We told you yesterday that this weekend was on track to become the lowest-grossing frame of the year and the lowest-grossing frame since September 2008. Unfortunately, nothing came along to change that gloomy portrait after Sunday’s estimates were released. No film, including first-place holdover The Possession, managed to break ten million and only one new film reached half that amount.

Tis the season for dead drops and tricked out gadgets. 2011 is ending with a bang thanks to a few big name spy movies coming out at the end of the year Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol is a perfect fit for the action junkies.  Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy appeals to those looking for more double crosses and trust issues.  Another spy film just hit DVD and Blu-Ray from earlier in the year. The Debt comes packed with big-name English actors, an Academy Award winning director and a story that spans three decades. Is it worth accepting this mission? Check out our review after the jump.

As the 84th Academy Awards move closer, we’re starting to get a better sense of how things will pan out. We recently shared the 39 songs that will contend for the Best Original Song category, and now the Academy has announced the 97 original scores eligible for the Best Original Score award. AMPAS is notoriously picky when it comes to eligibility in this category, and as we feared the scores for both Drive and Attack the Block have been deemed ineligible. Also disappointing is the ineligibility of Alexandre Desplat’s mesmerizing score for The Tree of Life.

While it’s upsetting to see some of the year’s best work side-lined, there’s plenty to be happy about. I was a huge fan of Howard Shore’s work in Hugo and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s score for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, as well as The Chemical Brothers’ brilliant work in the criminally underseen Hanna. Hit the jump for the full list, as well as who I think will make the cut.

John Madden’s The Debt is all about the sizzle. The growing tension behind even the most mundane acts – a handshake, a doctor’s appointment, the walk across a street… all-leading to an inevitable blow up. Three retired Mossad agents, celebrated for assassinating an in-hiding Nazi war criminal thirty years prior, must in the present – deal with the secrets and lies they have kept since that fateful day. The secret they are keeping can probably be inferred from that simple logline; but the film’s not so much about reveals and third act twists as much the growing burden of not only lying to others but to oneself.

David Peretz (played in the present by Ciaran Hinds, thirty years prior by Sam Worthington) in a more conventional film would probably serve as the hero. Soft spoken, enigmatic, do-gooder with a heart of gold. But here – it’s those very qualities that doom the poor guy. The toll of bottling up all those lies eventually becoming too much to bear. Instead of hero, David ultimately serves as a cautionary/tragic figure for the film. At the press junket for The Debt, Sam Worthington spoke about the difficulties in playing such an emotionally bottled-up character, how John Madden convinced him to star in the film and what types of films/projects interest him. Worthington (sporting a crazy wild man beard for the currently shooting Drift), also talked about what to expect in Clash of the Titans 2: Wrath of the Titans.  For the full interview, hit the jump.

We have arrived at the official end of summer: Labor Day weekend.  Never a blockbuster in terms of grosses, this year’s late summer crop of movies – two horror titles and a thriller – appears weaker than usual.  In fact, it looks like it will take four days for the newcomers to earn what last year’s Labor Day releases made in only three.

Last weekend the crop of late-summer newbies had that East Coast hurricane to blame for their less than stellar starts.  Too bad there’s no natural disaster to blame this time around.  Another lackluster crop of debuts means that the summer ‘sleeper’ hit The Help will remain in first place for the third weekend in a row.  Of Friday’s three new titles, Relativity’s Shark Night 3D and Dimension/TWC’s Apollo 18 each earned an estimated $2.8 million.  Because Apollo has the bigger screen count, it is expected to pull ahead by Monday – all the way ahead to a four-day total of $11 million!  Focus Features’ The Debt debuted on Wednesday, earning $970,000 from its 1,826 locations.  With an estimated $2.6 million, The Debt was fourth on Friday and is expected to bring in $8 million by Monday.  Details and analysis tomorrow.

This has been Jessica Chastain’s year as far as ubiquity goes.  She’s co-starred in The Tree of Life, The Help, Take Shelter, and she’s still got Texas Killing Fields and Coriolanus on the way.  However, of the films I’ve seen her in so far, she’s never been front and center.  She was overshadowed by Brad Pitt in Tree of Life, everything was overshadowed by Michael Shannon in Take Shelter, and she did a fine job in The Help hinting that she was the real deal.  But her latest film, The Debt, gives her the lead and she’s never able to hold the screen with any intensity or subtlety.  She’s once again overshadowed by her fellow actors and this time around she must struggle with a movie that tries to be an intense spy-thriller and ignores its strengths as a claustrophobic pressure-cooker and thoughtful moral drama.

In the espionage thriller The Debt , Rachel Singer is a Mossad agent in the 1960′s, who teams up with fellow agents Stephan (Marton Csokas) and David (Sam Worthington), to track down Nazi war criminal Dieter Vogel (Jesper Christensen), also known as the feared Surgeon of Birkenau. For that mission, she put herself at great risk and her heart on the line, not realizing that their actions would come back to haunt them over 30 years later.

At the film’s press day, actress Jessica Chastain talked about her four months of Krav Maga training for The Debt, how she studied Helen Mirren and worked with her on the backstory for the different ages of the character that they were playing, and just how uncomfortable the gynecological scenes were. She also talked about reuniting with Sam Worthington on Texas Killing Fields, what she loves about working with director Terrence Malick, her excitement over playing a character in a punk band in the Guillermo Del Toro-produced genre film Mama, and how she chooses projects based on the script and if it’s something she’s never done before. Check out what she had to say after the jump:

In the dramatic thriller The Debt, based on the Israeli film Ha-Hov, actor Sam Worthington plays David, a Mossad secret agent in the 1960′s who set out on a mission, with fellow agents Stephan (Marton Csokas) and Rachel (Jessica Chastain), to track down a Nazi war criminal. But, not everything goes as planned and, 30 years later, they all must face the truth.

At the film’s press day, Sam Worthington talked about how the director’s take on the material is what drew him to the project, how he enjoyed the Krav Maga training for the role, and how he balanced his performance with his co-stars. He also talked about how he’s not surprised that there’s a sequel for Clash of the Titans since it made a lot of money, how this one is a very different film, how he’s playing a surf photographer in Drift, and that he’d love to do multiple sequels for Avatar to keep working with Jim Cameron. Check out what he had to say after the jump:

With director John Madden’s (Shakespeare in Love) The Debt finally getting released August 31, Focus Features has provided us with six clips from the film.  The reason I say finally, is that Focus acquired the flick from Miramax, so it’s release date was pushed back from last year.  Starring Helen Mirren, Tom Wilkinson, and Ciaran Hinds as older versions of the characters played by Jessica Chastain, Sam Worthington, and Marton Csokas, The Debt is about three retired Mossad secret agents and what happened to them in the past.  From what I understand, the film cuts back and forth between 1966 and 1997, which is the reason you have two actors playing the same character.  Hit the jump to watch the clips.

A new poster has been released for The Debt. The film was originally scheduled to come out last year, but the Miramax hubbub put the picture in limbo. Recently, Focus Features acquired the flick and will now release it on August 31^st.

Directed by John Madden (Shakespeare in Love), The Debt stars Helen Mirren, Tom Wilkinson, and Ciaran Hinds as older versions of the characters played by Jessica Chastain, Sam Worthington, and Marton Csokas. Hit the jump to check out the poster, as well as Focus’ cut of the trailer.

The Debt was originally scheduled to come out at the end of last year (you can watch the trailer here), but the prolonged Miramax deal left the drama on the shelf without a release date (same for the other remaining Miramax title, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark).  The Debt has now found a home at Focus Features, which will release the flick on August 31st.

Hit the jump to check out the press release.  Directed by John Madden (Shakespeare in Love), The Debt features an impressive cast that includes Helen Mirren, Sam Worthington, Jessica Chastain, Ciarán Hinds, and Tom Wilkinson.  Matthew Vaughn and Jane Goldman (Kick-Ass) wrote the screenplay with Peter Straughan.

The buy-out of Miramax has caused an unfortunate delay for two of its upcoming films.  John Madden’s The Debt starring Sam Worthington was slated for December 29th while the Guillermo del Toro-produced Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark starring Katie Holmes was set for January 21, 2011.  Both films have now been postponed indefinitely while the logistics of the Miramax deal continue to be hammered out and, per The Playlist, “construction magnate Ron Tutor and Tom Barrack’s Santa Monica-based Colony Capital — put together their new shingle, Filmyard.”

Hit the jump for a synopsis on The Debt and Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark.  Both films look great so hopefully we’ll be seeing these films before too long.

We have a nice little set of images from a trio of films for you today.  The comedy My Idiot Brother recently commenced production in New York City, highlighted by the Jesus look that star Paul Rudd is sporting for the film.  Co-stars Janey Montgomery and Zooey Deschanel were also spotted on the set — one draped in a scarf, the other in a robe.  (You’ll have to hit the jump to see which is which.)

Meanwhile, Disney has released a pair of high-resolution stills for both the thriller The Debt and the Shakespeare adaptation The Tempest, which happen to share a cast member in Dame Helen Mirren.  Check out all the images after the break.

Every year, the Toronto International Film Festival showcases some of the year’s most exciting and must-see movies, and 2010 isn’t going to be any different.  Fifty films showing at this year’s festival have been announced and I’m (unsurprisingly) bitter-as-hell that I’m not going to be there.  Films making their various premieres (World, North American, etc.) include Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan, Robert Redford’s The Conspirator, Mark Romanek’s Never Let Me Go (image above), and Ben Affleck’s The Town.  While the line-up includes plenty of films that have already premiered at other festivals (including Sylvain Chomet’s The Illusionist, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Biutiful, Julian Schnabel’s Miral, and Stephen Frears’ Tamara Drewe), it will be the first time they’ll be showing up on our quaint little 9.5 million square mile-continent.

Hit the jump for a list of all 50 films.  The 2010 Toronto International Film Festival will run from September 9^th-19^th.