It looks like the big showdown between Barack Obama and John McCain won’t be taking place since McCain refuses to participate until all the economic problems go away. In the meantime you might want to drop by the Brattle Theatre which will be hosting a panel discussion that I’ll be moderating (okay, I admit it -- all that snarky self-righteousness is just a smokescreen for my own shameless self-promotion) for the United Nations Association Film Festival.

What happens when two geeks get together? They talk about geeks and superheroes and how they are very much the same as Brett Michel and Simon Pegg demonstrate in this second part of the interview.

BM.Moving on, superhero films – I’d imagine you’ve been keeping up with them?

SP: Yeah. It’s interesting, actually.

My colleague Brett Michel recently interviewed Simon Pegg, who was in town publicizing his big Hollywood breakthrough movie, “How to Lose Friends & Alienate People,” Robert Weide’s adaptation of Toby Young’s sardonic memoir about being a successful if dissolute journalistic hack in London who tries to make the big time in New York at hoity-toity “Vanity Fair.

The box office demographic for the rest of 2008, usually dominated by the male 12-24 year-old perpetual adolescent crowd, might be switching genders. So suggests Steve Mason writing in the “Hollywood Wiretap” website, where he speculates that the fourth quarter of 2008 will belong to the “below 25 female” audience.

Even some Republicans were skeptical about the box office potential of David Zucker’s conservative satire, “An American Carol,” in which, as I’ve mentioned before, a Scrooge-like Michael Moore-ish filmmaker is taken through a tour of American History by George Washington and other patriotic spooks. But maybe the success this Spring of Nathan Frankowski's anti-evolution documentary “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” changed some minds, because Vivendi plans to release the film on October 3 on 2,000 screens.

Because we make a living sitting in dark rooms and writing about it, people think film critics are sissies. Not so, as Lou Lumenick, he-man critic for the New York Post, never tires of proving. Back in 2006, he was one of the few critics with the guts to squash “Ant Buddy” , an animated children’s film, calling it out as commie propaganda.

As noted below, there doesn’t seem to be a burning desire on the part of fans for another “Poltergeist” movie. And do we really need another “Ghostbusters,” especially after the brilliant remake featured in Michel Gondry’s “Be Kind, Rewind?” Since the 1984 original grossed $292 million and the 1989 sequel took in another $215 mil, Sony Pictures apparently thinks it's the franchise to call.

Now that we’ve gotten war off our TV screens, we can put it back where it belongs, in movie theaters. Because it looks like the war movie is back, repackaged and marketed anew, just like the war we used to see on TV. So observes “The Hollywood Reporter” after taking a look at the upcoming films now being showcased at the Toronto Film Festival.

Who says movies don’t offer a window into the truth, a mirror of the zeitgeist? The titles, anyway. A tip of the hat to the people at Mudflats.com, a site dedicated to “tiptoeing through the muck of Alaskan politics,” for this update on what’s playing at the local movie house in Wasilla, Alaska, Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s hometown.