Weekend Film

"Blade 2" and vampire slayer Wesley Snipes sucked $33.1 million out of moviegoers to debut as the top weekend film and help continue a March box-office boom. "Ice Age," the animated comedy about prehistoric creatures caught by a big freeze, was close behind with $31.1 million in its second weekend, according to studio estimates Sunday. In third, the 20th anniversary reissue of "E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial" pulled in $15.1 million, the fourth-best weekend opening for a re-release.

Elmer Bernstein will be honored at 8 tonight at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 8949 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills. Carl Reiner will host the event, which will include tributes from directors John Landis ("National Lampoon's Animal House") and Carl Franklin ("Devil in a Blue Dress"); producer Noel Pearson ("My Left Foot"); actor James Coburn ("The Magnificent Seven"); composer Terence Blanchard; and Cecelia DeMille Presley, granddaughter of director Cecil B.

Last summer, "Speed 2: Cruise Control" debuted at the top of the weekend box-office charts. To the casual observer, the sequel's $16.2-million opening weekend made it seem like a sure winner, topping the opening of the huge moneymaker "Speed."

"Love and Death on Long Island" (unrated): Richard Kwietniowski's feature debut is a beautifully structured and perfectly performed culture-clash comedy about an insulated British novelist's romantic obsession with an American pop star. John Hurt plays Giles De'Ath, an intellectual with such disdain for pop culture, he doesn't even know movies like "Hotpants College II" exist, let alone feature an actor who could become the love of his life.

When the film "Thousand Pieces of Gold" was released in 1991, critics went wild. Writing for the Los Angeles Times, Michael Wilmington compared it to "Dances with Wolves" and raved: "Independent in the best sense of the word, 'Thousand Pieces of Gold' . . . gives us the Old West through a piece of candle-lit silk, hardship diffused through tears and smoke. ... The movie is a small but genuine triumph. Shot for less than $2 million, it's a superb Western."