A Nice Big Bottle Of film ick Ketchup

Here's a few very quickly typed-up bits that I missed out on in my illness. Think of this as a Minesweeper after you've already stepped on the mine, been thrown fifty feet into the air and have come raining down across a thirty metre diameter (or whatever it was Blackadder said). And it isn't meant to be entirely comprehensive, just a foggy window on the last week.

The other odd old story will creep into the next few Minesweepers, alongside heaps and heaps of new stuff.

- Victoria Hill has apparently screentested for the role of Wonder Woman in JLA; the role has reportedly gone to Jessica Biel.

- Sally Field has been cast as Mary Todd in Spielberg's Abe Lincoln pic - which suggests a rapid turnaround from Indy to Abe in the coming months.
- Paul Dini is scripting the Gatchaman movie.

- Giovanni Ribisi is the latest addition to James Cameron's Avatar.

- AJ Michalka has been cast in The Lovely Bones.

- Virgin 1 promise 'No soaps, no makeovers, no nonsense'.

- Pegg and Frost's Paul is, as it turns out, a Transamerican road movie.

- Sarah Paulson has been hired to play Ellen Dolan in The Spirit. Good. I'm very pleased with that.

- Despite being really very good and one of the most original films in a long, long, long time, Death Proof has flopped in the UK almost as badly as in the US.

- The first Oxford Murders poster has popped up.

- John McTiernan has been sentenced to four months in jail for his part in the Anthony Pelicano scandal.

- The Hotel Chevalier is available for free on iTunes and may perhaps (though I personally doubt it) be added to the theatrical run of The Darjeeling Limited after a few weeks.

- David Tennant and Catherine Tate have been snapped as the Doctor and Donna on a Pompeii set.

- Kermit the Frog, Rose McGowan, Matt Groening and Donald Trump are amongst the 29 guest programmers each running a November night on TCM. Any film that Kermit likes is probably a bona fide classic so keep an eye out for his selection in particular.

- UKTV G2 is being rebranded as a channel called Dave.

- The Film Experience Foreign Language Oscar pages are up. And very useful they are too, and well worth a bookmark.

- The packaging for Halo 3 is scratching the discs. What a cock up. Incidentally, I doubt we'll ever see a Halo movie.

- Rhys Darby has been cast in Yes Man. Nice news.

- The Zodiac director's cut is longer than the theatrical release... but by how much?

- Eli Roth is to write and direct an episode of Heroes: Origins. And talking of Roth, Nikki Finke's been up to her old tricks, and Lisa Schwartzbaum is onside too. Do people honestly believe that Roth designed his Hostel films to be nothing more than commercial commodities? Dear me.

- Hoyt Yeatman is to direct G-Force, a film about genetically modified guinea pig spies. It's likely to be rather Cats and Dogs but I swear, if it jeopardises any chance of We3 getting made I'll blow a valve.

- Phantasm 5 is coming.