Two Films

So the Weinstein Co., disappointed with the relatively poor box office of Grindhouse (less than $12 million its first week), is thinking about sawing the double-feature in half, releasing each of the two films it encompasses - Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror and Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof - separately? Two problems with that: 1) Won't that defeat part of the purpose, which was to replicate the experience of going to those fabled second-rate movie houses back in the early '70s, where sleazy double features were the rule?

Baltimore QFest, one of two LGBT film festival set for 2012, will unspool June 21-24 at various locations throughout the city. Organizers plan to show some 60 feature films, documentaries and shorts during the four-day festival. Where the films will be shown has yet to be determined, said Raymond Murray, the event's artistic director. Venues under consideration include the Charles Theatre , the Maryland Institute College of Art , the Creative Alliance at the Patterson and the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Community Center of Baltimore and Central Maryland.

Tickets are on sale for the 18th season of the Columbia Jewish Congregation's Jewish Film Series at The Meeting House in Oakland Mills scheduled for January-April. Cost is $28 for four films, $23 for three films, $16 for two films and $9 for single ticket, sold at the door only. The cost includes refreshments and post-screening discussions. For tickets and more information, call 410-381-4809.

A. Ronald "Ron" Menchine, the last voice of the Washington Senators and noted collector of baseball postcards and author of "A Picture History of Baseball," died Friday of a heart attack at his Glen Arm home. He was 76. "Ron was a very unique individual and kind of old school. He understood the radio experience and his broadcasting style was never bombastic," said Phil Wood, an old friend who is an analyst for the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network, which broadcasts Orioles and Nationals games.

if you can't get enough of those terrifying giant pods in the 1956 "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" and the 1978 remake, don't worry. Version No. 3, titled just "Body Snatchers," is filming in Selma, Ala.Co-screenwriter Stuart Gordon ("Re-Animator") says that it's more of a remake than a sequel."We realized that it's been 14 years since the last 'Body Snatchers' movie and that there's a whole new audience that really knows nothing about the first two films," says Mr. Gordon. "This one doesn't depend on knowing about the first two movies.

Martin Sheen has signed to star in two films for writer-director Clyde Ware's Ashby Productions.In "Rough Diamond," Sheen will star as an ex-high school football hero now working in the West Virginia coal mines. When insurance won't pay for his wife's dental bills, he considers robbing a mine payroll. In "Cass," inspired by Nicholas Ray's 1950 classic "In a Lonely Place," Sheen is a Hollywood film maker whose reputation for violence and womanizing makes him a murder suspect. Ware plans to begin production on one of the films by the first of April.

The Sunday Cinema at the Charles group meets again tomorrow with another art film in advance of its general release. The accent is Asian this time, as the film is the first part of a famous trilogy (the latter two films have reacreached American shores) by a Taiwanese director known for his shrewed awarness of family dynamics and family comedy.The speaker will be a clinical psychologist, Dr. Marvin Scherr, who specializes in family dynamics. The doors to the theater open at 10 a.m., and the screening begins at 10:30.

Emma Thompson has done two films with her husband, Kenneth Branagh, ''Henry V'' and ''Dead Again.'' She's also worked with him on the stage but doesn't think such collaborations -- away from home -- have any effect on their home life.''We met while we were working, so we take our professional relationship for granted,'' she said.''It's not a big deal. It isn't a question of taking your work home. It just doesn't happen that way with us," she said. "I don't think we're that kind of people.

Dear Elizabeth Perkins:What's the matter, hon?You come to Bawlamer to film two movie pitchers in a row. We trod to treat you like a star. The noosepaper wrote all these stories about youse. They closed a grocery stewer one night so you could shoot "He Said, She Said." They even cut trees and shot off farworks in the middle of the night so you could make "Avalon."But what do you do? You go on the "Today" show this week, and you say:"A lot of actors have the wonderful chance to say, 'Oh, I've made two films in Paris,' or 'I've made two films in Morocco,' or something.

In "Godfather III," the circle of corruption that was America widens and widens to include the Catholic church and, ultimately, the whole world.This is clearly a cynic's view, but Francis Ford Coppola, who has buried a son, perhaps has earned his cynicism the hard way. Thus the somber, riveting, "Lear"-like tale that is "Godfather III" is far from perfect and represents a level of storytelling magic a few notches shy of the original two films.But it is painfully genuine, the most corrosive film since Akira Kurosawa's equally bleak "Ran," which shares the common link to "Lear."

A. Ronald "Ron" Menchine, the last voice of the Washington Senators and noted collector of baseball postcards and author of "A Picture History of Baseball," died Friday of a heart attack at his Glen Arm home. He was 76. "Ron was a very unique individual and kind of old school. He understood the radio experience, and his broadcasting style was never bombastic," said Phil Wood, an old friend and analyst for the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network, which broadcasts Orioles and Nationals games.

Armed with six cans of Red Bull and an optimistic attitude, Christine Basley eagerly stood in line with her six girlfriends at the Hoyt's West Nursery Cinema 14 in Linthicum Tuesday evening waiting to see "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse." The 36-year-old accountant from Perry Hall had never seen of the previous two movies of the "Twilight" series, which grossed more than $488 million domestically. She'd never read any of the best-selling books on which the movies are based. But she was still excited, and intrigued.

Tickets are on sale for the 18th season of the Columbia Jewish Congregation's Jewish Film Series at The Meeting House in Oakland Mills scheduled for January-April. Cost is $28 for four films, $23 for three films, $16 for two films and $9 for single ticket, sold at the door only. The cost includes refreshments and post-screening discussions. For tickets and more information, call 410-381-4809.

Native son Barry Levinson will introduce the opening-night shorts program of the Maryland Film Festival on May 1, and on May 26 (according to trade reports) screen his latest picture, What Just Happened?, a comedy-drama about a Hollywood producer played by Robert De Niro, as the Cannes Film Festival's closing night attraction. Maryland festival director Jed Dietz said in an e-mail yesterday, "Barry launched the first MFF Opening Night 10 years ago, so it's especially great he will host our Opening Night short filmmakers next week -- opening our 10th festival, and closing Cannes in the space of a few weeks seems like a perfect expression of Barry's appetite for all parts of the movie art form."

A screening of Jeffrey Blitz's Rocket Science, with a portion of the proceeds benefiting the Baltimore Urban Debate League, is set for 4 p.m. Sunday at the Charles Theatre, 1711 N. Charles St. The film centers on a teenager with a severe stuttering problem who is tricked into joining his high school's debate team. After the film, members of the league will answer questions and show a short video of their own. Tickets are $6. Information: budl.org. Award-winning `Trash' Trailer Trash, in which filmmaker Don Diego Ramirez traces a nightmarish three-year period in which his family had to deal with the slow death (from cancer)

Porky's? Friday the 13th? If you were a decade, is that how you'd want to be remembered? Ask most people about the benchmark films of the 1980s, and that's what they'll come up with. Those, and a lot of John Hughes movies. Todd Hitchcock, 36, knows the era's cinematic landscape isn't rife with masterworks. But having come of age during that decade, he doesn't buy into the perception of the 1980s as a cinematic black hole, devoid of the boundary-pushing of the 1970s or even the big-budget grandeur of the 1990s.