According to Coming Soon, Radha Mitchell has joined the cast of Jonathan Mostow's sci-fi thriller, The Surrogates. The movie is based on the graphic novel from Robert Venditti and was adapted by the screenwriting duo of Michael Ferris and John D. Brancato. The bad news is that these guys have written some pretty crappy movies in the past. Hopefully, these two are better at adaptations than they are at original ideas.

In The Surrogates, Bruce Willis stars as a cop in a futuristic world where all human interaction is performed by look-alike robots called Surrogates. Not only do the robots do all the talking for us, but they're even better looking too (when it comes to Mitchell, though, the original is none too shabby ... so I can't imagine what they would do to make her even better looking). When someone begins murdering 'surrogates' right and left, Willis is forced to venture into the outside world for the first time to track down the killer.

If you're a ravenous movie nerd like me, than there's very little in Barry Levinson's "inside baseball" Hollywood movie What Just Happened? If, on the other hand, you don't know a whole lot about studio politics, the angst of test-market screenings, and the tricks that movie-makers (or, more specifically, movie-sellers) will pull just to get a festival screening and a huge opening weekend, then you'll most likely get a whole bunch of chuckles out of the flick. To those who know about this stuff all too well, the comedy should still make for an interesting enough diversion -- thanks mainly to a massive, colorful cast and a few solid jabs that hit Hollywood right in the kisser.

Based on producer Art Linson's book What Just Happened? Bitter Hollywood Tales from the Front Line, the film version tells the story of one very successful Hollywood producer, and the ways in which he juggles multiple professional crises, as well as some prickly domestic issues at the same time. Robert De Niro is our movie producer, doing his best "sly" comedic work since (probably) Wag the Dog. John Turturro is the archetypal agent: skittish, shifty, and packing a nasty ulcer. Stanley Tucci is the writer who needs our protagonist for professional reasons, but pursues his ex-wife (Robin Wright Penn) for other activities. Michael Wincott is the drug-infested director whose ultra-edgy film is being mangled by horrifying studio boss Catherine Keener.

Toss in some supremely amusing "self-mocking" performances from movie stars Bruce Willis and Sean Penn, and you've got the makings of a flick best described as "movie geek heaven." And while What Just Happened? is by all means a colorful and generally pretty funny expose of modern-day Hollywood, it often feels like Levinson and Linson (he also penned the screenplay adaptation) are content to preach to the choir. It's meant to be outrageous and unbelievable how art turns into pure commerce, but there have been plenty of Hollywood satires that demolish the "test screening" mentality, the "beleaguered producer" conceit, and the oh-so-cynical insinuation that Hollywood has no integrity whatsoever. So while much of the material in What Just Happened? is insightful and accurate ... it's just not all that new or shocking anymore.

I just love those lists that are supposed to represent the fandom of the general public. This is probably because my preferences rarely converge with them. Sure, some of my tastes are a little off the beaten path -- I'd pick Danny Huston over Brad Pitt, or Julie Delpy over Julia Roberts. That being said, I still love me some good mainstream. Yet I still find myself raising my brows when I read these lists, just as I did today when I saw the annual Harris Poll for America's favorite movie stars, which Hollywood.com put up today. The order is surprising, as is the one lone oldie to the group.

Their results, counting down from 10 to 1:

10. Bruce Willis
9. Sandra Bullock
7. (tie) Matt Damon & Sean Connery
6. John Wayne
5. Will Smith
4. Julia Roberts
3. Johnny Depp
2. Tom Hanks
1. Denzel Washington

Yes, that's John Wayne there at number 6. Apparently he is the only actor to nab a spot on the poll every year since its inception in '94. Also, Depp is quickly working his way up the ranks, having moved up four positions from last year. Personally, I find the list surprising, and a bit sad in the realm of women in cinema. What say you?

What's the definition of a "Christmas movie?" Is it a simple matter of setting in time, a more complex question of tone, an ineffable connection to the Christmas spirit? I can't answer that, but I can tell you one thing.

Die Hard is a Christmas movie.

It's bloody, brutal and base; it's punchy, puckish and profane ... and it's unequivocally a Christmas movie, or it wouldn't be in the rotation at my house -- and, I suspect, some of yours -- every December as reliably as it is, nor would that annual process of returning to my mind seem as welcome as it is. Normally, in a piece about a film, here's where I'd recap the plot, but seriously, do you need one here? Have you been in cryogenic suspension? Are you leaving the Amish faith after 20 years and figured you'd turn to the internets to catch up? It's Die Hard. You know the plot. And if you need a refresher, go watch it. Right now. We'll be here when you get back.

Moonlighting had all sorts of Cybil Shepherd and Bruce Willis goodness, with a sweet side Agnes DiPesto and a certain Boogery Curtis Armstrong. In 1986, it got even better when they went Shakespearian in the episode Atomic Shakespeare -- one of my favorite media moments of the '80s. Some unknown student wanted to watch Moonlighting, but his mom told him he had to read Taming of the Shrew for school. As he reads the play, the characters from the hit show slip into all of the bard's famous characters.

Bruce Willis is Petruchio, a man looking to gain a wife with lots of cash, and the shrew, otherwise known as Katherine (Shepherd), becomes the object of his monetary affection. In this scene, he meets Kate for the first time, and battles with her to try and win her hand in marriage. He crashes into the room a la The Shining (Here's Petruchio!) and the two banter in all sorts of sexy punningness ("pianist envy").

Poll Answer from last time: Nicole Kidman was the actress who bet George Clooney.

New poll:

He was supposed to head up Oliver Stone's latest Vietnam drama, Pinkville -- but that is on indefinite hold due to the strike. So, instead of some really depressing accounts of war, Bruce Willis is going sci-fi. Variety reports that the actor has signed on to star in The Surrogates -- Jonathan Mostow's robot production that Erik Davis blogged about back in March. The team that collaborated with the director on T3, Michael Ferris and John Brancato, wrote the script, which is based on a graphic novel from Robert Venditti.

Similar to the game Second Life, Surrogates is set in the near future, where humans live in isolation and interact through surrogate robots who are "better-looking versions" of themselves, rather than making the effort to step out of doors themselves. (A comment on the electronic age? Undoubtedly.) Bruce will play a cop, big surprise, who uses his surrogate to investigate the murders of other surrogates. (Wouldn't that be robotocide?) As the mystery unfolds, he has to do the unthinkable -- leave his house for the first time in years to solve the crime. While I don't go gaga for Willis, he's an attractive man, so I can't wait to see these "better-looking" robotic versions. Will good-looking celebs play sequestered humans who then play with even better-looking robots? This could get tricky really fast. The film will get released through Touchstone, and will gear up to shoot in early 2008.

So much for all those casting updates for (and comments asking about how to get cast in) Pinkville, Oliver Stone's latest Vietnam war movie. Thanks to the writer's strike, the movie is now delayed indefinitely, according to Variety. United Artists put the stop on the production because both Stone and Pinkville screenwriter Mikko Alanne are members of the WGA, and more script-tuning is needed. Apparently the film is fully written, but there were expectations that things would be changed while filming is taking place -- something Stone is known for -- and that's not allowed to happen during the strike. The movie now joins Angels & Demons (aka The Da Vinci Code 2), which was the first major feature to be delayed because of the strike. Yet unlike that higher-profile film, Pinkville may not be easily started when the strike is over. There are now possibilities the cast will change or that United Artists will be less interested in doing such a serious picture right off the disappointment of Lions for Lambs.

It will be a shame if Pinkville is on hold for too long. And it will be too bad if the ensemble cast is broken up. Just last week I was getting all excited for Michael Pitt. Before that, I was already into the group of actors brought together: Bruce Willis, Woody Harrelson, Channing Tatum, Michael Peña and Xzibit (plus Toby Jones, who was announced with Pitt). However, with rescheduling now there may be a chance that Sean Penn could come back to the film, as he was originally reported to be attached.

The cast and crew was set to begin shooting in a few weeks in Thailand, so now obviously there are a lot of people out of work who are likely praying for the strike to end asap. Once given a new greenlight, Pinkville will be Stone's fourth feature film to deal directly with the Vietnam war, following Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July and Heaven and Earth (unless he somehow squeezes another in before this one -- who knows how long UA will keep this on hiatus?). This time Stone is focusing on the terrible My Lai Massacre and the trial of the U.S. soldiers involved.

Oddly enough, The Hollywood Reporter has two new casting announcements today, despite Friday's announcement from UA. Jason Behr (The Grudge) is set to play Lt. Stephen Brooks, commanding officer at My Lai, and Cam Gigandet (Who's Your Caddy?) is cast as guilt-ridden soldier Fred Widmar.

I've been waiting for Michael Pitt to break out big for years now -- ever since Murder By Numbers, I think (he was noteworthy a year earlier in both Bully and Hedwig and the Angry Inch, but not quite as promising). He still has a chance, especially if he takes the part of Lt. William Calley in Oliver Stone's Pinkville. According to The Hollywood Reporter, he's currently in talks for the role, and if he's smart he'll just go ahead and grab it. Calley is the central figure in the Vietnam war film, which deals with the investigation into the 1968 Mai Lai Massacre; the Army officer was the one found guilty of giving the orders that sparked the incident. Pitt would join an ensemble cast that already includes Bruce Willis (or as I like to call him, Bruce Billis), Channing Tatum (another young actor continually teetering on the verge of stardom), Michael Peña (previously seen in Stone's World Trade Center), Woody Harrelson and Xzibit, who just joined on this week. Also joining the film is Toby Jones (Infamous), who will portray Lt. Andre Feher, the chief warrant officer who tries to convince Willis' character, Gen. William Peers, that the U.S. Army is responsible for the massacre.

With Pinkville, Pitt would be sure to make up for the mediocre year he's had. Between starring in Tom DiCillo's embarrassingly awful Delirious and the apparently abysmal Silk (it has an astonishingly sad 8% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes), the actor has been really struggling to get his due notice. He does have other intriguing projects in the pipeline, however; next year he can be seen co-starring in Michael Haneke's Funny Games U.S., a remake of the filmmaker's own earlier work, and he's set to star as a young Christopher Walken (sorta) in Abel Ferrara's King of New York prequel, Pericle il Nero. It seems that Pitt might prefer working outside of Hollywood, but the guy should at least do a good ensemble piece every now and then, and there's not many better Hollywood directors he could work with than Stone.

Another macho man has made the obligatory leap into the kiddie pool. This time it's Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson who has gone and starred opposite a child in this weekend's new release The Game Plan. Could it damage his potential for further tough guy roles? Does he care? He's already signed on to another kid friendly part in Witch Mountain, so perhaps he's no longer worried about audiences accepting him as a muscle man with attitude.

The Rock, like Vin Diesel before him, may have jumped the gun on doing a Disney family film before securing an iconic place next to Schwarzenegger, Stallone and other action hero types. His movie may therefore lack that necessary extreme between the character we associate with The Rock and the character he must take on for the movie -- like the type of contrast that made Kindergarten Cop so funny.

But there are worse things he could do. Other action stars and macho actors have made some pretty terrible mistakes that had nothing to do with working with kids, and many of these mistakes were career altering. Let's just hope Dwayne Johnson never has to suffer such ideas as these:


1. Junior (1994, Ivan Reitman)

For a macho guy, finding out you have a kid is domesticating, but finding out you're pregnant is emasculating. Nothing says an action hero has gone soft like giving him a bun in the oven, and it's no wonder that Arnold Schwarzenegger had difficulty maintaining his image in action movies for the next decade -- until Terminator 3. I'm certain that if The Rock tried doing a movie in which he's with child rather than with a child, he'd cause far more problems for his career. At least Schwarzenegger had just a few months earlier released True Lies, and fans likely held onto the hope he would be back on top one day.

When Mischa Barton was unceremoniously killed off the teen soap, The OC; I think most of us thought this was her chance to transform her teen stardom into a successful movie career. So far that hasn't happened, and I personally doubt her latest role is going to do anything to change that. Variety reports Barton has signed to star in the psychological thriller Walled In. The story centers on "a demolition company rep who supervises the razing of a mysterious building and discovers horrifying secrets and past inhabitants entombed within its walls by a vicious murderer". Based on the French novel Les Emmeures by Serge Broselot, Barton will play the demolition company rep -- and is it just me, but when you think commercial demolition and construction, someone who looks like Barton doesn't exactly come to mind?

Joining Barton are Deborah Kara Unger (Silent Hill) and Cameron Bright (Juno -- you can catch Scott's TIFF review of that film here) and set to direct is French helmer Gilles Paquet-Brenner (Gomez and Tavare). This will be the first English-language feature for Brenner, who also helped adapt the novel for the screen. Barton has been piling on the projects lately, having signed for the caper film St. Trinian's back in May and she also just finished the drama Finding t.A.T.u. Barton is still hard at work on the high school comedy Assassination of a High School President with Bruce Willis. Walled In is a French-Canadian co-production and is scheduled to start shooting on October 22nd, in the most glamorous of all Canadian locations: Saskatchewan (believe me, it's funnier if you are a Canadian).

First, there was Platoon, the 4-Oscar winner classic about the horrors of war. Then there was Born on the Fourth of July -- a double Oscar winner about the life of paralyzed Vietnam vet Ron Kovic. Finally, there was Heaven & Earth, a Golden Globe winner about the true story of a Vietnamese girl struggling during and after the war. Now Variety is reporting that after almost fifteen years, Oliver Stone is heading back to Vietnam -- and he's taking the Live Free or Die Hard Bruce Willis and Channing Tatum (who just completed an Iraq film called Stop Loss) with him.

This time around, the flick is called Pinkville, and it's an upper of a drama about the investigation of the 1968 My Lai massacre -- the mass murder of hundreds of defenseless Vietnamese people -- mostly women and children. (Some of whom were also tortured and mutilated.) Willis will calm his adventurous ways down a bit and play Army General William R. Peers, who supervised the investigation into the massacre, and Tatum will play defiant hero Hugh Thompson. Thompson was a helicopter pilot who spotted what was happening and landed his copter between the soldiers and remaining villagers before airlifting the remaining people to safety and reporting the atrocity. (Which, of course, didn't make him too popular amongst his fellow US forces.) We might also see a young Colin Powell, who was involved in the investigation of a letter from another soldier.

The script was written by Mikko Alanne, and will be his first feature film -- he previously penned a number of short films and most recently wrote Notorious, about the murders of Tupac and Biggie Smalls. The feature will go into production next year, and I'm sure that it is going to rile up a bunch of people. While it's a true story, there will be those war tensions to deal with, but it's not like that would deter Stone.

Dear 20th Century Fox,

I'm writing to request from your offices a reimbursement of funds totaling $11.00, which I believe were obtained from me under false pretenses. As a regular consumer of your products, I rely heavily on the advertising you produce to inform me when I make choices about which films to see and which to avoid, and my reliance on said advertising constitutes a bond of good will between you, the movie studio, and me, the audience member. I believe that bond has been broken in the case of Live Free or Die Hard, a new film that purports to be the continuing adventures of beloved movie character John McClane, but is in reality a film revolving around an entirely new character, who I shall henceforth refer to in this letter as Indestructible Fathead. Before I go on, let me stipulate that I was, in fact, offered a chance by you to see this film for free before its general release, and had I taken you up on that offer, my monetary damages might be lessened. The psychological damages would, I'm afraid, remain.

Like all Die Hard films (or films representing themselves as such) there is a terrorist plot at the center, but despite watching with close attention, I honestly couldn't tell you what it's supposed to be about. We're introduced to a team of cyber-terrorists, led by Timothy Olyphant and Maggie Q, who are attempting to pull off a 'Fire Sale,' which I gather means executing a rapid, simultaneous shutdown of our nation's regional power grids. The simultaneous part is apparently the key, since it has the desired effect of short-circuiting any backup plans and therefore crashes America's infrastructure. Anything run by computer will no longer work. Financial records gone, utilities gone, and so on. In other words, they declare total war on America, from the back of a moving truck. There are so many plot holes here that I won't insult your intelligence by pointing them out. Watching this plot unfold, I was reminded of what Roger Ebert said about Jaws: The Revenge -- that some executive at the studio should have been put in charge of making sure it was at least "a passable thriller."

Timothy Olyphant has been a scene-stealing character actor for years now (go see Go), but he seems poised to take his stardom to the next level. Of course, he's the villain in Live Free or Die Hard, which opens today and which I am still struggling to get excited about. He's got a major role in Kimberly Pierce's long-awaited follow-up to Boys Don't Cry -- Stop Loss, with Ryan Phillippe, Channing Tatum, and Jay Hernandez (Is that a movie or a Tiger Beat shoot?). He'll appear with the unreasonably attractive Jessica Alba in Bill, about a guy who mentors a rebellious teen. He also just signed on to play Agent 47 in Hitman, an adaptation of the much-loved video game (a new trailer for the film will play before LFODH). Even with all that going on, many still know him best from Deadwood, the wonderful HBO western drama that ran for three seasons, and was -- sigh -- taken off the air to make room for -- sigh -- John from Cincinnati. Deadwood's many fans (myself included) didn't take the cancellation well, but at least we've been able to calm ourselves with the news that creator David Milch planned to make Deadwood movies to give the series closure. Well, get ready to flip the freak out, Deadwoodians.

In an interview with comingsoon, Olyphant is asked about the status of the Deadwood films. And his response doesn't exactly inspire confidence: "I have no idea. There's been ongoing talk about those things for a long, long time. I, for better or worse, have the perspective of 'don't hold your breath.' My feeling is that the fact that show existed at all for as long as it did was a miracle of sorts. It was an incredible experience, and I'm very, very thankful, and as a fan of the show like everybody else, it would have been nice to see it end in a different way or have more life to it, but as far as I'm concerned, they don't owe me anything. It was a tremendous experience, I look at it that way. I walk away going, 'I must be a better actor because of that show.' Three years on TV is better than seven years on TV, you know?" So, ah...yeah. Pretty terrible news, huh? I suppose anything can happen, but I think it's becoming more and more likely that we're not going to see those movies. Really, HBO? Really, Milch? You replace my Deadwood with a show about a floating surfer, and now this?

Just in time for the new Die Hard sequel, Live Free or Die Hard (or, as its called in the UK and elsewhere, Die Hard 4.0), my favorite film cynic, Guardian Unlimited columnist Joe Queenan, has given us a review of the first three movies. Rather than recap the actual plots of Die Hard, Die Hard 2: Die Harder and Die Hard: With a Vengeance, though, Queenan focuses on reminding us of the deaths and damages of the franchise, most of which he claims would have gotten Bruce Willis's character in a lot of trouble, or at least mixed up in a lot of red tape. Of course, this is has been a joke about action movies for over twenty years now; plenty of parodies have knocked the fact that heroes cause more destruction than should be necessary. But Queenan points out one serious issue with the second Die Hard film that I had forgotten. Willis' John McClane pretty much causes the deaths of more than 230 innocent people, including passengers of a crashed jet plane, which is downed by a terrorist who doesn't like McClane's taunting.

As usual, Queenan is taking the movies too seriously (though I'm sure he doesn't really; its just for the story). The fact that McClane is an everybody who saves the day and faces no consequences is part of the fantasy of action films of the era. Critics have pondered the genre as everything from male empowerment following women's rights to individual empowerment following the failure of Vietnam and/or amidst an age of global threats, be they communist or terrorist. But basically action movies, and the Die Hard movies especially, are an all-of-the-above fantasy about what we'd all hope to be able to do if placed in the worst possible situation. Sure, they give a promise of implausible and impossible solutions, but I don't think many people have tried to single-handedly defeat hijackers or other bad guys because of what has been seen in the movies (I guess you could suggest the passengers on United 93, but that would be an honorable exception).

Earlier this month, we reported that Bruce Willis is expecting Fox to do another Die Hard movie after Live Free and Die Hard. At the time, the actor mentioned he'd only be interested in part five if he's joined again by Live Free co-stars Maggie Q and Justin Long, as well as director Len Wiseman. In a new story from MTV, though, Willis hints about the idea of making a Die Hard prequel. Could that be the direction for Die Hard 5? I doubt it, considering, as Willis admits, he could only return as a young John McClane if there were some serious special effects makeup utilized. Personally, I don't think a prequel would make sense; the whole idea of the first Die Hard is that McClane is a normal guy who has never been in this kind of situation before. The only other thing that Willis had to say regarding another film is that he prefers that it be shot in the U.S., because Die Hard is an American film.

Unlike his character in Live Free or Die Hard, who is portrayed as an analog man in a digital world, Willis is pretty hip to computers. The interview from which MTV's story is pulled was conducted through a virtual press conference on the online world of Second Life. Willis appeared to fans as an avatar and even confessed to being an internet junkie, getting all his news and doing most of his communication via the web (we already knew he liked to comment on movie sites.) He also applauded Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who plays his daughter, for studying the previous Die Hard films in order to make her character completely recognizable as the spawn of McClane and his wife, Holly (Bonnie Bedelia, who only appeared in the first two movies.) Live Free or Die Hard hits theaters next Wednesday, after which we'll find out if Fox thinks another outing, prequel or not, is worth it.