"Want to go see Choke this weekend and have your name in Chuck's next book?" Um, as what? A snuff film victim? A gangbang participant? This is super-graphic Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk we're talking about. He's taking the grassroots (read: hopeless) approach to finding viewers for his new movie: "all you have to do is get as many people as you possibly can to go see Choke this weekend" and get your name in a future book. Why? Because a bunch of big movies are coming out at once, and they're desperate.

Welcome back to Defamer Attractions, your indispensable guide to what's new, noteworthy and/or totally doomed this week at the movies. Today we welcome Shia LaBeouf and his million-dollar pinkie back to theaters alongside Spike Lee, Richard Gere, Diane Lane, Charlize Theron and Kirk Cameron (!), while facing a robust litter of potential arthouse underdogs and DVD release for the agoraphobes among us. As always, our opinions are our own, but if Josh Groban can steadfastly see it our way, shouldn't you as well?WHAT'S NEW: Shia LaBeouf reunites with his Disturbia director DJ Caruso for the thriller Eagle Eye, featuring our young hero as a man trapped (alongside Michelle Monaghan) in a mysterious mire of surveillance, espionage and murder also featuring Billy Bob Thornton and Rosario Dawson. Hitchcock comes up in more discussions of the film than he doesn't, with the rap being that Eagle Eye represents North by Northwest to Disturbia's too-influential-for-comfort Rear Window, but that's just adults being adults. The kids will toss rose petals and dump around $30.6 million out their wallets, further anchoring LaBeouf as his generation's most bankable star without a driver's license. Congrats, Shia! Meanwhile, that generation's parents can shuffle into the auditorium next door for the Gere/Lane reteaming Nights in Rodanthe, adapted from a Hallmark card novel by Nicholas Sparks with enough inoffesnsively creaky cliche and Mom Jeans-wetting romance to attract around $13.1 million. Also opening in limited release: The Palahniuk adaptation Choke; the Charlize Theron-led propaganda ensemble Battle in Seattle; Tim Robbins' and Rachel McAdams' Iraq-themed The Lucky Ones; Wayne Wang's modest immigrant mish-mash A Thousand Years of Good Prayers; the misanthropic Easter bunny comedy Hank and Mike; the race-baiting terrorism saga Shoot on Sight (tagline: "Is it a crime to be a Muslim?"); the Filipina-tranny doc The Amazing Truth About Queen Raquela; and the lyrical, Indie Spirit Award-winning drama August Evening. THE BIG LOSER: It's not like we actively root against films around Defamer HQ (all right, maybe that one time; it had it coming), and we really would like to see Spike Lee pull off Miracle at St. Anna, his epic WWII semi-mystery focusing long-overdue attention on the Army's 92nd Infantry Division — the only all-black unit to see combat in Europe. He may yet do it with Disney's micro-marketing prowess, but let's be honest: The reviews are brutal, it's 160 minutes long, it's rated R, it rotates between English, German and Italian, and at least a quarter of its intended audience is likelier to defer to one of two sturdy holdovers — Burn After Reading or The Famliy That Preys. If this breaks $5.5 million, we'll be shocked. Sorry, Spike; there's always Inside Man 2.

Arguably the first film to pack sex, autoasphyxia and colonial American angst into the same tidy bundle,Choke (opening Friday) features Sam Rockwell as Victor Mancini, a generally kindly sex addict whose professional pursuits include sponging off benefactors who happen to have saved him from choking. In his off-time, he susses his father's identity from visits with his ailing mother (Anjelica Houston) and a doctor (Kelly Macdonald) who reckons Jesus had something to do with it. Strippers, anal beads and hormonally charged 18th-century reenactments round it out — perhaps the very least one might expect from an adaptation of the prodigiously perverse Chuck Palahniuk. But it's a sturdy fit for the adventuresome Rockwell, whom we cornered for a few minutes of his busy '08 (also including Frost/Nixon later this fall) and another round of Defamer's ongoing Five Questions:DEFAMER: Look — Fox Searchlight gave us souvenir anal beads! Aren't they great? SAM ROCKWELL: Those are great. This is a classy movie. DEFAMER: No doubt. Victor has enough compulsions to require about a dozen different levels of research — sex addiction, choking, mother issues, etcetera. What did you prioritize here? SAM ROCKWELL: Obviously we read the book a lot. [Director] Clark Gregg and I rehearsed a lot; he was very well prepared; he's an actor, which is great. He's sensitive to this. I went to seven or eight sex addiction meetings. I met a sex therapist; we talked a lot, and he showed me a documentary. I try to do a little bit of research on everything, some more than others. But sexual addiction is more like a food disorder in that you're really filling a void; it's different than any kind of alcohol or narcotic abuse. DEFAMER: With that in mind, did you ever play devil's advocate with this — that sex addiction is more in the mind of the beholder? SAM ROCKWELL: I've been working with an acting coach for a long time; he and I go to therapy, and we talk about that in our work. It's kind of like Alfie or Tom Jones, but we're psychoanalyzing this Casanova in a comedic way. A real Casanova is not a guy that looks like Brad Pitt or George Clooney; they're normal-looking guys in this very depraved world. It's not as glamorous as people think. Sex addiction can go from compulsive masturbation to prostitutes to people who've been sexually molested. It's a serious condition; it's nothing to be laughed about. But I think we respect the condition and are able to joke about it at the same time. DEFAMER: We've been following you since In the Soup, in which you portrayed Steve Buscemi's mentally disabled neighbor. Sixteen years later, the "full retard" backlash is on from all sides. As someone who skillfully portrayed disability before it was Oscar bait, what's your take? SAM ROCKWELL: Well, look, they're totallly missing the joke. It's about actors and awards shows. I thought Leonardo DiCaprio did it really well, but at some point you have to let the research go and intuitively daydream and just let your imagination go. It's a matter of taste really. Do you respond to Forrest Gump? I do. I respond to what Dustin Hoffman does in Rain Man. Hoffman tells a story about Midnight Cowboy where he found the limp for Ratzo Rizzo. He put his foot in like this, and he got all these letters from handicapped people afterward saying, "That's the most ridiculous limp I've ever seen — you're making fun of us." So you try to be as responsible as you can be, but it's just an artist's interpretation. [Tropic Thunder] makes fun of the actor's process and the hype that goes around it. DEFAMER: When you take on Palahniuk, you're inevitably taking on Fight Club. Were you apprehensive about having to follow a classic? SAM ROCKWELL: Absolutely. But the advantage we had is that this is the anti-Fight Club. This is a low-budget film. We don't have special effects or bells and whistles. This is a different kind of movie. It's an independent movie in every sense of the word. It's like Harold and Maude or The Fisher King and think of it as a different tone; Fight Club is darker. We've got a heavy subject, but we've also got anal beads.

Nobody rocks an afterparty like dependable character actor Sam Rockwell rocks an afterparty. Along with his Choke director Clark Gregg, the Galaxy Quest star didn't even wait for the club's DJ to arrive before getting the post-screening dance party started. In between showing off some hot dance moves, Rockwell said, "People don't dance enough these days. It's fun. Oh no, the DJ in my head is just laying down the phattest beats right now." Gregg chimed in with a chant of "Rock Lobster!" as the two sauntered onto an empty dance floor. After a few moments and a few more classic jams from Rockwell's mental DJ, the dance floor remained empty. Rockwell said, "Nobody likes to show up to a party on time. Come back in ten minutes or so and it'll be packed."

Our recent experiments in Film Trailer and Clip Interception have been spotty at best, but this one seems to be the real thing: A new, mildly NSFW scene from Choke, the Sam Rockwell sex-addict / colonial-reenactor-angst comedy opening September 26. The red-band ribaldry of the past is swapped out for a more subdued exchange, however; no bare breasts, just bare souls as Rockwell and his role-playing partner plot out ... we don't even know. Our outraged mothers switched it off after about 10 seconds, leaving us hanging until our interview with Rockwell next week. So until we can straighten out (or at least parent-proof) this clip-grabbing contraption, perv away while you can after the jump. [Fox Searchlight]

· Choke's red band trailer suggests the movie successfully captures the spirit of golden era screwball sex-addict comedies. [Choke]
· "Zima or AIDS?" asks this 1994-nostalgia-tinged chart comparing The Wackness to Kids. [Vulture]
· "An Australian woman described as the world's oldest Internet blogger has died at the age of 108 after posting a final message about singing 'a happy song' in her nursing home." [Yahoo]
· Here's the new Radiohead video, which successfully elicits seizures using state-of-the-art 3D motion-capture techniques! [BoingBoing]
· Hot Babes Doing Stuff Naked will inevitably be followed by HBDSN Volumes 2 through 17, none approaching the purity of the original. [esandberg.tumblr.com]

The Reverse Cowgirl blog points us towards us a tidbit buried in a Daily Texan interview with Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk, regarding the bold marketing efforts being undertaken by Fox Searchlight to promote their screen adaptation of his novel Choke:

Are you among the legions of adoring Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk fans? I'm neutral on the subject, but I do love me some Anjelica Huston, and Sam Rockwell's pretty cool too. Anyhoo... Here's the just-released trailer for the film adaptation of Palahniuk's novel Choke.

Tonight marks the beginning of yet another Sundance Film Festival; we'll be covering the proceedings from a safe distance, far from the intoxicating allure of all-night Ketel One-and-Strawberry Hot Tub parties with the juggsiest indie film execs in Park City. Like the breakout hits of Sundance past, such as Once, Little Miss Sunshine, and Hustle & Flow, all your film really needs to get the buyers to come knocking at your condo door is a good antihero (Dublin busker, hip-hop pimp), a major disease or problem to overcome (death, lack of demo CD), an engaging solution (madcap road trip, recording of demo CD), and an unconventional romantic angle thrown in for good measure (love in a piano store, falling for your ho). With that in mind, we've taken the time to break down for you this year's crop according to their fundamental, Sundanciest elements: