briefing: ‘Scream 4,’ ‘Rio’ set to perk up box office 
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Atlas Shrugged movie  | Atlas Shrugged is [...] a wild card. [It has] generated buzz simply by being the first-ever adaptation of Ayn Rand’s popular and influential novel of the same name and due to its topicality, having been cast as the first “Tea Party” movie.  

• The Incredible Hulk 
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Atlas Shrugged  | Movie review.
Action scenes are pulsating, with an Atlas Shrugged-like Project X soundwave scene that's particularly powerful.  

• • • Interview: Lionsgate’s Michael Burns 
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Atlas Shrugged movie  |Atlas Shrugged  |The Fountainhead  | Interview with the vice chairman of Lionsgate, the company working on an Atlas Shrugged movie.
[Q:] Will Brad Pitt portray John Galt? [A:] No. I think Brad wants to play Howard Roark if they ever get [an adaptation of Ayn Rand's 1943 novel] The Fountainhead going. He's a big architectural fan, almost a [architect] Frank Gehry groupie. Maybe we'll have dueling Ayn Rand projects, though I think Paramount has [rights to] The Fountainhead. I wish we had it; I like that very much as well.  

• • • Interview: Director Vadim Perelman 
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Atlas Shrugged movie  |Atlas Shrugged  | Interview with the writer and director of the upcoming film version of Atlas Shrugged.
[Perelman:] The tone of the Atlas Shrugged script is like the novel—though there are differences. The Doomsday device is not there, [the character] Cheryl's not there—but Lillian Rearden is. So are most major characters but I don't want to say too much because it's still in development.  

•The Queen 
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Movie review.
In the exacting Helen Mirren, who has played everyone from Rosalind in Shakespeare's As You Like It to Ayn Rand and countless royals in between, Queen Elizabeth is a dowdy figure of rituals, frowns and constant consternation.  

• •Column 
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Forget attending the Aug. 13 screening of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, presented by the Art Directors Guild (ADG) Film Society. It's completely sold out.  

•Column 
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Mickey Spillane—not the dominant intellectuals—was the true voice of the people, according to Ayn Rand, who expressed her admiration for Spillane's artistic style in a Los Angeles Times column in 1962. Mike Hammer, she observed, was a moral avenger. He did not appease evil; he killed it.  

• • •Thank you, Ayn Rand 
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What has Ayn Rand, who stood for reason, capitalism, individual rights and self-interest, to do with the movies? The answer: not much, not yet, which partly explains and is explained by the state of movies. But the answer is also: more than you think.  

•‘Transporter 2’ drives to Labor Day record 
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Labor Day movie box office results.
A Sound of Thunder silently rolled into 816 locations with an estimated $1.2 million four-day gross, ranking No. 17 for the weekend. Shot three years ago, the $80 million time travel thriller, based on a Ray Bradbury short story, is the final picture from the bankrupt Franchise Pictures that Warner Bros. is contractually obligated to distribute theatrically. A Sound of Thunder had other producers, though, including Howard Baldwin (Sahara), who is developing a movie version of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.  

• • •The New Orleans disaster and the Line on ‘John Galt’ 
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For those who remember the novel, the aftermath of this week's hurricane puts a pit in the stomach that sits there; it is eerily similar to what Miss Rand envisioned. While it is too soon to pinpoint the particulars, the anarchy in the Bayou is undeniably related to the widespread irrationality—the refusal to think—that Miss Rand dramatized so powerfully in Atlas Shrugged.  

• •Measuring the Apollo missions 
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Apollo 13's backup astronaut, Charles Duke, whose measles had prevented Ken Mattingly from boarding the spaceship, swore that, while looking out of Apollo 16, he was overwhelmed by what he called 'the certainty that what I was witnessing was part of the universality of God.' But writer Ayn Rand, who had been invited to witness the launch of Apollo 11—and did—had other ideas.  

•Oscar without glamour 
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Mr. Eastwood, like other conservatives, appeared content to have gained the approval of others, especially liberals. His Best Picture winner, Million Dollar Baby, seems to have dragged even producer Albert S. Ruddy—who produced Mario Puzo's The Godfather and once sought to make Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged—into what Miss Rand called "the cult of moral grayness," which in Mr. Eastwood's case means a bleak world drained of color, purpose and life.