Just interviewed Sam Raimi for my Popcorn show on ABC News NOW. We hadn't met in all the years from his low rent Evil Dead movies to the Spider-Man trilogy. So it was a kick to finally greet him at the Manhattan studio and ask him if indeed the rumor is true: that he appears regularly on the set of all his movies dressed in a suit and tie even if the film was a scarefest like Drag Me to Hell. As luck would have it, Raimi was dressed formally for our interview while I took the slob route by leaving the tie at home. "You shame me," I told him. He smiled politely but seemed to agree. That was my chance to ask if he stood on ceremony out of respect for his directing hero, master of suspense Alfred Hitchcock. His answer was surprising:

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A pair of must-see summer films hits theaters this weekend, joining a packed multiplex filled with popcorn epics and Scum Bucket blockbusters. Thankfully, Rolling Stone movie critic Peter Travers is once again your guide for what to see and what to avoid.

Despite its ridiculous title, Travers says there's no reason to feel guilty about seeing the guilty-pleasure horror film Drag Me to Hell, which marks Evil Dead trilogy director Sam Raimi's return to his scary roots after helming the blockbuster Spider-Man series. The film, which stars Alison Lohman as a banker afflicted with a demonic curse, stretches the limits of PG-13, but its Raimi's dark humor that hit almost as hard as the shocks. Travers recently sat down with co-star Justin Long, who plays Lohman's fiancé in the film, for an upcoming episode of the new online series Off the Cuff, so keep an eye on the Travers Take tomorrow to see the series' debut.

Also in theaters is Up, the latest masterpiece by animation giants Pixar. Travers gave the film four stars in the new issue of RS, and notes that Up more than keeps Pixar's 1.000 batting average when looking at their 10-picture filmography.

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OK, there's really no secret. Just leave quality out of it. The MTV Movie Awards air this Sunday night and it's always a fun show as long as you don't expect the voters to hold to any standard except popularity. There's even a category called BEST WTF MOMENT, but the great thing about the MTV Movie Awards is that every category gives you at least one "what the fuck" moment. Let's take a looksee:

Best Movie
The Dark Knight
High School Musical 3: Senior Year
Iron Man
Slumdog Millionaire
Twilight

Slumdog won the Oscar so let's rule that out. Dark Knight and Iron Man were actually good movies, so their chances are shaky. High School Musical 3: Senior Year sucked from start to finish — I expect it to finish strong. But Twilight — bad reviews, bountiful box office — smells like a winner to me. WTF!

And here we go with the other categories:

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As I predicted, along with a bunch of you guys on Twitter, cute trumped carnage this Memorial holiday weekend. Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian took in $70 million over four days to seriously outgun Terminator: Salvation, which grossed $53.8 million over the same Friday to Monday frame. What happened? To quote star Christian Bale's tirade against the T4 director of photography on the set last summer: "what don't you fucking understand?" As I see it, Museum attracted family audiences with its wuss-friendly PG rating.

On the other hand, Terminator fans were put off that T4 also carried a relatively wussy rating, PG-13, the first in the franchise to not go out with a hardcore "R" on its hood. In fact, T4 director McG didn't wuss out. His first entry into the franchise stretched that PG-13 way past its usual limits. Maybe guys 25 and older — the target audience for T4 — were diverted by televised basketball playoffs this weekend. Or maybe the continued success of Star Trek, tickling $200 million in just three weeks, also siphoned off the core demographic. Or maybe it was the latest box-office gimmick: giant screens. T4 had no IMAX showings. Museum had several, including sellouts at DC's Smithsonian Museum itself, accounting for $5.4 million in take home.

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It's Memorial Day Weekend, which means giant Hollywood blockbusters at the multiplex, and this week there are two: Terminator: Salvation and Night At the Museum: The Battle of the Smithsonian. First up, Terminator: Salvation, the fourth installment in the man vs. robot series. While the film lacks the fire of star Christian Bale's now-infamous F-bomb-dropping rant, Peter Travers says this film isn't half bad, thanks to co-star Sam Worthington, a young "Russell Crowe without the attitude" who will be seen later this year in James Cameron's much-anticipated Avatar. Travers also applauds the work of the film's director, McG.

And in the Scum Bucket is Night at the Museum: The Battle of the Smithsonian, the sequel to the equally Scum Bucket-worthy Ben Stiller film, which Travers insists made him puke.

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Crazy question? Not really. Ron Howard's megabudget Angels & Demons did indeed take in $48 million on its opening weekend, enough to just squeeze ahead of Star Trek in its second week. But read between the lines and you don't quite come up with a success story. That $48 million gross for the sequel to The Da Vinci Code, once again starring Tom Hanks as Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon, is substantially below the $77 million that Da Vinci took in on its debut weekend in 2006. Dan Brown's Angels & Demons was a definite bestseller, but it only sold half the 80 million copies of Brown's Da Vinci Code. Worse, it barely stirred up an iota of controversy. Da Vinci posits that Jesus was married with children, making Angels' claim of anti-scientific bias in the Catholic Church seem like small potatoes. Ironically, the faster-paced film version of Angels received marginally better reviews than the slogging chunk of anti-cinema that was The Da Vinci Code on screen. But if money talks in Hollywood, it's writing a dimmer box-office future for Angels & Demons.

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It's hard to talk about how fierce Ewan McGregor is in the flawed Angels & Demons. His role as the right-hand holy man to the just-dead Pope is tied into plot details that lead to spoilers. But in a movie in which most of the actors, led by Tom Hanks, hold back — McGregor lets it rip. The Scottish actor has a reputation for taking risks. And yet McGregor, 38, is traditionally the forgotten man when it comes to winning Oscar nominations. He was the romantic soul of 2001's Moulin Rouge, but Nicole Kidman got the acting nomination. Nothing for Ewan. I'm not saying that anyone connected with the deadly Star Wars prequels deserves credit. But McGregor, as the young version of Alec Guinness's Obi-Wan Kenobi, was the only one to emerge from the Jar-Jar trilogy with his dignity intact. It's time to make up for past insults. So let's look at the roles for which McGregor deserved his share of award glory:

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This weekend At the Movies, Tom Hanks returns as Robert Langdon in Angels & Demons, the pseudo-sequel to what Rolling Stone movie critic Peter Travers called the "worst movie of 2006," The Da Vinci Code. Thankfully, Angels vastly improves on its predecessor, with Hanks ditching his silly Da Vinci haircut, director Ron Howard getting rid of all the long speeches and boiling down the film to make it "a ticking-bomb movie." While it's not anywhere near a quality popcorn flick like last weekend's Star Trek, it's not a "rancid piece of garbage," as Travers calls Da Vinci.

There's no need to surmise the plot as, if you're one of the millions who read Angels & Demons, chances are you know what you're getting in the theater. Ewan McGregor tags along this time around as the assistant to the Pope, while Israeli actress Ayelet Zurer plays the almost-Hitchcockian female lead. Travers' final judgment: "It's a load of hooey, but it's fun."

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The 62nd Cannes Film Festival opens today in France. American journalists whose outlets still have a dime to squeeze will squeeze into films that audiences back home will largely ignore when and if they ever win distribution stateside. I’d like to imagine a world in which the Wolverine brigade lines up to see Les Herbes Folles, the latest from 86-year-old New Wave pioneer Alain Resnais. Ain't happening. Besides, crass commerce is supposed to have no place here. Art is all on zee Croisette, the avenue of the “little cross” where festival goers stroll past the Mediterranean on their way to see films at the Palais. Of course, Hollywood’s greedy little hand is everywhere, especially at photo ops, hoping to give their latest scam job a little Cannes cred while the rest of us hope random French starlets will jump naked into a fountain. So, I hear you asking: Is there any good stuff?

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Photo: Paramount Pictures

Star Trek, refashioned by director J.J. Abrams into an origin story even a non-Trekker could love, beamed up a big $76.5 million at the weekend box office. Expect a sequel to be announced pronto and salary hikes for Chris Pine’s Kirk and Zachary Quinto’s Spock. Many fans were rooting for the gross to break $100 million and put the newbie in reach of last summer’s Iron Man. But the miracle didn’t happen — yet! Star Trek is, let’s face it, a tired franchise. A paltry $30 million debut for 1996’s Star Trek: First Contact was the best opening in the 10-film series, until now. Thanks to Abrams and his young cast, the Starship Enterprise is looking good to live long and prosper. Which begs the question. What is the best Star Trek movie and what is the one you wouldn't watch again even with a gun at your head?

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