The Woman in Black trailer: a scary amount of silliness

A crow on a desk; three quite similar girls; a muddy boy. Do the makers of The Woman in Black trailer even know what's scary?

This is a crucial time for Daniel Radcliffe. Harry Potter is over, and the choices he makes now will go on to define his entire career. Choose wisely and he could go on to have a long and fruitful acting life on his own terms. Choose badly and he'll spend the rest of his days stuck in a procession of grotty convention centres, trying his hardest to care about tedious Horcrux questions before going back to the local Premier Inn and unsuccessfully trying to hit on the girl who played Moaning Myrtle for the hundredth time.

Radcliffe's newest project is an adaptation of The Woman in Black. Hopefully it'll be able to drive a great big wedge between Daniel Radcliffe and Harry Potter. Will it work? And is the film even scary? Let's comb through its first full-length trailer for clues …

Oh crap, it's the Hogwarts Express. Right, forget everything I just said about Daniel Radcliffe moving on. Someone book him a superior room in the Wolverhampton Travelodge for the duration of Potterquest Midlands 2024.

Although, wait a minute. Daniel Radcliffe doesn't look anything like Harry Potter here. His hair is all swept back, he's got some impressive sideburns going on and his character doesn't seem as if he'd ever stoop as far as to say "A wuh-wizard?" Perhaps The Woman in Black won't be so silly after all.

Better yet, this spooky old house looks nothing like Hogwarts. I mean, it's probably full of talking hats and paintings of Dawn French that won't shut up, but it's still encouraging. Anyway, now that we've discerned that The Woman in Black is probably miles away from Harry Potter, let's find out what actually happens in it.

Inside the house, Daniel Radcliffe finds an old zoetrope on a coffee table. Don't spin it, Daniel. This is The Woman in Black. Spin it and you'll see something terrifying.

OH HOLY CHRIST! IT'S A WOMAN! At least on the plus side this means that everyone now knows to look away during the zoetrope scene of the actual film, but it's still pretty scary. Daniel Radcliffe should get out of there as soon as he can.

And quickly too, because there's a woman RIGHT BEHIND HIM! Admittedly the trailer doesn't make it clear if she's a ghost or just a regular woman who happens to be milling around minding her own business. But I suppose it's still quite scary.

OH MY GOD! IT'S A BIRD ON A DESK! That's … actually, hang on, it's a bird on a desk. That's literally it. It's just a bird standing on a normal desk. That isn't very scary at all. Pull your socks up, The Woman in Black trailer.

JESUS CHRIST! SCARY TRIPLET … oh, no, wait, they're not even triplets. They're just three girls who happen to be about equal height and have a vaguely similar hair colour. Honestly, The Woman in Black trailer, these aren't scary images at all. You don't need to announce each of them with all these screeching orchestral stabs. They don't really warrant it. Can you do better next time, please?

ON NO! IT'S A muddy boy. Calm down everyone, it's just a muddy boy. Panic over. Nothing scary about muddy boys. Right, The Woman in Black trailer, you've got one more chance. Do something genuinely scary.

Oh dear. You're not even trying any more, are you?

Borders and Belonging in My Beautiful Laundrette - A Cat and Elephant Production

'Looking Forward' by Mark Kermode

People are always asking me what films are coming up that I'm really looking forward to. I usually say the ones that I don't know anything about yet, but here I pick a selection of upcoming movies that I think could be stand outs - and ask what new releases you are eager to see.'

Families don't mind the gap as Johnny English and The Lion King are reborn

Eight years after the first film, audiences are flocking to see Rowan Atkinson's spy sequel; and Disney introduces an old friend to a new generation in 3D

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An ear for comedy ... Rowan Atkinson is back in Johnny English Reborn. Photograph: Universal Pictures Switzerland

The winner

Conventional wisdom dictates that sequels can suffer at the box office when there is a significantly long gap between releases, but eight years after Johnny English, audiences have embraced the follow-up in huge numbers. Johnny English Reborn opened at the weekend with £4.96m, which compares with a debut of £3.44m for the original Rowan Atkinson spy caper in 2003. Another comparison: Mr Bean's Holiday began its run in 2007 with £4.50m plus £1.94m in previews. The Johnny English Reborn opening number is the best for any film since The Inbetweeners Movie arrived in mid-August.

1. Johnny English Reborn
2. Production year: 2011
3. Countries: Rest of the world, UK
4. Cert (UK): PG
5. Runtime: 101 mins
6. Directors: Oliver Parker
7. Cast: Daniel Kaluuya, Dominic West, Gillian Anderson, Pierce Brosnan, Richard Schiff, Rosamund Pike, Rowan Atkinson
8. More on this film

The runner-up

With Johnny English clearly a hit with families, you might think there wouldn't be much room left in the market for a flick with kiddie appeal, but Disney proved otherwise. The Lion King 3D earned an impressive £2.75m, suggesting a strong appeal to a generation that had seen the stage musical but perhaps not the film, and certainly not in cinemas. The number compares highly favourably with the 3D version of Toy Story, which opened with £1.40m in October 2009, and even more so with Toy Story 2, which began its 3D re-release in January 2010 with a relatively lacklustre £909,000. When you consider that audiences were exhibiting more excitement over the novelty of 3D two years ago, the success of The Lion King is all the more remarkable. And if Disney can achieve similar paydays with 3D conversion of all its cherished old-school animations, that will be a rich revenue stream for many years to come.

The rock

Weather played a factor, but nevertheless credit is due to Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy for a stonking hold on its fourth weekend of play, up from £1.065m to £1.067m. The third weekend had, of course, been hit by the gloriously sunny skies, dropping 49% from the previous frame, so we are now witnessing a degree of bounce back. Still, to achieve four straight weekends at £1m plus is impressive: it's a feat not achieved by many of the summer's big hits, including Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Thor, X-Men: First Class and Captain America.

The arthouse battle

With Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen has already achieved his biggest US box-office hit ($55m) as well as his only $100m-plus global success. And the film's £496,000 UK debut at 153 screens certainly compares well with his last effort, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (opening of £112,000 from 101 venues). However, it's not the biggest ever weekend number for a Woody picture. Vicky Cristina Barcelona debuted in February 2009 on just 34 screens, but expanded to 175 cinemas on its second weekend, grossing £577,000. Vicky went on to cume a total of £2.66m in the UK, a number that looks a highly achievable target for the new film – as long as audience word is positive.

Midnight in Paris's main competitors were holdover titles such as Drive(down a slim 17%), The Debt (sliding 34%) and Melancholia (off by 36%). Landing in 20th place is Paddy Considine's critically laudedTyrannosaur, with a soft £70,000 from 37 screens, which rises to a healthier £82,000 including previews. Segments of even the most discerning arthouse audience will resist a tough drama featuring domestic abuse. Owen Wilson meeting literary and artistic heroes in a prettily photographed Paris was always going to be an easier sell.

The last weekend before the London film festival is, in principle, a good date for an arthouse picture, since so many titles are holding off until after their festival premiere to release, creating a vacuum effect. Last year, The Social Network didn't play the festival, and instead opened in cinemas on day three of the event, facing minimal competition for upscale audiences. In 2008, Gomorrah did well, debuting the Friday before the festival, while I've Loved You So Long opened late September and then gradually expanded during the festival's run. In 2007, Control performed nicely in the early October slot.

The expat phenomenon

Ignored by, and probably invisible to, most regular media channels, $9m-budget 3D historical actioner Battle of Warsaw 1920 was targeted directly at the Polish community in the UK, grossing a healthy £88,000 from 21 Cineworld screens, for a site average (£4,176) that was bettered only by Johnny English Reborn and The Lion King 3D, which both benefited from some multiple-screen occupancy at plexes. The Jerzy Hoffman-directed title does not appear on the Film Distributors' Association's website as a 7 October release, was not screened to UK newspaper critics at the weekly national press shows, and was consequently not reviewed.

BBC project aims to capture portrait of Britain in one day

People invited to submit pictures on 12 November for documentary to be broadcast as part of Cultural Olympiad

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• James Robinson
• guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 4 October 2011 20.42 BST
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The BBC project takes its inspiration from Kevin Macdonald's award-winning feature film Life in a Day.

The BBC is to ask members of the public to turn their cameras on themselves on a single day this year to help create a self-portrait of Britain that will be broadcast as a feature-length documentary on BBC2 in 2012.

The director Ridley Scott, whose films include Gladiator and Bladerunner, is working with the BBC on Britain in a Day, which aims to provide a snapshot of the country on 12 November. The documentary will form part of the BBC's Cultural Olympiad, which will showcase British life and culture during the year when London hosts the Olympic Games.

The BBC said it aimed to create the "definitive self-portrait of Britain today". The project will be officially launched on The One Show in late October.
Scott said: "Film-making has always been about just picking up a camera, getting out there and doing it.
"Our aim for this new project is to get everyone behind the lens and give us a window onto one day in Britain."
Britain in a Day was inspired by the award-winning feature film Life in a Day, a similar project by Scott's production company, Scott Free London, the award-winning feature film Life in a Day. Oscar-winning director Kevin Macdonald edited more than 4,500 hours of footage submitted by people all over the world into a 90-minute documentary, which premiered in US cinemas in July.
Macdonald will be executive producer on the UK equivalent. It will be directed by Morgan Matthews, whose work includes The Fallen, BBC2's three-hour, Bafta-winning 2008 documentary naming every British serviceman and woman killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Matthews "will use the rich trove of material submitted to craft a single, coherent story that captures the variety and vibrancy of life in Britain today", according to the BBC.
The BBC wants the public to film something that captures the intimacy and singularity of their lives. Contributors will be asked to upload their footage to YouTube, which is supporting the development of the Britain in a Day film.
Charlotte Moore, BBC commissioning editor for documentaries, said: "The Cultural Olympiad feels like an ideal opportunity to take a mirror to ourselves and capture something of the kaleidoscope of life that thrives in Britain today. I hope that the fresh approach we are bringing to the production process will allow us to preserve a moment in time in a compelling and truly inclusive way. This is a bold project, hugely ambitious in scope and scale, and the BBC is in a unique position to deliver it with real impact."
BBC Learning, which makes educational programing, is funding the project and holding a series of film-making workshops across the country to encourage communities to get involved. The BBC will also work with film schools, societies and charities.
The BBC will launch a promotional film to publicise Britain In A Day featuring celebrities including Ann Widdicombe, John Humphrys, Raymond Blanc, Terry Pratchett, Fiona Bruce and Stephen Fry.