bebe neuwirth - The Screengrab

Morning Deal Report: "Rome" Redux?

Be it ever so crappy, there’s no resisting the new Christmas movie over the long Thanksgiving weekend. The latest evidence is Four Christmases, a big, stinky chunk of holiday coal that nevertheless filled its stocking to the tune of $46.7 million since its Wednesday opening. Bolt nipped Twilight for second place, with both taking in over $26 million. The other major debut was Baz Luhrmann’s Australia, which finished in fifth place with a $20 million total since Wednesday.

Kelsey Grammer and Bebe Neuwirth are reuniting, but not for a big screen version of Frasier.

Forgotten Films: "Getting to Know You" (1999)

Heather Matarazzo turns 26 next month. Matarazzo was still in her early teens when she starred in Todd Solondz's Welcome to the Dollhouse, in which she gave a brave, risky performance as the iconically dislikable high school nerd Dawn Weiner; in her most recent movie appearance, in Hostel II, she got to hang upside down while a naked woman split her open with a scythe. Whether her future roles will give her more of a chance to show what she can do as an actress, she's already confirmed the promise of her work in Dollhouse. She's never been more affecting than in Getting to Know You, a first feature directed by Lisanne Skyler from a screenplay she adapted from stories by Joyce Carol Oates. Matarazzo plays Judith, who arrives with her pissed-off, uncommunicative brother, Wesley (played by a not-yet-irritating Zach Braff) at the bus station where they'll be waiting to go their separate ways. Judith strikes up a conversation with Jimmy (Mark Weston), who seems to appear out of the ether as if in response to her yearning, lonely vibe. Jimmy claims to know her from school, but he also claims to know the back story to just about everyone in the station, as he spins yarns about how the weary-looking security guard (Bo Hopkins) came to be a haunted man in hiding from his past and a woman (played by the director's sister Tristine Skyler) got mixed up with a manic-depressive gamblin' man (Chris Noth), his glib tongue and honeyed smile are like a red flag alerting her to his untrustworthiness. But the possibility that he's a nut seems less important in a setting like this than whatever his fantasies can provide in the way of entertainment value.

Summerfest '08: "Summer of Sam"

Summerfest '08, as you know, is our feature here at the Screengrab wherein we suggest a way for you to kill two hours while waiting for your grill to heat up. Every movie we profile on Wednesdays from now until Labor Day comes with our personal guarantee: these movies may not be essential hot-weather viewing. They may not even be good. But we can assure you with complete confidence that they will have the word 'summer' in the title. This week, we'll be taking a break from our previous diet of decades-old footage of people wearing skimpy beachwear and turning to a more recent effort by the director whose name is virtually synonymous with good-time party movies: Spike Lee. Responding to the demands of filmgoers, critics, and studio executives who wanted to know when he was going to produce a summer blockbuster, Lee, over the 4th of July weekend in 1999, brought us a bright, cheery feel-good movie about a fat psychotic whose neighbor's demonically possessed dog ordered him to murder couples in cars.

Strap it down and get ready for some hot fun in the summertime with Spike Lee's Summer of Sam!

THE ACTION: Boyhood chums Vinnie (John Leguizamo, in a stunning 1970s-style performance that recalls the glory days when all our favorite actors were zapped out of their craniums on cocaine) and Richie (Adrien Brody, wearing the world's least-convincing liberty spikes) are reunited after a long separation. But things are no longer the same between them; Vinnie has picked up the habit of sodomizing his wife (the much-abused Mira Sorvino) in the kind of discotheques Kurt Anderson once described as "fun that isn't", and Richie has become some kind of crazy bisexual punk rocker or something, of the sort once seen on an episode of Quincy. The suspicious behavior of Richie -- dressing all funny, listening to the Who, dancing with his shirt off, and expressing sympathy for the Boston Red Sox -- immediately triggers in his goombah-heavy neighbors the urge to reenact a pasta dinner theater version of the Salem Witch Trials to determine if he is the infamous Son of Sam murderer.