Last week, Bryan Singer’s charming fantasy romp Jack the Giant Slayer more or less tanked, grossing just $28 million in its opening weekend.

But this week, Sam Raimi’s elephantine, joyless Oz the Great and Powerful pulls in a record $80.3 million, setting it on course to be the next Alice in Wonderland … which is exactly what Disney wanted when they made it in the first place.

Meanwhile, Jack drops down to second place with $10 million. At least the roundly panned (well, almost roundly panned) Dead Man Down did even worse on its opening weekend, grossing just $5.3 million to place fourth behind the $6. 3 million gross of the unkillable Identity Thief.

Seriously, though. It’s getting harder to laugh this stuff off. Warm Bodies is the only 2013 release I’ve really enjoyed, and though it opened at number one, five weeks later it’s like it didn’t even exist. Shouldn’t we be getting some smarter films, now that winter’s finally ending? Or is there no point in asking that question?

With Disney’s Oz prequel looking to dominate the Spring Break frame — and a couple of weeks beyond that, if Disney gets its wish — everyone else is backing away, leaving the indies to counterprogram. And so we go charging into the release slate.

Cloudburst: Thom Fitzgerald’s latest casts Olympia Dukakis and Brenda Fricker as aging partners on one last road trip. Maybe a little cartoony in the supporting roles, but the central relationship is very nicely acted and observed.

Dead Man Down: Colin Farell and Noomi Rapace make sex faces at each other in the English-language debut of Rapace’s Girl with the Dragon Tattoo director Neils Arden Oplev. The studio’s embargoed it, so how good can it be?

Greenwich Village: Music That Defined a Generation: Laura Archibald’s documentary looks back on the hippies what changed the world with their protest singng and their love-ins. Susan has some reservations about the way the gay presence is represented, which sounds reasonable.

Neighboring Sounds: Kleber Mendonça Filho’s debut feature explores the social relationships in one corner of a Brazilian resort town. Susan loved it; I’m intrigued.

Oz the Great and Powerful: The one thing you don’t want Sam Raimi to be is Tim Burton. (Christ, no one even wants Tim Burton to be Tim Burton all that much these days.) But Disney wanted another Alice in Wonderland, and that’s exactly what he gave them.

Shepard and Dark: Treva Wurmfeld’s documentary examines the complex, contentious friendship of Sam Shepard and Johnny Dark, who know each other maybe a little too well. Modest filmmaking, great story.

Trouble in the Peace: If you’ve seen Gasland or Wiebo’s War or even Gus Van Sant’s Promised Land, you already know more about fracking and its related dangers than Julian T. Pinder’s insufferably pretentious documentary wants to teach you. Christ, Weibo’s War is even about the same place. This was awful.

Also, the Lightbox is running a mini-70mm festival, with 2001 and Vertigo each playing two shows daily in Cinema 1. Them, you should see.

Yay! The new NOW is out, and I actually have some interviews in it! It’s been ever so long!

Specifically, I talk to monkey boy Zach Braff of Oz the Great and Powerful, and a more thoughtful chat with Olympia Dukakis, a bona fide legend of stage and screen whose fine work in Cloudburst is definitely worth your time.

Thanks for waiting out the drought with me, you guys. Wait until you see what I’ve got coming next week.

Despite being pretty entertaining, Bryan Singer’s Jack the Giant Slayer failed to live up to its name, opening with just $28 million to win a sluggish box-office weekend.

Also not setting the world on fire were 21 and Over, which came in third with $9 million (just behind Identity Thief, which earned $9.7 million) and The Last Exorcism Part II, which opened in fourth place with $8 million. The only really good news here was that A Good Day to Die Hard slipped all the way to ninth place with $4.5 million, suggesting even John McClane’s staunchest supporters can’t bring themselves to revisit this awful fifth go-round.

In other news, Kim Nguyen’s Rebelle conquered the Canadian Screen Awards, winning 10 trophies including Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Original Screenplay and Best Director.

Called it. People really should listen to me about this stuff.

I’m on a plane to Las Vegas first thing today, so it’s time for another round of six-word-reviewery! (Besides, there’s like a dozen movies opening this weekend. Who has time for complexity?)

California Solo: Regrets? Robert Carlyle has a few. [Susan]

Charlie Zone: Halifax crime drama shows promise, eh?

Future Weather: Climate changed, innocence lost. American indie. [Rad]

The Gatekeepers: Who watches the Israeli watchmen? Umm … [John]

Jack the Giant Slayer: Very silly, kinda cheesy, ultimately charming.

The Last Exorcism Part II: Oops, the Devil did it again. [no press screening]

Lost Rivers: Insightful urban-planning documentary. And pretty.

Of Two Minds: Bipolar disorder. Take a closer look. [Rad]

Stoker: Good luck remaking Hitchcock there, dudes.

21 and Over: Liked The Hangover and Project X, didja? [embargoed]

There, that’s everything. Oh, except for The Bitter Buddha, a pretty good documentary about Eddie Pepitone’s middle-aged rise to comic prominence screening Saturday and Sunday at the Bloor — and Pepitone’s coming in for a Q&A at Saturday’s screening. I’d be there if not for this Vegas trip, so tell him I say hi.

This is, what, the third straight issue of NOW where I don’t talk to anybody? Ridiculous. Rest assured that steps are being taken to correct this; next week, I’m down for at least three interviews and possibly four, and you won’t believe with whom I’m talking this weekend.

Anyway, it’s not a total dead zone. I take a look at the shiny new Canadian Screen Awards in advance of Sunday’s gala ceremony, and there’s this online-only Top 5 in which John Semley and I make fun of The Last Exorcism Part II by rounding up other one-shot pictures that managed to turn themselves into franchises.

And yes, I considered George A. Romero’s Living Dead series, which basically starts off with a new set of characters every time, but that’s not quite the same. But the narrative gymnastics required to make Phantasm II would have qualified, now that I think of it …

Well, there you go: Argo, Daniel Day-Lewis, Jennifer Lawrence, Tommy Lee Jones Christoph Waltz, Anne Hathaway, Steven Spielberg Ang Lee. This is why I never buy into the Oscar pool. (Here’s my wrapup for the NOW website.)

Still, it’s nice that Brave got a little love, and Adele’s acceptance speech for her Skyfall theme was great, and Dame Shirley Bassey — or rather: Damn, Shirley Bassey. Shame about Quentin Tarantino making the final transition to the dark side, though.

But remember, Identity Thief returned to the top spot at the box office, remind us that cinema as we know it is dead, and Hollywood exist almost solely to dance on its corpse.

This guy knows what I’m talking about, right?

It’s a dim weekend for new releases; the studios are putting all their efforts into squeezing one last frame out of their Oscar nominees, and everyone else knows there’s no point in releasing a serious contender when the world’s entertainment media is focused on the Kodak Dolby Theater. So this is all we get:

Dark Skies: Scott Stewart, director of Legion (kind of fun) and Priest (kind of not) scales back with this slow-burn creeper about a suburban family being punked by aliens.

Snitch: The DNA of the best movie Gene Hackman never made runs through this labored thriller, starring a badly miscast Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as a father who endangers himself and his livelihood to get his son out of prison. But the execution’s off.

Tower: Toronto filmmaker Kazik Radwanski takes advantage of the relative quiet to put his first feature onto the screen at the Royal Cinema. I missed it repeatedly at TIFF, but I understand it’s a character study of a maladjusted thirtysomething who gets into a battle with a raccoon. Rad‘s review further intrigues me.

And there we have it … oh, except for the Oscar stuff that’s actually relevant. I’m currently scheduled to appear on CTV Newsnet this morning at around 10:45 am EST to discuss the Academy’s options, and I’ll probably do another hit over the weekend. Keep an eye on the Twitter widget to the right, or follow me directly, and you’ll get all the relevant information as it happens.