A Norse God And A Bridal Farce …
… topped the weekend’s take at the box office.

Kenneth Branagh’s “Thor” stayed at the top spot, while the Kristen Wiig-starrer “Bridesmaids” came second this weekend. Here’s the haul:

Name: Weekend: Total:
Thor $34.5m $119.5m
Bridesmaids $24.41m $24.41m
Fast Five $19.53m $168.78m
Priest $14.50m $14.50m
Rio $8.00M $124.97m
Jumping The Broom $7.30m $25.99m
Something Borrowed $7m $25.65m
Water For Elephants $4.10m $48.48m
Madea’s Big Happy Family $2.20m $50.22m
Soul Surfer $1.80m $39.20M

And here’s a new release, “The Artist” that’s worth looking out for at your local art house (from Salon):

“One of the first films to be picked up for American distribution out of the main competition here this year has the following qualities: It’s French, and unless you’re a fan of Gallic comedy, and specifically the recent “OSS 117” spy spoofs, you’ve never heard of either its star or its director. It’s in black-and-white. It’s not merely a silent film but one that both imitates and spoofs the Silent Age dramas of the late 1920s, movies that relatively few living people have even seen. That’s at least three strikes — if not four or five — against “The Artist,” an exceedingly weird and delightful new film from writer-director Michel Hazanavicius that premiered on Sunday in Cannes to a rapturous, uproarious reception.

This is a project so idiosyncratic, so unlikely, so simultaneously innocent and sophisticated that it could only have been devised by the French. Yet it’s such a sheer delight — something one doesn’t often say about movies at Cannes — that Harvey Weinstein may well be right in believing he can turn it into a hit. “The Artist” of the title is a silent-film star named George Valentin, played by Jean Dujardin, the hilarious, handsome ship’s figurehead of an actor who plays the super-spy hero of Hazanavicius’ “OSS 117″ series. (I don’t have to call Dujardin the poor man’s Sean Connery, because he’s done so himself.)”

Read the full story here.