Here's what you should do this weekend: Go to the Coolidge and see "Day Night Day Night" without reading a single review. Don't even go to the Coolidge's website; they give the game away, too. All you need to know is that the movie's about a young woman (the remarkable Luisa Williams, above) at the end of her emotional rope and what she does about it.

It's also about New York City and about being in the midst of it while feeling completely apart. As a portrait of emotional extremity and the search for grace, it consciously aspires to Falconetti in Dreyer's "The Passion of Joan of Arc" -- an absurdly ambitious target that director Julia Loktev comes close to realizing. (There's also a lot of Bresson whingwhanging around inside this movie.) Some feel "Day Night Day Night" is irresponsible in regards to certain real-world issues, but I beg to differ: Loktev and Williams use the real world merely as a backdrop to an elemental spiritual struggle.

Why am I being so coy? Because "DNDN" works best when you go in knowing nothing and let its initially enigmatic opening scenes crystallize into something very, very dark before the movie even thinks to seek the light. If you've read Wesley's review -- no, I'm not going to link to it -- you already know what I'm talking about, because he blows the mystery, as any reviewer has to. I would have had to, if I hadn't been tapped to cover other movies this week. But because I'm blogging, I'm telling you: Read the reviews after you've come back from the theater.

Elsewhere: An essential round-up of films by Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan at the Harvard Film Archive (it's easy, there are only four), including last year's Cannes hit "Climates." Lemony Snicket's at the Brattle tonight, followed by an academic deconstruction of movies like "Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things" at tomorrow night's "Grindhouse panel." The Gay and Lesbian Film/Video Festival continues at the MFA.

Or you could just take the kids to "Shrek the 3rd" like the rest of the country will be doing.

It's official: Variety reports that Elijah Wood will play Iggy Pop in an upcoming biopic called "The Passenger," to be directed by Nick Gomez. As they say in the funny papers, "Aiieeee!"

This may, in fact, turn out to be a good movie. More likely it's the first sign of the apocalypse. I like Wood, and I understand his desire to break out of the box that childhood adorability and "The Lord of the Rings" put him in. He's been trying to get this movie off the ground for two years, so obviously he's committed. And yet, and yet, and yet -- you're gonna have to prove it to me, Frodo.

And it's not going to be easy: Wood has the most soulful eyes in the business, and the former James Newell Osterberg -- leader of The Stooges, primogenitor of punk, and perhaps the most gleefully unhinged of rock's bad boys -- arguably has no soul. Unlike Jim Morrison or Ray Charles or any other rock great whose life has been poured into a Hollywood container, there's no psychological backstory (that we know of, anyway), no demons, no artistic mission, nothing to "explain" why the Ig felt it necessary to cut his chest with broken bottles in concert back in the late 60s and pour every bit of unholy midwestern voodoo he could muster into songs like "TV Eye". He simply is. The average rock movie is often about the perils of ego, but how do you make one about a guy who's all id? And how do you convince us Elijah Wood is that guy?

On another front, this marks the point where the wave of rock biopics finally starts to wash over the punk generation. Thirty years ago it was "The Buddy Holly Story," fifteen years ago "The Doors," now this. When Katie Holmes gets cast as Patti Smith, please kill me.

I'd love to give you the on-the-ground Cannes report, but Wesley and I are stuck here reading blogs like everyone else. Maybe next year. Still, the only festival in the world that could get away with letting Jerry Seinfeld float overhead dressed as a giant bee (promoting his upcoming kid's movie "Bee Movie") is worth keeping tabs on. Personally, I triangulate between Variety's Anne Thompson, Premiere's Glenn Kenny (to whom thanks for the Seinfeld photo above), and Hollywood Elsewhere's Jeffrey Wells, currently engaging in impassioned knockabout on the merits of "My Blueberry Nights," Wong Kar-wei's first English-language film. Wells hates it, Thompson loves it, and Glenn, bless his cross-referencing little heart, is "the Derek Smalls of this debate -- the lukewarm water to Thompson's fire and Wells' ice." Without seeing the movie -- as if that's stopped me before -- I will note the legions of great filmmakers who have crashed on the Scylla and Charybdis of English dialogue and name stars. (Bergman? "The Serpent's Egg." Truffaut? "Fahrenheit 451." There are plenty more, but the only one who turned it to his advantage while biting the hand that wrote the checks was Godard with "Contempt.")

Other Cannes blogs: Time's Richard Corliss, A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis at the Times (warning: video podcasts), the folks at IFC, the excellent GreenCine Daily, Cinematical, and the U.K.'s Guardian (they hate "My Blueberry Nights" too). There are plenty more out there, from pishers and panjandrums alike. If you find one you like, send me the link and I'll post it.

The Lotus Eaters. The Sirens. The Cyclops. Presumably "The Odyssey," the screening/reading/concert/multimedia happening that the Brattle's hosting tonight at 8:00 pm, will include these all-time Homer hits. The brainchild of writer Andrea Lawlor and filmmaker Bernadine Mellis, the project includes 24 short films by different artist collectives -- mostly queers, trans, and women -- corresponding to the 24 chapters on Odysseus' peregrinations. (I'm not sure, but I believe that's Nausicaa pictured above.)

Accompaniment on the accordian and saw by Ryder Cooley, and, no, I'm not making that up. If you can't get to the show, there's a zine available with a companion DVD containing all the films.

No word on whether Circe will show up to turn any Harvard men in the audience into swine.

Variety reports that Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson are planning to join forces for a trilogy of digitally animated motion-capture Tintin movies. Blistering blue barnacles! Now, maybe the zygote movie-geeks at Cinemablend have no idea who Tintin is, but for those of us whose memory doesn't screech to a halt at 1993, this is interesting news. The Tintin books represent some of the best drawn comic art of all time and the stories have a weird boys-own-adventure coolness that remain untarnished after all these years. Plans call for Jackson and Spielberg to each direct one film, with the third film up for grabs at this point; Jackson's special-effects house, WETA Digital, has produced a 20-minute test reel that apparently has given the filmmakers confidence to move forward. Nothing's going to happen on this for a while, and, yes, maybe Herge is rolling in his grave, but full speed ahead, gentlemen.

Rumors are flying that Matt Damon may be out as the young James T. Kirk in the next "Star Trek" movie and that Ryan Gosling may be interested. A closer examination reveals that said rumors have the solidity of a Klingon taco-wrapper in an interstellar photon storm. Damon hasn't even been cast. J. J. Abrams of "Alias" and "Lost" is directing, though, and I do like the notion of James McAvoy ("The Last King of Scotland") as the young Scotty.

Cannes is gearing up. Wesley and I aren't going (chagrin) but Variety's there, of course, as is IndieWire, as is Premiere's Glenn Kenny, and a whole lot of blogs. We'll be posting the most interesting findings as the fest goes forard. Non, je ne regrette rien.

As expected, "Spider-Man 3" continued to rule the box office, with $60 million in ticket sales this weekend; as expected it dropped off a sizable 60% from the week before. This is the classic summer scenario: a frontloaded event movie with no legs to speak of, and why should the studio care when it broke records the first week out and will make a killing on DVD? Expect more of the same when "Shrek the 3rd," "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End," and "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" open. (Warning: Links lead to resource-hogging corporate megasites that may eat your computer and possibly your soul.) With luck, some of them might even be good.

The other new movies ducked and covered, mostly. The surprise was British zombie sequel "28 Weeks Later" (pictured above) making $10 million mostly on the strength of expectations and very favorable reviews. It's worth noting, though, that the first movie, "28 Days Later," made the same amount of money in half the theaters in 2003.

"Georgia Rule" deservedly tanked with $5.9 million, and the latest from Zach Braff, "The Ex," performed even more poorly ($1.4 million -- ouch). At $3.9 million, the Larry the Cable Guy "comedy" "Delta Farce" fell in the middle, but at least there'll be a DVD aftermarket for that -- expect to see it on sale in bait shops and truck stops in about a week. I doubt they'll be able to give "Georgia Rule" away in rehab centers.

More box office fiddling from Box Office Mojo and Leonard Klady.