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According to Nikki Finke’s ”Deadline Hollywood” website, the Charlestown-set crime drama “The Town” is the surprise winner of Friday’s box office with a predicted $8.5 million gross.

It’s easy to see why Ben Affleck cast George “Slaine” Carroll Jr. as a shady character in “Gone Baby Gone.” Or why Affleck hired him to play a Charlestown bank robber in his new movie “The Town.” The 6-foot-tall Dorchester-born rapper is an intimidating physical presence with a raspy grumble of a voice flavored with a thick Boston accent.

When Ben Affleck needed to add some brawn to his shoot-’em-up flick “The Town,” he hired real-life Townie Dennis McLaughlin. McLaughlin, a 6-foot-2, 300-pound, fourth-generation longshoreman from the square mile, plays Rusty, henchman to actor Pete Postlethwaite’s (“In the Name of the Father”) villain Fergus Colm.

Arlington businessman Fred Gevalt has pumped $1 million into a feature documentary film that mocks the way America tries to keep its skies safe. “Please Remove Your Shoes” premieres Monday at the Boston Film Festival.

When we who write about the working class and underclass in Boston choose to do so, “crime fiction” (and its cinematic brother, film noir) often best serve our purpose. The crime novel is custom built to address issues of class warfare and the ills society foists on the people it flies over. When Dickens wrote about the underclass in London, I’m sure there were those who would have preferred he write about the Upper Crust–but that would be to miss the point. Dickens’s London wasn’t the London, it was a London. And so it is with Ben Affleck’s Boston.

Denis Lehane, who attended the premiere at Fenway Park on Tuesday (Affleck directed the adaptation of Lehane’s “Gone, Baby, Gone’’), said if anything, the movie is so visually gorgeous in its treatment of the iconic brownstones and the Bunker Hill monument, it will make people want to move to Charlestown. “My wife kept saying, ‘I can’t believe we live there,’ ’’ he said.

“Locked In,” formerly known as “Valediction,” is a made-in-Mass. thriller about a couple (played by Ben Barnes and Sarah Roemer) whose daughter is left in a coma after a car accident. The girl, however, continues to haunt her father who, at the same time, is being stalked by the creepy Renee (played by Eliza Dushku).

PART 1 Ben Affleck chats with Jay Leno on NBC’s The Tonight Show. Part 1. PART 2 Ben Affleck chats with Jay Leno about shooting THE TOWN in Massachusetts. Part …

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy Ben Affleck discusses shooting THE TOWN in Massachusetts with NBC’s Meredith Vieira. Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world …

“Girlfriend,’’ an indie film shot entirely in Wayland, Massachusetts, made it onto the bill at the Toronto International Film Festival. But even cooler is the fact that the film has been a hit. Wayland-bred director Justin Lerner has already sold out two screenings in Toronto and has plans to host a third on Sunday.

THE FIGHTER, starring Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale, and Amy Adams–shot in Lowell, Massachusetts in 2009–opens nationally on December 10, 2010. THE FIGHTER tells the story of Boston fighter “Irish” Mickey …

Long ago, in the American popular imagination, Boston was the home of the bean and the cod, a genteel stomping ground of Brahmins and bluestockings and Ivy League nitwits. Nowadays, perhaps owing to tax incentives that encourage local film production, it has become a paradise for dialect coaches and a cinematic stronghold of the kind of white, ethnic, blue-collar tribalism that used to flourish in movies about places like Philadelphia, Chicago and, of course, New York.

For local filmgoers who want to see their community on screen, the bumper crop of Boston-themed movies should be a treat.

His love of all things Boston didn’t make Ben Affleck any more comfortable shooting some of his new movie at Fenway Park. “I don’t know what to make of it. I’m either excited or panicked,” the actor said Tuesday night at Fenway, where “The Town” was premiered.

“There are bars – I’m not naming names – down on the main strip, where guys have been known to get stabbed. And the projects are on the other side.” He’s not talking about the Boston of Paul Revere, Old Ironsides and the Red Sox [team stats]. Ben Affleck is relating the sights in that part of Beantown – just a mile and a half from where he grew up – where he has filmed two movies. The rough “brown bag” (as Affleck calls it) neighborhood of Charlestown was the setting for “Gone Baby Gone” and Affleck’s second film as director, “The Town,” which opens Friday.

A host of Hollywood heavyweights hit Boston yesterday, gathering at friendly Fenway for a screening of Ben Affleck’s latest film, “The Town.’’ The movie’s A-list cast — Affleck, Jon Hamm (who brought his longtime girlfriend Jennifer Westfeldt), Jeremy Renner, Rebecca Hall, Chris Cooper, and Blake Lively — all made the scene, and walked a red carpet in front of the first base dugout. The surprise guest of the night was Matt Damon, who brought his pregnant wife, Lucia, his mom, Nancy, his dad, Kent, his stepparents, and his brother Kyle.

Across the span of his life, Maurice “Moe” Gillen has known most of Charlestown’s sinners and all of its saints.

The stars of “The Town,” Ben Affleck, Jon Hamm, Jeremy Renner, Chris Cooper, Blake Lively and Rebecca Hall – and Ben’s BFF Matt Damon – shone at Fenway Park [map] last night for the world premiere of Affleck’s set-in-Charlestown flick about some extremely good-looking cops and robbers who do battle in the bank-crime capital of America.

1997’s “Good Will Hunting’’ was set in Cambridge and South Boston and made Affleck both a famous actor and an Academy Award-winning screenwriter. A decade later, “Gone Baby Gone,’’ shot in Dorchester, made him a respected director. Now comes Affleck’s second feature as a director, the heist thriller “The Town,’’ which got a celebrity-studded local premiere last night at Fenway Park and opens nationally on Friday.

The romance is the the part of THE TOWN that works best. As an actor, Affleck is a nice visual match for Rebecca Hall — they’re both big, rangy people who seem comfortable in their own skin — and we root for them to make it even as we know that the big revelation (I’ve been dating the guy who held me at gunpoint and ditched me in East Boston!) might possibly be a deal killer.