I feel like I have this long checklist of cast and crew that we're slowly crossing off for this theoretical film. Now, you can put Bryce Dallas Howard on the "would sign tomorrow" list, thanks to MTV. "I would love to be apart of any continuation of the franchise. But, I also really understand that there's so many different story lines that the fans are really excited to see, and the studio, and the producers, and the filmmakers really need to appease everyone," the actress said. "Whether or not Gwen Stacy comes back, I mean, I wish it was up to me, but it's not. But yes, if they'd call me, I'd be there in a heart beat."

I'm not sure how they can really fit Gwen Stacy in -- is there a point in having a romantic rival when Spider-Man is never ever going to leave Mary Jane onscreen? I remember when we all thought (or maybe it was just my corner of the Internet) that they would reverse comic book history, and kill off Mary Jane and hook Mr. Parker up with Gwen. (If House of M is to be believed, and it probably isn't, that's who he really wanted anyway.) Is there even any emotional impact if they kill off Captain George Stacy in a fourth film, as James Cromwell once said they planned on doing? Is the subplot of "I'm really sorry your dad died, my one-time love interest" really worth exploring? I could probably think more clearly if I could get the breakdancing scene out of my head.

Of course, this is all idle speculation when no official announcements have been made. And as for Sam Raimi he's now playing coy with MTV about returning to the director's chair, and says he wants to wear the Spidey suit instead. That's one way to cut the budget.

It's been almost two years since I first wrote about The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond. The forgotten Tennessee Williams screenplay started cooking up in November 2006, with a stellar cast of Ellen Burstyn, David Strathairn, Ann-Margret, Chris Evans, and ... Lindsay Lohan? This was, however, before her personal demons took center stage and made a complete mess of her career. Bryce Dallas Howard starting circling the project in 2007, and now, finally, you can get a peek of her in the film above (courtesy of Rope of Silicon).

Can you imagine Lohan up there? Methinks her struggles will be a blessing for the film, which centers on Fisher Willow (Howard) -- a 1920s debutant who makes waves because of her "distaste for narrow-minded people and a penchant for shocking and insulting those around her." When she falls for a lower-class young man (Evans), she has to trick her family into thinking that he's upper class. But when she loses a diamond (like the title suggests), you can imagine what happens.

The film will finally begin to hit our eager eyes at TIFF next month.

The Hollywood Reporter announced that Terminator 4 has lost Charlotte Gainsbourg from its cast -- a mere two weeks after her surprise casting was announced. Apparently, it's all due to that age old story of a schedule conflict. Terminator director McG has already started production in New Mexico, but if an actor's strike happens, the delay will cause a conflict with Gainsbourg's next film, a French comedy.

But there is already an actress in talks to replace her, and one who has already cut her chops a bit in the action and sci-fi genres. Bryce Dallas Howard is reportedly the one who will play Kate Connor, the First Lady of the Resistance. She's been absent from screens since Spider-Man 3, due to marriage and motherhood, and it will be cool to see her return in a flashy role.

I think she is a better physical fit for the character than Gainsbourg -- Kate Connor/Brewster was played by Claire Danes, and they look reasonably alike. Not that Terminator sequels and spin-offs seem to be very concerned with that sort of thing.

Regardless of who steps into the role, I'm just continually surprised at the caliber of actors this franchise is getting. While the rest of us have been regarding it very skeptically, it's snagged more than one critical favorite. There must be something here we're just not seeing yet. Right?

Leave it to Hollywood to dig up a fact that nearly two centuries of historical research has missed -- that the famous Bronte sisters, Anne, Emily and Charlotte, were all smoking hot. A new biopic of the trio, simply titled Bronte, has just been greenlit for a fall start, and will star Bryce Dallas Howard, Michelle Williams and Evan Rachel Wood. Annoyingly, the Variety article doesn't identify who will be playing which sister, but I think Howard would be the obvious choice to play Anne, the least successful sister whose most accomplished work was The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. She can do the whole constipated-with-disappointment thing pretty well, I imagine. Emily and Charlotte were the real stars of the family, with the former penning Wuthering Heights and the latter topping that with Jane Eyre. The article also declines to give us any kind of outline as to the story, unless its doing so by proxy when it mentions that the sisters, as youngsters, "created epic fantasy worlds to entertain themselves."

The film was written and will be directed by Charles Sturridge, whose last effort was the 2005 film Lassie, which was barely released in U.S. theaters. Before that, he mostly did TV, including a rendering of Gulliver's Travels, so who knows what kind of quality we're looking at here. Interestingly, IMDB has had a Bronte page up for a while, and there are other actresses in all the main parts except for Michelle Williams, who is credited as Charlotte. Nathalie Press is credited as Emily and Emily Barclay is credited as Anne. Guess that was until Gwen Stacy decided to come knocking. Jonathan Rhys Meyers is also credited on IMDB as Bronte brother Branwell -- who knows if that still applies. The film is set to get rolling in September.

I saw Spider-Man 3 Saturday night. It was a total mess, but the visuals were incredible, the fight scenes were thrilling, and I enjoyed enough of the film to make it worth my time. Still, it occurred to me on the way home that with a few simple changes, the film could have been a superhero classic. And

Before we begin, please know that I'm not a die-hard Spidey fan. The first two Spider-Man films were entertaining enough, but I forgot them immediately afterward. I know when you read that heading you probably thought this article would consist of complaints like "Why didn't they do such-and-such with the character of Venom like they did in Issue #231 of blah-blah-bloo?" But that's not me. This article comes from the point of view of an average guy with no knowledge of comic books who went into Spider-Man 3 with no expectations. Here's what I would have changed to make the movie more entertaining to me. SPOILERS AHEAD!

1) Kill Mary Jane in the opening scene

The Uncle stuff is played out, Peter needs something new to be upset about. And I used to love Kirsten Dunst, but now she "acts" her scenes like she can't wait for someone to yell "Cut!" so she can go and make out with one of The Strokes. Are we really supposed to believe that Peter would choose Dunst's dehydrated, negative, miserable Mary Jane over Bryce Dallas Howard's pants-explodingly hot, upbeat, and cheerful Gwen Stacey? Mary Jane is a terrible girlfriend! She spends the entire film whining about her lackluster singing abilities to a guy who spends his time keeping the city free from evil! She's dull, she's pouty, and she participates in elaborate Chubby Checker-scored cooking/dancing/infidelity montages with James Franco! Dump her!

2) Have your villains get upset before the last twenty minutes roll around

A no-brainer. I can't recall seeing a movie where the villains decided "You know, maybe we should kill the hero" so late in the game. The Sandman appeared to be thinking about what to have for dinner for most of the film. Venom doesn't even enter the picture until the last third. It's screenwriting 101, especially in a movie of this kind. By the end of Act One, you better be damn sure your audience knows who the antagonist is, and what your hero is up against. Nobody seems to have clear motives here. All the characters are confused and conflicted and don't really know who they want to kill and why or if they even want to. That's fine for a Scorsese film, but this is Spider-Man, people!

3) More J.K. Simmons and Bruce Campbell

In the few moments of screen time given to each of these fantastic character actors, they charged the movie with an energy that nearly all of the other actors lacked. As a huge Oz fan, it's always a little jarring to see J.K. Simmons in other roles – I kept expecting him to sexually assault Peter Parker. But once I got past that, the guy was hilarious. And Bruce Campbell's champagne back-and-forth in the restaurant was pure gold. Truth be told, Campbell should have played The Sandman. He certainly would have brought more life to it than Thomas Haden Church -- who must have thought he was playing the Sandman who puts kids to sleep.

I grew up watching Shakespeare. I've seen every one of his plays performed at least once, and some of them many times. That being said, I've never been a big fan of Kenneth Branagh. I admire his dedication to the bard, and can't deny his talent, but he's never really grabbed me. However, that bugger had to go find my weakness and cast my beloved Kevin Kline as Jaques in his latest adaptation -- As You Like It. The film doesn't have a stateside release date yet, although it was released in Italy last year, but we've now got a trailer.

Branagh has changed things up again for his version of the comedic romance. Instead of all the forest fleeing coming at the hands of familial persecution and hot-headedness, it seems that they all head to the Forest of Arden because of... a ninja attack? Why? Because they're in Kyoto! It looks a bit less jarring then it sounds, and beyond this new twist, the trailer shows all the pressing bits. Kline's Jaques is joined by Bryce Dallas Howard as the cross-dressing Rosalind, Romola Garai as Celia, Alfred Molina as Touchstone, Adrian Lester as Oliver and David Oyelowo as Orlando. There's silliness, dancing, buildings on fire and Touchstone even seems to be doing a touch of Tai Chi. Branagh missed the mark with Love's Labor's Lost, so hopefully we can find out soon if he's got his game back. If the trailer is any indication, I'd say he has.

[via Film Ick]

Whether she's losing roles because she's too busy, because she's done with independents or because she's unreliable, Lindsay Lohan is so known for dropping out of projects that some of us have coined the action as "pulling a La Lohan." It isn't a surprise now to learn that she's being replaced in another film, The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond. You may remember the plot of the Tennessee Williams-penned film, which we told you about in November, as centering on a Southern socialite in 1920s Memphis. Lohan had been cast as that socialite, but now the role is being offered to Bryce Dallas Howard.

As far as reliability goes, Howard may be the better choice, but as for acting talent, I'd honestly rather have Lohan. Howard has so far done awful things for the films she's starred in, and she nearly damaged my faith in one of my favorite filmmakers, Lars von Trier. I'm hoping that Sam Raimi actually gets smart and cuts most of her performance from Spider-Man 3 -- she was almost completely absent from the trailer -- although it might help him to keep her just to make Kirsten Dunst look better. I think for Williams' fans, spoiled with the memories of great actors starring in film versions of A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and The Glass Menagerie, among others, as well as in his previously filmed screenplays like my personal favorite, Baby Doll, Howard will be a horrible addition to Teardrop Diamond's cast.

A loud splash disturbs the outdoor pool one night at The Cove, a drab, built-for-economy apartment complex somewhere in low-rent Philadelphia. The apartment's stuttering super, Cleveland Heep (Paul Giamatti) bounds out of his poolside bungalow, flashlight at the ready, thinking he's just caught one of the tenants in an unauthorized, off-hours cannonball. He's actually interrupted Story (Bryce Dallas Howard), a skinny dipper from the stars who has arrived in our world to complete a task so profound that she can't even articulate it. She can't articulate anything, in fact. Her role in the film will be to wander around aimlessly, speaking in a throaty hush and preferring to remain naked save for a man's button-up shirt that drops past her knees. Sometimes she gives off a seductive gaze and bares her long legs, while other times she wilts, as if her batteries are being drained by malevolent outside forces. She's like a cross between Annette Bening and E.T.

We eventually learn that she is a sea nymph from The Blue World, which sounds like a place you'd see on HBO's Real Sex, and she's come to deliver prognostications about the future of America. She can look someone in the eye and tell them exactly what happens in their future, and does so more than once, without even the courtesy of a spoiler warning. Why she crash landed at The Cove is a long story, matched in complexity only by the one about how she plans to return to her home planet. Her situation is so complicated that you wonder why she bothered making the trip; among other things, she must elude a wolfish predator with grass for fur, decipher complex symbology that will identify her Guardian and her Guild, and summon a giant eagle that can be ridden out of town like a flying carpet. Is this film derived from a bedtime story or the liner notes to a Led Zeppelin album?

What, did you think we quit our celebrity gossip feature already? Heck no! I've taken this sucker by storm with every intention to piss off at least one fan per story. And if I don't succeed? Well, actually, I'm pretty sure I'll piss someone off. Let's get started ...

How about we set sail with newlyweds Bryce Dallas Howard and Seth Gabel. First off, who the hell is Seth Gabel and how on earth did he manage to sneak his way into this power family? There's a book I wouldn't mind reading: "How Marrying Ron Howard's Daughter and Winning the Lottery Are One and the Same." Anyway, after a super-secret five-year relationship, the two youngsters married last month, then decided to take a cruise for their honeymoon ... with the entire Howard family. That's right, Papa Ron flew the family to Turkey where they picked up a boat and went sailing along Africa's north coast. Sheesh, there goes all the post-wedding "excitement." I mean, who would want to get "busy" knowing your Academy-Award winning father-in-law is sleeping right next door? Hey, should Seth make a wrong move, perhaps M. Night Shyamalan would produce a sequel to his upcoming Lady in the Water and call it, "Lady's Ex-Husband in the Water."

Poor Russell Crowe. No matter where this guy goes, he always manages to cause destruction. Lucky for him, this time there was no damage done to any human being. Instead, Crowe banged up his Mercedes after visiting his wife and newborn son, Tennyson, in the hospital. Tennyson? What? Why? The Gladiator star somehow drove his car into a concrete pylon outside The Royal North Shore Private Hospital in Sydney causing several thousand dollars in damage. Nice one, mate! Crowe later returned to pick up his family in a black Porsche and was seen carrying a telephone in case any more pylons decided to attack.

According to Page Six, anti-rape activists are pretty pissed off at the Jerusalem Film Festival for honoring Roman Polanski with a Life Achievement Award. Back in 1978, the Academy Award-winning director fled the country after seducing a 13-year-old model in a hot tub. However, that hasn't stopped him from making great films ... somewhere else. One rape survivor went as far as to call the Los Angeles district attorney's office and found out Polanski's warrant is still active. I say this calls for a sequel to Midnight Run where Robert De Niro is paid $20,000 bucks to locate Polanski and bring him back to Los Angeles. Hilarity ensues.

At long last (well, not really, but it still sounds good), it look as if Ron Howard is going to direct his daughter in a major role on the big screen (sorry, I'm not counting her appearances in Apollo 13 and Parenthood). Howard's partner Brian Grazer will produce The Look of Real for Imagine Entertainment, and Howard is confirmed to direct from a script by the great Winnie Holzman, who will be revered forever in some circles (read: my apartment) for creating and writing for My So-Called Life. The involvement of Bryce Dallas Howard, however, is unconfirmed -- according to Variety, Howard is "hoping" his daughter will star. Since the hopes of most directors aren't reported in the media, I'm guessing that in this case, the hopes indicate that negotiations are underway, and schedules are being examined.

The film is about "a group of young women in the garment industry," which sort of sounds more like a (potentially good) reality show than a movie. Howard and Grazer have already seen Holzman's first draft, and she's working on the changes they recommended now; the movie is one of very few that Howard is choosing between for his next project.