Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull earned an estimated $101 million between Friday and Sunday and might well outdo the current Memorial Day holiday champ, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, for the five-day record. Pirates earned $153 million during that period last year. Currently Crystal Skull is expected to come in at about $151 million. Final figures are due to be released on Wednesday. The film is expected to earn nearly the same amount internationally, due primarily to the greater strength of foreign currency. Nevertheless, it will take more than a single Indiana Jones success to lift the box office to its year-ago level. Currently, total ticket sales for 2008 are down almost 4 percent from 2007 and admissions are down 6.7 percent, according to box-office trackers Media by Numbers. In an interview with the London Financial Times, Dergarabedian said, "Indiana Jones is a shot in the arm but we're going to need consistency in the entire marketplace to catch up to last year." The top ten films for the weekend, according to studio estimates compiled by Media by Numbers: 1. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, $101 million; 2. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, $23 million; 3. Iron Man, $20.1 million; 4. What Happens in Vegas, $9 million; 5. Speed Racer, $4 million; 6. Made of Honor, $3.4 million; 7. Baby Mama, $3.3 million; 8. Forgetting Sarah Marshall, $1.7 million; 9. Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantánamo Bay, $900,000; 10. The Visitor, $800,000.

Director Laurence Cantet's Entre les Murs (The Class), a film about a year in the life of suburban Parisian students, was the surprise winner of the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival Sunday. It marked the first win by a French film at the festival since 1987. Jury president Sean Penn told reporters that the film "just touched us so deeply." Cantet brought the entire cast of 24 teenagers onto the stage with him to accept the award from presenter Robert De Niro -- and brought the entire audience at the Palais des Festivals to its feet. Of the four titles from U.S. filmmakers in the competition, only one received any recognition -- Steven Soderbergh's biopic Che, which garnered the best-actor trophy for Benicio Del Toro, who portrayed the title figure, Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara. The award could be helpful in securing a distribution deal for the $68-million film, which faces an uphill battle given its 4 1/2-hour length, its controversial subject, and the fact that the dialog is delivered in Spanish. Clint Eastwood's Changeling, which received mostly solid reviews from critics and numerous predictions that it would win the top award, was shut out for major awards, but the jury created a special prize to honor Eastwood's achievement in films. (French actress Catherine Deneuve was also so honored.) Turkey's Nuri Belge Ceylon received the best-director award for his Three Monkeys.Two Italian films also fared well at the festival as Matteo Garrone's Gomorrah won the Grand Prix and Paolo Sorrentino's Il Divo won the Jury Prize. Brazil's Sandra Corveloni won the best actress award for Linha de Passe and Belgian brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, who had twice won the Palme d'Or, received the best screenplay award for Le Silence de Lorna.

Dick Martin, one half of the comedy team of Rowan and Martin, who hosted the seminal Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In in the 1960s, died Saturday of respiratory complications in Santa Monica, CA at age 86. His comedic partner, Dan Rowan, died in 1987. Laugh-In's appeal was its irreverence. It famously persuaded Richard Nixon, then making a presidential bid, to deliver its signature line, "Sock it to me." In its obituary, the New York Times quoted Martin as once saying that the audience wants "to see sacred cows kicked over" and that the show contrived sketches involving celebrities just to be "irreverent and silly." He noted that other variety shows might pay the arch singer Robert Goulet $10,000 to sing three songs. "We hire Robert Goulet, pay him $210 and drop him through a trap door."

The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers continued bargaining talks over the weekend but were unable to resolve their differences by Sunday night. Although negotiators have agreed to a news blackout, trade reporters said that the talks have stalled over the issue of whether studios and networks should be required to seek permission from actors before clips of their performances are posted on the Internet. Studios claim that the cost of administering such permissions would be prohibitive and that the clips would end up only being posted by pirates, thereby wiping out payments for anyone. The AMPTP has indicated that it would like to wrap up negotiations with AFTRA by Wednesday, when it is due to resume talks with the larger Screen Actors Guild.

Members of Russia's dwindling Communist Party have called for a nationwide boycott of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which opened on Thursday. In particular, they object to the depiction of Soviet troops invading top-secret American installations, killing guards and wreaking havoc. As reported by the London Sunday Times, the Communists claim that no Soviet terrorists were ever sent to the U.S. in 1957, the year in which the movie's plot takes place. Instead, they said, the government successfully launched the first Sputnik satellite, "which evoked the admiration of the whole world." The Sunday Times quoted Moscow Communist lawmaker Andrei Andreyev as saying, "It is very disturbing if talented directors want to provoke a new Cold War." And Reuters quoted St. Petersburg Communist Party chief Sergei Malinkovich as saying, "Why should we agree to that sort of lie and let the West trick our youth?." He said that "they will go to the cinema and will be sure that in 1957 we made trouble for the United States and almost started a nuclear war."

Independent film producer Neil Schulman, who recently attempted unsuccessfully to sell rights to his movie Lady Magdalene's on eBay, is trying a new gambit -- offering a rebate in the form of one thousand gallons of gasoline to any studio that purchases his film. "We're making this offer during Memorial Day weekend when even the major studios are feeling the pinch of increased gasoline prices" to distribute their films, Schulman said in a statement. He added that he was barred from the typical indie filmmaker's route to a Hollywood deal -- the major film festivals -- because his film is "upbeat and feel-good. ... Who knew you needed to make a downbeat movie about a dysfunctional Inuit family whose lesbian daughter is molested by a Haliburton executive to get into Sundance?"

American Idol runner-up David Archuleta says he found all of the "stage dad" reports about his father Jeff "really weird." In an interview with E! Entertainment Channel, the 17-year-old singer, whose father was reportedly barred from rehearsals during the show's final weeks for attempting to override the producers, said the weirdest rumor was one claiming that his father refused to bring him a glass of water. "I mean, I am 17, and, you know, if I want water, I am pretty sure I would just go get it anyway." He did acknowledge that his father kept news about his performances away from him, "because I didn't want it to distract me or let it go to my head."

The Moment of Truth, in which contestants agree to answer questions about their personal lives while hooked up to a lie detector, turned out to be the most successful new show of the 2007-08 season, according to Nielsen Research. The show, which averaged 14.6 million viewers, ranked 13 on the overall list of network shows for the season. The most successful scripted show was ABC's Samantha Who?, which averaged 11.8 million viewers and ranked No. 27 on the list.

A French appeals court has overturned a libel judgment against critic Philippe Karsenty, who claimed that state-run France 2 Television staged news footage allegedly showing a Palestinian boy being shot by Israeli soldiers in 2000 as he was cowering with his father. Karsenty presented photos and other evidence suggesting that the boy was not shot at all. France 2 Television had also sued three websites that posted Karsenty's analysis of the footage. Karsenty hailed the court's decision as a "victory of truth over lies. It's the victory of honesty over intellectual dishonesty. It's the victory of French justice over corporatism and the media mafia. It is time for France to recover its decency and admit that they produced, protected and covered up the biggest anti-Semitic lie of the century." The television channel said that it would appeal.