First, a bit of news. Paramount Vantage (purveyor of such global consciousness-raising fare as Babel and A Mighty Heart) has gotten into a sticky spot with director Marc Forster’s adaptation of the Afghanistan-set novel The Kite Runner. A child rape scene is stirring up so much advance hysteria in the country that the distributor is considering spiriting the child stars to the United Arab Emirates. More at the New York Times.

Opening this week:

A ton of new movies and festivals are packing this weekend, but the real prize lands this Wednesday. My review of Brand Upon the Brain, part of Northwest Film Forum’s curiously strong Local Sightings lineup (no longer sponsored by Altoids, regrettably), kicks off On Screen this week. Get your tickets for the live show (including live narration, an orchestra, on-stage foley magic, and a “castrato”) here.

Also in the On Screen lineup: Ang Lee’s followup to Brokeback Mountain, the erotic spy thriller Lust, Caution. Don’t believe other critics. It isn’t dull or boring in the least, though I found other flaws.

I also got the chance to talk to Lee on Monday—you can read our exchange here. He’s a sweetheart, and his propensity to brag about Brokeback Mountain made me love him even more. (I had to cut the last part of the interview, when he launched into an assessment of every award he’d won, concluding that the Golden Lion for Brokeback Mountain was the only award that didn’t leave him filled with mixed feelings.)

The remaining reviews in On Screen: The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (includes “sustained passages of eerie, Malickian beauty [an early sequence involving a train robbery feels like one of the reasons that film was invented], mixed with increasing stretches of self-conscious artiness,” says Andrew Wright), Sweet Smell of Success (“The struggle between the old and the new, the sleek modernism of the interiors and exteriors, the experimental cinematography—all of this places Success in the higher regions of post-WWII American cinema,” concludes Charles Mudede), Michael Clayton (“It isn’t a movie that the world will remember, nor one that will prove that [director Tony] Gilroy is much more than a Hollywood screenwriter,” Charles claims), Ira & Abby (“funnier and smarter” than Dharma & Greg, insists Megan Seling), Great World of Sound (“an unbearably plodding odd-couple comedy” in the guise of a satire of the record industry, says Eric Grandy), Delirious (Sean Nelson calls it “a warm, smart, affecting movie” about the vampire world of paparazzi), and the Jew-meets-Muslim romantic comedy David & Layla (“just another movie,” says Christopher Frizzelle).

And in Film Shorts this week, check out the “magnificent” 5 Centimeters Per Second at Grand Illusion, the “greatest bad sci-fi disco musical biblical parable ever told” (The Apple) at Central Cinema, the “moldily Freudian” but intermittently enjoyable tween fantasy The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising, a buttload of Local Sightings screenings, a smattering of Independent South Asian Film Festival screenings, and tons more. (We’re sponsoring Spice World this weekend.) Oh, and there’s that little sold out thing called HUMP! 3. Refer to our exhaustive Movie Times search at Get Out for all your scheduling needs.