On the exclusive front, you’d better go online right now to order tonight’s tickets for “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead” (four stars from me). It’s playing only on a single screen apiece at the Lincoln Plaza and the Angelika, where it’s expected to average a sizzling $38,000 per venue over the weekend. There was also good news for “Bella,” a star-less, charming romantic sleeper that I awarded three stars yesterday. Released with little fanfare, it’s expeced to finish with a strong $8,300 per location — far better than Allison Eastwood’s “Rails & Ties” with the eponymous Kevin Bacon (one star from Kyle — Smith, not Eastwood) or the Jonathan Demme doc “Jimmy Carter: The Man From Plains” (also one star from Kyle), which Mase can’t resist joking is proving as unpopular as Carter was when he occupied the Oval Office.
Update: The new weekly Variety, already up online, has a grim post-mortem for the fall season: “After the biggest summer on record, Hollywood dropped the ball in the fall. Through Oct. 21, domestic box office is 6 percent behind last year, with the lowest total ($785.7 million) since 2001…”