Welcome back to Defamer Attractions, your weekly guide to peaks, valleys and pratfalls among the latest new movies in theatres. And finally, after consecutive weekends when we thought God had up and abandoned us with the feral makers of College and Disaster Movie, we have some real films to write about. So read on for our typically expert preview of what's what at the box office, including Coen surprises, Alan Ball atrocities, potential ladyfights, timely new DVD's and one melodrama to rule them all. As always, our opinions are our own; you simply can't fake this kind of refinement, taste and acuity.

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If it's the last thing it ever does — and it probably will be — Warner Independent Pictures is bound and determined to wring every last bit of notoriety out of the $1.5 million it spent last year on Alan Ball's merde du jour directing debut Towelhead. And almost a full 12 months after the film met its Toronto Film Festival premiere audience with a splat heard 'round the world, the doomed mini-major's quest to culturally salvage what's left of the rape-and-racism coming-of-age drama has tapped into yet another free-publicity boon: The Council on American-Islam Relations finally came around the other day to condemn the title Towelhead and urge a name change. We know nobody saw that coming.

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The eulogies are on following Thursday's twin killing of Picturehouse and Warner Independent Pictures by the executioners at Warner Bros. — or perhaps more accurately, by hooded, high-ranking Time Warner axeman Jeff Bewkes, to whom some today are attributing the death penalty that ended in nearly 75 lost jobs between the two mini-majors. While we still suspect that WIP's demise in cosmically linked to its acquisition of the poisonously atrocious Alan Ball film Towelhead (another blogger disagrees, citing Funny Games instead), at least a few other observers have more official diagnoses from the murder scene.

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We've survived our share of bad movies at film festivals, but nothing quite scrapes the all-time low of Towelhead, the directorial debut of American Beauty/Six Feet Under creator Alan Ball. Upon our viewing of the film (then titled Nothing is Private) at last year's Toronto Film Festival, our disdain for Ball's facile mishmash of pedophilia, racism and "edgy" suburban angst provoked us to level a bounty on the filmmaker's pin head — a bounty we'd like to double after viewing the new trailer. Laugh! at the lukewarm tampon gags. Gasp! at Aaron Eckhart's predatory one-liners. Cry! at Toni Collette's decreasing selectivity. This is but a fleck of the steaming horseshit we expect will bury Warner Independent Pictures in its post-New Line fight for life with corporate cousin Picturehouse, but we still think it merits your suggestions for creative, affordable means of cosmic revenge we might exact in the months ahead.

• Towelhead [Warner Independent]