The screen fills with a close-up of a military-issued boot marching along. Its owner, a grizzled and scarred commander, bellows, “You ain't in Kansas anymore.” So begins the preview footage of Avatar, the long-awaited and much ballyhooed sci-fi epic from James Cameron.

It's the filmmaker's first full-length feature project since Titanic made him the self-proclaimed “King of the World.”

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The summer movie season is closing with a flurry: Recent weeks have given us such diverse, worthwhile fare as Funny People, The Girl from Monaco, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, (500) Days of Summer, Ponyo, District 9 and the best film of the year so far, Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker.

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John Hughes, the writer and/or director of such 1980s staples as Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink and The Breakfast Club, died of a heart attack yesterday at age 59. That sucks for a variety of reasons, the least of which is that few filmmakers made popular entertainments with as much heart, authenticity and wit as Hughes, and fewer still did it in the largely vapid genre of teen comedy.

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I guess there’s nothing wrong with wishful thinking.

I bought my ticket for the 6:30 p.m. Friday film Official Rejection at Oxford International Film Festival — being held on short notice at the Esquire Theatre in Clifton — 90 minutes early because the volunteer at the information booth warned me it would be one of the better-attended movies. I then watched the clock as a friend and I had dinner nearby, wanting to be sure we got there in time for a good seat.

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Our largely uneventful summer movie season gets a kick in the ass this week with the arrival of not only one of the best films of 2009 — Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker — but also the third annual Oxford International Film Festival (OIFF), which moves to Cincinnati this year.

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When the quietly haunting notes of Nicholas Hooper’s score begin to play a little past midnight on July 15, cueing the opening scene of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, my heart feels like a hot cauldron bubbling with a jumble of emotions: excitement, anxiety, and even a slight trace of fear, in case things — god forbid — go horribly wrong.

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The third annual Oxford International Film Festival (OIFF) is moving south.

Previously held on Miami University’s Oxford campus and initially set to move to the Savannah Center in West Chester for this year, festival organizers announced this week that the majority of the screenings will now take place at the Esquire Theatre (320 Ludlow Ave., Clifton) July 24-30.

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“Sadly, I kind of liked it,” I hear the guy behind me say to his friend as the closing credits of Bruno, Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest outrageous, tongue-in-cheek (and that’s the most appropriate of places) social satire begin to roll. “Is that bad?”

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The Cincinnati Art Museum has announced its fall film series, the first under its own aegis since ending its relationship with Cincinnati World Cinema earlier this year.

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With what is likely to be the summer’s biggest box-office splash (Michael Bay’s latest Transformers outing), high-profile drama (Michael Mann’s Johnny Depp-led Public Enemies) and satirical (and likely controversial) comedy (Sacha Baron Cohen’s Bruno) looming in the near future, we actually have a solid collection of new releases this week, led by a pair of art-house gems and what looks to be a surprisingly effective romantic comedy.

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