By Pete Hammond Hollywoodnews.com: Halloween must be around the corner. It was clearly a supernatural week at the movies led by Paranormal Activity 2 (more on that below) and highlighted by the national release of Clint Eastwood’s masterful new drama, Hereafter, a multi-story formatted film in which three unrelated main characters search for meaning after experiencing death – or near-death- episodes that have a profound effect on their lives. The film opened on a limited basis last weekend in LA and NY to a very good $36,000 per screen and this week expanded to 2181 theatres and a $12 million plus gross which is slightly above par for Eastwood openings. Its Rotten Tomatoes rating though is a rather uninspired 51% although top critics give it a much higher 64% which seems more appropriate considering the ambition and the achievement of this intriguing film written by Peter Morgan (The Queen, Last King Of Scotland). Warner Bros has done an extensive marketing campaign supported by Eastwood appearances on several TV shows including Ellen, Jimmy Kimmel and others. Eastwood also has done the Q&A circuit to drum up word of mouth including sessions in front of the Directors Guild, BAFTA-LA and the Screen Actors Guild. When I caught up with him at the latter in North Hollywood last week he waxed nostalgic about the Lankershim neighborhood where the screening took place at the TV Academy. He recalled going into a local theater in the area to see one of his early films , Ambush At Cimarron Pass (1958), a miserable enough experience that he said it almost made his quit movies altogether. Fortunately he didn’t and now at 80(!) he is cooking on all burners, still producing significant works of meaning and quality most directors half his age couldn’t even begin to create. The film stars Matt Damon who won a Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for another Eastwood fllm , Invictus last year and is terrific again here in an understated and moving performance as a psychic haunted by his own powers and looking to get out. Co-star Cecile de France, the Belgian actress who has her biggest opportunity in American films as a French journalist whose near-death experience in a tsunami causes her to rethink her life, was also in LA last week after a whirlwind tour of New York , Chicago and San Francisco. She charmed [...]