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The film Mayaguez is a new war film now in pre-production, with filming commencing in Cambodia in late 2011.

Brendan Moriarty - who produced and directed another war movie "The Road to Freedom" - is producing from a script by James Larson - son of legendary television writer and producer Glen A. Larson.

The film is based on real events that occurred in the last official battle in the Vietnam War in 1975 when the Khmer Rouge seized the container ship the SS Mayaguez.

Mayaguez is scheduled for release in June 2012 from bajan Vista Productions.

Thanks to 3D and the hits like "Avatar" and "Toy Story 3, the global box office set a record high in 2010 at $31.8 billion, an 8% increase over the previous year, according to the Motion Picture Association of America's annual report released Monday.

But everything isn't rosy.

Overall, the domestic box office was up a bit at of $10.6 billion, but attendance at home actually dropped by 5% with 1.34 billion tickets sold. 3D helped offset the lack of bottoms in seats, accounting for 21 percent of revenue, with $2.2 billion.

MPAA president Bob Pisano blamed the lower attendance on baby boomers aging.

"There's an obvious trend when audiences get older; they go to the movies less," Pisano said.

Sure, or maybe boomers don't want to drag themselves out to see some of the overblown under-imagined 3D trash the studios have tried to foist on the public. Even young people are already wary of shelling out the extras bucks. But if Hollywood doesn't mix in more creativity with the technology, 3D will be last year's gimmick and more people will be happy sitting home watching "Justified."

There are several really cool things to do this weekend - maybe you can try to hit them all, if you have the time

LUKAS NELSON and SHOOTER JENNINGS at the Troubadour - Saturday
Lukas site
Shooter site

Lukas (Willie's son) and Shooter (Waylon's son) are playing a show at the Troubadour on Saturday night. Its the first time they're playing the same place - hopefully not the last - and they're doing separate sets. Lukas and his band The Promise of the Real are rockin blues and Lukas sounds like his Dad (40 years ago) when he sings. Shooter and his band Hierophant has been on tour promoting his album 'Black Ribbons' which is a conspiratorial, anti-government concept album with Stephen King narrating. According to Jennings, he's playing the album in its entirety at the Troubadour - which is a little more than 100 minutes. Lukas goes on at 9 and Shooter at 10.

The Troubadour's address is
9081 Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood/West Hollywood.

LA Weekly LA Weekend - Saban Theater, Beverly Hills-ish - Friday and Saturday
here

The Saban hosts two days of music, arts, politics and comedy blended together.

Day 1 (Friday) starts at approximately 7pm and features Amy Alkon (at 7pm), Jill Stewart Moderating 'The Bad Boys of Blogging w/Andrew Breitbart, Mickey Kause and John Amato (at 8), Devils Playground Comic Book Burlesque (9:15pm) and JA Prawn (9:45)

Day 2 starts at noon with Jonathan Gold Presents: Hot Dog: The Ins and Outs of Encased Meats: singer/comedienne/ukelele player Kate Micucci (1pm) , who mixes oddball songs with comic sensibilities (check out www.katemicucci.com for more); Clowntown City Limits (2pm); Gary Panter Speaks (3pm) and the themed 'Death Metal Afternoon featuring 'Dreams of Damnation," "Professor," "Drawing Dead" and "Until the Light Takes Us" - all of which play in 30 or 45 minute increments starting at 4. After Buddy (at 7:30), The Parson Red Heads (8:45) and the Poubelle Twins Slap Booth (9:45), there are film screenings of 'Secondhand Sureshots" (10pm) and Dublab Visionversion." (10:45).

SILVERLAKE JUBILEE - Silverlake area - Saturday and Sunday
here

Two days of music, arts and food in the streets of Silverlake - mostly on Mya St - between Sunset and Del Mar Ave - down the block from the El Cid Theater. Dozens of bands are playing throughout the two-day walkabout.

FORBIDDEN ZONE, LIVE IN THE 6TH DIMENSION - Sacred Fools Theater Company, Hollywood, every Friday and Saturday at 8pm between this weekend (May 21st) and June 26 and Sundays at 7pm on June 13 and June 20th
here

Richard Elfman - brother of Danny Elfman and co-founder of Oingo Boingo made a weird movie called The Forbidden Zone in 1982 with Hervé Villechaize in the lead role of 'King Fausto of the Sixth Dimension. Then he made it into a stage show. Both are weird and trippy - the stage show more so. Gotta see it to believe it.

THE BAKED POTATO 40TH ANNIVERSARY JAZZ FESTIVAL - The Baked Potato at THE JOHN ANSON FORD AMPHITHEATER, Hollywood, Saturday and Sunday

Festival starts on Saturday and goes from 2pm to 11pm and continues on Sunday - also 2pm to 11. Highlights include the Scott Henderson Trio, Chad Smith and Steve Lukather (on Saturday) and Lee Ritenour, Patrice Rushen and Larry Carlton on Sunday

Or you can see the movie MacGruber in a theater near you. Opens Friday

Pick one or do them all. They all sound cool

Did anyone else notice that the Oscar winner for Best Song for Crazy Heart and George Clooney's Academy-Award-nominated Up in the Air character are both named "Ryan Bingham"? I bet you didn't.

T-Bone Burnett is on the left, Bingham on the right.

Ra'mon Lawrence Coleman is the latest contestant to be kicked out of the competition on the Heidi Klum-hosted Project Runway.
In his several weeks on the show, he's either won that week's challenge or finished in the bottom two or three - including in last night's episode, where he finished in the bottom two after his sci-fi-inspired design.

He's not hurting for work though. He is the founder of Ra'mon Lawrence Designs and has three collections at the store Kohl's and he also designed actor James Francis Ginty's tuxedo and tie that he wore at the premiere of the film Surrogates last night in Hollywood.

Surrogates opens today.

Most young boys grow up watching the Indiana Jones and Die Hard movies idolizing the main characters and the actors who played them. James Francis Ginty also did that, but then he did what most people don't have the chance to do - appear in movies with both Harrison Ford and Bruce Willis before the age of 30.

After acting with Ford at age 21, Ginty now stars with Willis as well as Radha Mitchell, Boris Kodjoe and Ving Rhames in the sci-fi movie Surrogates, which opens today. The film is based on a graphic novel by Robert Vendetti and Brett Weldele and is directed by Jonathan Mostow, who has helmed Terminator 3: The Rise of the Machines and U-571, among others.

The film is about a society of people who never leave their homes and live vicariously through sexier and better versions of themselves - called surrogates. After an extremely rare murder of a host and subsequent surrogate, Willis's character has to go into the real world as himself to investigate the crime and he eventually confronts a large population of robots.

Willis plays two versions of the FBI agent 'Greer,' with the surrogate wearing a comb over of blonde hair and is clean-shaven, while the 'real' version is the haggard-looking, unshaven, aged agent. While most surrogates look generally like their hosts and are approximately the same age, Ginty's character of 'Canter' is unlike most of the others - with Ginty playing a younger version and James Cromwell portraying him older.

For the part of the younger Canter, director Mostow cast Ginty obviously on his acting talent, but also on his varied arts background.

Ginty studied and performed ballet for seven years at The American Ballet Company, The Royal Ballet and The National Ballet of Canada. For his acting training, he studied at The American Drama Academy, The Royal Academy, Interlochen in northern Michigan and Julliard. All of that experience helped Ginty prepare for working on Surrogates.

"Mostow will pull whatever he can out of you," said Ginty, hours before the world premiere of the film in Los Angeles. "Doing this movie was an extraordinary experience."

As a filmmaker, Mostow tries to incorporate as many physical and practical action sequences into his films as he can, as does Willis as an action star/actor. Both of them encouraged Ginty to do the same throughout his performance, including doing some stunt work.

"There was a ton of practical stuff (real stunts) in the movie and there was certainly CGI also," said Ginty. "Bruce was a real mentor to me. He had a mentor playfulness about him. The whole cast was family through and through."

For the premiere of Surrogates at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, Ginty teamed up with designer Ra'mon Lawrence Coleman of 'Ra'mon-Lawrence Designs,' who currently has three collections at Kohl's and appears on the Bravo series Project Runway.

Ra'mon - concidentally, a major sci-fi fan and an admitted 'Trekkie'- made Ginty a blue/black tuxedo with a combination sci-fi and an vintage-film look and both collaborated on the silver bow tie.

"I wanted a re-invented Old Hollywood in the tuxedo that was appropriate for him (Ginty), said Ra'mon. "The look has to represent the person as well as the designer."

Surrogates is produced by Max Handelman, David Hoberman and Todd Lieberman for Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. It was written by Michael Ferris and John D. Brancato.

Forget Star Trek, Wolverine and Transformers, the biggest summer movie has already come out. And it has an octopus that makes a submarine look like a Q-Tip.

In the spirit of Godzilla vs. Monster Zero and Gamera, The Asylum Home Entertainment has released Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus onto the world. And the world appreciates it.

Former teenage pop star-turned-Broadway star Deborah 'Debbie' Gibson stars in this monster movie as a scientist who originally wants to save the two giant creatures and Lorenzo Lamas as a (I think) military (or government?) guy who wants to kill them both. After the two enormous beings destroy a dozen or so military and non-military sea vessels and installations in between Japan and California, everyone wants to trap and kill the two.

Gibson plays 'Emma MacNeil' who 'borrows' an underwater sea vessel to investigate whale migrations in frigid waters, then she accidentally crashes it into a giant ice block and breaks it - unknowingly releasing the two massive sea creatures.

She then gets fired for stealing the sub and then buddies up to her former college professor 'Lamar Sanders' (played by Sean Lawlor) after they discover a Megalodon is loose in the Pacific. (They don't say actually how big it is, but I would guess 200 to 300 feet long - judging from its size compared to other things in the movie)

A Japanese scientist who also knows Sanders - named "Seiji Shimada" (played by Vic Chao) then shares with Emma and Lamar his discovery of a giant octupus off the coast of Japan that completely destroyed an oil rig and then the race is on to find both creatures.

Obviously, you have to watch this tongue-in-cheek to enjoy it - which is not hard to do. This is pure low-budget entertainment at its best. Sure there are some cheesy visual effects (oddly, some of the effects are great, then some are not so much). If you can ignore any logic and watch it for what it is, it's a fantastic 90 minutes. Really fun. The best scenes - of course - are when the shark and the octopus fight each other, but it is fantastic to see the badass shark bite a huge chunk out of the Golden Gate bridge (best sequence in the movie) and jump out of the water and knock an airliner of the sky (second best scene).

Funniest bits. Guy in the plane sees the shark flying up from the water to the airplane window and he says 'holy (stuff)!' and Lamas' acting - particularly after the shark bites through the bridge. Also, the way Lamas looks. Dressed in black mostly, sports jacket, PONYTAIL. Not sure if he's military or secret government - he was kind of doing things that could be considered both. It would have been cooler if he had his hair from Renegade, but I digress.

Again, this is a cheesy B-movie that happens to have recognizable people in it. Watch it with a grain of salt, then you'll love it. If you want realism, watch Shark Week on Discovery.

But, for what it is...its' great fun.

There is also a "Making of" section and a blooper reel, where apparently the shark bites through the wrong bridge and they had to do another take. Also, the octopus grabs Gibson right out of the blue.

You can buy it here or rent it at Blockbuster.