Movie Minesweeper - The Online Opinion Maker Edition

- Atonement is to open the Venice fest with I'm Not There, There Will Be Blood, Cassandra's Dream, These Times, Planet Terror and Lust, Caution all looking likely to screen also.

- Antonio Banderas is eyeing a deal that will make him an animation producer.

- Annete Bening is going Broadway next spring, taking a starring role in Joanna Murray-Smith's The Female of the Species. That will make for a nice round 20 year gap in her Broadway career.

- Ashton Kutcher vehicle Father's Day is set up to go at Columbia. So far, it is only a pitch from scriptwriters Ian Deitchman and Kristin Robinson, but one day it will be a 'comedy'.

- Elijah Kelley is to star in Party Up, a comedy about teenagers going to great lengths to have a party. Hmmmm.

- Elizabeth Kostova's Vampire yarn The Historian is at last making moves towards the multiplex. Caleb Kane is to write the screenplay adaptation. The book's reputation appears to be somewhat uneven, but if Interview With the Vampire can make for a film as good as it did, there's always hope.

- Spain is to be hit by a one-day cinema strike next Monday. It looks as if the protest is aimed at a new draft law that cinema owners say has failed to take their needs into consideration.

- Grayson T. Boucher is to star in Ball Don't Lie, a drama about a teen basketball player and his tough life. The law of averages has so far kept films about teen basketball players with easy lives away from the silver screen, but sooner or later, their day will come. Losts Emili De Ravin is also to appear.

- Neil Labute has cast Patrick Wilson in Lakeview Terrace.

- Danny DeVito's next is to be No Place Like Home. He'll play a retired Fireman (really? Isn't there a minimum height mandate?) who kidnaps his wife so that his twenty-something sons will have to fend for themselves and become discouraged from living at home. If she doesn't divorce him after that I'm gonna throw popcorn at the screen. What's the odds on him getting bedbound and needing her to wait on him hand, foot and finger?

- Matt Madden and Tom Hart are re-enacting The Five Obstructions with comic strips and not short films. I found the link at The Beat.

- Two Can Play That Game is to get a sequel called... Three Can Play That Game. Saucy. Vivica A. Fox is to star and produce.

- Disney defecter Nina Jacobson now has her first Dreamworks project on the calendar. Dominion is about the human leader of the world's first robosoldier platoon. She said "It's a film that will require a real visionary director, and it's a project that has a lot of big-movie elements" - I'll swing with the 'elements' but there's a good chance she won't get anywhere near a visionary director with this one. Not a real one, anyway.

- The Occasionally Interesting Anti-Adventures of an Unnamed Girl is a) a Wizard of Oz derivative set up at Disney and b) due a name change. This title seems like a producer-grabbing tactic like Untitled Teenage Sex Comedy That Can Be Made For Under $10 Million That Most Readers Will Probably Hate But I Think You Will Love, the original name on the American Pie frontcover.

- The IESB have a deal with Doug Jones. You send them your questions, he'll answer some of them.

- Mikael Halfstrom is expecting his entire back catalogue to get American remakes.

- Shatner.

- War Inc. is only War Inc. outside of the US. In the US, it will be called Brand Hauser. Is that tantamount to calling all Americans thick? Or just many Americans? Or not at all?

- MovieWeb have spoken to Gianni Nunnari about Ronin and Silence. I'll place my chips on neither of those ever being produced.

- Rumer Willis, Bruce Willis and Mischa Barton have been cast in The Sophomore. It revolves around a sinsiter conspiracy at a Catholic school. In my experience, Catholic schools are sinsiter conspiracies, given form in stone and flesh - so this must be doubly sinister.

- Mike Myers has told The Telegraph that his Keith Moon biopic will start shooting in January.

- Four old Rko creepy-crawlers are to be remade by Evolution Entertainment.

- Robert Mark Kamen is to write the upcoming Gatchaman film.

- Nurse Laverne of Scrubs is to return as... Nurse Shirley, her twin sister. Boom boom.

- Eli Roth is taking the rest of the year to write a pile of scripts, and Cell won't shoot until next spring. At least then he'll have a series of screenplays ready to go.

- Jeff Lieberman's brilliant Blue Sunshine is returning to DVD in August but, this time, the disc will be hosted by Elvira. Why? To promote her upcoming find-a-new-goth-glamour-girl reality show.

- Spy Kid Alexa Vega has been cast in Repo! The Genetic Opera. Will it really be an opera?

- Godzilla 3D.

- A trailer for Control has turned up on YouTube.

- Al Pacino has recorded a podcast for Time in which he answers readers' questions. How Doug Jones.

- Kellogs' movie tie-in marketing may be approaching the final curtain.

- Pat Eaton-Robb tried out to be an extra in Indiana Jones 4.

- Angelina Jolie's lawyer has been blamed for the recent attempts to stifle freedom of the press around A Mighty Heart.