An update on the Japan release date for Fahrenheit 9/11: they still haven’t set the date, but at least they got a little more specific than just “August” and are now talking about a mid-August release. Well, there’s still time. No update on the Democrats Abroad Japan effort to get a special screening in July.

In the meantime, Rex Reed adds his own two-thumbs-way-up to the long list of ecstatic reviews of the film, while the all the newspapers are taking the industry estimates of F-9/11’s weekend gross as fact (despite the fact that the weekend isn’t over yet) and proclaiming the $21.8 million figure as set. I’m a little worried about this, as it is just an estimate–but not too worried, because the film is more likely to outperform rather than underperform the estimates.

To see exactly how much so, just take a look at some of the photos on Moore’s site of the many screenings of the film across the United States–a few examples shown above, with F-9/11 showing every 45 minutes at one theater (top), and almost every show sold out at another theater (bottom).

By the way, when you see the “user ratings” for F-9/11 on many movie sites, keep in mind that practically all of the rock-bottom negative ratings are fake–disgruntled conservatives trying to skew the outcome. The ratings, as I mentioned previously, are starkly contrasted between 9s & 10s and 1s & 2s–very few ratings in between. So how can we know that the low ratings are fake and the highs, for the most part, are not? Because they’ve been polling people leaving the theaters in 15 cities and have found that 98% would “highly recommend the film.”