The Big Picture

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street: The well-acted and iffily (yes, that's a word now) voiced operatic musical class-war gorefest sets up shop in homes everywhere today. My full review is here.

Alvin and the Chipmunks: The big hit live-action adaptation of the novelty work of Ross Bagdasarian Sr. Jason Lee had a great time goofing around on the set of this film, but much ado was made by indie hipsters about their hero David Cross apparently selling out. Cross, however, responded eloquently.

My Name is Earl star Jaime Pressly has been cast in I Love You, Man, starring Paul Rudd as a friendless man about to get married who starts to go on "man-dates" to try to find someone to be his best man, which he winds up doing with Forgetting Sarah Marshall's Jason Segel. Pressly will be playing the best friend of the bride (Rashida Jones).

It's written and directed by John Hamburg, the guy who did Along Came Polly, so take from that what you will.

What better way to celebrate April Fool's Day than to watch the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled? Watch The Usual Suspects right here, right now, for free on Fancast.

Bryan Singer's greatest film to date. It truly made Kevin Spacey. It's the best thing Stephen Baldwin has ever done and likely ever will do. It gave many of us our first exposure to Benicio Del Toro. It boasts Kevin Pollak illustrating why he should really be getting so much more top tier work. And Gabriel Byrne is just perfect.

A boat has been destroyed, criminals are dead, and the key to this mystery lies with the only survivor and his twisted, convoluted story beginning with five career crooks in a seemingly random police lineup.

One whodunit to rule them all.

Watch this film.

Keanu Reeves, whom I've long railed against as a nice guy who makes interesting choices but just can't actually act, may have redeemed himself by mentioning to MTV that there is still the possibility to team up with Alex Winter for a new sequel to the last movie series he was truly great in - Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.

“I hear they’re doing a remake,” Reeves said of the movie that launched him to fame. “[Alex Winter and I spoke] on the phone the other day [about it]. We’re great friends.” So step into the phone booth, Mr. Reeves, would you ever be up for another sequel?

“The most serious we ever got was a few years ago,” he confessed of a hitherto unknown third film. “I had once mentioned about doing it when we were 40. Now maybe the only shot we have is to do it when we’re 50.”

And where will the Wyld Stallions be then? The same place they are now, laughed Reeves, “in each and every one of us.”

Hayden Panettiere is set to star in Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List, about a girl and her gay best friend who set up boundaries on people off-limits for tonsil hockey so they don't get jealous of each other.

This photo of her has not been altered. It's fascinating to try and figure out.

Thomas Haden Church has just dropped in to star in Big Eyes, opposite Kate Hudson, as Walter Keane - a painter in the 50s-60s who became a gigantic success with his series of pieces featuring children with large eyes. You know, like anime, only creepier.

It'll be written and directed by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, the screenwriters behind great films like Ed Wood and The People vs. Larry Flynt, but also the directors behind Screwed, which was not good despite the presence of Norm MacDonald and Dave Chappelle. So it's a mixed bag.

Rumor has it that Matthew McConaughey has been offered the role of Thomas Magnum, the ex-military-turned-detective in Hawaii made famous by Tom Selleck during the great run of Magnum P.I. That could work well, considering Matty Mac's laid-back, charismatic nature, but this will only work provided McConaughey doesn't try to pull off The Stache. The Stache belongs to Selleck. And the 80s, but mostly Selleck.

So Mel Gibson's being sued.

Benedict Fitzgerald is claiming Gibson lowballed him on the screenplay rights for The Passion of the Christ by vastly understating the expected budget of the film. What's curious is that Gibson is lobbying to keep the film's financial records sealed away from public view while his defense is trying to dismiss the fraud charge, thus escaping the wrath of punitive damages, where cash prizes can get really insane.

I think it's time for both Gibson and Fitzgerald to ask "Why Would Jesus Sue?"

Most science fiction stories somehow center around Earth as the ultimate goal (Battlestar Galactica) or the home from which a glorious spectacle of human achievement has spawned (Star Trek).

But the mixed-animation of Titan A.E. takes a page from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy but plays it straight - the planet Earth is destroyed. What next?

Combining 2-D and 3-D animation in interesting ways, Titan A.E. tells the story of Cale (Matt Damon), one of the last surviving humans After Earth, who are all generally treated like sub-standard creatures and forced to trudge through their doomed lives as menial laborers. Until he discovers the secret of the Titan, a massive craft his father and many others used to flee Earth before its destruction, and has to quest across the galaxy to fulfill his destiny. It also features the voices of Drew Barrymore as a pilot named Akima, Bill Pullman as Captain Joseph Korso, Janeane Garofalo as a hard-as-nails alien weapons expert named Stith, John Leguizamo as a kooky green scientist named Gune and Nathan Lane as wisecracking rat-thing Preed.

Watch Titan A.E. for free right here, right now on Fancast.

Leatherheads: A fun little comedy set during the crazy days of ramshackle professional football, starring George Clooney (who also directed) as Dodge Connolly, who devises a plan to save the game from going under by wooing the top college football star and war hero, Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski) to play for his team in Duluth, while hotshot reporter Lexie Littleton (Renee Zellweger) has been assigned to expose the truth about Carter's reported heroism. Romantical hijinks and gridiron tomfoolery ensue. It's not quite the wildly entertaining romp it wants to be, since it's a bit haphazard in its pacing, but the stars are all likable and Zellweger even stops squinting so much. It's Clooney. It's hard to dislike Clooney performances, especially when he gets to be a riff on his charming, affable self.

Check out what Clooney himself has to say about the film here.

Nim's Island: Abigail Breslin stars as Nim, who lives in a childhood fantasy land surrounded by neat-o animals, inspired by adventure books written by a reclusive and skittish Jodie Foster. When the island is threatened, they both seek help from the fictional swashbuckling literary hero Alex Rover (Gerard Butler). Fanciful!

The Ruins: Young people are terrified by the creepy things they find in Mayan ruins in Mexico. Normally dismissable, but the fact that the very talented Jena Malone is in it is enough to think that this may be a cut above your standard fright-fest.

Shine a Light: After nearly half a century of rock and roll, the Rolling Stones get Martin Scorsese to film them in concert. Maybe now they'll have a farewell tour that sticks.

At long last, Johnny 5 is returning to the movies.

The team that wrote the original Short Circuit, S.S. Wilson and Brent Maddock, have been hired by Dimension Films to write a relaunch of the family adventure story about a robot war machine who came to life when struck by lightning and just wanted to have fun, as evidenced by his desire to change his name from Number 5 to Johnny 5 by the end of the film.

Chances are they'll leave Fisher Stevens' Indian caricature behind this time, but can they get Steve Guttenberg back? Get the Gutt!

More casting news for Jonathan Mostow's The Surrogates - Marsellus Wallace will be reuniting with Butch Coolidge.

Ving Rhames and Rosamund Pike have joined the cast that already includes Bruce Willis and Radha Mitchell in a movie from the creators of Terminator 3 about a world where human interaction is entirely conducted with robotic avatars while people remain secluded indoors.

It sounds like Rhames might finally get a role worthy of his talent, as he's playing a charismatic cult leader who eschews the use of these surrogates and leads an rebellion. One of my biggest problems with the Mission: Impossible franchise and Hollywood in general is its criminal underuse of Ving Rhames. The guy is awesome, and everyone as Pulp Fiction as proof. Let him shine, people.

Fans of the old G.I. Joe cartoon series remember Shipwreck the Navy man as a nasal-voiced pasty-skinned wiseacre with a parrot and an actual sailor hat They always went by their codenames on that show, which means very few will remember that the character's actual name was Hector X. Delgado.

Thus, an interesting rumor about the G.I. Joe movie has arisen in which Dwayne Johnson, lovingly referred to as The Rock, may be playing the salty seadog Shipwreck. Apparently Brendan Fraser has already shot a one-scene cameo as Gung Ho, a character who was always voiced as a macho bulldog but who... well, wore a vest with no shirt, a handlebar mustache and a big poofy hat. It'll be interesting to see what Fraser does with him.

The Rock would be a great addition to G.I. Joe - and you can see they seem on the right track so far with the first images released of fan-favorite secret ninja guy Snake-Eyes. He'd likely also be a cameo, but with a movie with a cast this potentially huge and with this much sequel-bait, cameos can always bloom into something more.

Watch Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World for free right here, right now on Fancast.

During the Napoleonic Wars, a British frigate, HMS Surprise, and a much larger French warship with greater fire power, the Acheron, stalk each other off of the coast of South America. Russell Crowe brings great intensity to the role of Captain Jack Aubrey. Lucky Jack, as he is referred to by his crew, is well regarded by his men, who trust him implicitly, even after the first devastating battle and an apparent personal vendetta against the French captain. While the naval battle sequences are quite fantastic, the film is successful because director Peter Weir chose to build the story to get to know the men who are locked aboard the tight quarters of a small ship and how they interact everyday. The officers and the mates are well-known by the time the final battle comes. Paul Bettany offers a strong performance as the surgeon and naturalist who balances the violence of his chosen life with the quiet demeanor of the scientist. He is the captain's friend and confidant, the two frequently playing violin and cello duets together. The horrors of the injuries from the war are frequently implied, but vividly depicted in the reactions of the characters.

Legendary actor Charlton Heston is dead at age 84.

His death was confirmed by a spokesman for the family, Bill Powers, who did not specify a cause. In August 2002, Mr. Heston announced that he had received a diagnosis of neurological symptoms “consistent with Alzheimer’s disease.”

“I’m neither giving up nor giving in,” he said.

Mr. Heston’s life changed forever when he caught the eye of the director Cecil B. DeMille. DeMille, who was planning his next biblical spectacular, “The Ten Commandments,” looked at the young, physically imposing Mr. Heston and saw his Moses.

When the film was released, in 1956, more than three and a half hours long and the most expensive that De Mille had ever made, Mr. Heston became a marquee name. Whether leading the Israelites through the wilderness, parting the Red Sea or coming down from Mount Sinai with the tablets from God in hand, he was a Moses to remember.

Elected president of the National Rifle Association in 1998, he proved to be a powerful campaigner against what he saw as the government’s attempt to infringe on a constitutional guarantee — the right to bear arms.

In Mr. Heston, the N.R.A. found its embodiment of pioneer values — pride, independence and valor. In a speech at the N.R.A.’s annual convention in 2000, he brought the audience to its feet with a ringing attack on gun-control advocates. Paraphrasing an N.R.A. bumper sticker (“I’ll give you my gun when you take it from my cold, dead hands”), he waved a replica of a colonial musket above his head and shouted defiantly, “From my cold, dead hands!”

Mr. Heston’s screen presence was so commanding that he was never dominated by mammoth sets, spectacular effects or throngs of spear-waving extras. In his films, whether playing Buffalo Bill, an airline pilot, a naval captain or the commander of a spaceship, he essentially projected the same image — muscular, steely-eyed, courageous. If critics used terms like “marble-monumental” or “granitic” to describe his acting style, they just as often praised his forthright, no-nonsense characterizations.

Kevin Spacey's gambling adventure once again trumped the box office, dropping just over $8 million off its numbers from last week, which means George Clooney's Leatherheads did not capture the hearts and minds of America. Football movie, baseball season, maybe.

1. 21 - $15.1m
2. Leatherheads - $13.4m
3. Nim's Island - $13.3m
4. Horton Hears a Who - $9.1m
5. The Ruins - $7.8m
6. Superhero Movie - $5.4m
7. Drillbit Taylor - $3.5m
8. Tyler Perry's Meet the Browns - $3.4m
9. Shutter - $2.8m
10. 10,000 B.C. - $2.7m

How often have you seen a film that was so astonishingly bad that you wished the people who made it would be forever banned from making movies again?

Do films like BloodRayne, Alone in the Dark and House of the Dead qualify?

There's been a petition underway to try to halt the career of the man behind those films, Uwe Boll, who has stated that he would retire from filmmaking if enough people wanted him to, but the 18,000 signatures already collected are not enough. So /Film is trying to up that number to one million and see if we, the moviegoing public, can't hold him to his word.

Boll's clunkers, however, aren't nearly as troublesome as the continued success of empty spectacle monstrosities like The Day After Tomorrow and 10,000 B.C. If only we could get this same campaign going for Roland Emmerich, we might be onto something. He will never be forgiven for what he did to Godzilla.

More casting news for Oliver Stone's controversial project W, about the current president's rise to power: Thandie Newton has been cast as current Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and Ioan Gruffudd will be playing former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Josh Brolin is playing the titular president, James Cromwell and Ellen Burstyn are playing his parents and Elizabeth Banks will be playing his wife.

The world eagerly awaits the casting of Dick Cheney. Sadly, Burgess Meredith isn't around to reprise his Penguin.

Watch Planet of the Apes for free right here, right now on Fancast.

For the record, apes are not monkeys. Monkeys have tails, apes do not. This is not a planet of the monkeys, and even though monkey is a funnier word than ape, the two are not interchangeable, much as everyone wishes chimps were monkeys.

The late Charlton Heston was the star of the original film, and he returned in a vastly different role in Tim Burton's "reimagining" of the seminal piece of science-fiction, playing an elder ape preaching hatred for humanity and spurring Tim Roth's villainous Thade to further antagonism. Mark Wahlberg steps into the original Heston role as an astronaut stranded on a strange alternate world where apes have dominion and humans are treated as slave labor. With the help of Helena Bonham Carter's sympathetic liberal ape Ari, there's an eventual escape with high drama and adventure. But really, guys like Michael Clarke Duncan and Paul Giamatti in ape makeup running around causing havoc is awesome, no matter how you think this film stacks up to the original. Watch it now. Enjoy some sweet monkey fun!

There Will Be Blood: Film nerds everywhere will now rejoice that P.T. Anderson's difficult yet masterful critical darling can now be added to their DVD shelves to stir passionate debates about its quality and relevance. No one can deny Daniel Day-Lewis deserved the Oscar for his riveting performance as Daniel Plainview, sociopathic oilman bastard that he is, but this film is a rallying cry for aficionados to rail against mainstream movie conventions and to establish themselves as cinematic snobs to the misguided fools who thought it was just this boring, unlikable thing that put them to sleep.

It is a challenging movie, to be sure, as the main characters are generally detestable and there are no familiar character arcs to settle into. The central surly malcontent has no miraculous change of heart to soften his edges, and he only briefly flirts with even a modicum of remorse. The score is unique and keeps one feeling a bit off-kilter. Paul Dano's creepy and greasy evangelist Eli Sunday, however, is somehow even less likable than Plainview (likely because Eli can't turn on an agreeable personality when it suits his needs - he is always twitchy and wrong), and thus by the end you're actually rooting for the evil prick when the two meet up for the last time in that bowling alley.

Milkshakes aside, it's the kind of movie you need to see more than once to truly enjoy, and it's the kind of movie that sticks with you and rolls around in your mind long after you've watched it, which was the major case made for its Best Picture contention. You'll need to see it to decide for yourself, but just know that if you don't find yourself engaged by it, you must obviously be a philistine.

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story: John C. Reilly stars in this criminally underseen satire of Walk the Line in particular, and every musical biopic you've ever seen in general. Seriously, watch this riff on Bob Dylan and kick yourself for not seeing this movie in the theaters. Then go rent the thing!

Resurrecting The Champ: Sports writer Josh Hartnett finds Samuel L. Jackson living destitute on the streets after once being a boxing legend, and fights to tell his story.

The Water Horse: A lonely Scottish boy tends to a baby Loch Ness monster and helps it grow up.

Reservation Road: The relationship between Joaquin Phoenix and Jennifer Connelly starts to unravel when he becomes obsessed with bringing the hit-and-run driver who killed their daughter to justice.

Lions for Lambs: The star-studded cast of Tom Cruise, Meryl Streep and Robert Redford couldn't help it break the Iraq-Movie Curse at the box office, but these films may get a new life on DVD, where they can be watched in context with the rest of the dramatized news.

The Music Within: Ron Livingston stars in this true story about a Vietnam vet with hearing damage who transforms himself into a champion for the rights of the disabled.

P2: Wes Bentley stars in another round of torture porn as a psycho who locks a woman in a parking garage for a weekend.

Robert De Niro is set to star along side Drew Barrymore, Kate Beckinsale and Sam Rockwell as a father whose wife dies, leaving him without a bond with his children in Everybody's Fine, to be written and directed by Kirk Jones, who gave us the much-acclaimed Waking Ned Devine.

This also reunites the deeply troubled couple at the center of Snow Angels, a film that helped Beckinsale overcome her stigma as the harbinger of bad films, and that cemented Rockwell as the best actor to come along in years. No word on who they're playing yet, but the premise that De Niro's character plans to go on a road trip with each of his children to try and forge relationships with them might mean they'll play siblings - which will definitely make watching Snow Angels that much more disturbing.

Oliver Stone is making a biopic about George W. Bush, entitled simply W, starring Josh Brolin as the titular initial. Stone's track record with historical films has damaged his credibility as a biographer in any capacity, and despite his claim to want to make a true and fair portrait of the man, no one is really buying it. The Hollywood Reporter sought input from actual Bush biographers about the screenplay with the project due to start filming this month with the goal of being released in time for the election. Here is a sampling of their feedback.

"It leaves you with the impression that the White House is run as a fraternity house with no reverence for hierarchy, the office itself or for the implications of policy," said Robert Draper, author of "Dead Certain: The Presidency of George Bush." "Everybody calling everybody else nicknames and chatting about whether to go to war as if they were chatting about how to bet on a football game really misses the mark of how many White Houses, including this one, are run."

"The problem here is it goes to this notion of Bush as being the passive receiver of policy and the White House being run by (Dick) Cheney, (Donald) Rumsfeld, (Karl) Rove and others," Draper said. "Bush's adversaries have been ill-served by this belief that Bush is an observer to his own presidency. This notion that his schedule is driven by what's on ESPN is ludicrous."

All four Bush biographers cast doubt on one scene in which a wave crashes on a rocky promontory as Bush reveals: "There's this darkness that follows me ..."

"He doesn't think or talk like that," [Jacob] Weisberg said. "The darkness sounds like they've been listening to too much Springsteen. It doesn't ring psychologically true to me."

All four biographers confirmed the accuracy of one striking scene in which a young Bush challenges his father to a fistfight after coming home drunk. And while they recognized the nickname "Turdblossom" for Rove, they were less familiar with "Balloon Foot," which Stone's Bush uses for Colin Powell. And some felt that "Pooty Poot" for Vladimir Putin was taken from New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, not Bush himself.

The filmmaker's responses:

Screenwriter Stanley Weiser, who wrote "W" and also co-wrote Stone's "Wall Street," said: "I have no comment other than the fact that I have read 17 books on Bush."

"We've done our homework," said Moritz Borman, one of the film's producers. " 'W' will not be a documentary. It will be a compelling account of the actions and motivations of this president, fully guided by facts that have been established and documented."

[Financier QED's Bill] Block, for one, said accuracy was vital to the filmmakers. "When you embark on something as important as this," he said, "the truth is extremely important, and Oliver is relentless about the truth and facts."

"It is not going to be simplistic at all. It is powerful and not trying to be skewed to the left, but to be real. The truth is surprising and, frankly, shocking enough."

What the director plans to do with this script, however, remains a complete unknown. Like a Brolin Stone!

Worst pun ever, thank you very much.