BUSINESS WATCH:Oscar favorites abound in summer selection

It’s summer movie season again, and some familiar faces are lighting up screens around Newport-Mesa: Spider-Man. Shrek. Capt. Jack Sparrow. And Edith Piaf.

The classic French balladeer may seem like an unlikely candidate for superstardom in a season dominated by superheroes and other action heroes. To the art-house cinema world, however, she’s bread and butter.

The subtitled biopic about her life is garnering Oscar buzz, and if viewers are going to flock to an obscure film during the hot months of the year, “La Vie En Rose” is the most likely bet.

“It’s pretty sporadic here,” said Ben Meredith, assistant manager of the Edwards Cinemas at UC Irvine, one of the few art-house cinemas in Orange County. “Right now, the movies we have, in the winter, they might bring in more people. But all those movies like ‘Spider-Man’ and ‘Pirates,’ they really drown out our business.”

For those moviegoers who prefer Oscar favorites to June blockbusters, this summer offers a few choice picks. One is “La Vie En Rose,” which is also lighting up the marquee at the Regency Lido Theatre in Newport Beach. Coming soon is Michael Moore’s documentary “SiCKO,” which examines the cracks in the United States health-care system.

And aside from that? Well, there’s “Once,” the story of a group of hard-luck Irish youths who attempt to jump-start a music career. There’s “Paris, Je T’Aime,” in which a group of acclaimed directors — including Wes Craven, Alexander Payne, Gus Van Sant and the Coen Brothers — offer their own perspectives on France’s cultural hub.

Newport-Mesa provides more opportunities to view smaller films than just about any other area in Orange County. In addition to the Lido and UCI, there’s also the Regency South Coast Village, located in Santa Ana across the street from South Coast Plaza. And on the even more esoteric side, the Orange County Museum of Art screens movies from the 2007 Newport Beach Film Festival throughout the summer.

It may be a smaller market than running the AMC 30 at The Block, but it’s a market nonetheless. Lorenzo Porcelli, the general manager of Regency, said art-house movies often garnered an audience through word of mouth.

“A lot of the time, you have people who want to see something by the people who made ‘Sideways,’” he said. “They’ll say, ‘Well, he made that. Let’s give him a chance with this one.’”