By Julio Nakamurakare,

How you view or regard every day of the week depends on what you do, what you like and a myriad other reasons. In Argentina, until not long ago, cinephiles used to have a field day on Thursdays, movie release day here. Renovación de cartelera, to use the Spanish-language expression. In extreme cases of movie anxiety, it meant that, no sooner was the evening's last screening over, suspense in the air and, sometimes, panic on their faces, film buffs would wait until moviehouse staff made room on walls and doors for posters of the week's new releases.
Restlessness was, still is, the byword Monday to Wednesday, for movie ticket prices are slashed by half all day (well, it used to be 50 percent, and now maybe 40 or 30 percent, but it's better than nothing).
Thursday mornings all you had to do was buy your copy of a morning daily for a brief synopsis of every movie on release that day. You had to wait until Friday for the film critics' verdict before making your choice.
All that changed when the country's largest circulation daily decided to push things ahead by one day: new releases started to be announced on Wednesdays, one day before opening. This meant that Thursday was movie review day. Every other self-respecting newspaper had to do likewise so as not to damage circulation figures.
Everything is different now: with the proliferation of countless film sites, information and misinformation go both ways, meaning film distributors, exhibitors, advertising agencies and moviegoers are, more often than not, left in the dark. The quality and quantity of your cinematic information depends on who you rely on. Know thy friends, and, more importantly, know thy enemies.

A NATION UNDER THE INFLUENZA. Truth be told, this is an unusual week when it comes to movie uncertainty. Confusion and conjectures are due not to last -minute whims of distributors and exhibitors: as we all know, the flu pandemic hitting Argentina has forced theatre owners and showbiz entrepreneurs to cancel shows altogether for a minimum 10 days, to fill theatres to half capacity to allow healthier conditions in auditoriums, and to indefinitely hold back the winter holiday heavyweights.
Two films fall under this category: Hanna Montanah, The Movie; and The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3. Suspension of the former has translated into long faces among teeny boppers, and cancellation of the latter has thriller fans in a cliffhanger, for Pelham, actually a remake of a 1970s suspense movie, was the only wise choice in a week when Pride and Glory (Colin Farrel & Edward Norton) was about the only thriller - a botched one - showing in town. But let's not forget about 100% lucha, an Argentine children's movie about wrestling heroes. Last but not least, we'll also be missing, at least for a while, the release of the Argentine feel-good comedy Papá por un día, directed by Carlos Mentasti - an expert in this kind of stuff - and starring Luisana Lopilato, Nicolás Cabré and Gimena Accardi. It'll be sorely missed, as will the other movies that failed to make it this week. In all, four film premiere cancellations: deadlier than the influenza itself.
So, this is it, folks: no news on the movie front this week, save for Killshot (El ave negra), and Solstice (Miedo al amanecer). That is, provided no last-minute developments result in a week with no new releases at all.

KILLSHOT IN THE SOLSTICE. Produced by pop film geek Quentin Tarantino and directed by Oscar-nominated John Madden (Shakespeare in Love), Killshot was adapted by Hossein Amini from an Elmore Leonard novel. This last fact - the author of the original source text being Leonard, a hard-boiled narrative expert - bode well for Killshot, but film distributors made a good decision: Killshot can wait, it's not a killshot. Anxiety won't let you? Browse the production company's site: http://www.weinsteinco.com.
The other loss this week is Daniel Myrick's Solstice, billed as a horror film/thriller. Some say that Solstice (2008) is surprisingly professional in quality in spite of its rather low budget. Plot: six months after the suicide of her twin sister Sofie, Megan travels with friends to her family's house in Nowell Lake, Louisiana, to celebrate the summer solstice. There, she is haunted by a spirit that she believes is Sofie trying to communicate with her.

REMADE, REMODELLED, REFURBISHED. Tony Scott directs this remake of the original Palomar Production/Walter Matthau 1974 thriller about a group of hijackers who take over a subway train. With Denzel Washington and John Travolta in the leads.

DROWNING BY NUMBERS. The commercial side of movie business in Argentina is shrouded in mystery, for the number of multiplexes keeps on growing, movie audiences keep dropping, and it looks like it takes a lot of creative accounting to make it add.
Moviegoing from Thursday to Sunday amounted to 288,472 people in Argentina. On top of the rank was Ice Age 3. The previous weekend (mid-term elections here), the moviegoing figure was 450,970. The flu pandemic wasn't even on sight, the government seemed to be intent just on securing its grip on power, and people went about business as usual. The drop between one weekend and the following one, then, reached 36 percent.
It took only one week to have moviegoing down by such a large percentage. As one sage of a webmaster underlines in his movie site, only two months ago Mexico took the drastic measure of closing all movie theatres, restaurants, schools, museums, concerts, sports arenas, etc., for five days. It was all on account of the lethal influenza.
At that moment, only one country in the world cancelled all flights to and from Mexico as a precaution measure. That country was Argentina, for good measure. Cases of discrimination against Mexican citizens were then reported in Buenos Aires, most notoriously a party of diners cordially invited to climb on a limo and leave a restaurant's premises upon request from the other patrons.
It was the flu that flew down, even if health authorities here chose to look the other way.