Clearly having filibustered enough last week on Letterman, Pacino declined Goldstein's interview requests. But inveterate B-movie godfather Avi Lerner wasn't going to pass up an opportunity to spin:

"I like [88 Minutes] — it's exactly the movie I wanted it to be," he says. "The critics can say what they want. That's the great thing about America. Everyone gets to have their opinion. It hurts when people call and say the reviews were terrible. But I don't read reviews. I hardly read anything." (Lerner is famous for not reading scripts either, though he insists he read 88 Minutes.) ...

When I asked if the scathing reviews for 88 Minutes could damage [Righteous Kill]'s commercial chances, he joked: "Hey, it's two different movies, two different sets of 17 producers." Turning serious, he said: "They are still two icons. If you get out of Beverly Hills, to Ventura Boulevard, every person you ask will say — we want to see them together. Just like people did for Nicholson and Morgan Freeman in The Bucket List. And they're even older!"

Oh, now we get it: We just have to "get out of Beverly Hills" and into the parallel universe where the hoi polloi eat up hammy, old-man condescension like sweets. At these prices, though (Goldstein puts Pacino's 88 Minutes price tag at $9 million), we can't imagine many souls that wouldn't be for sale. Alas, we'll always have Heat.

[Photo Credit: Splash]

• Pacino and De Niro: How the Mighty Have Fallen [LAT]

WHAT'S NEW: Chockablock with tropical raunch and waaaay more of Jason Segel than you ever wanted to see, Forgetting Sarah Marshall has Variety suggesting that the film's "R" rating could push it down to a opening weekend "in the low- to mid-teens." Not half-bad for a studio comedy budgeted at $30 million, but probably not enough to surpass the PG-13 Jet Li-Jackie Chan action-fantasy The Forbidden Kingdom, which is predicted to top out around $18 million on roughly 3,100 screens. Also opening: Morgan Spurlock's gonzo War-on-Terror doc Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?; the portentous Uma Thurman-Evan Rachel Wood drama The Life Before Her Eyes; the Ben Stein entry Expelled; and the throwaway MGM thriller Pathology.

THE BIG LOSER: Prom Night stands to drop as much as 70% from last week's No. 1 spot, but really, we're just waiting to see what kind of audience revolt ensues at screenings of 88 Minutes. Already recognized among the decade's most reviled films, the Al Pacino suspenser will likely draw about $30 million in masochistic lookie-loos, with $25 million being returned shortly thereafter in angry box-office mutinies around the country.

THE UNDERDOG: We haven't even seen the Jenna Jameson crossover vehicle Zombie Strippers, but that's no reason for us to withhold our zeal. Plus, let's face it: The world needs a Robert Englund comeback in the worst way.

FOR SHUT-INS: New on the DVD shelf this week are special editions of the essentially interchangable Juno and Alien vs. Predator - Requiem; other titles include the Sidney Lumet drama Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, Ryan Gosling's sex-doll romance Lars and the Real Girl and the long-long-awaited complete fourth season of Melrose Place.

Take a few minutes and call your own shot for the weekend — can male full-frontal knock Jackie Chan out of the multiplex? Are you getting your pitchfork and/or torch ready for 88 Minutes?

Somewhat astonishingly, their All-Time Low Scores—a Cinematic Excrement Hall of Fame, if you will—ranks it at #3, bested only by Bio-Dome, and lesser-known, gay-Holocaust-romance-with-supernatural-elements drama, The Singing Forest. (We highly recommend watching the trailer.) With Uwe Boll coming in at a relatively respectable #18 for Alone in the Dark, we imagine it's only a matter of time before the reviled director adds 88-helmer Jon Avnet to his ever-growing shlockteur shit list, filled with those guilty of unleashing far more heinous cinematic crimes upon the moviegoing public than he.

• All-Time Low Scores: The Worst-Reviewed Movies [Metacritic]