Screen writer

Who will dare take on Potter, wonders DONALD CLARKE

SOME good films are released today. Indeed, if eccentric pieces from Swedish directors are your thing, Mammothand Involuntarywill both suit you quite nicely.

There is, however, no doubt that the week's schedule is a bit light on mainstream oomph. A critical and financial flop in the United States, You Againis nobody's idea of an A-grade commercial release. Skyline doesn't exactly fire up the adrenal glands either. Next week just three releases grace the rota. Why, it's almost as if a fearsome beast had scared all frailer creatures from the watering hole.

Yes, it’s Harry Potter season.

Every now and then, a supernova arrives in Cinemaland and, after detonation, leaves nothing else but a smoking crater. When multiplexes emerged in the early 1990s, the notion was that the plethora of screens would allow exhibitors to present a much wider variety of material. You would soon be able to watch Attack of the Tomato Peopleon screen one, Love Is Lovelyon six and My Camel Is No Longer at the Yam-Yam Treeon 19.

It hasn't worked out that way. Granted even greater chances by the digital revolution to hedge their bets, cinema owners will be screening Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallowson as many screens as possible.

A vicious circle has been established. Distributors hold back releases because they fear too few screens will be available during (and around) Potter week. Meanwhile, those few brave exhibitors who seek to offer alternatives search in vain for attractive Potterless pictures. Similar droughts coincided with the releases of Avatar, Iron Man and the various Pirates of the Caribbean.

When films do emerge on the same day as the blockbusters, they tend to abide by the mysterious principles of "counter programming". It's a weird one, this. If you're going to release anything against a major bruiser, it should be as unlike that entity as humanly possible. For example, when Sex and the City 2oiled its way into cinemas, it did so opposite the manly thriller The Losers.

This makes a certain pounding logic: fans of ordnance and decapitation now need not flee the cinemas. On the other hand, those action enthusiasts are going to be disappointed when they discover the Big Bang Movieis only screening in one cinema – the one between the detergent cupboard and the disabled loo.

The most interesting form of counter-programming is the class that sees prominent highbrow films being unleashed opposite the season's Hollywood behemoth. Next week, Apichatpong Weerasethakul's extraordinary Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, winner of this year's Palme d'Or at Cannes, finds itself squaring up to the bespectacled young wizard.

How quaint that two such unlikely bedfellows end up squeezed together in the same tiny berth. The mysteries of counter-programming would befuddle even a Dumbledore.