After tons of speculation and millions of votes counted, the results are in -- Richard Gere is still The Man. Seriously, how many people do you know who look 33 when they're actually 106? None. Gere. That's it. And Variety tells us he's signed on for not one, but two more films. The Pope turned 81and he's riding around in a little bulletproof car. Gere is 106 and he's doing two movies! Who do you think is more awesome? Hint: His name rhymes with Fear??

First up, he'll star opposite Hilary Swank in Amelia -- a biopic on the famed aviatrix, Amelia Earhart, which will be directed by Mira Nair off a screenplay by Ron Bass. Gere will play Earhart's husband, publisher George Putnam, and the film will document their rocky relationship. Additionally (and this is something we already reported), Gere will co-star in the cop flick Brooklyn's Finest, alongside folks like Don Cheadle and Ethan Hawke. Antoine Fuqua will direct. (Currently, there's no word on which young actress Gere will be shaggin' in that film, but we'll let you know when more info is released ...)

Variety is reporting that Phillip Noyce has signed on to direct Scarlett Johansson in Mary, Queen of Scots, a long talked-about project that will focus on the Roman Catholic Scottish queen who conspired in the Babington Plot to murder her cousin, Elizabeth I, and was eventually beheaded as a traitor in 1587. It's hard to understand what the excitement could be in telling this tale again -- we've seen it innumerable times in the past few years, right up to last year's bloated disaster Elizabeth: The Golden Age, in which the character was played by the hugely talented Samantha Morton. I also can't be the only one who thinks the casting here is bizarre in the extreme. Johansson is not a bad actress, but can she really play a French-accented monarch from the Elizabethan age? Isn't that something of a stretch? I guess we'll find out. The Variety story also says nothing about how this impacts Noyce's involvement in the Amelia Earhart biopic he's supposed to be helming.

The word from Hilary Swank's own mouth last month was that her Oscar-bait biopic of the doomed flying ace was set to begin filming in February -- so how is Noyce going to start helming Mary, Queen of Scots in April? Obviously something is screwy here. Numerous outlets have been reporting Noyce's commitment to the Earhart biopic over the last couple of months, but details about the project -- including official confirmation about basic cast and crew details -- have not been forthcoming. It certainly can't be true that Noyce is filming a major show like an Amelia Earhart biopic in the same season as Mary, so maybe his involvement was never so firm in the first place or he just dropped out of one and moved to the other. Such has been known to occur.

Once upon a time, back when I started out this line of work, it was my aim to see every movie ever made. Then came the VHS player. Once the direct-to-video market began, numerous filmmakers stopped thinking of the pleasures and rigors of making films for the big screen. Instead, they started thinking of a quick payoff. VHS financed the rise of the indie movie for good (or often, ill). It all added up to a huge increase in the number of films released. Eventually, I realized if I wanted to do some ordinary things--hoisting an ale, listening to music, reading a book--I was going to have to let a few films slide. Coming attractions have been a huge help in picking which ones to avoid, particularly the ones that reveal every single plot point and the most likely resolution of the problem. So how can I really do a worst of 2007 list? I ducked a lot of contenders. Underdog, for instance.

I missed P.U., I Hate You, as those slashing wits at Cracked magazine will be calling it, but I really felt James Rocchi's personal agony at witnessing the last of Hilary Swank's trio of evil movies this year. Though some would call it a duo; some people fell for Freedom Writers. Maybe this kind of story can be told without Room 222-levels of obviousness and manipulation...perhaps from the POV of one of the students, instead of the earnest white teacher? I'm not going to get any prizes for prescience by saying Swank's agent needs to be renditioned to some country with deep dark dungeons. Swank's Lost Year has already been celebrated elsewhere.

But The Reaping (#1) was the worst of the three; no one wants to see this actress's career reaped anymore. The low-water mark of this swamps-of-blood Christian thriller was the scene where Swank is told by a yokel, "Some people just don't want to go to heaven." Meaning her, and the atheists, agnostics, and Odin-worshippers in the audience.

It's a fact of modern movie watching: as bland storytelling becomes more and more ascendant, you have to be on the lookout for clichés. And most of the time, we remember that -- and occasionally lose sight of the fact that there really are no cliché plots, just cliché execution of the moments within those plots. I can't think of a better example of that fact than the new big-budget tear-jerker P.S. I Love You, starring Hilary Swank and Gerard Butler as a young couple torn apart by untimely death. As P.S. I Love You opens, we witness young married couple Holly (Swank) and Gerry (Butler) fussing, feuding and fighting before they kiss and make up; then, after the credits, we jump ahead to ... Butler's wake. And while that leap is a little brusque, the real indicator of the movie we're in for comes soon after. A priest introduces the playing of Gerry's favorite song, and the opening chords of the Pogues's "Fairytale of New York" fill the air ... and then the song jumps ahead several bars, skips selectively through the verses, and then leaps to the chorus. Really? The music Jerry wanted played at his wake was a clumsily-edited version of a song, cut for no other reason than to move the movie forward faster? This is not playing a character's favorite song; this is cheap manipulation, designed to engage your feelings as swiftly and cheaply as the filmmakers can. And so goes the movie.

I have no objection to a film trying to warm my heart; what I object to is a film trying to microwave it. P.S. I Love You barrages us with high-frequency waves of cheap sentiment, lazy writing, absolute fabrication and only-in-the-movies nonsense, a purely mechanical process designed to make us feel sadness as swiftly as possible, imbuing the sort of emotional heat that, like the hot patches in a microwaved burrito, doesn't really spread through the entire film or endure beyond a few seconds. And I know it's unfair to compare one film to another, but P.S. I Love You is so clumsy that I found myself thinking of far better films about terminal illness (My Life Without Me) or the unexpected loss of a loved one (Truly, Madly, Deeply) not immediately after but, in fact, during the film's agonizingly long dead spots and bland, off-the-rack montages.

The moment has finally come. P.S. I Love You opens this week -- the sad and funny romcom that stars Hilary Swank and Gerard Butler. You might remember my previous posts on the film. I've been following it ever since the production gave me my favorite example of spastic injuries back in November of last year, when Swank got hurt. Why? During one scene, Butler does a striptease, and a flying suspender beaned her on the head and required stitches. Since then, there's been a slew of images, and a trailer to check out. There was also the chance, earlier this month, to submit questions for Moviefone's Unscripted series. The questions were picked, Butler and Swank chatted away, and the new clip is now up over at Moviefone.

You'll get the chance to see Swank laugh a lot and give affection to Butler's new shoe, lots of talk of letter writing, and all that love-related sort of stuff. They even mention the accident, but only in passing, unfortunately. Most of the time, it's just the two joking around. Hearing how Butler talks about a scene that includes a powerful embrace surrounded by cheering music fans, it's no wonder that he's looking to stop the whole historical action drama theme. Gerry's got a big ole soft spot.

P.S. I Love You is the tale of a woman (Swank), who falls for the perfect Irish man (Butler), only to lose him to an illness. But he's not completely gone. To help his love get over the shock of his death, he's created a number of letters that get sent to her, guiding her to take chances and move on to her next love. Could it be Harry Connick, Jr.? Jeffrey Dean Morgan? James Marsters? Not bad choices at all. If only every girl could have those men to choose from.

Hilary Swank has confirmed what was reported a while back -- her next project is a big biopic of flying ace Amelia Earhart. Collider reports that Swank gave some details at the recent junket for my-husband-just-died romcom weepie P.S., I Love You. "It's happening," Swank says of the Earhart film. "I start doing my research in January. It's my next project." She goes on to note that the strike may put a crimp in the plans, as the script is not quite finished. "The film's almost done, but with the hopes that ... we're not filming that till late February, so while I'm doing my preparation and breaking down the script -- sorry, not breaking down the script -- when I'm doing my preparations in breaking down Amelia, who she was and doing all that research, hopefully the writers get what they need and we can start working on that. It's very minor, minor work that needs to be done on the script." Swank also said the film does not attempt to offer a solution to the mystery of Earhart's disappearance.

Want to hear more? As is often the case, the Australian press is out in front on this. A couple weeks ago, The Australian broke the story that Philip Noyce is attached to direct this film, and it already has a title -- The Story of Amelia Earhart. Catchy. The paper also revealed that Noyce will shoot the film in Hawaii and Nova Scotia. That's it for details thus far, but expect more casting news and the like in the next month, assuming this picture doesn't become the latest in an increasingly long line of strike casualties.

Her last horror outing, of 10 biblical plagues and The Reaping, wasn't the most loved piece of scary cinema to hit the screens, but the 2-time Oscar winner Hilary Swank is trying again. I'm not sure what has brought about her recent attraction to fantastical horror, but Variety reports that Swank will star in an upcoming adaptation of John Marks' recent novel, Fangland -- a project that she will produce with Das Films and Blumhouse Productions. Mark Wheaton, scribe of The Messengers, handed in the project's first draft just before the strike -- and he's the same guy whose Unfinished Country script just got Samuel L. Jackson to take the lead.

John Marks is a former producer of 60 Minutes, and Fangland merges Bram Stoker's legend of Dracula with his experience on the news show. Yes, that means Hilary is heading back to the vamps, but with a little more drama than her role on Buffy. Evangeline Harker (Swank) is a producer for a television news show who takes an assignment to go into Romania and investigate a criminal legend, Ion Torgu, to get him on camera. This will put Swank face to face with more stories about crazy plagues, first, because one can't get enough of terrible disease. Soon, Torgu accosts her, impersonating Dracula. Like Stoker's tale, Harker finds herself held for months, before she pops up in a Transylvanian monastery as this Torgu Dracula gets introduced to New York City. Since only the first draft has been completed, this production will, most likely, be in the works for a while yet. I wonder... will Swank get accosted by the same, lustful vixen vamps? If you've read it, or would just like to comment on Swank taking on Dracula, please chime in!

Way back when speculation was running wild about who should be cast as James Bond in Casino Royale, a friend of mine said to me adamantly, "No question! Gerard Butler, hands down. Dude. Geraaaaard Butler."

Now, this was a good while ago, and I hadn't seen Phantom of the Opera yet, so I didn't know all that much about this "Gerard Butler" person. But before too long I went to an early press event for 300 at which we were treated to a surprise guest: Butler himself, sitting just a few rows from me, fielding questions like it was his favorite thing to do in the world. And not to get all fangirl on you or anything, but ... well, I went a little fangirl. It was the strangest thing. I felt like those teenagers on old Beatles clips. The man is charm and sex personified -- and soon, with the resounding success of 300, the entire rest of the world knew it, too, not just the millions of rabid Gerard Butler fans who, I discovered, can be both impressive and a little terrifying in their loyal devotion to "Gerry."

Well, Gerry's now trading in his loincloth for sensitive-guy clothes in the new romance P.S. I Love You, in which he plays a man who doesn't let a little death stop him from expressing his love for the wife he left behind. That wife? Oh, she's only played by one Hilary Swank, winner of (ho-hum) two Oscars, phenomenal actress and general ass-kicker extraordinaire (see: Million Dollar Baby, The Next Karate Kid). Heck, I'm pretty sure she could've played Bond AND the new Bond girl, if only anyone had thought to ask her.

In just a few days Butler and Swank will be interviewing each other at Moviefone's studios for our Unscripted interview series, and while we'd be perfectly happy to watch these two sit in a room silently -- or maybe duke it out, gladiator-style -- we'd rather have some questions for them to ask each other. So let us have it, impressively terrifying Gerard Butler and Hilary Swank fans. Ask both of these stars whatever you want to know, and check back here the week of December 17 to see if your question made it on the air.

To submit a question, you can leave it here in the comments, or you can text one to AskCelebs@aol.com (brought to you by Verizon Wireless). Please provide your first name and your city and state, and if you're looking for inspiration, then take a look at some of our past Unscripted interviews here. Good luck!

Usually huge masses of pictures come by way of superhero movies. Everyone is dying to see how different characters will be presented, and there's so many particular details to see that even a big pile of pictures won't spoil the final, cinematic outcome. Hell, the set pictures that just went up for Watchmen will only be the tip of the iceberg there -- fans still haven't glimpsed the heroes themselves, Nite Owl's ship, or any of the goodies sure to hit us at some point. But then sometimes, there are just a ton of pictures for a random, part-drama romcom. Rope of Silicon has just added 61 new images to their gallery for P.S. I Love You -- the film about the woman who gets letters from her husband about how to move on after he dies -- the same one where Hilary Swank was injured due to a suspender.

Sixty-one. Logic might make you wonder if they're showing a flip-book of the whole movie, which would be cool, but also pretty pointless and spoileriffic. No, instead these are a mixture of set and promotional pictures. There's Hilary Swank with dead hubbie Gerard Butler, smooches with Jeffrey Dean Morgan (who you'll see much more of once pics of his Comedian work in Watchmen hits the web), and lots of slightly-different shots. By that I mean shots they almost work like a flip -- hugging from far away, a close up, a lean-in for a kiss, an almost-kiss, the same pose in a different outfit... you get the idea. At least you can see James Marsters finally -- who looks to be gearing up to perform for Swank. Personally, an outtake with that suspender is all I'd need to see it, but maybe sixty-plus pictures will help convince some other people. The film opens on December 21 -- just in time for Christmas.

I know I make it look easy, but it's tough to be this prescient. A few days ago, we got word of an unspecified Amelia Earhart project being ramped up for a pre-strike shoot, and at the time I pointed out that the whole idea of doing this story as an indie film -- as the mystery project was then described -- is absurd. There's hardly ever been better fodder for a big-budget piece of Oscar bait than the story of Earhart, the legendary flying ace and early feminist hero who disappeared over the Pacific in 1937, never to be seen again. Hollywood apparently agrees -- the New York Post is reporting that two-time Oscar winner Hilary Swank has just put pen to paper to star as Earhart in a biopic. According to the paper, Swank's agents had to ditch a party the other night to take "urgent calls about the deal," and the next day she signed on to the project. This all sounds so on-the-money that I'm already onto wondering who is going to direct this thing. In my earlier post, I mentioned Scorsese, but since he's already put his stamp on Howard Hughes, you can rule him out. How about Anthony Minghella? Joe Wright? The project needs a majestic scope.

As of right now, there's no further information available on the film or Swank's deal, but let's keep the speculation train going: Who should play Fred Noonan, the co-pilot who went down with Earhart? How about Luke Wilson, in a grown-up role for a change? Who should play the wealthy feminist who bankrolled her flights? I said Susan Sarandon last time.and I'll stick with that. Stay tuned as more information on the project comes into focus -- I'm sure the moneymen will be watching to see how well P.S., I Love You does this Christmas.

One movie I have been dying to see is Hilary Swank's P.S. I Love You, but not because of the subject matter. One of the first posts I wrote for this site was about the film, when the actress suffered injuries during a scene where co-star Gerard Butler does a strip-tease. A suspender flew through the air, smacked her in the forehead, and gave her stitches. That's comedy gold that just can't be re-created. Excuse me, ma'am -- how did you get your scar? A suspender...

Finally, almost a year later, we've got a trailer to check out. To recap -- the film is about a woman who is haunted by the ghost of her dead husband. Instead of exiting her life in a sudden clap, he has left her a series of messages to help her move on with her life. From the look of the trailer, the messages come in all shapes and sizes, and give her a list of tasks to complete, sort of like a treasure hunt out of mourning. Between the music and the tear-jerking aspects, I'm sure this will be a big romantic hit and rampant date movie -- one just in time for the holiday season, since it comes out right before Christmas.

Beyond Swank and Butler, there's a pretty solid cast to back the duo up -- Prey for Rock 'n' Roll's Gina Gershon, Buffy's second tortured soul James Marsters, Friendly Lisa Kudrow, Grey's Anatomy's doomed Denny, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Bug's Harry Connick Jr. and the wonderful Kathy Bates. Sadly though, Marsters didn't even get a mention in the trailer, although he's one of the top billed. Hopefully this will give the actor some cinematic cred. Anyhow, there's only a few months left to wait, and try not to get blind-sided by some flying suspenders in the meantime.

Remember that indie comedy that Patrick Walsh blogged about last month? The Laws of Motion, as the flick is called, is Matthew Perry's latest attempt to find some solid, cinematic comedic success, and teams him up with everyone's favorite funny girl Hilary Swank... er, wait. The comedy is about a husband (Perry) in the typical adult male complex -- his job and community are suffocating him and he is "enduring headaches caused by his free-spirited brother and sister." Swank tops off the the man's pressure by playing the annoyingly-perfect neighbor. Ben Foster, who you might remember from his overly-emotional artist stint in Six Feet Under, or as the big-winged Angel in X3, was already cast as Perry's brother, and now there's a sister to boot.

The carefree sis will be played by Ginnifer Goodwin. If you're a cable television fan, you might recognize her from her time as Bill Paxton's third wife in the polygamist series Big Love. She's also the woman who played Vivian Cash in Walk the Line. Motion comes from the pen of Elyse Friedman, whose lone previous credit is the romantic drama Suddenly Naked, and will be the sophomore directorial stint for Craig Lucas, who last helmed The Dying Gaul. He's also the guy who wrote the mainstream Prelude to a Kiss, and the less well-known dysfunctional marriage movie with Campbell Scott called The Secret Lives of Dentists. This film, which is currently shooting in Connecticut, also has one more name on the roster over at IMDb -- Justin Long -- that cheerleading dork from Dodgeball and the cool, human embodiment of a Mac. Any bets on which way this comedy will go - big flop or funny success? I honestly have no idea.

There are two Karate Kid movies, one good and one great. The first one is about a naive young man being taught valuable life lessons through karate, and the second one has him putting those lessons into action to save his neck. That's the saga, and it should have ended there. For all I know, there may have even been some idealistic young studio executive at Columbia Pictures who argued for not ripping off the fans and for stopping the series before it went too far. If that happened, I'm sure he's now an idealistic middle-aged waiter at Sizzler -- this is Hollywood. So after the success of Part II, we had the unintentionally comic Part III, which is so enjoyably over the top that I would be lying if I said I didn't like it. Unfortunately, I can't say the same thing of the next and final nail in the coffin, The Next Karate Kid. This one represents the breaking point where the director, screenwriter and star of the first three films said 'no' and the studio still said 'yes.'

But Miyagi comes back, right? Well, no. The oddest thing about The Next Karate Kid is that the character being played by Morita bears practically no resemblance to the dour, alcoholic handyman of the early films. Our Miyagi has been body-snatched and replaced by some kind of cloying, annoying fool with a weird inability to keep a straight face. When Miyagi first comes face to face with this film's 'Miyagi-bad-guy' -- one of the few resemblances of this film to the previous trilogy is that it reserves one bad guy for Miyagi and one for the kid -- he seems on the verge of a giggle fit. The bad guy he's facing is a fascist football coach for the local high-school, played by Michael Ironside. He's on the field, in the middle of delivering some kind of veiled invective against 'the enemy who live among us' when Miyagi innocently interrupts to ask for some help in finding a student he's there to pick up. Ironside's response -- to accuse him of trespassing and overtly threaten him -- is beyond ludicrous.

Matthew Perry is a funny guy. His charm alone is (almost) enough to carry the stunningly self-important Studio 60, and before that he was great on some no-name sitcom with that chick from Office Space. His movie roles haven't been quite as successful -- I don't think we'll be seeing The Whole Eleven Yards any time soon, and you'd have to work hard to find romantic comedies as unmemorable as Fools Rush In, Three to Tango, and Serving Sara -- but he's giving it another shot. Perry will star with everyone's favorite Million Dollar Baby, Hilary Swank, in the independent comedy Laws of Motion. We all know Perry can do comedy, but Swank? Unless we're counting The Next Karate Kid, she's not the first person I think of when I want a hearty chuckle. We'll see if she can pull it off.

Perry will play "a husband struggling with life in a repressive career and community along with headaches caused by his free-spirited brother and sister." Swank will play "the all-too-perfect neighbor of Perry's harried character" -- a supporting role. Ben Foster is in negotiations to play Perry's brother. Foster is probably best known for playing Angel in X-Men: The Last Stand, but I immediately thought of the unbelievably whiny Russell on Six Feet Under. Laws of Motion will be co-produced by Hilary Swank Productions, which I am assuming is Hilary Swank's production company. The film is supposed to start shooting this month, but the press release doesn't mention a writer or director. Hopefully, they've got those minor details sorted out!

Double Oscar-winner Hilary Swank has reportedly signed to play Evangeline Harker in the big-screen version of John Marks' vampire novel Fangland. The New York Post is reporting that Swank's company optioned the book for Swank to star, which she will, and describes it as a "Dracula meets 'Network' story. That squares with what I've heard about the book -- that it's basically Bram Stoker's Dracula only all the protagonists are news people instead of lords and ladies. Evangeline Harker is a producer for a TV news show called The Hour that's based on 60 Minutes (where Marks used to work) who is debating a marriage proposal and trying to climb the ladder at work when she unexpectedly gets sent to Romania to do a puff piece on a legendary criminal named Ion Torgu. She ends up encountering Togu, who is supposedly very much a Dracula figure. No other details were available in the Post item about the forthcoming production of the film.

Swank has one film already in the can -- the romantic dramedy P.S., I Love You, about a woman who finds messages that her recently deceased husband left her, designed to help her get on with her life. She's also supposedly attached to Labyrinth, a thriller about a woman with multiple personalities, and one of those personalities knows the identity of a killer, but I'll believe this one when I see it actually get off the ground. We also recently reported that Swank is developing a remake of Intimate Strangers, a French film about a woman who thinks she's seeing a psychiatrist, but the guy is actually some nut pretending to be a psychiatrist. Looks like she's got a lot to bite off.