About 30 years ago, I took a date to go see a Broadway musical by a guy I'd never heard of -- someone named Stephen Sondheim. It was "Sweeney Todd," of course, and it thoroughly scrambled my brain and altered my understanding of what musical theater could do. (Take that, Rodgers & Hammerstein.) The sordid tale of a crazed Victorian-era barber and the wicked lady who cooks his victims into meat pies, the show was completely unique: a pitch-black slasher opera, a tour of hell with music and lyrics from heaven. If not for its very theatricality, "Sweeney Todd" would have been unbearable. Who would dare make it into a movie in which the blood, by necessity, would have to look real?

Well, yes, Tim Burton would. But as someone who loves this property -- who thinks Sondheim's one of the very few geniuses walking among us -- I've been dreading what Burton might deliver unto us this Christmastime. (Ho ho ho.) The director is himself one of the singular visionaries in the Hollywood system, but he's also maddeningly inconsistent. Has he made a movie that's great all the way through, other than "Ed Wood"?

And then there's the casting of Johnny Depp in the title part. Can the star carry a tune? It's been a big, fat question mark. More to the point, how can Depp summon the vengeful massiveness of the bulls who've played this role onstage -- Len Cariou and George Hearn, especially? (I regret I never got to see Michael Cerveris in the recent Broadway revival.)

Well, now the trailer for the new "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" is here, and my fears have eased somewhat. The thing looks great, full of menace and atmosphere, and while Depp is still too slight to be a juggernaut of rage, his Sweeney comes off as appropriately, lethally deranged. And Helena Bonham Carter seems right as Mrs. Lovett, too -- lacking the crazed comedy of Angela Lansbury in the original cast, but more dangerous than Patti Lupone. The trailer hits all the beats, showing off the supporting cast (Alan Rickman as the Judge, Timothy Spall as the Beadle, Sacha Baron Cohen as Pirelli -- yum), while building a nasty, alluring momentum in two and a half short minutes.

They even let you know it's a musical -- about halfway into the trailer, as if admitting a character flaw. Depp opens his mouth and uncorks the lyrics of "Epiphany" (the moment in the show when Todd's sanity finally gives way like a rotting floor), and the pieces of Burton's vision seem to snap into place.

Can the star sing? The jury's still out. Based on what we see here, Depp hits the right notes, but he doesn't appear to have the savage vocal force some of us want out of our Sweeney. Sondheim wrote a show about nihilism blotting out the sun, and the lead voice has to be undeniable. I have yet to be convinced.

Speaking of Sondheim, if you blink, you'll miss that he has anything to do with the movie. His name flashes by in the credits at the end of the trailer, but that's it. I know the movie's getting marketed to a young audience and all, but don't they understand that every high school in America has been staging "Into the Woods" for the last 15 years?

Festival, festival, pick a mini-festival. They're happening all over the Boston area this weekend. At the Brattle is the fifth annual Boston Fantastic Film Festival, a collection of horror, sci-fi, and general dementia you won't find anywhere else.

The Boston Latino Film Festival kicks off tonight at the Harvard Film Archive with "Imitation," about a Mexican woman (Vanessa Bauche of "Amores Perros") looking for love and meaning in Montreal.

Other BLIFF screenings will be held at the Coolidge, and BU's Thurman Center. Further information at the festival's homepage.

The other big news is the Michael Haneke retrospective at the MFA and the HFA: a week of brilliant, discomfiting cinema capped by an appearance next Friday night of the man himself (in photo above). He'll be bringing along a print of "Funny Games," the U.S. remake of his harrowing 1997 drama about violence, cinema, and audience culpability. The new version -- to be released in February 2008 -- stars Nicole Kidman, Tim Roth, and Michael Pitt, and it promises to be a lot more than Gus Van Sant's shot-for-shot recreation of "Psycho." (You can catch the original "Funny Games" October 20 at the MFA.) Wesley weighed in on the series recently. If all you've seen of Haneke's work is "Cache" or "The Piano Teacher," you need to check this out, but fasten your seatbelts -- this director doesn't play nice, fair, or easy. "Time of the Wolf," in particular, is one of the great end-of-civilization experiences. (It's screening at the MFA on Halloween, appropriately.)

If you're up near the New Hampshire seacoast, the 7th annual New Hampshire Film Festival unspools in Portsmouth. The excellent documentary "Row Harder No Excuses," about a cross-Atlantic rowboat race, plays tonight at 6:00 p.m.

Fairly slender pickings in the multiplexes, although if you haven't yet seen "Michael Clayton," get thee to a multiplex -- the film expands from the Boston Common to suburban markets this weekend. The more I think about this movie, the more impressed I am with its quiet, compelling craftsmanship. They don't make them like this anymore, and they should.

Among new films, "Elizabeth: The Golden Age" is worthwhile eye-candy for those who look forward to the Oscars for Best Costume and Production Design, but it's a little distressing to watch Clive Owen turned into a lovesick swain out of a romance comic. Blanchett's fine, as expected.

Neat little documentary playing at the Kendall and the West Newton: "My Kid Could Paint That," about a four-year-old girl whose paintings sell for tens of thousands of dollars. Prodigy? Fraud? The movie considers all the possibilities and leaves the ball in your court, which isn't such a bad thing. The wife and I watched this with our daughters and had a great conversation afterwards about creativity, kidhood, and parenting.

Of course, you may not even make to the movies this weekend, right? Go Sox.

It was yesterday, actually. Make up for missing it by heading to the mysterious and wonky Tativille, the offical site for the late, great French comedy director. Go ahead; give yourself some Playtime.

A strange and indifferent weekend at the box office: Feelgood pap (but feelgood Boston pap!) "The Game Plan" held on strongly and came out on top with $16.6 million, representing a more than acceptable second-week slide of 28 percent. But "The Heartbreak Kid" made only $14 million on 4,200 screens in 3,229 theaters, well below its expected landing point of $18 to $20 million.Other freshmen releases "The Seeker" and "Feel the Noise" did bupkis, not even cracking the $4 million barrier. Overall weekend grosses were down 11 percent from the previous weekend and 24 percent from last year at this time, when a little movie called "The Departed" debuted.

So what went wrong? Negative reviews for "Heartbreak" arguably had an impact, but you don't have to see "Night at the Museum" to realize that Ben Stiller's critic proof. No, I think the inherent unpleasantness of the movie's premise -- newlywed husband falls out of love with his wife on their honeymoon and in love with a different woman -- leaked out of the trailers and posters, putting off the distaff half of dating couples. The original 1972 "Heartbreak Kid" -- still out there on video and well worth catching -- was so cruel it went all the way through bad taste and came out mindblowingly funny, but even so it bombed with audiences. Moviegoers in 2007 are even less inclined to pay $10 to watch a schmuck ditch his wife. Or it may simply be that the Ben Stiller/Farrelly brothers gross-out meme has run its course. Either way: Big disappointment for the studio execs.

Things are looking up further down the charts, though, as "Michael Clayton" ricocheted off rapturous reviews for a $48,000 per-theater-average at 15 theaters (and this is the kind of movie that critics can make or break). "Lust, Caution" and "The Darjeeling Limited" are also posting healthy PTAs as they slowly roll out, and the re-release of the restored "Blade Runner: The Final Cut" (photo, above) pulled in $45,000 at each of its two theaters. Why, oh, why are they not releasing this in Boston?

How tepid is the fall, overall? The highest grossing movie released since Labor Day is "3:10 to Yuma," with a total of $49 million. Fine movie but not exactly a pace car.

More analysis from Box Office Mojo and Leonard Klady.