A press release showed up this morning informing me that the third “Chronicles of Narnia” movie, “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader”, has started shooting in Australia under the direction of Michael Apted.

Now, given how terribly misconceived last year’s “Prince Caspian” was, and how poorly Apted handled the James Bond franchise when he made “The World is Not Enough”, I am not exactly over the moon here. Then again, one could argue that the Bond films were already crippled by their own formula by the time “World” came along, so … ah, hell, I like Michael Apted, so whatever he has to do to make the next “Up” movie is fine by me.

But the real beloved-cult-novel news of the day is the announcement that a new version of Robert C. O’Brien’s “Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH” is in development at Paramount. The director is Neil Burger, who hasn’t exactly impressed me with “The Illusionist” or “The Lucky Ones”, but the book is strong, so I’m hoping for something that’s at least competent.

Yup, that’s me. Pre-emptively judgmental all the way down …

Well, that was a short honeymoon — “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” got socked in the mouth in its second weekend by a 3D movie about secret-agent rodents.

The AP reports that “G-Force” took the top spot at the North American box office with a gross of $32.2 million, while “Half-Blood” made $30 million. (The fact that the Harry Potter movie runs an hour longer than the 88-minute “G-Force” surely factored in there somewhere.)

The Katherine Heigl-Gerard Butler romcom “The Ugly Truth” came in third with $27 million, a looooong way ahead of fourth-placer “Orphan”, which made just $12.8 million. I guess having the stupidest twist ever isn’t enough to conquer the world. But I bet it’ll do surprisingly well next weekend, as word-of-mouth turns it into the must-see comedy of the summer.

Scary kids are the focus of this week’s Sympatico/MSN gallery, because “Orphan” opened yesterday and … well … kids are terrifying. They keep sneaking off and doing stuff you don’t understand, with their twittering and their Face Books, they listen to that devil music, and they’re probably plotting to kill you the minute you deny them their Spaghetti-Os.

… yeah, it’s probably a good thing I don’t have children.I’d just stick ’em in a Skinner box with a bunch of Spongebob DVDs and check back in five years. At least they’d be secure.

That midsummer thing where distributors start throwing out movies they picked up over the last year of festivals? Well, we’re still in the thick of it, with films from Cannes, Toronto and Sundance popping up everywhere … as well as the usual hard-to-market studio stuff. Shall we get to it?

“The Beaches of Agnes“: In which director Agnes Varda flips through her life and career and modestly decides she’s had a good run. This is a lovely little memoir, and if you don’t go to see it you will be the smaller for it. There, I said it.

“G-Force”: People of the world, I ask you: How can any movie where Tracy Morgan voices a talking guinea pig be bad? How? Well, Rad has a theory.

“The Girl from Monaco”: Anne Fontaine’s latest trifle tracks the love triangle that develops between a lawyer (Fabrice Luchini), a pretty young thing (Louise Bourgoin) and the lawyer’s bodyguard (Roschdy Zem). But as Adam and Susan both observe, Fontaine’s not that great at keeping all her balls in the air.

“Humpday“: Two straight guys decide to have sex with each other in order to affirm the strength of their heterosexual bond. “It’s beyond gay.” It’s also a very funny comedy of manners (and mores) from Seattle director Lynn Shelton. Do check it out.

“Orphan”: Poor Vera Farmiga — first she and Sam Rockwell got stuck with “Joshua”, and now she and Peter Sarsgaard have to deal with a creepy little girl who may or may not be eeeeevil. (My money’s on “may”.) Andrew liked it, with reservations.

“Rocksteady: The Roots of Reggae”: It has the misfortune to open against one of the year’s best music movies (see below), but Stascha Bader’s exploration of the evolution of the reggae movement has its own merits, as Jason and Rad explain. Sadly, the film ends before it gets to the Lonely Island’s hotstepping “Ras Trent“.

“Soul Power“: Jeffrey Levy-Hinte brings Don King’s 1974 soul festival back to raucous, thrilling life in this amazing documentary. Throw down for James Brown! Get the shivers for Bill Withers! Um … take the elevata for Miriam Makeba! (Oh, just see the movie.)

“Surveillance“: David Lynch must love his daughter Jennifer very, very much if he’s still willing to let her steal shamelessly from his body of work after “Boxing Helena” … but all the love in the world can’t turn a hack into a visionary. Nice supporting work from French Stewart, though. He opens his eyes and everything!

“The Ugly Truth”: Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler square off in this rom-com that dares to suggest that men and women view relationships from vastly different perspectives. Take a look at Todd McCarthy’s Variety review, which somehow manages to hold Heigl in absolute contempt without ever coming right out and saying it. Now, that’s a brilliant piece of writing.

The casual reader of today’s NOW might conclude that all I do is interview people these days. It’s just the way the schedule crumbles; I sat down with Agnes Varda and Jeffrey Levy-Hinte when they came to TIFF almost a year ago.

“Humpday” stars Joshua Leonard and Alycia Delmore? That just happened last week. See, I don’t seem nearly as busy when you look at it that way … unless you’re in the room with me as I frantically try to turn all those audio files into stories.

Sorry, didn’t mean to get ahead of myself: I sat down with Agnes Varda last year. This Agnes Varda. That was kind of a big deal for me. Lovely woman, very entertaining. Kinda hard to distill into 400 words, though.

In other news, still loving the job.

TIFF announces its Wavelengths and Midnight Madness titles later this morning, so I’m crouched and ready, preparing to take that release and turn it into a news blurt for the NOW website.

I do love the Midnight Madness program; my very first festival experience as a member of the press was the midnight screening of “Hellbound: Hellraiser II” at the Bloor, all the way back in 1988, and I try to catch at least a couple of MM titles every year. As I was telling a friend yesterday, the year I don’t get excited about that series is the year I realize I’m officially old.

I’ll post a link to the piece when it goes up. Until then, just try to stay calm …

UPDATE: Here it is!

When I did that round of TV appearances the other day for various “Harry Potter” stories, everyone asked the same question: Do you think the franchise still has the same drawing power that it used to, now that the books are done and the kids are all atwitter about “Twilight”?

I imagined it would, since the absence of new books would likely make fans that much more eager for new movies; sure, they know what’s going to happen from moment to moment, but they just want to see their Hogwarts pals again — you know, hang out in the library, maybe catch a Quidditch match. And this movie, being rather low on action and high on atmosphere, will cater to that quite nicely.

Indeed it has: According to the AP, “The Half-Blood Prince” pulled in $159.7 million in its first five days, outdoing the last film, “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix”, by something like $20 million and putting in on track to be the biggest hit in the series since the first installment. And this movie is really quite good, so that’s even better.

In other news, “Bruno” took a considerable hit in its second weekend, dropping 73% to land in fourth place with just $8.4 million. That, too, is a good sign. I mean, it’s still made its budget back and everything, but … well, it can just go away now.

There are only a few distributors foolhardy enough to go up against a Harry Potter movie, so the release slate is relatively light this week. And that’s nice, actually, because the next few weeks are going to be insane.

“The End of the Line”: You like sushi, do you? Me too; that’s kind of the problem. Rupert Murray’s sobering documentary explores the global impact of overfishing, and comes to the disturbing conclusion that, sometime in the next forty years or so, fish will be … over. Glenn and Adam elaborate.

“(500) Days of Summer“: Hey, remember when Zooey Deschanel was a breath of fresh, idiosyncratic air rather than a blank-eyed zombie who insisted on singing once per feature? I can’t really blame her for taking the path of least resistance, but so is everybody else in this focus-grouped quirkfest, designed to please people who want their indie edge to look and sound as much like “How I Met Your Mother” as possible. (Which is actually edgier than this. It had a goat last season.)

“Seraphine“: Yolande Moreau delivers an excellent performance in Martin Provost’s utterly unsentimental variation on the tortured-artist biopic; if it looks familiar, that’s because you’ve been seeing it on the DVD shelves for a month and a half now. Here’s hoping this is a trend; I can think of half a dozen other movies E1 has sent straight to disc that deserve a shot at the big screen.

“The Stoning of Soraya M.”: Cyrus Nowrasteh turns Freidoune Sahebjam’s tale of a judicially sanctioned honor killing in 1986 Iran into a hand-wringing indictment of evil Muslim patriarchy. Susan feels its bludgeoning approach is excessive, but justified; Adam begs to disagree.

And now, I’m off to see my first Cannes film of 2009 … in a Toronto screening room. Stupid lousy economic downturn.

So they’re doing midnight shows of “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” tonight. My NOW review should be up very soon — it’s running in Thursday’s paper, which starts hitting the stands late Wednesday evening, but we were going to try to get it online a little sooner to stay on top of the release. UPDATE: Here it is!

Still, if you absolutely need to know what I thought of the movie RIGHT THIS SECOND, you have a couple of options. I’ll be part of a Pottermania story airing tonight (Tuesday) at 11 pm on City TV, and tomorrow morning I’ll be appearing live on CTV Newsnet at around 9:15 EDT.* It’s Potteriffic! Or … Pottertastic! Or something. Anyway, if clips become available, I’ll post links. ANOTHER UPDATE: Here’s the Newsnet interview. Not sure if City ever put their piece online.

And speaking of Pottermania, here’s my latest Sympatico/MSN movie gallery, looking at eight actors who’ve tried to transcend their signature characters or personae. Daniel Radcliffe is indeed one of them, because we’re all a little worried about that business with the horses.

* In the Toronto area, City TV can be found on UHF channel 57 and cable channel 07; CTV Newsnet is channel 62 on Rogers digital cable. You’re welcome.