Here's a few casting nibblets from Variety for your weekend:

First up, there's the wonderful Hugo Weaving. I could watch that man in just about anything -- whether he's Elrond, purring through wordplay with V, making the name Smith sound cool, or having cross-dressing adventures in the desert. Now he's grabbed a part in Glendyn Ivin's The Last Ride. Set in Australia, the film follows an "emotional road trip seen through the eyes of a young boy accompanying his father on the lam." Yeah ... sounds like Priscilla without the divine wardrobe, but with Weaving, I don't mind. Production begins this summer.

Meanwhile, moving across the globe and way, way up, we've got Tia Carrere in Winterpeg, er, Winnipeg, Manitoba. She's signed on to Dana Lustig's Wild Cherry -- the flick I told you about last month. It's about a girl who is ready to give up her virginity to her football-playing boyfriend, only to find out that he's just dating her to add her to the team's "bang book." So, she decides to get revenge with other girls in the school. Carrere will play "an exotic high school history teacher who becomes a sexual mentor for her femme students." I wonder what action Tia will guide them to take...

Well, even though the last "Australian" to attempt a boxing film wasn't exactly a raging success, you can't blame someone else for wanting to take a swing -- and yes, that pun was intended, I couldn't help myself. The Australian newspaper The Age posted a photograph from the Australian noir The Tender Hook. Written and directed by Jonathan Ogilvie, the film stars Rose Byrne, Matt Le Nevez (who made a name for himself as a serial killer in the Australian made-for-TV film The Society Murders) and Hugo Weaving. The story is less a sports tale and more of a "noir-ish" take on a love triangle between a young boxer, an aristocratic Englishman and Byrne's romantic opportunist. The film takes place in 1920s Redfern, Australia, and was expected to shoot on location. However, some local controversy sprung up when the production moved to Melbourne for the sake of some "incentives" to the filmmakers.

The photo is the first look at Le Nevez as the soulful boxer, with plenty of sepia tones to remind you that this is a period piece. Production started in February and Ogilvie is still filming, so a release date might still be a way off. Ogilvie has claimed that he has been trying to make this film for over ten years now, so I'm pretty sure that he's going to take his time to make sure he does it right.

There has been plenty of speculation as to who was going to be providing the voice of the evil Megatron in Michael Bay's big-budget remake of Transformers. IESB.net has been following the process pretty closely, and they have now confirmed that Australian actor Hugo "Mr. Anderson" Weaving has been signed on as the head Decepticon. Rumors of who was going to provide the voice varied from the traditionalist's choice Frank Welker (who voiced Megatron, Soundwave, and Galvatron in the animated series) to some bizarre gossip that it could be rapper Ludacris (aka Christopher Bridges) being up for the part. But silly rumors aside, it looks like the casting of Weaving could be a done deal.

Fans have had plenty of changes to get used to since the film was put into production. Last August, Mark gave us the news on some images of Megatron that had caused a stir among fans, and there have been plenty of grumbling about some of Michael Bay and producer Tom DeSanto's "stylistic" choices. With the addition of Weaving, who has already had plenty of voice-over experience. It will hopefully add a little something to a character design that has inspired some "mixed reactions" to say the least.

The only thing I know for sure about the casting situation with The Tender Hook is that it's an Australians-only affair. An article in this morning's Herald Sun is re-affirming most of what we've already known -- that Rose Byrne has replaced Radha Mitchell as Iris, a woman in a noir-stylized 1920s Sydney who is fought over by two opposing boxers. Hugo Weaving, Ray Winstone and Matt Le Nevez are also still attached to the project, although official announcements have yet to be made. The project is being written and directed by Jonathan Ogilvie, whose last film, Emulsion, was unseen by me. Still, I have high hopes for any film that self-identifies as film noir, one of my favorite genres.

Byrne, who was the Duchesse de Polignac in last year's Marie Antoinette, has a full slate of high-profile films for 2007, including the sequel to Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later and the starring role in Boyle's highly-anticipated 'the sun is dying, what do we do?' science-fiction film, Sunshine. The paper also reports that The Tender Hook is set to be shot in Melbourne, which has recently become one of the hottest filming spots in all of Australia.

Hugo Weaving is probably most famous (or infamous, if you prefer) for playing the iconic agent Smith in The Matrix and its sequels -- at least that's where I first became aware of him. His portrayal of the single-mindedly evil agent was one of the best things about the movies (other than Carrie-Anne Moss in PVC outfits) and helped make them as great as they were. Well, at least the first one was great -- the others are a topic for a different post.

Other than the Matrix films, Weaving has shown his diversity and distinguished himself in a variety of different and challenging roles including elf leader Elrond in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, freedom fighter V in V for Vendetta and as drag queen Mitzi del Bra in the bawdy hit Priscilla, Queen of the Desert -- opposite the great Terrence Stamp. Now, according to our good friends at Production Weekly, Weaving is set to star in a new film that will certainly add to his already diverse and impressive repertoire.

Weaving, along with Matt Le Nevez and super-cute Rose Byrne, will play the three leads in first-time feature writer/director Johnathan Ogilvie's film noir drama The Tender Hook. The film, set in stylish Sydney of the 1920s, tells the story of a young woman's struggle to find true love amidst the morally ambiguous and often corrupt world of boxing where people fight both inside and outside of the ring to find their way. As I'm a big fan of this kind of noir thriller, this film sounds like it will be worth checking out. Plus, Weaving is really good at picking roles in interesting and successful projects -- so if he's in it, there must be something to it. Shooting on The Tender Hook is scheduled to start February 9th in Sydney.

The male equivalent to the lead role in Wonder Woman seems to be that of the Clown Prince of Crime in the upcoming Batman sequel. Nearly every actor even remotely decent for the part has been rumored to be in the mix, from Paul Bettany to Johnny Depp to Robin Williams. The new word on the street is actually a redux of some old words on the street, and it comes to us via the incredibly well connected folks over at Batman on Film. According to BoF, Hugo Weaving's name has begun resurfacing again. Weaving was an early favorite of the rumor mill, but disappeared pretty quickly in the flurry of names which soon followed.

While Weaving is certainly a talented and accomplished actor, I still like the idea of going with a slightly younger Joker. It is obviously an origins story, with the character showing up for the first time in Gotham, so it makes sense to me to cast a younger man for the role.

There's been a plethora of coverage on V for Vendetta leading up to this, its opening weekend; it's with no small sense of irony that I found one of the most interesting articles I read this week about the film's genesis was dredged up from November 2005. Heidi MacDonald -- whose The Beat over at Comicon.com is a must-browse blog as a one-stop-shop for news about where comics and culture intersect -- has published a full transcript of an interview conducted last year. The end result? I found it to be one of the best interviews with Moore possible, covering in very great detail why he's so tired of Hollywood. Maybe the most refreshing part of MacDonald's interview for myself was the realization that Moore's not just so unhappy he's refusing his credits on a project ... he's refusing money.  MacDonald's interview is on-line -- Part One is here and Part Two is here.

(Via Comicon.com)

"They make us feel indebted
For saving us from hell
And then they put us through it
It's time the bastards fell!"

-- "Suspect Device," Stiff Little Fingers, 1979

"The revolution will not be televised."

-- Gil-Scott Heron

The more things stay the same, the more they change. Or vice-versa. Originally written and published in 1981, the comic book V for Vendetta was created by Englishmen Alan Moore (writer) and David Lloyd (artist) in response to political events in their home nation. They created a dark fantasia about life under fascism in a near-future England, and a masked man who sprung from the shadows to smash the iron grip of power. Over two decades later, V for Vendetta comes to the big screen with a script adaptation by Andy and Larry Wachowski, with big stars and big money all apparent in the final product. And once again, Hollywood moves at the speed of lead; a rousing response to Thatcherism is exactly what the world needs now.

Time turns all artifacts of rebellion into fetish objects: Ronald Reagan is immortalized as a collectible plate. Che Guevara's known mostly as a T-shirt. Billy Bragg's early on-the-cheap LP's of protest songs have been re-mastered for a CD box set with bonus DVDs. And turning any work of art into a movie inevitably takes time. The question of whether the world of 2006 resembles that of 1981 politically is a matter of personal opinion; the question of whether filmmaking has changed in the past 25 years is not. Moore's original vision (which I read when it was first published in serial form, riveted with adolescent angst) is so old it takes place in a future that is now our past. (It's also worth nothing that Moore has asked for his name to be removed from the film as part of a dispute with DC Comics - which, like Cinematical, is nestled under the corporate umbrella of Time Warner, along with Warner Brothers Films.)

The story is still essentially the same; after political chaos and mass destruction, England's risen from the ashes of ruin to be reborn as a orderly, healthy, efficiently-run dictatorship, complete with secret police and propaganda broadcasts.  A young woman, Evey Hammond (Natalie Portman) is out past curfew and set upon by the feared 'Fingermen' – secret police that can call anything you do a crime and whose every action is, by definition, legal. The cops are stopped by a single man – a cape-wearing phantasm wearing a Guy Fawkes mask, an unceasing, unsettling smile beaming out as he dispatches any who oppose him. (The film shows and explains how Fawkes attempted to destroy the House of Parliament in 1605 in a prologue, so American audiences won't be left wondering why the dude kicking ass is wearing what looks like, as near as they can tell, a Hamburglar mask.)