Movie Minesweeper - The Holiday Skin Edition

Here's another slate of Movie Minesweeper business before bedtime. Carole King continues.

- Blades of Glory screenwriters John Altschuler and Dave Krinsky have taken up the task of scripting Brothers of Invention. They're also the current scribes on The Jetsons, which Variety have linked pretty definitively with Robert Rodriguez. Yep: Rodriguez is working with screenwriters of Blades of Glory on a Jetsons film. Oh dear.

- Jimmy Olsen 2006 has joined the Cavemen sitcom.

- Brett Ratner may well be casting Paris Hilton in the Hugh Hefner movie. And why wouldn't he?

- TV viewers were pretty thin on the ground for the Live Earth gig. Indeed, the Princes Di shindig greatly outperformed it (in the UK at least). Which I find quite sad and a little bit embarrassing. All of this nonsense in the popular press about scientests being in doubt about the human contribution to climate change is not only ignorantly ant-scientific (there's actually a consensus amongst the scientific community) but is also risk killing millions, tens of millions or hundreds of millions in the next century.

- Jonah Hill has scripted himself a vehicle called Pure Imagination. He says, of his role, "I go through a bunch of traumatic stuff, and I develop an imaginary friend. Then what happens is I meet a girl, and we start dating…but the problem is I don’t know whether she [actually] exists [or] whether she’s a figment of my imagination.”

That's enough. Eyelids drooping. See you on the other side.

Movie Minesweeper - The Before The Shouting Starts Edition

Welcome to Tuesday morning, GMT and an act of Movie Minesweeping as procrastination.

- AintItCool have published a very heartening statement from George Romero. Romero who, I have to admit, was critically missing from my list of 100 directors. Shame on me.

- According to the LA Daily News quite an astonishing list of lookylikeys is being sought for Snyder's Watchmen: Nixon, Kissinger, H R Haldeman, Ted Koppel, John McLaughlin, Annie Liebovitz, Lennon and Ono, Castro, Einstein, Norman Rockwell, JFK and Jackie, Warhol, Mao Tze Tung and Larry King.

- Has an upcoming location for the Indiana Jones IV shoot been discovered? Well, it seems likely - but, er... so what? It's not a very telling detail at all.

- An alarming little piece of a Google-owned corporate blog kicked off a furore this weekend. The post criticised Michael Moore's Sicko at the same time as encouraging health care companies to buy targeted ads that would ambush Google users searching for details on the film. This was quite clearly against Google's desired reputation as a neutral information outlet - and after a whole heap of fuss, the author of the post had to issue a retraction. Her politics aside (they're obviously very different from my own) I think she's done something very bad here and a simple retraction just isn't enough. Frankly, I'd like to see her fired.

- Magnolia have revealed their launch strategies for cheap 'indie comedies' Cashback and Closing Escrow.

- Disney Animator and Director Art Stevens has died, aged 92.

- The offical Saw IV synopsis and cast list have been unveiled. I've heard rumours that Saw V is to be the last and that it has been, broadly at least, been plotted already - and in a way that will wrap up the whole shebang quite conclusively. I'm asking around and will report any findings worth sharing.

- So, Kylie Minogue is to appear in the Christmas Dr. Who and that's been all over the news here for twelve hours or so - but less high-profile was the casting of Keeley Hawes in Ashes to Ashes, the Life on Mars sequel. I gave a pretty detailed break down of the show's premise a couple of months back and it sounds from that description that Ms. Hawes will play DCI Alex Drake.

- There's a casting call out for the young girl lead in Nowhereland.

- There are more Resident Evil: Extinction pictures doing the rounds.

- Maddy Gaiman has announced a December 2008 release date for the Hellboy 2 DVD. Bless.

- We don't know for sure that The Mayor of Castro Street is to come before Superman Returns Again, but it does seem fairly likely.

- Young @ Heart played on TV here last year - now it's getting a US theatrical release. It's a documentary about a bunch of old folk singing pop songs. It wasn't very good, but I absolutely loved it.

- The Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has declined Oliver Stones offer to make a doucumentary about him. The President's media advisor said "It is right that this person is considered part of the opposition in the U.S., but opposition in the US is a part of the Great Satan".

- Brian Hill is to turn this weekend's Live Earth event into a feature for Jeff Skoll's Participant Productions.

- Dana Delaney might turn up in Desperate Housewives - finally, after a string of offers stretching back before the show went into production. Previously, they wanted her for Bree but (obviously) she passed on that one... so, how about Bree's 'Conservative Republican' sister? Seems like she might bite.

Spinal Tap Comeback Film Online Now

See the fifteen-minute (well, nearly) Spinal Tap comeback film at the Live Earth page.

The Tap Are Back!

This Wednesday, Rob Reiner will unveil a 15-minute short film at the Tribeca film festival. the film's subject? The earth-shaking rock reunion to damn all others to hell: Spinal Tap are back.

And, according to Variety, the news gets even better. Do you want to see Tap live? If you've got tickets to London's Live Earth gig, you're lucky - the mighty Tap will be rocking out at Wembley.

They've recorded a new track - Warmer than Hell. The lyrics are, as ever, majestic:

The devil went to Devon, it felt like the fourth degree
He said, `Is it hot in here, or is it only me?'

Talking to the AP, Reiner has discussed the band's ecological outlook:

They're not that environmentally conscious, but they've heard of global warming. Nigel thought it was just because he was wearing too much clothing - that if he just took his jacket off it would be cooler.

And what have the boys been doing in the last few years? Well, Nigel has been breeding miniature horses to race, but can't find jockeys small enough; David is producing hip-hop records and runining a colonic clinic; and Derek is in rehab for his addiction to the Internet. None of which, really, is very surprising.

Hopefully the new short will be online soon or, better still, on DVD - perhaps as a fundraiser release at a nominal price.