Slow News Week

Not a lot going on out there in Moving Pictures land, but here's a quick run-through some of the stuff I almost blogged about in the past few days.

People are still disputing the quality of The Fountain; Heath Ledger is showing his absolute ignorance of comic books, and comic book derived movies; the Janis Joplin casting has been officially announced; the merest possibility of Peter Jackson filming The Hobbit has the geekosphere buzzing; Sam Jackson has a production deal at New Line; Christopher McQuarrie - the writer who's script for The Usual Suspects is the real star of that show, despite Singer and the rest of the boys offering sterling work - is bringing The Conversation to TV with a spin-off series; John Waters has a cameo in the film of the musical of his film Hairspray; Death of a President and Bella nabbed the big awards at TIFF; James Mangold wants to fictionalise Murderball, and according to Cinematical, Eminem expressed interest in playing Mark Zupan; Latino Review scored the first trailer for Shoot 'Em Up and it's not as ridiculous as I had hoped; RES magazine is folding after the current issue - at least in it's current form (whatever that turns out to mean); Gerard Bach has passed on; Stephen Soderbergh is being eyed to direct a Brad Pitt starring fourth installlment in the Mission: Impossible franchise; The Nintendo Wii is being launched around the world this November and December - and in most countries (that is, NOT in Japan) will come with a copy of Wii sports in the box; Rachel Bilson is not going to play Wonder Woman for Joss Whedon; Matt Damon is not going to play James Tiberius Kirk for J. J Tiberius Abrams; a few people fainted at the screening of Trapped Ashes at TIFF; Rounders and Ocean's 13 scriptwriters Koppelman and Levien have written the upcoming De Niro flick, The Winter of Frankie Machine; Trick 'R Treat is a very nifty sounding horror film with that old Pulp Fiction/Go/Crash/Magnolia structure, coming from Mike Dougherty, sometime Bryan Singer collaborator; George Clooney returns to the long-in-development Leatherheads to rewrite, direct and, as was previously planned, star; Johnny Depp is not going to be - and never was going to be - in I Am Legend; both The Queen and The Night Listener are rather good, if somewhat flawed, new releases to UK cinemas; an image of Kristen Bell in the Princess Leia slave bikini (as per her role in Fanboys) brought certain corners of the internet to their knees in puddles of drool; Andy Serkis and Terry Gilliam will each be honoured with special celebrations at the eDIT 9 festival in Frankfurt next week; Erik The Viking is getting re-released on DVD in what is being touted as The Director's Son's Cut.

Pop any of that little lot into google if you want further details - but trust me, there's not much else to say about most of it. If only this blog was a constant string of headlines. Then I could keep up with everything going on.