If you've seen Marion Cotillard in La Vie en Rose, you've seen one heck of a great performance. But will we see another from the actress, or was playing Edith Piaf the role of a lifetime? While I can't imagine her ever making such a huge transformation or giving such a notable, career-defining performance again, I'm excited to see where her Oscar nomination takes her and I hope that she can at least follow it up with some interesting parts. We've already heard that her next major role will be in Rob Marshall's Nine, an adaptation of the musical inspired by Fellini's 8½. After that, she could be heading to Chicago (not Marshall's Chicago, the real city) for Michael Mann's Public Enemies. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Cotillard is in negotiations to play Billie Frechette, the torch singer girlfriend of John Dillinger, who will be played by Johnny Depp. Channing Tatum, Giovanni Ribisi, Stephen Dorff and Jason Clarke have also joined the cast.

As Monika relayed last week, Billie will be a major character in the plot of Public Enemies, which also stars Christian Bale. The movie will reportedly balance between Dillinger's crime story and his love life while also focusing on FBI agent Melvin Purvis (Bale), who famously pursued and caught Dillinger in the mid-1930s. It is interesting to note that Public Enemies will be another singing role for Cotillard, who did not actually perform any of the Piaf songs in La Vie en Rose. But while the actress is not a born singer nor a long-trained one, she did sing in in the 2001 French film Les Jolies Choses (Pretty Things) and will be singing in Nine. Also, if you think Cotillard is suddenly getting work just because of her La Vie en Rose acclaim, you're mistaken. You may have seen her in either of her two English-language movies (Ridley Scott's A Good Year and Tim Burton's Big Fish), in any of the three Taxi movies, as the female lead in the sweet Amelie wannabe Love Me If You Dare, in Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Amelie follow-up, A Very Long Engagement or in any of the many other French films in which she has appeared.

It was a good year for much of Hollywood, but a bad year for A Good Year. The Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe team-up only grossed $7 million domestically, and has been labeled a flop. Variety has listed the major box office disappointments for 2006, and interestingly enough, a few of them have to do with water. The appropriately bad way to describe their fate, then, is to say that they drowned. Flushed Away, The Lady in the Water, Poseidon and The Fountain (okay, I didn't see it, but I don't think there's an actual water-type fountain), just couldn't swim. Here's some more bad puns: Sharon Stone didn't have the Basic Instict 2 stay away from a dumb sequel; Producer Dean Devin said, "Flyboys," to his new movie but it crashed and burned; All the King's Men stayed away from this remake, and so did everyone else; Audiences let their Freedomland in other activities besides seeing a movie starring Julianne Moore and Samuel L. Jackson. There's no pun needed for The Wicker Man; it just sucked.

Unlike the biggest flops of all time, none of these movies from 2006 broke a studio or likely ended a career. Ridley Scott and Wolfgang Petersen (director of Poseidon) have had flops before, but they can be forgiven for "flukes" every once in awhile since they usually turn out successful work. Plus, their films did okay business overseas. International box office saves more flops these days than back in the times of the really big bombs. Most of the other filmmakers represented are also probable to bounce back, or at least fall back on their other talents. Joe Roth (Freedomland) has already returned to producing. Steve Zaillian (All the King's Men) is back to writing. Tony Bill (Flyboys) may continue acting. Michael Caton-Jones (Basic Instinct 2) will eventually make another crappy film. M. Night Shyamalan (Lady in the Water) might need to be forced to work on somebody else's script for once, but he isn't going to disappear anytime soon, unfortunately.

Take Russell Crowe, throw in a vineyard and a French chateau, toss in a beautiful, hot-headed woman, stomp it to a mush in a big wooden tub, and you get A Good Year, the latest directorial effort of Ridley Scott -- a film with all the subtlety and bouquet of a screw-top bottle of wine purchased in the bargain bin of your local supermarket. In A Good Year, adapted by Marc Klein from the book by Peter Mayle, we meet Max Skinner (Crowe), a super-rich businessman with a slightly shady moral code -- think of him as Gordon Gekko, but with less charm and personality.

Max is all about making money, whatever the cost; he barrels his way through life, stomping ruthlessly over anyone who gets in his path. Max doesn't care about anyone or anything, unless there's a profit in it -- until the day he hears that his Uncle Henry (Albert Finney) has died, leaving him the charming-but-dilapidated vineyard and chateau in France where Max spent his boyhood.

Of course, Max has to go to the chateau himself to handle details like taking pics for his real estate guy, so he can unload the place as quickly as possible -- right in the middle of a scandal involving a questionable stock transaction that could finally land his butt in a sling. Max goes to France reluctantly, in part because he hadn't stayed in touch with dear old Uncle Henry -- the man who was, ostensibly, the most important influence in his life -- for years. Once there, he must deal with Francois, who has run the winery for Uncle Henry for decades, and who fully expects Max to keep things going as they have been. When Francois learns that Max intends, as the sole surviving heir, to sell off the chateau to the highest bidder, he is understandably annoyed and contrives to make the sale as difficult as possible by convincing Max that the vineyard and its grapes are worthless. If this doesn't sound like the most original or exciting idea for a film starring Crowe, well, you're right -- it isn't.

Organizers behind this year's Toronto International Film Festival have announced the addition of some more red carpet flicks to a lineup that will include a total of 352 films from 61 countries. (Hat tip goes out to the person who somehow manages to take in all 352 pics.)

Joining a slate that already includes Darren Aronofsky's highly-anticipated The Fountain, Christopher Guest's For Your Consideration and Tony Goldwyn's The Last Kiss will be the world premieres of Ridley Scott's A Good Year and Anthony Minghella's Breaking and Entering, with Michael Apted's Amazing Grace chosen to close out the fest. Also joining the party on the red carpet for its world premiere will be Mark Palansky's directorial debut, Penelope. Starring Reese Witherspoon and Christina Ricci, pic is said to be a modern-day fable which revolved around a woman (Ricci) who is looking to escape from a family curse.

Of the 352 films, 261 will be features and most are looking forward to either a world, international or North American premiere. The festival runs from September 7 through the 16th.

Well well well, it seems the Scott family is awfully busy as of late. After a trailer for Tony Scott's Deja Vu premiered recently, we now have a chance to catch the brand spanking new trailer for brother Ridley's film, A Good Year. In a role that's very different from the warrior he played in Gladiator, Russell Crowe reunites with Scott for the first time since the two brought home five Oscars back in 2000.

Based on the novel by Peter Mayle, Crowe stars as English businessman Max Skinner. After inheriting a remote vineyard from his late uncle, Max re-locates in an effort to sell the land. However, while there, he meets a beautiful American woman who also claims to own the property. I have to admit, the trailer didn't do much for me. Guy inherits a vineyard? Discovers himself? Falls in love? While it will be interesting to watch Ridley Scott direct a film that doesn't include a sprawling climactic fight sequence, the trailer certainly did not leave me intrigued and wanting more. Of course, I never read the book and might be missing something here. If that's the case, feel free to chime in.