LOS ANGELES — For a man who’s so stone-faced on the screen, Danny Trejo sure has a lot to say.

Standing up at a banquette inside the classic Hollywood restaurant Musso & Frank on a recent afternoon, Trejo tells an elderly man hovering uncertainly in the doorway to "come on in," imitates director Robert Rodriguez’s text-happy fingers, gestures to the waiter for a refill of his cranberry and 7-Up ("Manny, another one!") and turns to a reporter to decry the flaws in the California prison system before offering some culinary advice ("You’ve never had the eggs Benedict here? You gotta have them!"). Then, he follows said reporter into the restroom, where the business at hand does little to stop Trejo’s riff about the time his then-9-year-old-son greeted Robert De Niro with a "Taxi Driver" imitation. ("I said 'Mi hijo, how do you know that movie?'") ...read more.

Years ago the great American movie critic Pauline Kael made it safe to enjoy bad movies. "Because movies are so rarely great art, if we can’t appreciate great trash we have very little reason to be interested in them," she wrote.

Based on early reviews, "Piranha 3D" sounded like great trash — a lightweight exploitation movie with a sense of humor to accompany its buckets of gore and gratuitous bare boobs. It goes out of its way — and then some — to be an outrageous, mindless good time, and in trying so hard to please it becomes exhausting. In a short while, the movie becomes something like a loud, drunken party guest whose dirty jokes prove embarrassing instead of amusing.

As remakes go, "Piranha 3D" has pretty good DNA. The original 1978 film was both a calculated rip-off and clever B-movie parody of "Jaws." It was easily the best of a sorry lot that included "Barracuda," "Orca: The Killer Whale," "Tentacles" (about a giant octopus) and, less subtly, "Great White," a movie that was such a shameless copy that "Jaws" distributor Universal sued and got the movie pulled from American theaters. ...read more.

Patricia Clarkson seems to lift any movie she’s in, and she’s in a lot these days, with no fewer than four releases this year.

Though she’s an indie-film stalwart, she hasn’t escaped the notice of big-name moviemakers. How many actors can say they did back-to-back Woody Allen movies (“Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” “Whatever Works”), then a Martin Scorsese picture (“Shutter Island”)? ...read more.

TOKYO — Dolphins have been herded into a cove as part of an annual hunt in the Japanese seaside town made famous by an Oscar-winning documentary about their slaughter, conservationist group Sea Shepherd said Friday. A town official said none were killed.

The dolphin hunt at Taiji, documented in "The Cove," begins Sept. 1 every year. The boats returned empty Wednesday. But on Thursday, some dolphins were corralled into the inlet, according to anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd and a fishing official in Taiji.

The official in charge of media queries at the Taiji fishing organization said a handful of dolphins were kept for aquariums, but the rest were set free Friday morning. He declined to give details. ...read more.

TELLURIDE, Colo. — Many tears were shed at the world premiere screening of "127 Hours" at the Telluride Film Festival on Saturday afternoon. But few in the audience of some 500 cried harder than Aron Ralston, the hiker who famously cut off his right forearm and is the subject of director Danny Boyle’s new movie.

Boyle has described the film, which Fox Searchlight is releasing on Nov. 5, as an action movie in which the hero doesn’t move — a reference to how Ralston (played fearlessly by James Franco) was pinned by a fallen boulder in an isolated canyon and was forced to amputate one of his limbs to survive. But as Boyle has proved throughout his filmmaking career — his last film, "Slumdog Millionaire," which premiered at Telluride two years ago, not only won the Oscar for best picture but also for directing, cinematography and editing — he can take a scene that at first glance looks unfeasible to film and make it both visually kinetic and emotionally moving.

Christian Colson, who produced "Slumdog Millionaire" and "127 Hours," said Ralston’s tale "was a story that on paper felt impossible to tell as a movie." ...read more.

LOS ANGELES — Fewer paying customers showed up for this summer’s movies than in any summer since 1997, but Hollywood still raked in record receipts of $4.35 billion. The answer to this seeming contradiction: 3-D.

Thanks largely to higher admission prices for 3-D presentations, revenue rose a projected 2 percent from summer 2009, even while the estimated number of tickets sold dropped 3 percent from last year to 552 million, according to Hollywood.com, which tracks box-office numbers. The figures are closely monitored in the film industry, which typically draws about 40 percent of its annual theatrical revenue from the first weekend of May through Labor Day.

The summer’s top-grossing film, "Toy Story 3" from Pixar Animation Studios and Walt Disney Studios, drew more than half its receipts from 3-D showings, and four of the top 10 box-office earners were in 3-D. ...read more.

LOS ANGELES — Before she signed on to make "Machete," the campy celebration of the eponymous Latino legend, Michelle Rodriguez had pretty much decided she didn’t want to make a movie about her own culture.

"I was nervous about doing a movie about Latinos. I’ve usually stayed away from it," she said, saying she found most depictions of Latino culture on the big screen to be one-note and marginal. "But after I read the script, I realized this is about a symbol of hope. It was kind of the way we felt about Obama when he was first elected."

The Robert Rodriguez movie wouldn’t, on its face, be considered a grand political statement. Although it could be categorized as an immigration-law satire and an exploration of Latin identity, it’s also an exploitation film whose linchpin scene features low riders shooting missiles. Among other selling points, it offers the rare triple whammy of Lindsay Lohan engaging in a menage a trois, shooting Robert De Niro and dressing up as a nun, while the film generally takes advantage of most opportunities for comedically over-the-top violence. (It also throws in character parts for Don Johnson, Steven Seagal and Cheech Marin and a leading role for longtime baddie Danny Trejo.) ...read more.