For as long as I can remember, I've had a love for movies. Seeing people get to act like these extraordinary people and go to extraordinary places was something truly amazing for me. I had a passion for movies that hasn't quit yet. I've always felt like I could relate in some way to every movie I see. When I was younger, I wanted to be Belle in Beauty and the Beast. More recently, I've felt like I actually was the character Josie in Never Been Kissed or Bridget in Bridget Jones's Diary. From Beauty and the Beast to Bridget Jones, movies have had a deep impact on my life.
     Movies portray the extraordinary and the ordinary. Most importantly, they portray humanity. Comedy movies extend those clutsy moments we know we all have or silly jokes we hear and can't stop laughing at. Action movies give us heroes and some really ridiculous macho stuff. Drama movies extend pain, sadness, joy, love - all the emotions that make life real. Horror movies, well, they let us make sure we have someone special to cling onto when we're scared. Sci-fi movies make us wonder if there really is intelligent life out there somewhere. Biopics show us real people, real lives to be inspired by and learn lessons from.
     Moments that can last a lifetime are also created by movies. I will eternally remember Josie's speech at prom in Never Been Kissed. Bill and the Bride's meeting outside of the wedding rehearsal in Kill Bill. Christian and Satine singing to each other in Moulin Rouge. Jack and Karen's conversation/love scene in Out of Sight. Dorothy's one line to Jerry at the end of Jerry Maguire. And too many more to count.
     Movies also create icons: legends we all wish we could be or, at the very least, meet. Charlie Chaplin. Ingrid Bergman. Humphrey Bogart. James Stewart. Katharine Hepburn. Faye Dunaway. Jack Nicholson. Al Pacino. Susan Sarandon. Robert DeNiro. Michael Douglas. Julia Roberts. George Clooney. Renee Zellweger.
     But the filmmakers and screenwriters that have visions and make them real - they're the extraordinary ones. Cecil B. DeMille. George Cukor. Howard Hawks. Alfred Hitchcock. Stanley Kubrick. Martin Scorsese. Woody Allen. Francis Ford Coppola. Steven Spielberg. Quentin Tarantino. Steven Soderbergh. Cameron Crowe.
     Then it's what these extraordinary people come together to make: movies that stand out against the rest. Vertigo. A Clockwork Orange. Taxi Driver. Annie Hall. The Godfather. E.T. Out of Sight. Jerry Maguire. Kill Bill.
     Movies shape style, music, trends and lives. Movies are pop culture masterpieces that can draw tons of followers and publicity - both positive and negative.
     I might be one of those people who always criticizes movies, but at the end of the day, I'm just sitting in the theater, waiting to be entertained.

-Catherine Krummey

   As another year comes to a close, the questions on every movie-lover's mind are: Who or what will be nominated for an Oscar this year? Will Clint Eastwood be crowned Best Director for Mystic River? Will Nicole Kidman make it two Best Actress Oscars in a row? Will Sean Penn finally win Oscar gold? Will the Academy voters embrace The Matrix sequels? The official nominees will not be announced until January 27, but speculators and movie industry insiders, including myself, have a pretty good idea of the names that will be announced.

   The first and biggest category, Best Picture, will most definitely include Cold Mountain, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King and Mystic. As for the other two nominees, good possibilities are 21 Grams, The Matrix Reloaded, Seabiscuit and Whale Rider.

   Moving on to Best Director, Eastwood for Mystic, Peter Jackson for Lord of the Rings and Anthony Minghella for Mountain are all shoe-ins. Their two fellow nominees will likely come from the following group: Sofia Coppola for Lost in Translation, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu for Grams, Jim Sheridan for In America, Andy and Larry Wachowski for either Matrix sequel.

   This year, as opposed to last year's abundance of strong female roles, there are many Oscar-worthy male performances. For Best Actor, Jeff Bridges (Seabiscuit), Russell Crowe (Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World), Tom Cruise (The Last Samurai), Johnny Depp (Once Upon a Time in Mexico & Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl), Jude Law (Mountain), Tobey Maguire (Seabiscuit), Viggo Mortensen (Lord of the Rings), Penn (Grams & Mystic) and Elijah Wood (Lord of the Rings) are all good possibilites.

   As for Best Actress, this year, while some actresses had multiple Oscar-worthy performances, the female roles were not as plentiful or strong. Cate Blanchett (Veronica Guerin & The Missing), Scarlett Johannson (Girl With a Pearl Earring & Translation) and Kidman (Mountain & The Human Stain) all have a good chance of getting at least one nomination. Joining them could be Oscar-winner Julia Roberts (Mona Lisa Smile) and Kidman's pal Naomi Watts (Grams).

   Most of this year's supporting nominees will come from Lord of the Rings and Mystic. The potential nominees for Best Supporting Actor are Sean Astin (Lord of the Rings), Kevin Bacon (Mystic River), Laurence Fishburne (The Matrix Revolutions), Ian McKellan (Lord of the Rings) and Tim Robbins (Mystic River). For Best Supporting Actress, they are Kirsten Dunst (Mona), Marcia Gay Harden (Mystic), Julia Stiles (Mona), Liv Tyler (Lord of the Rings) and Renee Zellweger (Mountain).

   Next comes the writing. For Best Original Screenplay, the potential nominees are: Guillermo Arriaga and Inarritu for Grams, Guljit Bindra, Gurinder Chadha and Paul Mayeda Burges for Bend It Like Beckham, Coppola for Translation, Jim, Naomi and Kirsten Sheridan for America, and the Wachowskis for either Matrix sequel. As for Best Adapted Screenplay (meaning the movie was based on a novel, short story, etc.), the nominees should be John August for Big Fish, Phillippa Boyens, Jackson and Fran Walsh for Lord of the Rings, Niki Caro for Whale, Brian Helgeland for Mystic, and Minghella for Mountain.

   2003 was a landmark year for visual effects, especially with the release of the Matrix sequels. The nominees for Best Visual Effects should be Joel Behrens, Bryan Hirota, John Knoll, Tim Landry and Gray Marshall for Pirates, Tim Crosbie, Joe Letteri and Jim Rygiel for Lord of the Rings, John Gaeta for both Matrix sequels, and Kevin Scott Mack for Fish. The biggest box-office movie of the year, Finding Nemo, won't go unnoticed at the 2004 Oscars. Nemo will hands-down win the Best Animated Feature Oscar, and other potential nominees such as Brother Bear and The Triplets of Belleville shouldn't put up much of a fight. All the movies listed here have a chance of picking up other nominations. For example, Tim Burton might have a chance to hook a nomination as Best Director for Fish. It also might be wise to keep an eye out for nominations for House of Sand and Fog, Kill Bill: Vol. 1 and X2: X-Men United.

   Overall, the movies released in 2003 pale in comparison to those released in 2002. Last year, there was Chicago, Gangs of New York, The Hours, Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and The Pianist. This year showcased some of the worst movies in the history of cinema: 2 Fast 2 Furious, Bad Boys II, From Justin to Kelly, Gigli, Legally Blonde 2. Granted, this list is all summer movies and they usually tend to be dumb every year, but last year movies like Spider-Man were released in the summer. Hopefully 2004 will bring to the table a few more Oscar-worthy movies - the year should with the release of Shrek 2 and Spider-Man 2, among others.

-Catherine Krummey, MovieCat Cinema

     It's simple: movies are my escape, my solace, my home. It doesn't matter where I am, if I'm watching a movie, good or bad, I'm at home. I could be at a disgusting theater that smells like ass, a quiet downtown cinema arthouse, in the quiet (or loudness) of my dorm room or at home, with my family (or alone), snuggled up in a blanket with my dog and a snack. Now, I might prefer to be at home, but I'd do just about anything to watch a movie.

     My friends, family and classmates can visibly tell I'm obsessed with movies: I collect ticket stubs (but strictly ones from when I went to the theater), I love playing SceneIt, I'm always reading Entertainment Weekly, Premiere or some random cinema book I found at the school library, I made a shirt that says "MovieCat" on the front and "I Heart Cinema" on the back, I made a movie about my favorite movies, my "Oscar" stands proudly on my desk in my room, my dorm room walls (and my walls at home) are littered with movie posters and collages of my favorite movies and movie stars, I treasure the "critic" pass I bought in Los Angeles, and, finally, I store most of these movie-obsessed items in my trunk, a hand-me-down that my mom and I decophaged with pictures of movies and movie stars. If I could only save one item from a burning building, I'd pile all my movie stuff into the trunk and lug it out.

     Simply put, movies are my life. I couldn't imagine a life without them.

-Catherine Krummey

     I want to be in film class next semester. Probably mostly because I want to find my "film friends": people my age who enjoy seeing movies more than the average human being.

     I've been reading the book Totally Tenderly Tragically: Essays and Criticism From a Lifelong Love Affair With the Movies by Phillip Lopate, and Lopate describes how he found his "film friends" in college by introducing himself to the college newpaper's movie columnist, becoming friends with him, and meeting other film fanatics in the process. Maybe I can find that in my film class, because I'm not too keen about the movie columnist for my college's paper.

     It's not personal, it's just business: at the beginning of the semester, it was between me and the current columnist to get the job as the paper's movie critic-in-residence, but obviously I didn't get the job. But, as a freshman, I am excited that the guy making the decision even had me in his top two candidates.

     Anyway, back to finding "film friends." I suppose another way of doing this would be to go to a MU Film Club movie meeting, but I don't think that I'll be able to go tonight because I have to work on a project for one of my classes. They're showing Super Size Me in the Physics building at 5:30. Maybe I'll be able to go to the MUFC movie next week. I wonder what they're going to show.

   I guess you could say that I do have some "film friends," my friend Paula and my mom, but they're both in St. Louis and not exactly in my age bracket. I also have my godmother, my Aunt Pat, but she lives in Madison, Wisconsin, and, again, is not exactly in my age bracket. So here I am, stranded in Columbia without any "film friends."

   I really miss not being able to just hop in the car with my mom and meet whoever at the movie theater for the latest movie to hit the big screen. Now I have to take the big, scary bus and adhere to the transit schedule. I have not yet attempted taking the bus to the Forum or Stadium, but as soon as Alfie or Ray come out, I suppose I'll have to do it. Maybe I can find some "film friends" on the bus.

-Catherine Krummey

     Last weekend, I went to see The Miracle of Marcelino on campus as part of the MSA's International Film Festival, and Sunday afternoon I made the jaunt on foot to the Ragtag to see Maria Full of Grace, also a foreign film. So last weekend can basically be dubbed "Spanish Cinema: Past and Present." That's not a problem, though, because I love Spanish cinema. I suppose that's the case because I am somewhat able to understand what the actors are saying. Furthermore, I love the work of Pedro Almodovar, especially Todo sobre mi madre (All About My Mother). The night I get back to St. Louis for Thanksgiving break I'm going to see his La mala educacion (Bad Education) as part of the St. Louis International Film Festival. Nothing can beat a good Almodovar flick (except for a good Tarantino flick, of course).

   I also saw Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown for the first time last weekend because they showed it on MUTV. It was good, but not as great as Kill Bill, Pulp Fiction or Reservoir Dogs. MUTV also, in its brilliance, showed both Kill Bill Vol. 1 and Kill Bill Vol. 2. To me the Kill Bill movies are actually one, as they were originally intended to be, and I count the one movie as my favorite.

-Catherine Krummey

  In recent years, the most hotly-contested Oscar race has been for Best Actress. This year, it's time for the men. It's impossible to know exactly which five of the following will be the nominees, let alone who will take home the coveted trophy for Best Actor: Johnny Depp (Finding Neverland), Jim Carrey (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events), Jamie Foxx (Ray), Zach Braff (Garden State), Gael Garcia Bernal (Bad Education or The Motorcycle Diaries), Paul Giamatti (Sideways), Jeff Bridges (The Door in the Floor), Leonardo DiCaprio (The Aviator), Al Pacino (The Merchant of Venice), last year's winner Sean Penn (The Assassination of Richard Nixon), Topher Grace (In Good Company), Bill Murray (The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou), Liam Neeson (Kinsey), Jude Law (Closer), Denzel Washington (The Manchurian Candidate), Jim Caviezel (The Passion of the Christ), Javier Bardem (The Sea Inside), Gerard Butler (The Phantom of the Opera), Kevin Bacon (The Woodsman), Don Cheadle (Hotel Rwanda), Adam Sandler (Spanglish) and Kevin Spacey (Beyond the Sea). However, the early front-runners seem to be Depp for his portrayal of Peter Pan author J.M. Barrie in Neverland and Foxx for his amazing portrayal of the late Ray Charles.

   As for Best Actress, the possible nominees are: Uma Thurman (Kill Bill), Julia Roberts (Closer), Renee Zellweger (Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason), Bryce Dallas Howard (The Village), Kim Basinger (Door), Natalie Portman (Garden), Kate Winslet (Sunshine), Laura Linney (P.S.), Imelda Staunton (Vera Drake), Audrey Tautou (A Very Long Engagement), Annette Bening (Being Julia), Hilary Swank (Million Dollar Baby), Rachel McAdams (The Notebook), Paz Vega (Spanglish) and Emmy Rossum (Phantom). And as of now, there are no clear front-runners for Best Actress.

   Best Supporting Actor and Actress are pretty unclear as well. For Supporting Actor, the list includes David Carradine (Kill Bill), Thomas Haden Church (Sideways), James Garner (Notebook), Rodrigo de la Serna (Motorcycle), Foxx (Collateral), Morgan Freeman (Million), Clive Owen (Closer), Alan Alda (Aviator), Ian Holm (Garden or Aviator), Jon Foster (Door), Grace (P.S.) and Liev Schreiber (Manchurian). For Supporting Actress, the list is more abundant: Winslet (Neverland), Julie Christie (Neverland), Kerry Washington (Ray), Regina King (Ray), Tea Leoni (Spanglish), Cloris Leachman (Spanglish), Miranda Richardson (Phantom), Daryl Hannah (Kill Bill), Linney (Kinsey), Cate Blanchett (Aviator), Portman (Closer), Meryl Streep (Manchurian), Gena Rowlands (Notebook) and Virginia Madsen (Sideways).

   Best Director could quite possibly already be in the bag for the man who's always the bridesmaid and never the bride when it comes to the trophy: Martin Scorsese (Aviator). However, he's receiving tough competition from Alexander Payne (Sideways), Mike Nichols (Closer), Clint Eastwood (Million), Taylor Hackford (Ray), Joel Schumacher (Phantom), Pedro Almodovar (Education), Marc Forster (Neverland), Mel Gibson (Passion), Bill Condon (Kinsey), Michael Moore (Fahrenheit 9/11), and Wes Anderson (Aquatic).

  Now we've come to the top of the heap: Best Picture. Pretty much any of the aforementioned films have a shot. Box office giants The Incredibles and Spider-Man 2 might also have a shot at walking away with the Best Picture Oscar.

   The official nominees for the 77th Annual Academy Awards will be announced on the E! TV network at 8:30 a.m. ET on January 25, 2005, and the winners will be announced on Oscar night, February 27, 2005, at 8:30 p.m. ET on ABC. Be sure to check back here and at MovieCat Cinema for the latest on the nominees and winners.

For a complete list of my predictions of the nominees go to: http://www.geocities.com/moviecatcinema/oscars.html.

-Catherine Krummey

     Everyone has heard of the French New Wave of cinema: Godard, Bresson, etc. A new wave has begun right here in the United States, with filmmakers such as Oliver Stone, Spike Lee, Steven Soderbergh, Cameron Crowe, Quentin Tarantino, Wes Anderson, Alexander Payne and Sofia Coppola.

     One could say this new wave began in the mid-to-late 1980s with Stone's Platoon and Lee's Do the Right Thing. The movement really started growing in the '90s and early 2000s with the continued work of Stone, Lee, Soderbergh, Crowe, Tarantino, Anderson, Payne and Coppola.

     The most recent time in American cinema where we've had a crew like this is in the late '60s and '70s, when Coppola's father, Francis Ford, was drawing attention alongside cinematic geniuses such as Stanley Kubrick, Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas.

     All of these new wave filmmakers are blessed with the talent of writing or co-writing beautiful, important, original and entertaining scripts, and being able to put the screenplays to work as directors and captivate and move audiences around the world. These films might not have a large audience, but all eight of the filmmakers have been nominated for or won Oscars for Best Original Screenplay. In addition to winning Best Original Screenplay Oscars, Tarantino, Coppola and Payne have been nominated for Best Director for, respectively, Pulp Fiction, Lost in Translation and Sideways. Stone hasn't won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar, but he's won two Best Director Oscars for Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July, and Soderbergh won the Best Director Oscar for Traffic.

     Other filmmakers, such as Tim Burton, Robert Rodriguez and Kevin Smith, can be included in this group, but these eight, Stone, Lee, Soderbergh, Crowe, Tarantino, Anderson, Payne and Coppola, are the leading talents.

American New Wave's Greatest Hits

Oliver Stone: Platoon (1986), Wall Street (1987), Born on the Fourth of July (1989), The Doors (1991), JFK (1991), Natural Born Killers (1994)

Spike Lee: Do the Right Thing (1989), Mo' Better Blues (1990), Malcolm X (1992), Crooklyn (1994), Bamboozled (2000), 25th Hour (2002)

Steven Soderbergh: sex, lies & videotape (1989), Out of Sight (1998), The Limey (1999), Erin Brockovich (2000), Traffic (2000)

Cameron Crowe: Say Anything (1989), Singles (1992), Jerry Maguire (1996), Almost Famous (2000), Vanilla Sky (2001)

Quentin Tarantino: Reservoir Dogs (1992), Pulp Fiction (1994), Four Rooms (1995), Jackie Brown (1997), Kill Bill (2003-2004)

Wes Anderson: Bottle Rocket (1996), Rushmore (1998), The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (2004)

Alexander Payne: Bottle Rocket (1994) Citizen Ruth (1996), Election (1999), About Schmidt (2002), Sideways (2004)

Sofia Coppola: The Virgin Suicides (1999), Lost in Translation (2003)

American New Wave's Supporting Players

Tim Burton: Edward Scissorhands (1990), The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), Ed Wood (1994), Sleepy Hollow (1999)

Robert Rodriguez: El Mariachi (1992), Desperado (1995), Four Rooms (1995), Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003)

Kevin Smith: Clerks (1994), Chasing Amy (1997), Dogma (1999)

-Catherine Krummey, MovieCat Cinema

     Let me start by saying that I do feel that Jamie Foxx did an excellent job in his portrayal of musical genius Ray Charles in the film Ray. I gave the film 10 stars (out of 10) and I count it has one of my top 100 films.

     Lately, in this year's awards season, I've been noticing how the various groups seem to recognize the breakout hits instead of bonafide stars whose performances, while they may not be surprising, are still terrific, especially in the Best Actor category. For example, who knew that Foxx, the star of a somewhat mediocre TV sitcom (The Jamie Foxx Show) who was once only known as In Living Color's Ugly Wanda, was such a good dramatic actor? His surprisingly good performances in Ray and Michael Mann's crime thriller Collateral, which co-stars Tom Cruise, have won him several nominations, honors and awards this season.

     While Foxx is deserving of this attention, actors we've come to associate as stars are being somewhat overlooked. For example, Johnny Depp gives what might be the best performance of his career in Finding Neverland. Most awards groups only started recognizing Depp for his work in 2003's Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, but most people, like myself, thought that Depp was great before Pirates and think that the under-appreciated actor is deserving of a lot more than simple nominations. Another great performance is found in the dramatic success (finally!!) of Jim Carrey in last spring's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, opposite Kate Winslet, Depp's Neverland co-star.

     So far, all we've heard about the Best Actor awards is Ray, Ray, Ray, and Jamie Foxx, Jamie Foxx, Jamie Foxx. I doubt this will change. For anyone who hasn't seen Ray, it is a must-see, but Neverland and Eternal Sunshine are also must-sees, and I hope that no one forgets that.

     Disney and Pixar's animated hit The Incredibles, while it was a pretty good movie, is another unexpected hit that is taking every nomination, honor and award and running with them. DreamWorks also released Shrek 2, the highest-grossing movie of 2004, a movie that was expected to be good (it was) and has nearly disappeared because everyone is looking at the new big thing, The Incredibles, which was good, but not incredible.

     Sideways is an unexpected film that has also been receiving a lot of awards and nominations this season. While it is an excellent movie (I gave it 9 out of 10 stars), I really do not see why it should be getting all these accolades. The Aviator, on the other hand, was expected to be great, and is also receiving many awards and nominations, but I gave it 8 stars, and think that movies like Eternal Sunshine, Neverland, Kill Bill Vol. 2, Garden State, A Very Long Engagement and The Motorcycle Diaries, which are all 10-star movies, should be receiving a lot more attention than they currently have.

-Catherine Krummey, MovieCat Cinema

     The nominations for the 77th Annual Academy Awards, a.k.a. the Oscars, were announced bright and early January 25. The devoted movie and Oscar buff that I am, I was up just to watch the Academy President Frank Pierson and Oscar-winner Adrien Brody (The Pianist) deliver the noms for the major categories on E! Entertainment Television. Now I offer up my predictions to who will win, who I think should win and who was wrongly left out of the nominees.

     Best Picture. The Aviator, Finding Neverland, Million Dollar Baby, Ray and Sideways are the fab five for Best Picture of 2004, a very deserving and versatile group of films. Everyone has personal favorites that they wish would've been nominated, mine are Kill Bill Vol. 2, Neverland, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Spider-Man 2 and Garden State. One out of five is pretty good. Will win: Aviator; should win: Neverland.

     Best Actor. Of course Jamie Foxx, the only true predictable winner this year, was nominated for his powerhouse performance as legendary musician Ray Charles in Ray alongside Don Cheadle (Hotel Rwanda), Johnny Depp (Neverland), Leonardo DiCaprio (Aviator) and Clint Eastwood (Baby). The real surprise was Eastwood's nomination for Best Actor; either Jim Carrey (Eternal Sunshine) or Liam Neeson (Kinsey) was expected to be in his spot. Missing persons: Carrey, Neeson, Paul Giamatti (Sideways), Javier Bardem (The Sea Inside), Gael Garcia Bernal (The Motorcycle Diaries or Bad Education) and too many more to name. The abundance of strong male performances this year makes it remarkable that the Academy was able to narrow it down to five. A truly disappointing omission is that of Carrey for his brilliant performance in Eternal Sunshine. Will win: Foxx; should win: Depp.

     Best Actress. Annette Bening (Being Julia), Catalina Sandino-Moreno (Maria Full of Grace), Imelda Staunton (Vera Drake), Hilary Swank (Baby) and Kate Winslet (Eternal Sunshine) are nominated for the coveted Best Actress Oscar. Missing persons: Natalie Portman (Garden) and Uma Thurman (Kill Bill Vol. 2). The Star Wars vixen gave the best performance of her career to date in Zach Braff's Garden State, and Thurman was amazing as the Bride in the Quentin Tarantino masterpiece Kill Bill. After snubbing out Bening (American Beauty) in 2000, Swank (Boys Don't Cry) will most likely snub Bening again and win the Oscar, something she truly deserves. Drake's Staunton also gives a great, Oscar-worthy performance. Swank, Bening and Staunton have all won several awards and honors for their respective roles, so it comes down to the three of them. Will win: Swank; should win: Swank.

     Best Director. This race basically comes down to two legends: Eastwood (Baby) and Martin Scorsese (Aviator). These two giants are nominated against Taylor Hackford (Ray), Mike Leigh (Drake) and Alexander Payne (Sideways). Missing persons: Walter Salles, who created a masterpiece in The Motorcycle Diaries, and Tarantino, for his best film to date, Kill Bill Vol. 2. Both Scorsese and Eastwood have received several accolades for their directorial efforts in their respective films, so this is a hard one to predict. Will win: Eastwood; should win: Hackford.

     Best Supporting Actor. Alan Alda (Aviator), Thomas Haden Church (Sideways), Foxx (Collateral), Morgan Freeman (Baby) and Clive Owen (Closer) are the male supporting players up for Oscars this year. Missing persons: David Carradine for Kill Bill and newcomer Rodrigo de la Serna for Motorcycle Diaries. TV's Kung Fu star Carradine gave a strong, versatile performance in Kill Bill, and in his debut, de la Serna was fantastic as Che Guevara's fellow road warrior in Salles' Diaries. This is a hard one to call: Church, Foxx and Owen have all won several awards for their performances. Will win: Church; should win: Freeman.

     Best Supporting Actress. Cate Blanchett (Aviator), Laura Linney (Kinsey), Virginia Madsen (Sideways), Sophie Okonedo (Rwanda) and Portman (Closer) are in a close race for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar. This is even harder to call than Supporting Actor. Blanchett had good performances in Aviator and The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, but I don't think that her performance beats Madsen's deep, touching performance in Sideways. Plus, Blanchett plays Katharine Hepburn, an Oscar favorite, in Aviator. Will win: Blanchett; should win: Madsen.

     Best Foreign Film. As It Is in Heaven, The Chorus (France), Downfall, The Sea Inside (Spain) and Yesterday are the nominees for Best Foreign Film. And with the exceptions of Chorus and Sea, this particular set of nominees is rather disappointing. The masterpieces A Very Long Engagement (France) and The Motorcycle Diaries (Argentina & Brazil) were left out, in addition to Bad Education (Spain), House of Flying Daggers (China) and Maria Full of Grace (Colombia). Alejandro Amenabar's Sea already won 14 Goyas (Spanish Oscars), so its win is very rightly in the bag. Will win: Sea; should win: Sea.

     Best Adapted Screenplay. The nominated movies are Before Sunset, Neverland, Baby, Motorcycle and Sideways. Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor's adaptation for Sideways is great, but the story of Patrick McGee's Neverland is beautiful. Will win: Sideways; should win: Neverland.

     Best Original Screenplay. The nominees are: Aviator, The Incredibles, Rwanda, Eternal Sunshine and Drake. The real-life drama of The Aviator will probably overshadow the inventiveness of Charlie Kaufman's Eternal Sunshine. Will win: Aviator; should win: Eternal Sunshine.

     Best Animated Feature. The Incredibles, Shark Tale and Shrek 2 make three company too for the Best Animated Feature Oscar. Tale got horrible reviews, while the omitted Polar Express got better reviews than Tale. Shrek 2 was expected to be great and it was, but The Incredibles, as a surprising hit and surprisingly good movie, will most likely take home the statuette. Will win: Incredibles; should win: Shrek.

     Best Documentary Feature. Born Into Brothels, The Story of the Weeping Camel, Super Size Me, Tupac: Resurrection and Twist of Fate are the best of non-fiction cinema, according to Academy voters. Somewhat ominously missing from the Best Documentary category is Michael Moore's anti-George W. Bush hit Fahrenheit 9/11. However, Super is a hilarious look into the American counter-culture of fast food, especially McDonald's, from filmmaker Morgan Spurlock. Will win: Super; should win: Super.

     Best Visual Effects. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, I, Robot and Spider-Man 2 are nominated for the Visual Effects Oscar. Robot was a somewhat-moronic movie, I don't even understand why it got a nomination, and Azkaban, while it was a good movie, didn't have the most believable effects. Will win: Spidey; should win: Spidey.

     Best Cinematography. The cinematographers for Aviator, Flying Daggers, The Passion of the Christ, The Phantom of the Opera and Very Long Engagement are all nominated for the Oscar. One important omission from the nominees is the foreign film The Motorcycle Diaries, which I think was shot beautifully. France's Engagement was also shot beautifully, but it will most likely lose to the dominating Aviator. Will win: Aviator; should win: Engagement.

     All in all, I think The Aviator received too many nominations and that Kill Bill Vol. 2, while it may not be an "Academy" movie, should have been acknowledged in, at least, the Best Actress and/or Best Supporting Actor categories. The Aviator was a good movie (I gave it 8 stars out of 10) definitely worthy of nominations, but I don't think that it qualifies as masterpiece material.

     Last year, everyone pretty much new who was going to win long before the nominations even came out: the final Lord of the Rings film would sweep; Mystic River's Sean Penn and Tim Robbins would win, respectively, Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor; Charlize Theron's breakout performance in Monster would win her the Best Actress prize; Cold Mountain's Renee Zellweger would achieve Oscar glory in winning Best Supporting Actress. I can't think of another year that has been that predictable. This year, with the exception of Ray's Foxx as Best Actor, it is nearly impossible to know who will win the movie industry's highest honors. Sideways has sweept the independent awards, but The Aviator has cleaned house at the more mainstream awards. In addition, Million Dollar Baby and Finding Neverland have also won several awards and honors. This makes for a very unpredictable and fun to watch Oscar night.

     The 77th Annual Academy Awards will air live on ABC February 27 at 8 p.m. (ET) and be hosted by comedian Chris Rock. E! will air a pre-show and a post-show. For MovieCat Cinema's complete Academy Award coverage, visit: http://www.geocities.com/moviecatcinema/oscars.html.

-Catherine Krummey

     The word is out. The 21st James Bond pic will officially be Casino Royale, Ian Fleming's original Bond book. Royale was the only title not initially purchased by EON Productions when they started making the 007 films. 1967's Casino Royale, an unrelated spoof of the book and the Bond films, starred Peter Sellers and Woody Allen and poked fun at the spy genre.

     Kill Bill and Pulp Fiction mastermind Quentin Tarantino had expressed interest in doing his own version of Royale with Bond being Pierce Brosnan. Now, however, it would appear that neither Tarantino nor Brosnan will be working on the film, as MGM and EON have already signed Brosnan's Goldeneye director Martin Campbell for Royale and Brosnan issued an official statement announcing that he will no longer portray the martini-loving British spy. In an interview with Britain's FilmFocus, Tarantino said "I always really loved the book and over the course of time, to me, he's (Brosnan) really proven himself to be the James Bond for this generation and he can really pull off that sixties flair that Casino Royale would have if you were going to try and pull it off."

     Campbell says that in his Royale, "Bond is essentially starting out in his career, and has just recently become a part of the double-0 section," according to an interview with the New York Daily News.

     The question now is who will be the sixth actor to play the one and only Bond, James Bond. The other actors who have played Bond are Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton and Brosnan, of course. A who's-who of Hollywood's leading men have been mentioned to slip into the super-spy's tux: Daniel Craig (Enduring Love), Julian McMahon (TV's Nip/Tuck), Ewan McGregor (the new Star Wars trilogy), Hugh Jackman (X-Men), Eric Bana (Hulk), Orlando Bloom (Pirates of the Caribbean), Heath Ledger (The Patriot), Colin Farrell (S.W.A.T.), Jude Law (Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow), Clive Owen (King Arthur), Ioan Gruffaud (Fantastic Four) and most recently, Dougray Scott (Ever After). Brosnan wanted fellow Irishman Farrell, but the actor publicly announced that he would not be Bond. Law, a Brit, has been the leading name in the press as to who will be the next Bond. As of March 13, the front runners were McMahon and Craig. Between those two, I'd have to go with McMahon; Craig seems to villainous. Supporting players Judi Dench and John Cleese are already attached to appear in Royale, which is scheduled to hit theaters in 2006.

     So, basically MGM and EON just ruined what could've been one of the best spy flicks ever made. With no Tarantino and some random guy probably signing on to be 007, this could be bad.

-Catherine Krummey, MovieCat Cinema

     It was announced February 23 that brothers Harvey and Bob Weinstein, the "founding fathers" of Miramax Films, a division of Disney, are stepping down as Miramax's execs, effective this September. The dynamic duo plans on starting a company of their own, New Co. (a temporary name), where they hope to be free from the Disney-like conservatism that forbade them from releasing the controversial Fahrenheit 9/11.

    Disney is transporting the New York-based company to Los Angeles, where it will be under the supervision of a new exec and Disney production president Nina Jacobson. Disney says Miramax will be transformed into an "elite SWAT team," and that the studio will focus on smaller pictures, as lately, Miramax has produced bigger pictures like The Aviator. The new annual budget for the studio will be cut to $350 million. In its glory days, Miramax had a $700 million-a-year budget.

    The reign of Miramax began with the release of Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction in 1994 and took flight in 1996 with the win of the Best Picture Oscar by The English Patient. Miramax has been flying high ever since. In 2003, they also won the Best Picture Oscar for Chicago. The production company became the go-to company for the small pictures that had a chance to be great, but the big studios didn't want to take a chance on them. Miramax took in the abandoned dark horses and really proved that movies with smaller budgets can still be as good as big, gaudy blockbusters. This reign may end as the Weinstein brothers, perhaps the most powerful brothers in Hollywood since the Warners, leave.

-Catherine Krummey, MovieCat Cinema

     Holy crap! An Oscar ceremony that went 20 minutes under the time allotted, as opposed to the standard 40 minutes over. While I might think that's a bad thing, most folks will say it's a good thing. I love the Oscars, and this year's ceremony was a pretty good one, although I was disappointed that they didn't do a "Class Picture," where they gather every living Oscar-winner on stage and take a picture. That would have taken up at least another five minutes.

     Anyway, back to the actual awards. The Aviator won five Academy Awards, and Million Dollar Baby won four. The only other multiple-winners were The Incredibles and Ray with two apiece.

     After presenter Barbra Streisand read "Million Dollar Baby" as Best Picture, I jumped up and shouted "Screw The Aviator!" Aviator was a good film, but Baby was by far better. I was glad to see that Aviator didn't sweep the awards.

     While I would've liked Virginia Madsen (Sideways) and Johnny Depp (Finding Neverland) to win, respectively, Best Supporting Actress and Best Actor, the Oscars went to Cate Blanchett (Aviator) and Jamie Foxx (Ray).

     Critical faves Sideways and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind won Best Adapted and Original Screenplays. Two of my faves won the music awards: Best Score for Finding Neverland and Best Original Song for The Motorcycle Diaries.

     The tribute to movies intro was incredible, any movie lover would just salivate over it. Host Chris Rock's opening monologue was hilarious, and all of the performances, except for Beyonce Knowles' French singing for The Chorus' "Look to Your Path." Another bad thing about this year's telecast was the way they presented some of the awards from the seating area and for others, they had all the nominees form a herd like cattle on stage and announce the winner. Stick with tradition, folks: just read the nominees from the stage and announce the winner and have them walk up to the stage to accept it. For Best Speech, I would have to pick Best Actress Hilary Swank (Baby) for her emotional shout-out to her co-star and Best Director Clint Eastwood. Foxx's emotional tribute to his grandmother was a close second. All of the winners and honorees seem to have a real devotion to the art of movies, which is something that makes me feel very optimistic towards the future of the art of making movies.

-Catherine Krummey, MovieCat Cinema

     Yes, I'm obsessed with movies. I'll be the first to admit that. I am a hard-core movie buff, cinephile, film geek, or whatever you want to call it. But my ultimate movie-related obsession is the Oscars, so every Oscar Night you can count on me watching them or, hopefully one day, actually being at the ceremony. It would be a dream come true for this movie buff.

     My obsessing probably goes a little too far for Oscar time. It starts in November and December with the release of all the Oscar "material," and goes into full swing when the nominations are announced in January. Then the countdown to the Academy Awards begins. Once the night of nights, Oscar Night, arrives, I watch ALL of the coverage, from the pre-show that starts at 11 a.m. through the awards, which start at 7:30 p.m., and all the way to the conclusion of the post-show, 1 a.m. So on this particular day, I watch TV for 14 hours straight. I know it's a little sad, but it's the honest truth. I surround myself with my Oscar books, put my fake Oscar on display, wear my "MovieCat" shirt, have my computer handy to update my website, and, of course, watch all the Oscar coverage.

     The introduction to last night's Oscar ceremony was fantastic. The Dustin Hoffman-narrated intro included clips from hundreds of movies, even some of my lesser-known favorites like Out of Sight. And the closing image of the intro, Charlie Chaplin and Shrek walking off into the distance, was near orgasmic for this particular cinephile. The Oscar ceremony's pure devotion to celebrating cinematic masterpieces, both new and old, as art forms is at the core of why I love them. To me, there is no greater art form than cinema. Period.

-Catherine Krummey

     Everyone has their one movie star/celebrity that if they had the opportunity, they'd have sex with this certain person. Some people have huge lists, but everyone has at least a number one choice. For most, it's Orlando Bloom, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie or Halle Berry. For me, it is most definitely Quentin Tarantino.

     The arrival of this tidbit of information into all of my friends' realms of knowledge has been met with teasing, and the general consensus that I'm just plain old crazy. That's fine by me, because I doubt that I will change my mind on this. Of course actors Michael Vartan, George Clooney and Johnny Depp are further down on my "list," but QT is my definitive number one.

     My reasoning on this: Tarantino is the celebrity I feel I am most like, due to his pure obsession with movies. For example, "I go to movies whenever I can... people have said they want to hang out with me on an average day and do what I do. And I always think they're waiting for me to take them horseback riding or something... I go to movies, sometimes more than once a day, and I watch TV with friends. Occasionally, I go to coffee shops. That and work. That's what I do." This quote, while said by QT, is clearly applicable to me. Finding someone as enthused about movies as I am is one of my dreams, and QT is the celebrity embodiment of that dream.

-Catherine Krummey

     The word on the movie street is that Closer's Clive Owen will play the one and only Agent 007, James Bond in fall 2006's Casino Royale, directed by GoldenEye helmer Martin Campbell. At the March 28 premiere of Owen's latest film, Sin City, which was co-directed by Robert Rodriguez, Frank Miller and Quentin Tarantino, Owen was very indecisive about saying "yes" or "no" to questions pertaining to the legendary role. All he said was that he'd be "busy for a while."

     Sean Connery originated the role of Bond on the big screen in 1962's Dr. No. Since then, Roger Moore, George Lazenby, Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan have played the British spy. Brosnan recently announced that he would no longer play Bond.

     Owen's other work includes the titular role in last year's King Arthur, a supporting role in 2001's Oscar-nominated Gosford Park and the 2003 flop Beyond Borders, which co-starred Angelina Jolie.

     For more on Casino Royale and the other Bond contenders, check out my other article "A Bond-less Bond" and MovieCat Cinema for the latest news updates.

-Catherine Krummey

     On April 27, President Bush signed the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act, legislation aimed at helping parents keep their children from seeing sex scenes, violence and curse words in DVDs. The bill gives legal protection to the fledgling filtering technology that helps parents automatically skip or mute sections of commercial movie DVDs. The act also contains crackdowns on copyright infringement by providing no legal protection for those companies that actually sell copies of the edited movies.

      On April 26, AMC aired a special in collaboration with ABC News on this issue called Bleep! Censoring Hollywood. Bleep showed the people on both sides of the story, the highly-religious people who sell copies of edited/filtered movies and the members of the Directors' Guild of America (DGA) who are in protest of what the other side's doing. The members of the DGA interviewed for the special include Ray director Taylor Hackford and Traffic director Steven Soderbergh. One random woman interviewed for the special said she took her 10-year-old daughter to a PG-13 movie and felt uncomfortable having her daughter there. PG-13 means that a 10-year-old probably shouldn't be watching the movie! That's the parent's fault, not Hollywood's, thank you very much. Kids are not meant to see PG-13 and R-rated movies, that's why they have those ratings!

     Stopping the sale of edited DVDs is a good thing, and the filters would have also been good to stop too. Editing out anything considered vulgar in PG-13 and R movies could just ruin them. Imagine Bridget Jones's Diary without the f*** drawn out in a subtitle on the screen. Or The Godfather without the infamous horse head scene. No "yippie kay-yay mother f***er" from Bruce Willis in Die Hard. Anything from Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's non-family movies would be ridiculous if edited. I couldn't imagine watching or even enjoying edited versions of Kill Bill, Pulp Fiction or Sin City. That's just plain crazy, and these examples are just a start. If you're worried about what is said or what happens in a PG-13 or R rated movie, don't watch it. You won't get the full effect of the movie with all the violence, sex and foul language edited out.

     This issue of censorship is the only issue that I can carry out a good argument on, as it's something that I'm adamantly against. Movies are an artistic form of expression, and limiting any form of art is downright evil. It is not the government's job to stop parents from allowing their kids to see PG-13 and R-rated movies or help the parents edit out vulgarities. That responsibility is solely in the hands of parents and guardians. PG-13 and R movies are rated that way for a reason: KIDS ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO WATCH THEM!

     Enduring Love's Daniel Craig, who had been a leading contender in the race to be the next James Bond, officially announced that he will not play the martini-loving British spy. Last week, rumors buzzed that Sin City's Clive Owen was in negotiations for a two-picture Bond deal for $40 million. However, Owen has signed on to star in director Alfonso Cuaron's sci-fi flick Children of Men, which takes place the future where a former radical (Owen) must protect the first pregnant woman on earth in almost 20 years. I guess Owen's not Casino Royale's Bond then. On April 26, the New York Post reported that Judi Dench, a.ka. M, said that Pierce Brosnan will play Bond for the fifth time in Royale, despite previous reports to the contrary. How excited am I? There are no words. "I have no words!"

     President Bush signed legislation aimed at helping parents keep their children from seeing sex scenes, violence and foul language in movie DVDs April 27. The bill gives legal protections to the fledgling filtering technology that helps parents automatically skip or mute sections of commercial movie DVDs. F***ing ridiculous is what I have to say. Read more about this below in "Censoring Hollywood, One Filter at a Time?"

     Universal Pictures is teaming with producer-director Michael Bay (Bad Boys) to remake the 1963 Alfred Hitchcock horror classic The Birds. Why the hell are they even touching one of the best horror movies ever made?! And if they had to do it, surely they could find someone better than the guy who brought us Bad Boys II!

     Actress and mother-of-twins Julia Roberts graces the cover of People's "50 Most Beautiful People" issue for a record third time. According to an online poll conducted by the magazine, tabloid fodder Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt were named the most beautiful woman and man. The magazine hit newsstands April 29.

     Us Weekly reports that Matt Damon is following in pal Ben Affleck's footsteps, as he has become engaged to Florida-based bartender Luciana Barroso. Last week, People reported Affleck's engagement to Daredevil co-star Jennifer Garner. A double wedding for the Oscar-winning Good Will Hunting duo? Eh... maybe not.

     Reps for TV's Dawson's Creek star Katie Holmes, 26, and Tom Cruise, 42, have confirmed the two have been dating for a few weeks. The duo was photographed in Rome this week, where Cruise is being honored with a lifetime achievement award at the David di Donatello Awards. This is the second random Dawson's Creek hook-up in a short period of time, as last week it was reported that Michelle Williams (Jen) is having a baby with Heath Ledger. Holmes' ex-fiance, American Pie's Chris Klein, pled guilty to once count of DUI stemming from a February traffic stop in San Diego. He was sentenced to five years' probation, 150 hours of community service, 90-day license suspension and an $1,800 fine. Ouch. Cruise's ex, Penelope Cruz, is reteaming with her All About My Mother director Pedro Almodovar for Volver (to return), a comedy involving a grandmother, a mother and a daughter who journey from the south of Spain to Madrid. Carmen Maura, who starred in Almodovar's Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, co-stars.

     Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic Roger Ebert will receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame June 23. Awesome!

Check out MCC's Movie News @ www.geocities.com/moviecatcinema/movienews

     The nominees for the seventh annual MTV Movie Awards were announced May 4. Anchorman (4), Mean Girls (4), Spider-Man 2 (4), The Incredibles (3), Napoleon Dynamite (3), Kill Bill Vol. 2 (3) and Dodgeball (3) picked up the most noms.

     This particular awards show is known for its more mainstream picks, although this year MTV acknowledged popular indies Garden State and Napoleon Dynamite (an MTV Films co-production), in addition to the foreign film House of Flying Daggers for Best Fight.

     The popular awards movies of the 2004-2005 season were left out, for the most part, of the nominees for the MTV Movie Awards. Critical faves Sideways and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind received no nominations; Finding Neverland picked up a Male Breakthrough nom for Freddie Highmore. Best Picture Academy Award-winner Million Dollar Baby only has a nomination for Hilary Swank for Best Actress. Ray picked up two: Best Movie and Best Actor for Jamie Foxx. The Aviator also picked up two noms for Best Actor (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Best Action Sequence.

     The MTV Movie Awards love Kill Bill, so therefore I must love the MTV Movie Awards. Kill Bill Vol. 2 is nominated for Best Movie, Best Actress (Uma Thurman) and Best Fight (Daryl Hannah vs. Thurman). Last year, Thurman won Best Actress for Vol. 1 and Lucy Liu won Best Villain. Kill Bill director Quentin Tarantino is a fan of the awards show, so you can be pretty sure he'll be in attendance. If the MTV Movie Awards had a Best Director category, Q.T. would probably have won that four times, and be up for his fifth.

     The seventh annual MTV Movie Awards take place June 4 and will be hosted by Fever Pitch's Jimmy Fallon. They will air on MTV June 9 at 8:30 p.m. (ET). See all the nominees at www.geocities.com/moviecatcinema/mtvmovieawards.html.

-Catherine Krummey, MovieCat Cinema

     Larry King is not a film critic. Not even a film reporter. Sure, he has a talk show on CNN, but the focus of his show is not on movies. He occasionally interviews a movie star or director, but he is not qualified, at least in my opinion, to have the little "blurb" on the movie ads or to be touted as a film critic as he is for online Kingdom of Heaven ads. Sure, Kingdom of Heaven might be "Ridley Scott at his masterful best," but I think Roger Ebert, Richard Roeper, Owen Gleiberman, Lisa Schwarzbaum or another film critic should be the one with the quote, not Larry King. I know King was also quoted in an advertising campaign for one of the award contenders late last year or early this year (I can't remember which one), and it still annoyed the hell out of me then. -Catherine Krummey, MovieCat Cinema

   For example: One of my favorite movie memories is when I went to see a movie without parents for the first time. I saw The Haunting, which wasn't that great of a movie, in the summer between seventh and eighth grade with three of my friends. It was just a lot of fun. -Catherine Krummey, St. Louis, MO

     Batman Begins took in over $15 million in its debut June 15. The movie is freaking awesome. Read my review here. Tom Cruise announced at a Paris news conference that he and Batman Begins co-star Katie Holmes are engaged after he proposed to her atop the Eiffel Tower early June 17. Eye rolls, we'll see if it lasts through the summer. Ultimate Bottom Line on TomKat: MCC will NOT report on the every move of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, who are dating, if you've been living under a rock, unless they for real get married or - dun dun dun - split up.

     Writer-director J.J. Abrams has cast Keri Russell opposite Tom Cruise in the upcoming Mission: Impossible 3, which was originally intended for Scarlett Johansson, who dropped out a month ago. I guess it pays to have friends: Russell starred in the Abrams TV drama Felicity. Could be scary.

     NBC Universal will premiere the trailer for King Kong June 27 from 8:59:30-9:02 PM ET on NBC, Sci-Fi, USA, Bravo, MSNBC, CNBC, Telemundo, Mun2 and Universal HD. Kong hits theaters December 14. I can't wait!

     According to a poll released by the Associated Press and America Online, 73 percent of Americans would rather stay home and watch a movie on DVD than go to theaters. Also, nearly half said that the flicks that do get released are getting worse. I'm in the minority with the first group, but I do agree with the second point. The proof: Gigli, From Justin to Kelly, Glitter, Catwoman: all in the past five or six years.

     Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson and Angelina Jolie are in talks to star in the comedy The Mirror. The premise of the movie is that Stiller awakens one day to find his mirror image massing himself off as the real star. Stiller's character can't handle the notion that everyone, even his own parents, prefer the mirror image. Wilson plays Stiller's friend, Jolie plays an "irresistible sex goddess" (no, really?) and Stiller's real-life wife, Christine Taylor, plays his wife. Owen's brother and frequent co-star Luke Wilson is in talks to star in director Ivan Reitman's comedy Super Ex, about a man whose ex-girlfriend uses her superpowers to get back at him. Jolie's Mr. & Mrs. Smith co-star and ex-husband, Brad Pitt and Billy Bob Thornton, respectively, are teaming up for Peace Like a River, which is about a family that gets into a deadly confrontation with some neighborhood thugs. Thornton will star and Pitt will produce.

     Beyonce Knowles, Jamie Foxx and Eddie Murphy are teaming up for DreamWorks' adaptation of the Tony Award-winning musical Dreamgirls from director Bill Condon, who wrote the screenplay for Best Picture Oscar-winner Chicago. Dreamgirls follows the rise of the Dreamettes, a female singing trio who does back-up for James "Thunder" Early (Murphy), before they take over the spotlight and become The Dreams.

     Hugh Grant, Dennis Quaid, Willem Dafoe and Mandy Moore have signed on for Universal Pictures and Depth of Field's social satire American Dreamz, which will be directed by In Good Company's Paul Weitz. Good cast and good director, so most likely a good movie.

     Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe has joined the cast of the coming-of-age drama December Boys. Radcliffe will play the oldest of four orphans competing for the affection of a childless couple keen to adopt a son. The film takes place in the late '60s on an isolated beach resort and is based on Michael Noonan's novel of the same name.

     Spider-Man Tobey Maguire will star in and produce New Line Cinema's romantic comedy Quiet Type. The story centers on a mute man from a small town who moves to New York to pursue his dreams of conducting an orchestra. Sounds interesting, but hey, I'll see any Maguire flick.

     Oscar-winning actor Tim Robbins is in final negotiations to star in director Philip Noyce's based-on-a-true-story drama Hot Stuff, about an ordinary man who resorts to terror during the apartheid in South Africa.

     Clive Owen will star in Shoot 'Em Up, an action flick that follows a man entrusted to protect a baby recently delivered in a shootout from an army of gunmen. You passed up Bond for this?! Or has he???

     Men in Black II's Johnny Knoxville has signed on for the Warner Bros. baseball movie Stolen Season. Season is reportedly about former Baltimore Orioles catcher Rick Dempsey. In the summer of 1963, his coach, John Jennings, robbed a string of 20 banks up and down the California coast, using the baseball team's travel as a cover.

     The Fast and the Furious' Vin Diesel will star as Agent 47 in 20th Century Fox's adaptation of Hitman, the best-selling video game franchise from Eidos and IO Interactive, Variety reports. Talk about being typecast.

     Streep For President: Falling in Love co-stars Robert DeNiro and Meryl Streep are in talks to star in the Disney comedy First Man, about a business mogul who puts his career on hold to help his wife become the first female president of the United States.

     Anthony Hopkins, Robin Wright Penn, Ray Winstone and Brendan Gleeson are in talks to star in director Robert Zemeckis' adaptation of the literary classic Beowulf. Beowulf is an Old English epic poem about a knight who slays a monster and becomes king. It was boring in high school English class , I really hope it isn't as a movie.

     Virginia Madsen, Tim Roth, Joan Plowright, Clifton Powell, Manuel San Martin, John Kani and Patrick David have signed on for director Arthur Allan Seidelman's In the Shadow of Wings. The film centers on the true story of an American plastic surgeon (Madsen) whose family is killed in an airplane crash while on vacation in Kenya.

     Michael Keaton and Brendan Fraser will star in writer-director Michael Caleo's The Last Time. The movie follows a contented salesman who is teamed with the top moneymaker in a New York conglomerate, a grumpy loner who triens to show him and his fiancee the awful realities of the world. Sounds like The Devil's Advocate with a so-so cast.

     The Wayans brothers are reportedly eying a vacant Oakland Army Base as a location to develop a project that would feature a movie studio, entertainment-themed attractions, retail shops and a hotel. So it's the Wayans Bros. instead of Warner Bros. now?

     Lorna Thayer, who played the waitress who antagonized Jack Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces, has died at age 85. Film composer Jaime Mendoza-Nava has also passed away at age 79.

-Catherine Krummey, MovieCat Cinema

Read all the latest movie news from MCC @ www.geocities.com/moviecatcinema/movienews.html

     Film critic Roger Ebert received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame June 23. Congrats and yay! Someone truly more deserving than Seacrest. Annette Bening, Steve Martin, Ray Romano and Charlize Theron are among the stars who will receive stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2006.

     German film critics are protesting Paramount for implementing a worldwide embargo preventing reviewers from publishing their critiques of Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds until the film's global release date June 29. The critics called the embargo a "violation of basic constitutional rights." Is the movie that bad?! Tom Cruise hosted a special screening of the  War of the Worlds for hundreds of fans in Los Angeles June 20. Laurence Fishburne and Philip Seymour Hoffman are joining Cruise and Keri Russell for writer-director J.J. Abrams' upcoming Mission: Impossible 3. Two good additions.

     Frankly, my dear, I do give a damn: The line "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" from Gone With the Wind was named the American Film Institute's (AFI) number one quote on its "100 Years... 100 Quotes" list and special, which aired June 21 on CBS. Casablanca had the most entries at six, with "Here's looking at you, kid" at number five, the highest-ranked one from that particular movie.

     Paramount Pictures and Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston's Plan B production company have entered a first-look agreement that gives Paramount an exclusive first bid at producing projects developed by Plan B over the next three years. Paramount Pictures Chairman and CEO Brad Grey is the third founding member of Plan B. Warner Bros' Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Plan B's first endeavor, hits theaters July 15.

     The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) invited 112 members of the film industry to become members. Members of AMPAS vote on who should be nominated for and win Oscars. Gael Garcia Bernal, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Sophie Okonedo, Clive Owen, Charlotte Rampling, Jean Reno, Stellan Skarsgard, Imelda Staunton and Ziyi Zhang are the foreign actors that got in. American actors Thomas Haden Church, Jennifer Coolidge, Will Ferrell, Jamie Foxx, Paul Giamatti and Mykelti Williamson were extended invitations as well. Five directors got in: Alejandro Amenabar, Marc Forster, Oliver Hirschbiegel, Andy Tennant and Joel Zwick. Paramount CEO Brad Grey, Spider-Man producer Avi Arad, Robert Rodriguez's producer-wife Elizabeth Avellan, Crash creator Paul Haggis, The Motorcycle Diaries writer Jose Rivera and School of Rock writer and co-star Mike White were also invited to join AMPAS. On June 22, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voted against granting a consortium of stunt performers their request for an Oscar in their field. Oscar-winning Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar received a Bunuel's Razor Award for the Best Spanish Film of 2004 for his latest hit, Bad Education. Again, congrats and yay!

     The Los Angeles trial for the case of a photographer accused of trying to extort money from Cameron Diaz via racy photos of her taken before she was famous started June 23. Diaz's Charlie's Angels co-star Lucy Liu will star opposite Cedric the Entertainer in Les Mayfield's action comedy The Cleaner. Liu plays an FBI agent posing as a waitress to Cedric's amnesiac janitor who thinks he's an undercover agent. Liu will also executive produce and star in the independent thriller Devil to Pay. Diaz's pop star boyfriend Justin Timberlake is in talks to join Christina Ricci and Samuel L. Jackson in the film Black Snake Moan. Ricci and Jackson are good, but I don't know about Timberlake - or the title for that matter.

     Fox and Marvel Enterprises are suing Sony and Revolution Studios over Sony's new comic book satire Zoom, starring Tim Allen, which will hit theaters around the same time as Fox's X3. Fox and Marvel claim that Zoom rips off elements of the X-Men.

     Us Weekly reports that Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner got married June 29 in the Caribbean islands of Turks and Caicos. The couple is expecting a child this fall. I guess Bennifer really is working out after all. Warner Bros. has acquired the rights to remake the Japanese film Be With You. Variety reports that Garner will star in and produce the film through her Vandalia Films production company.

     The Princess Diaries' Anne Hathaway will join Meryl Streep for the big screen adaptation of Lauren Weisberger's novel The Devil Wears Prada.

     Terry George and Keir Pearson, the screenwriters of Hotel Rwanda, won the Humanitas Prize June 29 for helping bring attention to the victims of the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

     Writer-director Paul Haggis' successful film drama Crash will be brought to a television near you on the FX network. Don Cheadle, who also starred in the movie, will likely appear in and direct several episodes of the gritty race drama should it go to series.

     Variety reports that Brian DePalma and producer Art Linson are reteaming to develop The Untouchables: Capone Rising. The prequel to the filmmaker's 1987 hit will follow a young Al Capone rising through the ranks of the criminal underworld. Who will play Capone?

     Warner Books will publish the memoirs of British actor Rupert Everett (My Best Friend's Wedding, A Midsummer Night's Dream) in the fall of 2006.

     Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon's Chow Yun-Fat will co-star in Pirates of the Caribbean 3 as Captain Sao Feng, a notorious pirate who plays a major role in the second sequel to Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. Both sequels are currently filming back-to-back. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest will hit theaters in July 2006, and 3 will be released in the summer of 2007. Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley are back for both as well.

     Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt stopped in Ethiopia July 7 to pick up the baby girl Jolie is adopting, Zahara Marley Jolie, who was orphaned by AIDS. Jolie adopted her three-year-old son, Maddox, from an orphanage in Cambodia in 2002.

     Nicolas Cage will star in Paramount's production of director Oliver Stone's untitled feature about the rescue of two Port Authority police officers from the rubble of the World Trade Center.

     Ryan Phillippe, Jesse Bradford and Adam Beach have signed on for the Clint Eastwood-directed Flags of Our Fathers, a World War II epic that tells the story of the troops who fought the battle of Iwo Jima. Phillippe's Crash co-star Brendan Fraser is teaming up with Mos Def, Catalina Sandino-Moreno and Alice Braga for Millennium Films' thriller Journey to the End of the Night for writer-director Eric Eason. Journey is the story of a son and father separately planning to escape the desolation of their lives.

     Revelations Entertainment, a firm co-founded by Morgan Freeman, is teaming up with Intel to form a digital entertainment company called ClickStar that will make first-run movies available to consumers online. More declining box office numbers.

     Batman Begins' Gary Oldman has signed on for director David Fincher's thriller Zodiac. Oldman plays San Francisco attorney Melvin Belli, who received letters from the Zodiac killer in 1969.

     Warner Home Video will release two new remastered DVD editions of The Wizard of Oz. The two-disc set will contain loads of extras and a new digital transfer, while the three-disc set adds a new documentary on Oz author L. Frank Baum.

     Leonardo DiCaprio's Appian Way production company will develop and produce a feature film adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's novel Cat's Cradle. No word on if DiCaprio will star as well. This week, DiCaprio also bought Blackadore Caye off the coast of Belize, where he hopes to build a resort with renewable energy resources.

     Jackie Chan is blaming co-star Chris Tucker for the delay in making Rush Hour 3. Chan says that Tucker has too many demands for the movie's final cut.

     Marisa Tomei, Craig Bierko and Regina Hall are teaming up for the psychological thriller Danika. Tomei is the title character, a woman whose fears for her children are manifested in premonitions of death and disaster. Bierko plays Tomei's husband, while Hall is her psychiatrist.

     A group has raised money to build a 10-foot statue of actor James Garner in front of the Sooner Theater in his hometown of Norman, Oklahoma, as well as dedicate a James Garner Commemorative Plaza, which they plan to open in April 2006.

     Zsa Zsa Gabor suffered a stroke July 6. The 89-year-old actress was taken to a Los Angeles hospital, where she underwent emergency surgery to clear a blocked artery. Her husband, Frederic von Anhelt, announced July 7 that Gabor is in "intensive care, critical but stable."

     Screenwriter-producer Ernest Lehman, whose credits include North By Northwest, The Sound of Music, West Side Story and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, has died. He was 89. Lehman became the first screenwriter to receive the Lifetime Achievement Oscar in 2001.

     Dawnette Knight, who pled no contest to stalking Catherine Zeta-Jones and making criminal threats, has been sentenced to three years in prison. In other legal news, Roy Disney and Stanley Gold have dropped their shareholder lawsuit challenging Disney's selection for CEO after expressing confidence in CEO-elect Bob Iger.

     Fox's Fantastic Four, which has been given mixed reviews, drew in the American public enough for the weekend of July 8 through 10 to end the 19-week slump in the box office. The Associated Press reports that the top 12 films took in an estimated $139.5 million, up 1.2 percent from the same weekend in 2004. Now that's some truly fantastic news. I hope it will be for more than one week.

     Jack Black is reteaming with School of Rock writer Mike White for Paramount's Nacho Libre, directed by Napoleon Dynamite's Jared Hess. Black will play a Mexican priest who secretly moonlights as a masked wrestler in order to save an orphanage from closure. Paramount and DreamWorks also made a joint announcement July 13 that the live-action Transformers movie will hit the big screen on July 4, 2007.

     Kate Hudson and Owen Wilson are teaming up for Universal's comedy You, Me and Dupree. Wilson plays best man Randy Dupree, who stays on as a houseguest with newlyweds Carl and Molly, eventually wearing out his welcome. Wilson will also star in Paramount's remake of the 1947 classic film The Secret Life of Walter Mitty for director Mark Waters. The story follows the title character, a dreamer whose vivid imagination allows him to escape from his ordinary life. The story of the remake will be closer to the 1939 James Thurber story than the 1947 movie. Kill Bill's Uma Thurman and The Royal Tenenbaums' Luke Wilson (Owen's brother) are teaming up for director Ivan Reitman's romantic comedy Super Ex. Thurman will play a superhero who falls for a regular guy (Wilson). When he dumps her, she uses her powers to turn his life into a nightmare.

     Henry Winkler will play Adam Sandler's father in Sony and Revolution's comedy Click, about a remote that enables Sandler to fast-forward and rewind to different parts of his life. Winkler previously appeared as the coach in the Sandler hit The Waterboy. Sandler's Punch-Drunk Love co-star Emily Watson has signed on for the family adventure film Crusade for director Ben Sombogaart. Crusade is based on Thea Beckman's bestselling novel Crusade in Jeans.

     Lions Gate Films has signed a multipicture deal with S.W.A.T. co-star LL Cool J. One of the films is an urban retelling of Fatal Attraction. Ewan McGregor and original Fatal Attraction star Glenn Close are teaming up for a musical remake of the Hollywood classic Sunset Blvd. McGregor plays an out-of-work screenwriter whose path crosses with fading silent film star Norma Desmond (Close).

     Sarah Jessica Parker will star in and produce a big-screen adaptation of Rebecca Gilman's play Spinning Into Butter. Parker plays a college dean who's forced to face her feelings about race when a hate crime shakes things up on campus.

     The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants' Blake Lively and Herbie: Fully Loaded's Justin Long will co-star in Universal's comedy Accepted, which centers on a high school senior (Long) who finds a way to avoid the pressure to attend college. Lively plays Long's friend, whom he has a secret crush on.

     American Beauty co-star Chris Cooper has signed on to star in Fortress Entertainment's drama The Road Back. The film follows a man dealing with the breakdown of his marriage and an increasingly icy family relationship in the wake of the suicide of his daughter, an Iraq war veteran. Sounds good and powerful.

     In America filmmaker Jim Sheridan's next project will be the Irish mafia film Emerald City, a Radar Pictures and Relevant Entertainment co-production. City, based on a true story, is a look into the world of Irish organized crime in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of New York City.

     Good Will Hunting director Gus Van Sant has announced that his next project will be an adaptation of Audrey Niffenegger's novel The Time Traveler's Wife. Wife is loosely based on Homer's Odyssey and centers on a woman and a man with a time-traveling gene that enables him to jump to different times in her life.

     The three Lord of the Rings movies topped Amazon.com's list of their all-time bestselling DVDs. In honor of the company's 10th anniversary, never-before-seen footage from the trilogy was screened in a webcast July 16. Gwyneth Paltrow and Lord of the Rings star Orlando Bloom will make cameo appearances and Brittany Murphy, Matthew Rhys, Catherine Tate and Santiago Cabrera will star in the romantic comedy Love and Other Disasters. The story revolves around a group of friends in London who discover sometimes love isn't like the movies. Proof (which stars Paltrow), In Her Shoes and the new Pride and Prejudice are among the films on the slate of this year's Toronto International Film Festival, which runs September 8-17. The Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line, which stars The Village's Joaquin Phoenix as the legendary "Man in Black," will also have its world premiere at the festival. Line hits theaters on November 18.

     Opening arguments began July 13 in the criminal trial of a photographer who allegedly tried to sell topless photos of Cameron Diaz taken before she was famous.

     A federal judge dismissed a $20 million libel and defamation lawsuit July 14 filed against filmmaker Michael Moore by the brother of Oklahoma bombing conspirator Terry Nichols.

     An L.A. judge threatened to have actor Tom Sizemore arrested if he fails to show up for his next hearing on July 22, which addresses whether or not he violated his probation in his drug case.

     Sandra Bullock and TV's Monster Garage mastermind Jesse James were married in a sunset ceremony July 16 near Santa Barbara.

     The Perfect Man's Hilary Duff and Deuce Bigalo: European Gigolo's Rob Schneider will co-host the Teen Choice Awards on Fox August 16. This is perhaps the strangest duo I've ever heard of. Duff's Agent Cody Banks co-star Frankie Muniz has become engaged to his girlfriend, Jamie, whom he has been dating since the spring.

     Brad Pitt checked out of Los Angeles' Cedars Sinai Medical Center July 13, two days after being admitted for "flu-like symptoms" that turned out to be viral meningitis. His publicist says the Mr. & Mrs. Smith star is "doing well" and resting at home.

     The Manchurian Candidate co-star Angela Lansbury underwent knee-replacement surgery July 14.

     Actress Frances Langford, who appeared in dozens of movies including Broadway Melody, Yankee Doodle Dandy, The Glenn Miller Story and Every Night at Eight, passed away July 11. She was 92.

     Tom Hanks will star in Universal's Charlie Wilson's War as a rogue Texas congressman who oversaw a successful CIA covert operation in Afghanistan that heped bring down the Iron Curtain. Hanks' Playtone Productions will also be teaming with Warner Bros. for the CGI animation flick The Ant Bully, which will hit theaters on August 4, 2006.

     Batman Begins' Christian Bale and Sahara's Steve Zahn are teaming up for Werner Herzog's independent action-drama Rescue Dawn, which is based on the German filmmaker's 1977 acclaimed documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly. Dawn tells the real-life story of U.S. fighter pilot Dieter Dengler (Bale), a German-American shot down and captured in Laos during the Vietnam War. Disney confirmed July 17 at the San Diego Comic-Con that Bale's Batman co-star Liam Neeson will provide the voice for Aslan the Lion for The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, which hits theaters December 9.

     Christina Ricci will star in Type-A Films and Stone Village Pictures' modern-day fable Penelope. Ricci plays the titular character, a woman under a curse who tries to end a lifelong string of bad luck. Reese Witherspoon, who started Type-A, will also have a supporting role.

     Box office numbers were up for the second weekend in a row, July 15 to 17, thanks to the draw of new releases Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Wedding Crashers. Additional support from the previous week's slump-stopper, Fantastic Four, also helped. Matt Dillon is joining Kate Hudson and Crashers star Owen Wilson for Universal's comedy You, Me and Dupree. The movie tells the story of a newlywed couple (Dillon & Hudson) whose relationship problems boil over when the groom's unemployed best man, Dupree (Wilson), moves in and seems to have no intention of leaving.

     Mel Gibson is teaming with Disney to distribute his next film, Apocalypto, which he wrote and will direct. The film is set in an ancient civilization 3,000 years ago, and the film's title is a Greek term which means "an unveiling" or "new beginning."

     The Weinstein Co. is teaming with Warner Bros. to distribute the first all-CGI-animated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film, which will be released in 2007. Awesome!

     Universal and Imagine Entertainment are teaming up for an untitled heist comedy to be directed by Rush Hour's Brett Ratner and starring Eddie Murphy and Chris Rock. The movie is about a couple of blue-collar guys who aspire to pull off the perfect heist. Murphy came up with the idea and has expressed a desire to work with Rock.

     The life of Notorious B.I.G. is being made into a feature film with a script written by journalist Cheo Hodari Coker, the last person to interview the rapper before his untimely death. The biopic, produced by Fox Searchlight, will be directed by Training Day's Antoine Fuqua.

     Sin City's Rosario Dawson will star in and produce the psychological thriller Descent. Dawson plays Maya, a college student who turns into a vengeful seductress after a shocking act of violence.

     Memento's Guy Pearce and Constantine's Rachel Weisz will star in the Houdini drama Death Defying Acts. Based on true events during escape artist Harry Houdini's 1926 tour of Britain, the film follows his relationship with a woman he encounters in Scotland.

     An Officer and a Gentleman's Louis Gosset Jr. will star as a Miami police detective battling drug traffickers in the film Caribbean Manhunt.

     Melissa Gilbert has made the decision to not run for a third term as President of the Screen Actors Guild because she wants to spend more time with her family.

     Selena producer Moctesuma Esparza is building a chain of movie theaters called Maya Cinemas that aims to serve the 41 million Latinos living in the United States. The first theater opens July 29 in Salinas, California.

     Jude Law has issued a public apology to fiancee and Alfie co-star Sienna Miller, admitting that he has been having an affair with Daisy Wright, the nanny of one of his kids. "I want to publicly apologize to Sienna and our respective families for the pain that I have caused," Law said in a statement released to the British Press Association.

     Tom Cruise's couch-hopping antics on Oprah has topped TV Guide's poll to determine the Wildest Celebrity Meltdown. Runners-up include Michael Jackson, Courtney Love, Farrah Fawcett and Mariah Carey.

     Salma Hayek appeared at a Judiciary Committee Hearing on the Violence Against Women Act July 19 in Washington D.C. to speak about the importance of lending support to battered women.

     Filmmaker David Lynch has announced that he'd like to raise $7 million to launch the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace, a massive transcendental meditation program. The program would begin in the United States and later spread worldwide, teaching school kids stress-reducing techniques which he believes will go a long way toward achieving world peace.

     Roman Polanski has won his libel suit against Vanity Fair, which published a 2002 article claiming he attempted to seduce a woman en route to wife Sharon Tate's funeral. The Pianist director was awarded about $87,000 in damages. Polanski viewed the proceedings via video link from his Paris hotel room in order to avoid extradition to the United States.

     A Los Angeles judge issued a restraining order July 19 against a woman who is allegedly trying to distribute a sex tape involving Colin Farrell. The actor filed suit July 18 seeking to block the sale of a 15-minute sex tape featuring the actor and the woman, former Playboy playmate Nicole Narain. A hearing has been scheduled for August 10.

     A hearing has been scheduled for Freddie Prinze Jr.'s lawsuit against his former manager, Ric Beddingfield, whom he alleges gave bad business advice, costing more than $700,000.

     Tom Sizemore admitted to using a prosthetic device in an attempt to fake a May 25 drug test in an L.A. court July 22. A judge ordered the actor to be confined at a Pasadena rehab facility pending a September 15 court hearing.

     James Doohan, who played Scotty the engineer in the Star Trek TV series and movies, died July 20. He was 85. His final request was that his ashes are scattered in space. "Beam me up, Scotty."

Quote of the Week: "American popular culture is my culture, and I don't just live in it; I love it madly, and writing about it seems as natural - and as necessary - as breathing." -Stephen King, in his column "The Pop of King" in the July 29 issue of Entertainment Weekly

Get the latest news on the movie world at www.geocities.com/moviecatcinema/movienews.html

     Nicole Kidman will star in German director Oliver Hirschbiegel's Invasion, a remake of the 1956 sci-fi horror classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Invasion centers on Carol (Kidman), a woman who uncovers a conspiracy in a small town where the inhabitants' personalities seem to be changing. Kidman will also star in Wong Kar-Wai's A Lady From Shanghai as a glamorus woman who is in danger and in love with a spy.

     Russell Crowe is reuniting with Gladiator director Ridley Scott for A Good Year, which follows a London banker who moves to Provence, France. Year is based on Peter Mayle's novel.

     20th Century Fox is updating the Charlie Chan series with a new film starring Lucy Liu as the granddaughter of the fictional Chinese-American detective. Liu will also executive produce. A jury has convicted photographer John Rutter of attempted grand theft, forgery and perjury in connection with his attempts to sell topless photos of Liu's Charlie's Angels co-star Cameron Diaz without her consent. Rutter was taken into custody immediately and faces up to six years behind bars once he is sentenced on September 17. Diaz has also accepted undisclosed libel damages and a public apology from British tabloid The Sun after it published a story alleging that she was seen making out with married television producer Shane Nickerson. The paper now acknowleges the incident involved nothing more than a "goodbye hug" between friends.

     Maggie Gyllenhaal and Maria Bello will play the wives of Port Authority officers rescued from the World Trade Center in Oliver Stone's upcoming 9/11 movie. The duo joins Nicolas Cage and Michael Pena, who play two Port Authority officers.

     Paul Walker is joining Ryan Phillippe, Jesse Bradford and Adam Beach for the Clint Eastwood-directed World War II film Flags of Our Fathers. That should be a helluva lot better than Fast and the Furious 3.

     Jeff Bridges, Shia LaBeouf, James Woods, Zooey Deschanel, Jane Krakowski and Jon Heder are providing some of the voices for Sony Pictures Animation's CGI film Surf's Up.

     The foursome of movies released July 22 (Bad News Bears, The Devil's Rejects, Hustle & Flow, The Island) performed poorly at the box office for the weekend of July 22-24, stopping the two week break from the 19-week box office slump. The slump was stopped by Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Wedding Crashers and Fantastic Four, which remained the top three, respectively, for the second week in a row. Producers pulled printable Purple Hearts advertised as a gimmick to pick up women from the Wedding Crashers website July 25 after complaints from Vietnam vets. This summer's box office giant, Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith, will be released on DVD November 1 on a two-disc set, complete with all the bells and whistles.

     The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) has announced the schedule for the 78th Annual Academy Awards. The actual ceremony will take place at the Kodak Theater on Sunday, March 5, 2006, and will start at 8 p.m. (ET) with ABC's preshow starting at 7:30. The nominations for the 2006 Oscars will be announced Thursday, January 31, 2006, at 8:30 a.m. (ET). Yay!

     Disney named Daniel Battsek the new president of Miramax Films July 25. Battsek will replace the Weinstein brothers upon their departure on September 30. The Weinstein brothers, Bob and Harvey, who founded Miramax before it was bought up by Disney, are leaving after budget and project disputes to start a new production company, the Weinstein Co. Click here for more.

     Jodie Foster will direct and most likely star in Sugar Kings, a drama from Tribeca and Universal. Kings is about a young lawyer who teams with a veteran public-interest attorney to take on powerful sugar barons who are exploiting cane-cutting migrant workers.

     Bride & Prejudice's Aishwarya Rai is joining Colin Firth, Ben Kingsley, Thomas Sangster and John Hannah for Dino De Laurentiis' production of the epic The Last Legion. The action-adventure film, based on Valerio Massimo Manfredi's bestseller, is set during the fall of the Roman Empire. With the help of teacher Abrosinus (Firth) and legionnaire Aurelius (Kingsley), 12-year-old Romulus Augustus escapes to make a last stand for Rome.

     Dukes of Hazzard's Jessica Simpson has signed on for Major Movie Star to play an actress who has hit rock-bottom and enlists in the marine reserve. Simpson says she's doing the movie as an homage to Goldie Hawn's Private Benjamin.

     Crash's Brendan Fraser will star in director Roger Spottiswoode's historical drama The Bitter Sea. The film is based on the true story of British journalist George Hogg, who saved a group of children during the Japanese invasion of China in 1937.

     The Bourne Identity's Gabriel Mann is joining Pete Postlethwaite, Bruce McGill, Diana Scarwid and Tom Bower for the indie film Valley in the Heart's Delight. The film tells the true story of two lynchings that took place in the early 1930s in reaction to the kidnapping of the son of a prominent local businessman.

     Bob Hope's remains have been moved from a mausoleum to the new Bob Hope Memorial Garden in the San Fernando Valley two years after his death. The garden opened July 29 as a place where friends and family can remember the comic legend.

     Hong Kong will mark kung-fu movie legend Bruce Lee's 65th birthday on November 27 with a bronze statue of the late actor, the Bruce Lee Club announced.

     Sin City co-star Brittany Murphy has inked a deal to star in a new ad campaign for Jordache jeans.

     Housekeeper Lucyna Turyk-Wawrynowicz has pled not guilty to charges that she stole from celebrity clients including Robert DeNiro and Candice Bergen.

     Monster-in-Law Jane Fonda has announced plans to take a cross-country bus tour next year to call for an end to U.S. military operations in Iraq. Fonda will be joined by families of Iraq war veterans on her trip. Hanoi Jane Part Deux?

     People reports that Lord of the Rings' Sean Astin and his wife Christine have welcomed baby girl Isabella Louise Astin into the world. Isabella is the couple's third child. Yay for Sam!

     Reservoir Dogs' Mr. Blue, crime novelist and convicted felon Edward Bunker, has died due to complications from surgery to improve circulation in his legs. He was 71.

     George D. Wallace, an actor best known for playing Commando Cody in the film Radar Men From the Moon, has died at age 88.

     Good Night, and Good Luck, the latest directorial effort from George Clooney, will open the 43rd New York Film Festival September 22 at Lincoln Center. Luck stars David Strathairn (A Midsummer Night's Dream) as journalist Edward R. Murrow, who stood up to the Red-baiting during the McCarthy era of the 1950s. Clooney-directed Confessions of a Dangerous Mind star Sam Rockwell is in negotiations to star in Rogue Pictures and Platinum Dunes' remake of the 1986 horror film The Hitcher, which starred Rutger Hauer. Hitcher tells the story of a teen who picks up a hitchhiker from hell, a serial killer.

     Samuel L. Jackson will star in and co-produce Afrosamurai, a live-action film based on a Japanese manga comic. Bible-quoting hitman, Jedi Knight, chain-smoking piano player, samurai: this guy can do it all.

     Billy Bob Thornton and Napoleon Dynamite's Jon Heder are teaming up for a remake of the 1960 British comedy School for Scoundrels. Heder plays a down-on-his-luck meter reader who enrolls in a confidence-building class so he can win the love of his dream girl. Problems arise when his professor (Thornton) falls for the same woman.

     War of the Worlds has passed $500 million at the global box office, making it the most successful movie (money-wise, anyway) of Tom Cruise's career. War has made more than $218 million in the United States. March of the Penguins is on target to become the number two documentary of all time, behind Michael Moore's 2004 hit Fahrenheit 9/11. So far, March has made over $19 million in the U.S.

     A Missouri teen has been charged with making video recordings of The Perfect Man and Bewitched in theaters and distributing the films online. The indictment marks the first time someone has been charged under the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005, which President Bush signed into law in April. While this may be one of the better things about the act, it's not all good, read MCC's editorial on the act and its effect on censorship here.

     Oscar-winner Marcia Gay Harden will play the First Lady to Dennis Quaid's President in director Paul Weitz's American Dreamz. The film also stars Hugh Grant, Richard Dreyfuss and Mandy Moore. So I guess Bridget Jones 2 wasn't really Grant's retirement picture, huh?!

     Richard Gere has signed on to star in director Andrew Lau's thriller The Flock, which follows a hypervigilant federal agent (Gere) who, while training his young female replacement, must track down a missing girl who he is convinced is connected to a paroled sex offender he is investigating.

     Brittany Murphy, Sin City's Shellie, has signed on for Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller's Sin City 2, which will hit theaters in summer 2006. Rumors are circulating that Mickey Rourke, who played Marv in the original, will be back as well.

     The Motorcycle Diaries' director and writer, Walter Salles and Jose Rivera, respectively, are re-teaming to bring Jack Kerouac's 1957 novel On the Road to the big screen. Road is being produced by Francis Ford Coppola's American Zoetrope company.

     Peter Jackson, who is currently working on a remake of King Kong, scheduled to hit theaters December 14, is helping to produce bonus materials for the DVD debut of the 1933 classic.

     Filmmaker David O. Russell (I Heart Huckabees, Three Kings) will receive the Filmmakers Alliance's Vision Award at its sixth-annual screening and gala presentation August 17 at the Directors Guild of America in Los Angeles.

     The Hollywood Foreign Press Association has announced that the 63rd Annual Golden Globes will take place Monday, January 16, 2006. The Globes honor the best in movies and television.

     The Montreal World Film Festival has pulled Karla, a film about a Canadian schoolgirl killer, from its lineup after mounting pressures from sponsors.

     Variety's Army Archerd will pen his last "Just For Variety" column in September. Archerd has been writing for the Hollywood trade magazine for over 50 years.

     The Hollywood History Museum, located across the street from the Kodak Theater in the heart of Hollywood, opened an exhibit called "The Private Life of Marilyn Monroe" August 5 with a special opening night symposium to honor the late actress.

     A judge approved an agreement calling for Sony Pictures Entertainment to pay $1.5 million to settle a class-action lawsuit accusing the studio of citing a fake movie critic in ads for several of its films, an attorney announced August 2. Must've been for Gigli.

     A film company headed by a vice chairman of Lions Gate Entertainment filed a lawsuit against Sony Pictures August 2, accusing the studio of wrongly claiming it has the rights to the Zorro character as it moves ahead with a futuristic flick entitled Zorro 2110.

     Eddie Murphy's wife, Nicole, has filed for divorce from the actor, citing irreconcilable differences. The couple has been married for 12 years and they have five children together.

     Oscar-winning actress Holly Hunter and longtime beau Gordon MacDonald are expecting twins.

     Don Knotts' health problems have forced his hometown of Morgantown, West Virginia, to indefinitely postpone a parade and film festival that was scheduled for August 12 thru 14 in the 81-year-old actor's honor.

Updated Thursday, August 11 @ 6:21 PM

     After 19 weeks down, two weeks up and another two weeks down, the awesome duo of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Wedding Crashers teamed up with the awful Dukes of Hazzard to bring the U.S. box office up 4.7 percent from this same time last year. Dukes star Seann William Scott has signed on for the comedy The Book of Leo, a comedy about a man facing a quarter-life crisis as he turns 30.

     Paul Newman, Matt Damon, Matthew McConaughey, Morgan Freeman, John Travolta, Gary Sinise, Bill Paxton, Barry Pepper, John Corbett, Scott Glenn, Rita Wilson and Kevin Pollack will lend their voices to Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman's IMAX 3-D space film Magnificent Desolation: Walking on the Moon.

     Meryl Streep, Annette Bening, Gwyneth Paltrow and Jill Clayburgh will star in Paramount's adaptation of the play Dirty Tricks. Streep stars as Martha Mitchell, the whistle-blowing wife of President Richard Nixon's chief of staff, John Mitchell.

     Casey Affleck is joining Brad Pitt for Warner Bros.' adaptation of the Robert Hansen novel The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Pitt will play legendary outlaw James and Affleck will play Ford. Jeffrey Weiss, an employee of People magazine, has been arrested on suspicion of trespassing on property reportedly owned by Pitt near Santa Barbara's El Capitan State Park. The paparazzi who chased Reese Witherspoon from her gym and then cornered her at the entrance to her home will not face criminal charges because there wasn't enough evidence of false imprisonment, the Los Angeles District Attorney's office announced August 10.

     David Duchovny, Sigourney Weaver and Fantastic Four's Ioan Gruffudd are teaming up for the indie comedy The TV Set, a satire on the making of a TV pilot.

     Stockard Channing will make her directorial debut on The Joy of Funerals, based on the short story collection by Alix Strauss. Joy chronicles the darkly comic misadventures of a woman looking for love in all the wrong places.

     Liev Schreiber and Julia Stiles are in talks to assume the roles originally played by Gregory Peck and Lee Remick in Fox's remake of the 1976 horror flick The Omen.

     Gary Oldman, Paddy Considine, Virginie Ledoyen and Aitana Sanchez-Gijon have signed on for Filmax Entertainment's rural thriller The Backwoods, which will be in both English and Spanish. Backwoods is set in the summer of 1978 as a couple of English tourists travel to a friend's house, finding a girl in a cabin in the woods with deformed hands.

     Ray Liotta, Trevor Morgan and Armin Mueller-Stahl are teaming up for the indie coming-of-age drama Local Color. The film is a semi-autobiographical account of writer-producer-director George Gallo's life as an impressionist painter during the summer of 1974.

     On September 9, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) will open "Hans Dreier and the Paramount 'Glow': The Golden Age of the Studio Art Department." The exhibit pays tribute to Dreier, Paramount's art department head from 1932 to 1950 and Oscar-winner for Frenchman's Creek, Sunset Blvd. and Samson and Delilah. The exhibit will be open until December 11 in the Academy Gallery.

     The producers of the 1979 indie flick Parts: The Clonus Horror are suing Warner Bros. and DreamWorks over the box-office flop The Island, claiming it ripped off their movie. They seek unspecified damages and are asking the court to order the film to be pulled from theaters and bar its further release.

     A judge has ruled that Disney does not have to reimburce shareholders the $140 million severance paid to former number two Michael Ovitz.

     Oliver Stone pled no contest August 10 to a marijuana charge stemming from his arrest at a police checkpoint in Los Angeles. The filmmaker was ordered to pay a fine of $100 plus court assessments.

     Dana Reeve, the widow of Superman Christopher Reeve, announced that she has been diagnosed with lung cancer and is currently undergoing treatment.

     Oscar-nominated actress Barbara Bel Geddes, who appeared in several notable Hollywood films during the '40s, '50s and '60s including Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, died August 8 of lung cancer at her home in Maine. She was 82.

     Dorris Bowdon, a film star of the '30s and '40s whose films included The Grapes of Wrath, died August 9 of a stroke, heart failure and old age at the Motion Picture Country House. She was 89.

     Actor Matthew McGrory, best known for his role as Karl the Giant in Big Fish, passed away August 9 of natural causes near Los Angeles. He was 32.

     Al Pacino and director Harold Becker are reteaming for Stone Village Pictures' remake of the 1955 French heist classic Rififi, which revolves around a career thief who, upon leaving prison, discovers his wife has left him, and returns to a life of crime. Pacino and Becker previously collaborated on Sea of Love and City Hall.

     Layer Cake's Daniel Craig is joining Nicole Kidman for director Oliver Hirschbiegel's Invasion, a remake of the sci-fi classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The remake tells the story of a mysterious disease that alters the behavior of human beings. When a Washington D.C. psychiatrist (Kidman) discovers the origins of the disease are extraterrestrial, she fights to protect her son, who may be the key to stopping an invasion. Craig plays Kidman's colleague and love interest who helps in the fight.

     X-Men's Hugh Jackman has officially turned down the role of Agent 007, James Bond, in Casino Royale, which is scheduled to hit theaters in fall 2006.

     Billy Bob Thornton will star in Warner Independent Pictures' The Astronaut Farmer. The story follows an eccentric farmer who dreams of space travel and sets out to build a rocket inside his barn.

     Clive Owen, Paul Giamatti and Monica Bellucci are teaming up for New Line Cinema's action flick Shoot 'Em Up. The story begins with a woman having a baby during a shootout. The man who delivers the baby, Mr. Smith (Owen), is entrusted with protecting it from an army of gunmen. Giamatti plays the villain who wants the baby dead, and Bellucci plays a love interest for Owen.

     Cary Elwes, who starred in last year's horror hit Saw, is suing the film's producers for breach of contract and unjust enrichment, claiming they screwed him out of back-end profits. Saw, which cost $1.2 million to make, has grossed $102.9 million worldwide.

     Christopher Walken's rep says the website Walken2008.com, which claims the Oscar-winning actor is running for president, is a hoax.

     American Pie's Natasha Lyonne is in a New York City hospital after suffering a collapsed lung. The actress is also ill with hepatitis C and is "fighting for her life," Access Hollywood reports.

     Pixar Animation Studios' head of story, Joe Ranft, died in a car crash August 16 in Mendocino County, California. He was 45. Ranft earned an Oscar nomination for co-writing Pixar's debut feature, Toy Story.

     Oscar-winner Alexander Golitzen, an art director and production designer best known for his work on Spartacus and To Kill a Mockingbird, has died. He was 97.

     Milos Forman will direct Natalie Portman, Javier Bardem and Stellan Skarsgard in Goya's Ghosts, the story of the last years of the Spanish Inquisition, when the Church tortured and executed suspected Jews, as told by legendary painter Francisco de Goya (Skarsgard). Portman plays Goya's muse, Ines, and Bardem plays Brother Lorenzo, a sinister monk. Portman is also joining Dustin Hoffman for the fantasy Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium. Hoffman plays the titular eccentric toy-shop owner who wants to help Portman out of her funk by leaving her his store.

     Goran Visnjic, best known for playing Kovac on TV's ER, is now one of the top contenders to play Agent 007, a.k.a. Bond, James Bond, in October 2006's Casino Royale.

     Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid stars Paul Newman and Robert Redford may reunite for an adaptation of Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods. The travel book is about two friends who hike through the American wilderness. Newman and Redford also co-starred in The Sting.

     Whoopi Goldberg, William H. Macy, Brian Dennehy, Robert Wagner, Raven Symone, Rob Reiner, Mandy Patinkin, Dana Reeve, Richard Kind and New York Yankees manager Joe Torre will provide voices for IDT Entertainment Animation's Yankee Irving. Superman Christopher Reeve was directing the computer-animated project from his home at the time of his death last October. Irving is about a boy who travels across the country to return Babe Ruth's bat before the deciding game of the 1932 World Series.