Movie Minesweeper - The Automatic Out Of Office Response Edition

Is this a slow news week? You bet it is.

- Catherine Tate is to return to Dr. Who for the entirety of the fourth series, as his 'companion'. This appears to contradict everything about the Tom Ellis story, but I'm still told "he's not gone for good - we'll see him again". Maybe in Torchwood?

- New Line have hooked up with HBO to bankroll and release a Sex and the City movie. All of the other details are just as rumoured from the last year or two. As part of the deal, Kim Cattrall has been given a deal for a new series on HBO TV.

- Keith David will voice Dr. Facilier, the villain of Disney's The Princess and the Frog. I love Keith David, and I really love the song that Belle and Sebastian wrote for him.

- Just a couple of days after I mentioned A Dog's Breakfast again, it pops up in the news. MGM have quietly released it directly to iTunes and Unbox - and you can download it now. Will I be able to download it in the UK? Seems not... I'll have to wait for the September 18th DVD and import that. Either way, I'm a little disappointed this is bypassing cinemas, but very glad that, at last, we'll all be to able to enjoy it.

- The official Cloverfield site is online. Rubbish - but online.

- Michael Jai White is in The Dark Knight. I expect we'll also see him in the big fat Kill Bill coming out in November, though he was cut from the episodic version.

- The IESB have some video interviews with Werner Herzog and his Rescue Dawn boys.

- The Alvin and the Chipmunks poster hasn't been getting much love. I'm not exactly surprised, looking at the thing.

- Ratatouille producer Brad Lewis has confirmed that his involvement on another, as yet unannounced, Pixar project is underway.

- Fangoria have a couple of exclusive 30 Days of Night shots.

- The poster and trailer for Catacombs have both turned up. I see Pink is being credited by her real name.

Movie Minesweeper - The Wedding Day Edition

No, I'm not getting married today. But I am going to a wedding, and filming it too. So, I'm in a real rush - but I can't not update at all today, can I? No. So, here's a very rapid Movie Minesweeper to try and keep things relatively smoothly running.

- SuperHeroHype have the final Transformers one sheet. I was going to see the film today, but that wedding interfered. I'll survive.

- The first image of Harrison Ford in costume for the new Indiana Jones shows that his dress sense hasn't altered much.

- Morgan Freeman is to play Nelson Mandela. It was only a matter of time.

- Variety have published their 2007 list of hot screenwriters to watch. I spotted two that were, previously, actors on Buffy the Vampire Slayer but I wouldn't be surprised if you told me there were more.

- Sharon Morrill, the mastermind behind Disney's direct-to-DVD operations, has lost her job. Ostensibly, it's because of the delays and spiralling costs of Tinkerbell, but seeing as Tinkerbell seems to be the first of these projects to finally start going right, it's really because of everything else. She has done quite a bit of damage, if you ask me, and she really should have to carry the can.

- There's even more evidence that a Sex and the City movie is coming.

- A deliberately obscure and mysterious Saw IV still has turned up.

- Terence Stamp is now in Wanted too. I understand it's not a huge part (fans of the comic probably know which role I'm getting at).

- Only one witness to Cillian Murphy on the Dark Knight set? Hmmmm. I'm not saying the Scarecrow isn't in the film, just that this is no more proof of his appearance than all these dappy e-mails I've received are of Edward Nygma turning up. I'm shrugging at both, though, to be honest.

- Woody Allen and William Friedkin are to direct opera.

- Tonight, He Comes is being retitled John Hancock. Not sure about either of those. How about An Alan Smithee Movie 2?

- Apparently, James Marsters is to appear in the next series of Torchwood - presumably before knuckling down to write the script that will make him one of 2008's hot screenwriters.

- MTV have secured a much nicer version of the Where the Wild Things Are still.

- The Munchkins are getting a star on Hollywood's walk of fame. Just one star - to share. Is there some sort of height-to-star ratio that we don't know about? I'd get the man from the lollipop guild on the case, this simply can't be fair.

Grind House Info Aplenty

The New York Times today have an article on Grind House, talking to just about everybody involved. If you don't have time to read it, then here's a few bullet points:

• Planet Terror is 80 minutes long, Death Proof around 90.
• There are four trailers between the two features: one by Eli Roth, one Edgar Wright, one by Rob Zombie and one by Robert Rodriguez.
• Tarantino suggests that Death Proof is missing a reel too - we already new Planet Terror is.
• Josh Brolin and Marley Shelton's characters in Planet Terror are a married couple; Rose McGowan's character is the ex-girlfriend of Freddy Rodriguez'.
• In one scene, Brolin's character tortures his wife by 'slowly and deliberately pricking her hands with her own needles' - she's an anesthesiologist, so, er... Brrrrr!
• Tarantino is claiming to have cooked up one of the top-three car chases of all time, if not the greatest, citing Vanishing Point as partial inspiration.
• The dialogue for the lead female characters in Death Proof is compared to a mix of Sex and the City and teenage girls' MySpace profiles.

Sounds good, but the article doesn't seem to be exactly on the money. For one thing, I thought this was Grind House now, but the article constantly refers to it as Grindhouse; for another, there's no mention of Tarantino's Swedish Cowgirls trailer.

Maybe I'm just behind the times - but then, so is Grind House. Definitively, deliciously and deliriously from another time.

Peyton Reed In Cashmere

Sex and the City guru Darren Starr's new show is Cashmere Mafia. Why do I care? Because Peyton Reed is directing the pilot. Bring it On.