Comic book movie fans who are mad at Hollywood in a summer season bereft of many superheroes, fear not. Help is on the way.

As the giant Comic Con pop culture convention neared its end on Sunday, it was clear that the major movie studios have plenty of costumed crime fighters set for adventures in 2011 and beyond with the Green Lantern, Green Hornet, Thor, Captain America and a team of Avengers making their way to theaters.

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Can "Inception" safely dream of Oscar glory? That's one conundrum that will linger long after average moviegoers have stopped debating the ambiguities of Christopher Nolan's twisty new thrill ride into the subconscious.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences failed to reward Nolan's most recent movie, mega-grossing "The Dark Knight," with a best picture nomination, though it collected eight other nominations.

(Reuters) - Oscar-winning actress Sandra Bullock and her estranged husband Jesse James have filed divorce papers in Texas, ending their nearly five-year marriage after he admitted to infidelity, according to reports on Monday.

People magazine said the divorce papers were filed under seal last week, and that a representative for Bullock confirmed the divorce is final.

(Reuters) - "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse" makers hired a horror director to pump up the action, but what they got was a movie filled with love. And "Twi-hard" fans of the hit film franchise will likely be happy.

"The Twilight Saga: Eclipse" premiered Thursday to throngs of screaming young women in Los Angeles with its usual mix of razor-toothed werewolves and bloodthirsty vampires, but the movie's true heroes are the pair of lovers who long for the affection of a teenage girl.

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Mike Newell has proven one of Hollywood's most versatile directors.

After graduating from TV to movies with such hits as "Enchanted April" and "Four Weddings and a Funeral," the British filmmaker has jumped from a franchise tentpole ("Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire") to a literary drama ("Love in the Time of Cholera") and now Disney's "Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time," which opens Friday.

Noting the “quiet, reflective nature” of the pictures competing at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, jury president and “Alice in Wonderland” director Tim Burton, himself not known for his cinematic reflection or quietude, awarded the top prize to what he called a “dream” of a film by Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul. His resume includes studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

The festival’s closing ceremonies were held Sunday. Acting prizes went to international favorites Juliette Binoche and Javier Bardem, and to Italian actor Elio Germano.

The Palme d’Or winner, a beguilingly elliptical meditation on past lives and what lies beyond, carries the title “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives.” It is Weerasethakul’s sixth feature. In it, a dying man’s final days in rural northern Thailand are complicated by the ghost of his deceased wife and the reappearance of his son in simian-like form.

“The world is getting smaller, and films get more and more Westernized,” Burton said in the post-ceremony press conference. “Uncle Boonmee,” he said, introduced him to a filmmaker highly regarded among cinephiles.

Burton’s brand of fantasy is a far cry from the work of this filmmaker. But jury president Burton, whose fellow jurors included actors Benicio Del Toro and Kate Beckinsale, acknowledged that “Uncle Boonmee” used “some fantasy elements in a way I’ve never seen before.”

Accepting the Palme d’Or onstage at the Grand Lumiere Theatre, Weerasethakul — who goes by the name “Joe” and whose previous works include “Syndromes and a Century” — spoke of cinema’s inherent mystery. “I think this mystery,” he said, in a soft-spoken voice in tune with his work, “keeps us coming back to Cannes and sharing our world.”

 

Binoche won the best actress prize Sunday for “Certified Copy,” an elegant relationship riddle from Iranian writer-director Abbas Kiarostami. The Iranian director shot the film on mellow, supple digital video, and if this year’s Cannes proved anything, it was the increasing quality and dominance of digital imagery in contemporary cinema.

The film was picked up for U.S. distribution earlier this week by IFC.

In tribute Binoche held aloft the name of Kiarostami’s fellow Iranian Jafar Panahi, whose arrest and incarceration prevented him from serving on this year’s Cannes jury, and whose recent announcement of a hunger strike sent a political ripple through the festival.

Bardem, portraying a Barcelona trafficker in undocumented laborers, shared the best actor prize (for “Biutiful”) with Germano of the Italian feature “La Nostra Vita.”

The Festival de Cannes awards include a second prize (known as the Grand Prix) and a jury prize. The Grand Prix went to “Of Gods and Men,” director Xavier Beauvois’ restrained, fact-based drama of French Christian monks engaged in a life-or-death standoff with Islamic terrorists in Maghreb. Sony Pictures Classics acquired the film for U.S. distribution earlier this week. “A Screaming Man” from Chad’s Mahamat-Saleh Haroun won the Jury Prize.

 

Actor-turned-director Mathieu Amalric, recently a James Bond villain (in “Quantum of Solace”), won the directing prize for “On Tour,” a road picture about a promoter and an American burlesque troupe working French seaside towns.

One of the festival’s best and best-loved pictures, “Poetry” from South Korea’s Lee Chang-dong, made do with a screenplay nod. (I loved it.) Meantime it wasn’t a good year for either the Brits or the Americans:  England’s Mike Leigh came to Cannes with “Another Year,” a first-week highlight, but was shut out completely. Cannes regular Ken Loach’s crude Iraq-themed melodrama “Route Irish” had many wondering why it was included in competition at all.

The sole American main competition film, “Fair Game” starring Naomi Watts as outed C.I.A. analyst Valerie Plame, had its defenders.  But as one festivalgoer observed, Doug Liman’s thriller was the sort of thing you expect to see as an in-flight movie en route to Cannes, not part of the festival itself.

The inaugural Aruba International Film Festival will showcase 28 films from 18 countries, including Richard Gere-starrer Hachiko and the Duplass Brothers’ Cyrus as opening and closing night films.

Guests expected to participate in on-stage conversations include Thelma Schoonmaker, Guillermo Arriaga, Patricia Clarkson, Griffin Dunne and choreographer Longiness Fernandes, adding to the previously announced Gere and Bernardo Bertolucci.