The Week in Film: Stitchpunk, murder on ice and on campus, and hot new trailers

Now that Ben Lyons has gotten the boot from At the Movies, we no longer need to yell, "You lie!" at our TV screens each week. And with summer behind us, let's see what's shaking this week on the big screen.

Opening on 9/9/09 was, of course, 9, a bleak but beautiful animated feature about doll-like creatures — they're already calling the style of this stop-motion animated feature "stitchpunk" — fighting for survival in a bleak post-apocalyptic landscape.

While the storyline didn't thrill me, I was taken by director Shane Acker's stunning visuals and by his ability to create distinct personalities for his lead characters (who all have names such as 9, 2 and 6).

He's helped greatly with the latter by a terrific cast of actors, including Elijah Wood, John C. Reilly, Martin Landau, Christopher Plummer, Jennifer Connelly and Crispin Glover. 9 is way, way too bleak and disturbing for little kids — who should totally see Ponyo if they haven't already — but it's an impressive debut for Acker.

9 is based on his original short film of the same name, which can be viewed right here:

Also opening this week is Whiteout, a disappointingly routine murder-mystery-thriller based on the exceptional graphic novel by Greg Rucka (who's currently chronicling the adventures of the lesbian Batwoman for DC Comics) and Steve Lieber.

Kate Beckinsale stars as U.S. Marshal Carrie Stetko who, just days before she's supposed to rotate out of her post at a scientific facility in Antarctica, finds herself having to solve the continent's first homicide.

Skip the flick; read the book.

Two movies not shown to critics also grace the screen this Friday: Tyler Perry's I Can Do Bad All By Myself — which my friend Dave Kittredge, director of the festival hit Pornography, calls "I Can Do Drag All By Myself" — and Sorority Row.

The former stars Mary J. Blige and Taraji P. Henson but Perry, canny showman that he is, has figured out a way to shoehorn his Madea character in there somewhere.

The courtroom thriller Beyond a Reasonable Doubt rounds out the week's list of new releases, while the popular fash-mag documentary The September Issue opens wider.

Red Carpet Shilling

Sorority Row may not have rated critics screenings, but that doesn't mean the horror flick was going to deprive itself of a full-on, blood-red carpet premiere.

Rumer Willis (apparently not having gotten her fill of sorority life with her well-received turn in The House Bunny) and Micah Alberti at the L.A. premiere of Sorority Row at the ArcLight Hollywood.

Supportive mom Demi Moore makes the scene for daughter Rumer's new flick.

Matt Lanter

Bits and Stuff

* Seeing a need to get its house in order after Disney acquired Marvel Entertainment, Warner Bros. has restructured DC Comics into DC Entertainment in order to "fully realize the power and value of the DC Comics brand and characters across all media and platforms."

Whether that means the long-delayed Wonder Woman movie will finally see the light of day or we merely wind up with a whole lot more Slurpee cups with the Wonder Twins on them remains to be seen.

* Images and information are leaking out about The Illusionist, the new film from Sylvain Chomet, who made the extraordinary Triplets of Belleville. As if I weren't already excited enough to see his follow-up feature, it turns out that it's based on an unproduced screenplay by French comedy master Jacques Tati (Playtime, Mr. Hulot's Holiday). Pathé released the following four stills:

And if you haven't see Belleville or the Tati movies, move them to the top of your Netflix queue immediately.

Los Trailers

Disney has released a second trailer for its eagerly-anticipated The Princess and the Frog, due out this holiday season:

One of the most buzzed-about movies at last year's Telluride Film Festival was Up in the Air, the latest from director Jason Reitman (Juno, Thank You for Smoking). George Clooney stars as a guy who can probably recite the entire "if the oxygen masks drop down" speech from memory:

The Weinstein Company keeps changing dates on The Road, adapted from the novel by Cormac McCarthy (who wrote the novel No Country for Old Men) starring Viggo Mortensen. Now it's set for November 24, and the studio has released some footage, lest anyone think they weren't proud of it:

And here's a look behind the scenes at Surrogates, that sci-fi movie with the sexy billboards (none of which feature the film's star, Bruce Willis):