As the marketing people have no doubt told you, “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” opens everywhere today. My review won’t be available until much later tonight, when the new issue of NOW goes online (UPDATE: There it is!), so I’ll just make that enigmatic smile I make whenever I talk about Nicolas Cage transcending the movie he’s in, and let you wonder precisely how he goes about doing that.

Mostly it’s the shoes.

In other news, if you’ve been trying to process the latest Mel Gibson scandal, the AV Club’s Genevieve Koski has found what may be the best way to understand it. Great job, Koski!

Universal’s “Despicable Me” dominated the box office in 3D and otherwise, pulling in $60.1 million and leaving the “Twilight” threequel in the relative dust with $33.35 million — just ahead of “Predators”, which grossed a comparably weak $25.3 million to place third. After this and “Splice”, I’m starting to think Adrien Brody just can’t catch a break.

Now, I liked “Despicable Me” just fine, though the little yellow minion guys wore out their welcome pretty quickly. I have no illusions; the smash-hit status of the movie pretty much guarantees they’ll be front and center in the inevitable sequel. But honestly, I’d much rather hang out with Agnes as she takes her unicorn fixation to even more terrifying heights.

In other news, Swiss authorities have announced Roman Polanski will not be extradited to the U.S. over that unpleasant matter of being a fugitive from justice; he’s been released from his house arrest in Gstaad and will presumably make his way back to France, where his lawyers will argue that nearly ten months of public humiliation surely counts as time served in the state of California, and can’t we finally put all this behind us?

“The Ghost Writer” hits DVD on August 3rd, by the way.

I wrote this for MSN’s special Canada Day section, but was all distracted by my New York trip when it went up and never got around to posting a link. So if you missed it last week (and, let’s face it, you probably did), here’s my hopefully amusing gallery of Canadian cities posing as American locations.

If I left out a favorite example, please let me know. But remember, there’s only so much trivia you can squeeze into a thousand words …

The week that follows the Fourth of July is supposed to be calmer, in terms of movie openings, as the studios wait out whatever massive Will Smith movie is stomping through the box-office. That’s the theory, anyway; this year’s big dog turned out to be the “Twilight” movie, so an animated Steve Carell comedy seems like savvy counterprogramming. Read on and see …

“Act of Dishonour“: Nelofer Pazira makes her feature directorial debut with a film that’s just as calculated and hectoringly on-message as her documentary “Audition“, purporting to explore the Afghani cultural pressures that lead to honor killings but really just giving Westerners the chance to feel superior to a backward culture. Samira Makhmalbaf made a much better version of this film seven years ago; it’s called “At Five in the Afternoon”, and you can still find it on DVD.

“Despicable Me“: Some delightful voice work from Steve Carell, and the weirdly enchanting dynamic that develops between his supervillain character and the three little girls he adopts in a bid to steal the moon (it’s a long story), goes a long way to redeem an otherwise derivative CG comedy. Note to Universal’s marketing department: Those minions are not nearly as endearing as you think they are.

“The Girl Who Played with Fire”: Blomkvist and Salander are back for another round of crime-fighting in the second adaptation of the truncated Stieg Larsson series. Susan suggests you rent the first one beforehand; Jason doesn’t think much of it at all.

“Les Herbes Folles”: I think Alain Resnais wants us to see his visually splendid but emotionally incomprehensible tale of co-dependent stalkers as a frothy romantic farce. Instead, it feels like a shellacked pastry — lovely on the outside, but sour and indigestible within. (Except for Mathieu Amalric, who’s quietly wonderful as a frustrated police officer caught up in the madness.) Rad is kinder to it than I would have been; Jason, kinder still.

“The Kids Are All Right”: My trip to New York meant missing the press screenings of Lisa Chodolenko’s latest, which examines the tensions that erupt between a long-term lesbian couple (Julianne Moore and Annette Bening) when their children decide to seek out their biological father. Susan and Jason were less than whelmed, but I’m hoping they were just having an off day; Chodolenko’s previous films, “High Art” and “Laurel Canyon”, are enough for me to give her the benefit of the doubt.

“A Place Called Los Pereyra“: Andres Livov-Macklin’s direct-cinema documentary plops us down in a remote Argentine village and watches the interaction of its impoverished residents and the medical students making an annual visit from Buenos Aires. Simple, uncomplicated, and compelling; it’s only playing at the Royal for the weekend, so catch it quickly.

“Predators“: The dreadlocked space hunters are back … and this time they’re chasing an Oscar winner. (That makes it sort of personal, right?) Adrien Brody, Alice Braga and Danny Trejo are among the tough humans forced to face off against an invisible enemy in Robert Rodriguez and Nimrod Antal’s good-enough reboot of the Fox sci-fi property.

“Red Alert: The War Within“: Anath Narayan Mahadevan’s thriller about a lowly cook swept up in India’s Naxalite guerilla movement might have been better before it was cut by 20 minutes and dubbed into heavily accented English. But it’s also possible that it’s just as terrible in its original version. It’s pretty bad, is what I’m saying.

And there we are …

The chance to talk to Kristen Schaal dropped out of nowhere. The week after “Toy Story 3” opened, Disney suddenly offered phoner opportunities with a bunch of the voice talent, and would I be interested in speaking to any of them?

I like Schaal’s work. She’s got terrific timing, and she has the unique ability to suggest torrents of crazy surging underneath a reasonably normal facade — if you’ve seen her in “Flight of the Conchords”, you know what I mean. She does the same thing for a split-second (with just her voice!) in “Toy Story 3”, when Trixie the Triceratops rushes to close an instant-messenger window; the moment speaks to a much bigger world we’ll never fully understand, and it gets a huge laugh.

Anyway, we talked about all kinds of stuff, including the difference between Pixar and DreamWorks and the recent media dust-up over Olivia Munn joining the cast of “The Daily Show”. It’s a short little Q&A, but like Schaal’s best stuff, she manages to get a lot across in a small window of time.

The 3D upconversion of “Clash of the Titans” hadn’t been finished in time for its L.A. press junket, so they showed it to us in 2D, on good old 35mm film. But they did screen about seven minutes of digital 3D footage that was “80% done”.

Meh.

I was out of town when “The Last Airbender” was screened for the press — in digital 3D — but I’ve heard nothing but disappointing things about the experience. Jim Emerson and Sam Adams are wondering whether the added darkness and extra blur of the 3D version will lead audiences to shun 3D all over again. They’re expressing the same concerns that flew around when “Clash of the Titans” opened in April; I wondered then whether the largely negative reviews “Clash” were in some way influenced by critics’ frustration with the 3D process; seen flat, it was a pretty enjoyable little movie. Perhaps “Airbender” is running into the same problem.

Anyway, my point is that if you’re in Toronto, “The Last Airbender” is screening at the Carlton Cinemas in 2D, as M. Night Shyamalan  intended the film to be seen before it was swept up in the post-facto 3D craze. I plan to catch it there sometime in the next few days, as soon as I have a window of free time.

Has anyone out there caught it in either version? Thoughts? Opinions?

Also: If you’re down at Harbourfrount Centre and willing to spend a couple of hours outside in the stifling heat this evening, come over to the Sirius Satellite Stage around 8:30 or so for the first of this summer’s Free Flicks screenings. This year’s theme is “food”, and first up is Nora Ephron’s “Julie & Julia“, starring Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, Stanley Tucci and many exquisitely photographed meals.

Once again, I’ll be introducing the series on behalf of NOW; my co-host this year is Ali Rivzi of the SUN-TV series “Street Eats“. We will try to get off the stage before we sweat through everything we’re wearing. And you know you want to see that, right?

On my way home from a lovely week in scorching New York City … and apparently Toronto has improved on the Manhattan weather by adding thunderstorms and humidity? (You know, we don’t have to be a world leader all the time.)

Anyway, while I’m in the air, you might want to know that “Eclipse” surprised no one by making all the money in the world (or at least $161 million of it) over the long holiday weekend, while M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Last Airbender” took second place with $53.2 million in the same expanded frame. Not bad for one of the worst-reviewed movies of the year — though, in all fairness, I still haven’t seen it and might enjoy it when I do.

I mean, who knows? Stranger events have occurred.