WHAT'S NEW: We're avowedly Team Tropic Thunder, a genuinely funny (if perhaps too-close-for-comfort) satire that nevertheless looks likelier and likelier to slide softly into history as DreamWorks' last noble misfire. We'll discuss that more below, but our skepticism doesn't mean it can't finish on top for one happy weekend — the question is, How happy? Opening opposite Star Wars: The Clone Wars and still facing a formidable money magnet in The Dark Knight, we could see Thunder surmounting the new Harry Knowles favorite with around $25 million. Clone Wars will finish close to $19 million, with TDK wielding enough juice to creep as far north as maybe even $18 million. Pineapple Express will holdover nicely around $13 million.

Also opening: The disposable Kiefer Sutherland thriller Mirrors; the Luke Wilson disease-of-the-week dramedy Henry Poole is Here; the 3-D housefly-in-space adventure Fly Me to the Moon; the seedy, acclaimed LA saga Falling; the Argentinean hermaphrodite coming-of-age story XXY and finally! In the city limits! At the Nuart! Lionsgate's dump-and-run splatter flick The Midnight Meat Train. See it while you can.

THE BIG LOSER: Can a film finish in first place at the box office but still be considered a disappointment at Defamer Attractions? Sure — especially Tropic Thunder. It's turned into a bit of a headache for DreamWorks, which has saturated the media to the point of overexposure — literally to a place where the casual viewer they so desperately need for a $90 million R-rated comedy (especially women) is dead to the stimulus. Some folks we've talked to are avoiding it on principle alone, arguing they've already seen the movie via its infamous redband trailer and on about 50 billboards flanking Santa Monica Blvd. Love it though we do, we can't really argue with them.

THE UNDERDOG: Vicky Cristina Barcelona is Woody Allen's admittedly overrated return to mid-level form: Two nubile Americans abroad (Scarlett Johansson and Rebecca Hall) fall into a love triangle with smoldering artist Javier Bardem, which becomes a skewed quadrangle after the entrance of his batshit ex-wife Penelope Cruz. We could take or leave its hammy narration (or hell, the entire narrative) and postcard cinematography, but Hall nearly redeems the film with a fantastic performance recalling Diane Keaton's tart, tormented other woman in Manhattan. We'd watch her in anything, even a dirty old man's overindulgent Euro slop job.

FOR SHUT-INS: Slim pickings among new DVD's this week, including the Ellen Page/Sarah Jessica Parker ensemble comedy Smart People; the Val Kilmer/Stephen Dorff prison flick Felon, the complete 11th season of South Park and the must-have The Love Boat: Season One, Volume Two. Two volumes! Who knew?

So choose your outs, kids: Is Tropic Thunder a bigger success or disaster-in-waiting than we're foreseeing? Do you dare spend money on The Clone Wars, let alone speak up here on its behalf? Or is it just another sluggish Olympic weekend at home. Speak up — what's good?

Hey dude(tte) are you UP for a THREESOME WITH SCARLETT!!!? To help launch and promote the U.S. release of her new movie 'VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA' directed by WOODY ALLEN, starring JAVIER BARDEM & PENELOPE CRUZ, and in movie theaters on Friday, August 15, SCARLETT JOHANSSON cordially INVITES YOU to JOIN HER in a SMOKING-HOT THREESOME with one more (2+1) unbelievably darn LUCKY BASTARD WINNER (♂ or ♀).

All you've got to do is e-mail her your most personal and creative response as to why YOU WISH to be included in such an awesome treat, and you will be entered for a chance to win this smashing (baby) once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!

Though we have to give credit to the savvy scarlettjohansson.com production team for their well-timed promotion, we're a little surprised that they're simply soliciting for bad fanfiction and not, y'know, money. Better start clearing out your inbox, boys: those auto erotic fantasies from a certain well-chinned talk show host will have your servers crippled in no time.

• Win a THREESOME WITH SCARLETT Johansson @ ScarlettJohansson.com [ScarlettJohansson.com]

There's just one thing: as the two-thirds of Defamer who've seen the movie can confirm, there is an on-screen threesome in Vicky Cristina Barcelona — albeit a tame, brief one. Details after the jump:

Now, keep this in mind: Woody Allen has never been big on the sex scenes. Even the recent, sensual Match Point was all about the foreplay and afterglow, baring nary a R-rated body part. So, too, is Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which features two separate foreplay scenes, each set in the same darkroom: one where Johansson and Cruz lock lips, and one where the kissing actresses coax Javier Bardem to join in. The latter scene doesn't escalate far beyond "You kiss me. Now, you kiss her. OK, now I kiss her!" but it's still fairly steamy for the Wood-man, all things considered. Is it on par with the champagne-soaked menage a trois from Wild Things? Not unless Scar-Jo gets a do-over with Ryan Reynolds and Barack Obama.

• Can Horny Movie Critics Make Woody Allen’s ‘Vicky Cristina Barcelona’ a Hit? [New York]

• Vicky Cristina Barcelona's Big Three-Way Lie [Gawker]

"Clint Eastwood made two films about Iwo Jima that ran for more than four hours total and there was not one Negro actor on the screen," Lee told reporters. "If you reporters had any balls you'd ask him why. There's no way I know why he did that — that was his vision, not mine. But I know it was pointed out to him and that he could have changed it. It's not like he didn't know."

Incidentally, when Eastwood was asked about Lee's comments during Tuesday's Exchangeling press conference, the Cannes moderator reportedly rebuffed the inquiry. But! We digress! Lee also squeezed in a Coen brothers smackdown ("Look, I love the Coen brothers; we all studied at NYU. But they treat life like a joke. Ha ha ha. A joke. It's like, 'Look how they killed that guy! Look how blood squirts out the side of his head!' I see things different than that.") and announced a new documentary about Michael Jordan he's planning to unveil at next year's festival.

Elsewhere, we finally found someone who doesn't like Eastwood's latest, and the Croisette cascades with hype as Steven Soderbergh's two-part, four-and-a-half-hour Che prepares to unspool in its entirety. "From a press and industry perspective, people are definitely talking about the film," writes Karina Longworth, "but everyone seems less interested in what's going to be on screen tonight than in how it'll eventually be seen." All together? Kill Bill-style? Straight-to-video serialization? Buy one, get one free?

Also among the debris:

—Hide the kids! Oscar-fetish grunt and Blurb Whore Hall of Famer Pete Hammond has been hyperventilating over Vicky Cristina Barcelona and co-star Penelope Cruz in particular, and it's all unflinchingly caught on video.

—Sadistic Variety blogger Mike Jones also videotapes a succession of fest attendees mispronouncing the title of Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York. (Don't be fooled — that's a hard "K" at the end of "York.")

—The brilliant if frustrating Argentinian director Lucretia Martel showed off her new film La Mujer sin Cabeza (The Woman Without a Head) on Tuesday; she was rewarded promptly with mystified reviews and the helm of a big-budget film about "alien invaders and their army of giant insects." Like Indiana Jones 4, kind of, but with even less story.

[Photo Credit: Getty Images]

"Nobody cared she wasn't there", snapped a prominent New York socialite...

The French branch of Warner Brothers Films, distributors of Vicky Cristina Barcelona in France, had spent weeks negotiating with Johansson's representatives about flying her to Cannes. [...]

Johansson demanded her own exclusive make-up consultant at a cost of 5,000 Euros a day...Johansson wanted to be at an hotel way out in the sticks, some 25 to 30 miles away. [...]

"Also, I think, while Woody's terribly fond of Scarlett, he was a little upset that she wasn't being a team player", an executive connected to the film told the Daily Mail.

It would seem to us a sort of tragedy if the father/daughter, virginity-curious bonds that bind Allen to his frequent muse were somehow compromised by Scarlett's childish diva antics. Hopefully the actress will reign in her ballooning sense of entitlement, lest her collaborator strike back by feigning illness on the opening night of the "Anywhere I Lay My Head Tour," thus rendering an evening of Tom Waits covers virtually unlistenable due to their lack of any clarinet accompaniment.

• Scarlett Johansson misses shining moment at Cannes after studio refuses demands [Daily Mail]

• WATCH VIDEO

''Because it was Penélope and Scarlett and Javier, it got out that there was torrid sex in the picture,'' Allen says. Sorry, that's not the case. There's sex, yes, but it's a discreetly photographed ménage à trois. ''People who come and expect those exaggerations are going to be disappointed.''

Knowing Woody's modesty and unabating horniness, we assume the truth likely reflects an in-between kind of smut featuring Johansson and Cruz in a passionate liplock while Bardem taps each on the shoulder, nervously inviting himself to join in with a succession of one-liners scored to Gershwin. The scene ends with the Spanish hunk sitting up and looking for his eyeglasses, griping about the size of his new apartment while the starlets writhe into the night beside him. We'll take it!

[Photo Credit: Bauer-Griffin]

• Summer Movie Preview [EW via Vulture]