The Big Picture

Much has been made in hipster circles, where comedian David Cross is generally regarded as a conquering hero, about the fact that he showed up in a completely commercial and generally vapid movie like Alvin and the Chipmunks. Indie cred is a tenuous, amorphous thing based wholly on quickly-shifting perception, and hipsters are often obsessed with the idea of "selling out." Cross, being a comic known for intensely political vitriol as well as the star of the counter-cultural underground hit Mr. Show with Bob Odenkirk, is ripe for the sell-out label, and naturally the cult that follows him has been making noise in that direction.

Cross' response on his official site is highly amusing and enlightening. Some highlights:

Hello, David here. I've internally debated the merits of addressing my appearance in, (and thus tacit condoning of) "Alvin and The Chipmunks". I am not stupid nor unobservant. I knew going into this movie that I would be eating a lot of delicious shit for it. Usually I wouldn't give a shit about what everyone's feelings are about it, but I wasn't prepared for the level, or amount I should say, of vitriol that's been flung about like so much monkey poo.

I have not seen the movie so I can't really comment to whether it's an "evil" or "dangerous" "piece of shit "or not. The reason I haven't seen the movie is because I am not eight years old. I am an adult and don't see children's movies. I haven't ever seen "Curious George", "She's the Man", or the "Dr. Doolittle" movies that I worked on for the same reason. I never saw "School for Scoundrels" either but that's just 'cause it looked like it was gonna suck.

If someone decided to re-make "Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang", (a movie I fucking LOVED when I was a kid) with the cast of "High School Musical" and Raven Symone giving voice to a now sassy CGI car with tits that sang about race relations I think that I would not care about that either. It's a waste of time and energy. I choose to care about other things that I believe are worth the investment of that kind of outrage, disappointment, and sense of urgency.

I like to work. I really do. I enjoy it and try to have fun no matter what I'm doing. I assume part of the reason I get hired for the things I'm offered is for that very reason. I have fun on set and tend to riff all over the place. What they choose to keep from that (if anything) is up to them. But I do try to have as much fun as possible. Up to working on "Alvin" I had not worked in six (SIX!) months. That is an eternity if you're an actor. Think about not working for two months with no hope of anything on the horizon. Now triple that. It was the longest period without work since after "Ben Stiller" got cancelled (the show, not the man) and I was going nuts. I was depressed and difficult to live with. I was VERY happy to have the work. Again, no regrets.

Shoot 'Em Up: Clive Owen leads a non-stop action movie that is literally non-stop, for once. Bombastic and insane and Paul Giamatti as the bad guy certainly should equate to entertainment.

Resident Evil: Extinction: Milla Jovovich is back to fight zombies again. Honestly, the trailer for this, featuring Las Vegas as a post-apocalyptic wasteland, looked pretty awesome... until it turned out to be another Resident Evil movie.

War: At long last, Jet Li and Jason Statham kicking each other on the big screen.

September Dawn: Jon Voight stars in this story about the Mountain Meadows Massacre, where the Mormon militia slaughtered 140 men, women and children,

Someone sounds bitter about the critical lambasting delivered upon the Star Wars prequels.

More details are emerging about Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull, the fourth installment in the legendary saga of a sardonic archaeologist and his swashbuckling adventures. Vanity Fair has an in-depth piece with comments from Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Harrison Ford, the Indy braintrust, on how they finally came around to making the fourth installment, and it's a very interesting read.

Lucas, however, is already assuming that the critics and fans will despise it.

Lucas is convinced he won’t please everyone. “I know the critics are going to hate it,” he says. “They already hate it. So there’s nothing we can do about that. They hate the idea that we’re making another one. They’ve already made up their minds.”

At least the legions of Indy geeks will be pleased, right?

“The fans are all upset,” Lucas says. “They’re always going to be upset. ‘Why did he do it like this? And why didn’t he do it like this?’ They write their own movie, and then, if you don’t do their movie, they get upset about it. So you just have to stand by for the bricks and the custard pies, because they’re going to come flying your way.”

George, you've got a point, but writing off all criticism this way isn't wise. Then again, this is the guy who once said that The Empire Strikes Back, the best of the Star Wars films, "didn't need to be that good."

A bit of spoilery goodness for Indy 4 below:

The first building block of any Indiana Jones movie, according to Lucas, is something called the MacGuffin. The term, popularized by Alfred Hitchcock, refers to an object or goal that kicks the story into action and drives it to the third act.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull will apparently nudge our hero away from his usual milieu of spooky archaeology and into the realm of (spoiler Code Red) science fiction. “What it is that made it perfect was the fact that the MacGuffin I wanted to use and the idea that Harrison would be 20 years older would fit,” Lucas says. “So that put it in the mid-50s, and the MacGuffin I was looking at was perfect for the mid-50s. I looked around and I said, ‘Well, maybe we shouldn’t do a 30s serial, because now we’re in the 50s. What is the same kind of cheesy-entertainment action movie, what was the secret B movie, of the 50s?’ So instead of doing a 30s Republic serial, we’re doing a B science-fiction movie from the 50s. The ones I’m talking about are, like, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Blob, The Thing. So by putting it in that context, it gave me a way of approaching the whole thing.”

You're all aware of how dorks giggling and quoting movies can suck all the fun out of the movie they're quoting, even if it's a great movie. The Quig Spot has compiled a list of the Top 10 Most Obnoxiously Overquoted Movies, and while I don't necessarily agree with their order (300 has not been around long enough to be number 1, but I can see why it's fresh in their minds as being annoying), it's hard to argue with any of their choices. I'd definitely put Austin Powers at the top spot.

Although I did notice they included angry Star Trek II KHAAAAAAAN! Shatner as the entry heading without including it on the list, but I guess Star Trek movies are only overquoted if you're in a very specific and nerd-tastic crowd.

At least it'll make ME angry, a self-admitted Godzilla Nerd.

I've been resisting the online clamor about Cloverfield, the J.J. Abrams-produced movie coming out in a couple of weeks that is meant to give America their own giant monster comparable to Japan's Gojira. King Kong apparently doesn't count, which makes sense because even though they did make King Kong vs. Godzilla movies, they really shouldn't have been even remotely the same size. Kong had to climb the Empire State Building, whereas Godzilla could pick his teeth with it. I trust this proves my Godzilla nerdery well enough.

The reason Cloverfield may well tick me off is not because I think it will suck, even though the trailer gives the whole film a 'reality show' feel that could either make it a supremely effective disaster movie (what if 9/11 was actually a giant monster?) or it could make it unbelievably annoying to watch with shaky-cameras and grainy footage. I know just watching the first part of the trailer, I couldn't wait for all these Bambis to meet Godzilla right away.

No, the reason it'll infuriate me is the same reason that I'm still angry whenever I hear that Roland Emmerich is still getting work. It's the same reason I cackle nastily when people look at the 10,000 B.C. footage and think it will be a highly-mockable unintentional comedy. It's the same reason I retroactively hate Independence Day and I've wanted to smack Dean Devlin for a decade.

It will piss me off because when we got the chance to do a legitimate American version of Godzilla: King of the Monsters and not just the Japanese version with Raymond Burr edited in, we were given this piece of crap instead, and Cloverfield is likely going to be everything that Godzilla should have been - a truly terrifying horror story about an unstoppable force of nature come to destroy human arrogance.

I know I'm going to watch Cloverfield and think 'wow, that's cool' and then get immediately annoyed that I'm not watching a Godzilla movie that's this cool. Godzilla is not a giant iguana that can jog on the Brooklyn Bridge without collapsing the damn thing. There is no Mayor Ebert. Matthew Broderick should not leave his talent in his other pants. Half the movie should not be reels stolen from Jurassic Park 2.

My god, it's been ten years and I still get the bile in my throat. Please, Hollywood, stop giving Roland Emmerich money to do anything other than bus tables at Denny's.

On a different note, Cloverfield is currently employing the creepy 'don't show the monster' advertising angle that didn't work for Emmerich's travesty, but that's likely because the movie was a hunk of mucous, not because of any inherent drawback to the marketing strategy. Jeffrey Wells of Hollywood Elsewhere is actively promoting the 'don't show the monster at all' philosophy, which he says will instantly make it a visionary classic while likely sacrificing box office in the process. People going to monster movies want to see monsters, after all. But he's now reporting rumors that the monster is definitely seen. So we knuckle-draggers should have nothing to worry about.

I certainly see Wells' point - what's unseen is often scarier than what is seen - but come on. Half the fun of monster movies are the striking visuals. Godzilla stalking through the skyline of a city, forever altering it. King Kong perched on the Empire State Building and swatting down airplanes.

You gotta see the monster. And if they can reboot the Hulk and the Superman franchises, someone has to reboot the American version of Godzilla into something worthwhile.

Brandon Routh, star of the much-maligned Superman Returns who managed a pitch-perfect Christopher Reeve impersonation as Clark Kent, likely won't be back for the next Superman movie, according to Variety's Anne Thompson. She also says that the next Supes movie will likely not include vaunted director Bryan Singer, who is the hero of the X-Men franchise (and Brett Ratner is the archenemy) and apparently the villain of the Superman saga for choosing to make a direct sequel to Richard Donner's Superman II as opposed to a "fresh new take,"

So it's possible the next Superman film will completely ignore everything that happened in Superman Returns, since they're likely going to use whoever the cast for the upcoming Justice League movie, and spin it off from there. Now while I think people were way too harsh on Singer's movie, this isn't necessarily a bad thing. Not only can they ignore the complications of Superman as deadbeat dad, but they have the chance to finally turn Lex Luthor into the truly cunning Machiavellian genius he should be. Gene Hackman and Kevin Spacey both could have pulled it off if the script actually asked it of them, but alas, both roles left us with a bumbling comic relief as opposed to a true, credible threat to the Man of Steel. This was my biggest problem with the Superman films to date, and while Justice League's apparent casting of hordes of young unknowns as the major players could either spell greatness or catastrophe, I've got my fingers crossed that they'll at least address this particular issue.

Michael Bay has a blog. On it, he said the following about a sequel to Transformers.

For the millions of viewers that logged on this year I want to thank you for the support. Transformers 2 will be coming soon. The new robots are really really unique and there are a lot of them this time.

Is it too much to ask that we be able to tell them apart this time? Seriously, look at that picture. Do you have any idea who that is? Can you even find its face?

The first weekend in January is never a good time for movies. Think about it - it's the furthest possible release date from a given year's award season, so it's likely the dumping ground for the worst movies on the docket. 2008 doesn't seem much different.

One Missed Call: "You get a voice mail, you hear your own death, and then you die!" Seriously, a movie about haunted cell phones. Haunted cell phones!

Part of the reason I hated The Ring is because VHS tapes are not old enough to be spooky and haunted yet, so I'm even less inclined to buy haunted freakin' cell phones. I think we need to make a cinematic rule: Objects need to be more than 50 years old before they can be haunted. I'll buy a haunted World War II tank (and in fact would like to see a movie based on DC Comics' Haunted Tank), but don't try to haunt an iPod for another half-century.

Also, wasn't Shannyn Sossamon an "it girl" a few years ago? What happened there? I'll buy Edward Burns earning a paycheck to finance his next movie about relationships, but Sossamon was supposed to be the next big something-or-other. She was good in The Rules of Attraction, an underrated flick. Now she's in the haunted cell phone movie? What gives?

As I said earlier, Cloverfield's artistic choices could be great or could be its downfall. Cinematical has expounded on my points after Variety's Anne Thompson said the movie is running the "Blair Witch playbook."

The significant point they raise, which I agree with, is thus:

I know some people were genuinely spooked by The Blair Witch Project, believing it to be "real" found footage, but according to my admittedly unscientific investigations, for every person that was scared there were three people who were irritated by the horrible "improvised" performances and/or nauseated by the 'shaky cam' photography.

Variety also reveals some new details about Cloverfield, the most interesting being the fact that there is no musical score at all - just source music and "well-orchestrated ambient sound." Then director Matt Reeves says we'll get "intimate contact" with the monster by the end, which seems like it could be pretty creepy. Here's hoping they don't take the Michael Bay route and have the monster urinate on a guy. Maybe a Starbucks, though.

Lost in La Mancha told the story of the catastrophic attempt that Terry Gilliam made to film his take on the legend of Don Quixote. Jean Rochefort was to play Quixote, and Johnny Depp was to play his Sancho Panza, who was actually going to be a poor modern-day sap thown back in time. Gilliam loves his time travel. 12 Monkeys is still a classic headache.

Word is, however, that the quixotic quest to make The Man Who Killed Don Quixote isn't over yet. Empire talked to the kooky director about it, and he had this to say.

"[Producer] Jeremy Thomas is very close to getting all the pieces of paper signed from all the people who you gotta get signed," Gilliam told us. "He’s been on it for a year now, and he’s come the closest to getting it untangled from the legal swamp it was in. And, um, I don’t see why, I don’t see anything that’s gonna stop it now. He’s just gotta get all the paperwork done and then I call Mr. Depp and see which pirate film he’s still on".

Depp is (we hope) now done with the Pirates movies and could have a space in his schedule, since The Rum Diary and Shantaram both seem to be shelved due to the writers strike. Don Quixote's script is presumably ready to go, since it was shoot-ready before. One man who won't be back is Jean Rochefort. "Physically, he can't do it," says Gilliam. "It's a real tragedy, but he can't. His arse is broken".

While we're covering J.J. Abrams projects today, we can't forget to mention his relaunch of Star Trek, especially when Jennifer Garner says she loves Abrams so much she wants to be a Klingon. MTV says she's angling for a cameo.

“He rocks; I would do anything for him,” she said of her friend. And now, as his highly-anticipated “Star Trek” reboot continues to film, Garner wants to go where few actresses have gone before.

“I just want to be a Klingon in the movie,” the A-list “Juno” star pleaded, insisting that she’d even take a cameo. “I just want to walk through [the frame] as a Klingon.”

Of course, no one will confirm that the hairy, wrinkly-foreheaded aliens are even in next winter’s “Trek” (unless Garner just coughed up something Abrams told her). Either way, the actress said she’s something of a Trekkie herself, and can’t wait to see what J.J. brings to outer space.

“J.J. is kind of like Juno,” she laughed, referencing Ellen Page’s quick-witted character in her current movie. “It’s just his energy, his personality, and he’s as smart as anybody I’ve ever met. Both funny and nice.”

Following in the footsteps of Worldwide Pants, United Artist - the production company owned by Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner, has brokered it's own deal with the writers guild, giving the struggling re-start-up an advantage, according to Deadline Hollywood Daily.

Granted, given how tiny UA is -- only six executives -- and how limited their movie development can be, this is more of a symbolic than a significant development in the ongoing WGA strike.

I'm told that, like Letterman's company, UA has accepted the very same proposals that the WGA presented to the media conglomerates when the Alliance Of Motion Picture & Television Producers walked out of contract negotiations back on December 7th. "It's the same kind of agreement that the guild made with [David Letterman's] Worldwide Pants. But 'interim agreement' is not the right word," a WGA insider explained to me. "At the end of the day, once an overall agreement is done between the WGA and AMPTP, if the terms and conditions of that agreement are more favorable to UA, they will be able to enjoy that. This essentially means that UA has the ability to be in business with the WGA."

So the precedent has been set. C'mon, Solidarity SAGers, swing that weight around and end this thing.

Ridiculous action movie National Treasure: Book of Something-Or-Other has won the third straight weekend of box office competition, although its only new competitor was a ridiculous movie about haunted cell phones. Thankfully, Juno has been steadily climbing up the list and doing quite well for itself.

1. National Treasure: Book of Secrets - $20.2m
2. I Am Legend - $16.3m
3. Juno - $16.2m
4. Alvin and the Chipmunks - $16m
5. One Missed Call - $13.5m
6. Charlie Wilson's War - $8.1m
7. P.S. I Love You - $8m
8. The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep - $6.3m
9. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street - $5.4m
10. Atonement - $5.1m

Maybe David Letterman did indeed lead the way to the end of the writers' strike..

His company, Worldwide Pants, has brokered a deal with the WGA to get back to business as somewhat close to usual, and Tom Cruise's United Artist has followed suit. Now, the New York Post says the Weinstein Company is the next group in line to try and get a leg up on the competition by getting back to work sooner than the rest of the AMPTP.

Like United Artists, the Weinstein Co. is a smaller, independent studio - as opposed to the traditional Hollywood heavyweights - with Wall Street backers and pressure to produce results for investors.

The Weinstein Co., run by Harvey Weinstein and his brother Bob, held talks with the guild around Christmas and is weighing a proposal from union leaders that would allow writers to resume work, according to sources.

The deal is said to be a "me-too" agreement, meaning the Weinsteins would agree to adopt whatever terms the writers and the producers ultimately reach.

"They've always had a good relationship with [the writers] and are in a unique position to address the issue" as an independent studio, said a source close to the Weinsteins. It could also be a catalyst for ending the strike," the source added.

The Golden Globe Awards, known either as the Academy Award bellwether ceremony or a second-ranked Hollywood prom depending on how sick you are of hearing Joan Rivers ask 'who are you wearing' at the time, have now been canceled thanks to the writers' strike.

Hollywood Wiretap has a good wrap-up of the story, saying that the pomp and circumstance is going to be scrapped, since the Screen Actors Guild is standing in solidarity with the Writers Guild of America and won't cross picket lines to traipse about in shiny clothes for the show. Instead, there'll be an hour long news conference to announce the winners, and it likely won't be televised in any form beyond a newsmagazine package.

Once the PR groups got the word from SAG on Monday that WGA pickets were a certainty, the fallout was swift. Stars were certain to stay away, the studio parties were scuttled, and shortly after 4 p.m., the HFPA issued a statement.

"We are all very disappointed that our traditional awards ceremony will not take place this year and that millions of viewers worldwide will be deprived of seeing many of their favorite stars celebrating 2007's outstanding achievements in motion pictures and television," said HFPA president Jorge Camara. "We take some comfort, however, in knowing that this year's Golden Globe Award recipients will be announced on the date originally scheduled."

WGA West president Patric Verrone declined to comment on the specific circumstances seen Monday but did tell Variety, "I'm hoping that they see the collapse of awards season and our ability to make interim deals with other companies as a sign that we are serious, and they need to get back to the table with us."

Personally, I'm all for the ending of this strike and the Golden Globes are like "The Oscars Who Actually Notice Comedy." But honestly, if this whole mess can whittle away some of the glut of celebrity-meat-market dog-and-pony award shows like "Procter & Gamble's Random Movie Awards" or "The Doritos/USF&G Applause Smattering For Glamor Awards," I think we'll be better off as a species.

Go ahead. Let the bodies hit the floor.

At least, that's what a pair of economists - those astute observers of human sociology - are saying in a report given at the meeting of the American Economic Association. The New York Times says that Gordon Dahl of UC-San Diego and Stefano DellaVigra of UC-Berkeley are putting forth the proposition that violent movies mean that violent people won't be out committing violence - they'll be inside watching the violent movies.

A paper presented by two researchers over the weekend to the annual meeting of the American Economic Association here challenges the conventional wisdom, concluding that violent films prevent violent crime by attracting would-be assailants and keeping them cloistered in darkened, alcohol-free environs.

Instead of fueling up at bars and then roaming around looking for trouble, potential criminals pass the prime hours for mayhem eating popcorn and watching celluloid villains slay in their stead.

“You’re taking a lot of violent people off the streets and putting them inside movie theaters,” said one of the authors of the study, Gordon Dahl, an economist at the University of California, San Diego. “In the short run, if you take away violent movies, you’re going to increase violent crime.”

Professor Dahl and the paper’s other author, Stefano DellaVigna, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, attach precise numbers to their argument: Over the last decade, they say, the showing of violent films in the United States has decreased assaults by an average of about 1,000 a weekend, or 52,000 a year.

Crime is not merely delayed until after the credits run, they say. On the Monday and Tuesday after packed weekend showings of violent films, no spike in violent crime emerges to compensate for the peaceful hours at the movies. Even a few weeks later, there is no evidence of a compensating resurgence, they say.

Though such films may indeed stimulate a greater tendency toward aggression in audiences, Professor Dahl offers a rejoinder much favored by economists: Compared to what?

This still seems to be a specious claim, since it's fairly obvious that violent movies don't turn their audiences into slobbering riotmongers instantaneously. However, for those of us who are wondering why economic wizards are studying the criminal psychology, we have "freakonomics" to thank.

The findings in their paper are part of a recent wave of economic research in what might be called the “freakonomics era.” Practitioners of the dismal science are transcending traditional subjects like labor and markets, and are now crunching numbers to evaluate matters like cheating among sumo wrestlers or the effects of a crackdown on cocaine.

Let's just pray they don't invent "trickle-down freakonomics." I don't want to think about what that might entail.

A black-haired, tattooed ex-stripper who calls herself Diablo is a horror fan. Who'da thunk it?

The former Brook Busey and current Diablo Cody, who's getting insane amounts of praise for her screenplay for Juno, is planning a horror flick entitled Jennifer's Body as one of her next projects, with Juno director Jason Retiman producing and Transformers mannequin Megan Fox in the lead role. She told MTV a bit more about it.

“It’s a horror movie, and it’s also about teenagers,” explained Cody, the white-hot writer currently accumulating awards nominations faster than Angelina Jolie takes in international babies. “It’s a lot darker [than ‘Juno’], and it also has comedic elements. Horror is my favorite genre - and like Juno, I like horror movies.”

The flick is called “Jennifer’s Body,” and will most likely mark the first appearance of sexy Megan Fox since her “Transformers” breakthrough this past summer. Described as a “Heathers”-type dark comedy, it tells the story of a seemingly-perfect cheerleader whose life is thrown into disarray when she gets possessed by a demon, begins eating boys in her small Minnesota town, then faces off against her best friend and the Satan-worshipping band that made her evil. Geez, doesn’t it suck when that happens?

“I think the interesting thing about adolescence is it’s a time when your emotions are totally heightened,” Cody said of the subtext she’s attempting to capture. “There’s so much potential for comedy, tragedy, melodrama, horror, whatever.”

No, we're not talking about another remake of the old TV show, or a sequel to that Ralph Fiennes/Uma Thurman Avengers. We're talking about comic-book movies, which are big business, uniting into one big superhero slugfest, which would be even bigger business.

Warner Bros., the owners of DC Comics, has the luxury of tossing out a Justice League movie, where all their big guns like Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Green Lantern, etc. can all be in the same movie, teaming up and beating up Lex Luthor's Legion of Doom. The casting is already underway, notably not using Brandon Routh (who may or may not still be the star of the franchise) and Christian Bale as Superman or Batman, but rather skewing young and relatively unknown to populate the cast (and likely keep the budget down).

Marvel Comics doesn't have the same luxury, as the rights for their characters are spread out among different companies. However, there are rumors that both Jon Favreau's Iron Man film and Louis Leterrier's Incredible Hulk relaunch starring Edward Norton, both due out in 2008, have filmed scenes to allow the movies to cross over and exist in the same world, which is a very interesting move to bring things more in line with the comics. It's also indicative of the greater strategy to angle for an eventual Avengers movie, a supergroup made up initially of Iron Man, the Hulk, the Norse God of Thunder Thor, the super-scientist Ant-Man and his socialite girlfriend the Wasp. The legendary Captain America joined up with the squad very early on, and he's become synonymous with them.

Now, an Ant-Man movie is already in development, last I heard as more of a kid's film, which you might expect from a superhero who's main power is to go "Honey, I Shrunk The Both Of Us." But the fact that Hot Fuzz's Edgar Wright is on board to direct means that all bets are off and Ant-Man could go any which way. There's also a Thor movie tentatively targeted for 2009, with Stardust director Matthew Vaughn attached. So when they finally get around to doing a Captain America movie in the way it needs to be done (it has to be set entirely in World War II, and end with him dropping into the icy North Atlantic and being flash frozen into suspended animation), the Avengers could finally assemble. And Jon Favreau, a card-carrying geek himself, may want to direct it, according to what he's said to MTV.

Favreau's Iron Man already looks like a godsend to fans of both comics and film, starring the always amazing Robert Downey Jr. and finally delivering a superhero movie with great dialog (something Spider-Man desperately needs).

Favreau insists that Marvel will only go ahead with the project if and when all the individual characters get their own story. It’ll be worth the wait, Favreau claimed, calling this way not only more impressive and formidable – but more consistent as well.

“I wonder if the tone of ‘The Incredible Hulk’ is going to be similar or different than [’Iron Man’],” Favreau questioned. “And ‘Captain America’ is a twinkle in Marvel’s eye right now. And ‘Thor’ and ‘Ant Man.’

“[But] in the case of Marvel they’re pretty clear on wanting to do it with the actors who’ve established the roles or to not do it at all. That’s what they’ve said to me,” he continued. “I think it’s a good idea if you use the characters established in the other franchises that then come together for an event. I don’t think they would do it like they’re doing ‘Justice League’ where it’s a whole different set of actors and a whole different take on the world.”

It's important to note that any potential Avengers movie does not require its canonical founders to be involved. Spider-Man, Wolverine and even most of the Fantastic Four have been members of the ever-changing team, and Hugh Jackman's Wolverine spin-off is set to start shooting soon. There's been a cavalcade of super-dupers in that book, so any of them could make the cut, and movies can always invent new members anyway. Don't hold your breath for Nic Cage's Ghost Rider or a big Wesley Snipes comeback as Blade, but since Favreau played Foggy Nelson, there's an outside shot he could ring back the dynamic Bennifer duo as Daredevil and Elektra. If anybody really wanted him to, that is.

I had never seen any production of Sweeney Todd before going into Tim Burton's typically pale-faced and exaggerated stylistic take on the material, so I wasn't sure exactly what to expect other than the much-ballyhooed gore. I hadn't really imagined an operatic musical without any catchy tunes, much less one that is as utterly dark as Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street turned out to be. The Best Picture chatter is a bit overdone, but it's a very interesting and unique piece of work that puts standard musical conventions in a tailspin.

It's nice to be the Director's Guild. You don't have to worry about supporting actors or screenplays or ensemble casts. You give one award - Best Director. Five nominees, one award given at a dinner, and you can spend the rest of the time chowing down on free grub.

The DGA nominees are none too surprising, considering the way awards and nominations have been going this year.

Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood
Joel and Ethan Coen, No Country for Old Men
Tony Gilroy, Michael Clayton
Sean Penn, Into the Wild
Julian Schnabel, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Anderson went 20 minutes into his film before adding dialog. Gilroy made a damn good movie in a true classic style. Penn had to trudge through massive Alaskan snow drifts. Schnabel filmed an unfilmable story. The Coen Brothers are the goddamned Coen Brothers.

All great achievements. Any one of them could win. It's a crap shoot. My money's on Anderson, because he got Daniel Day-Lewis to come out of retirement.