At the beginning of this year, there was news that Drew Barrymore and Ellen Page were setting their sights on Whip It! -- a flick about snarky chicks, toughness, and roller derby action. It sounded like a whole wackload of fun. The rumored March start date came and went without a sound, but now, luckily, things are on track for this summer. Even better: The Hollywood Reporter posts that joining Page and Barrymore on-screen will be Marcia Gay Harden, Kristen Wiig, Juliette Lewis, and Zoe Bell.

Page is playing Bliss Cavendar, a beauty queen who runs away to join the roller derby league in Austin, Texas. Harden will play her mom, an ex-beauty queen herself who wants her daughter out of the skates and back on the beauty circuit. Meanwhile, Wiig will play Bliss' rolling mentor, Malice in Wonderland, Lewis will be top star Dinah Might, and Bell will be "a medical technician moonlighting as derby star Bloody Holly." With first-time feature director Drew Barrymore taking on a role as Page's teammate, that's one heck of a roller roster.

I wonder if 5'1" Page will have to take on 5'8" Bell? Hell, I'm trying to imagine how she'd do against anyone, being as teeny as she is. We should find out soon enough -- the film heads into production this summer in Texas and Michigan.

Have no fear -- Vincent Gallo isn't going to become the next Tim Allen -- one of those unlikely men whose interesting past is buried as they become a bright and shiny Disney name. And no, this new project is not a big-screen version of the Canadian TV drama. Metropia is gearing up to be adult fare with a Swedish twist, and Variety reports that Gallo and Juliette Lewis are leading the film's voice cast.

According to ATMO... "Metropia is taking place in a not-so-distant, terrifying Europe. The world is running out of oil, and the net of undergrounds has been connected, creating a gigantic web underneath Europe. Roger from Farsta (a suburb of Stockholm) tries to stay away from the underground. He think it's unpleasant and he sometimes hears strange voices in his head." Then, this dude finds out that every detail of his life is being controlled. (But I ask, if every detail was controlled, could you actually discover that and change it?) The best part: "To succeed, he needs supermodel Nina to help him. Or, is it maybe Nina that needs Roger?" The best way to survive the scary future: supermodels!

Since Gallo and Lewis are leading the voice cast, I imagine they will be Roger and Nina. Are they the people you would pick for a guy suffering from strange voices and a future-saving supermodel? Joining them -- Udo Kier, Stellan Skarsgard, Sofia Helin, Shanti Roney, and Alexander Skarsgard. In the works for a handful of years now, this project should be pretty interesting -- the plan is to blend live action with animation, and Tarik Saleh, the film's director, says: "The border between animation and regular fiction film is blurring. In the future, the audience will not categorize films in the way we tend to do today. Metropia is steps ahead." Well, we'll find out fairly soon -- the film's release is slated for Spring 2009.

Yes, this is Gary Oldman week for me and retro cinema, but you won't see me complaining. Usually, the chameleon Oldman morphs and slides onto the screen for one of his many diverse supporting roles. Most recently, he's taken on heroes like Sirius Black and Lt. James Gordon, but he's got a past that includes the little person Rolfe, the creepy Mason Verger, Pontius Pilate, Zorg, a Russian hijacker, and as I shared earlier this week, Ludwig van Beethoven. 1993's Romeo is Bleeding, however, marks one of the few times like Immortal Beloved where we can see him shine in the lead.

Oldman plays Jack Grimaldi, a cop who has been lured by the dark side in a noir '90s landscape. (Think Twin Peaks' timeless quality and haunting music, but set within a violent urban environment.) To supplement his low-pay job as a sergeant, Grimaldi is working for the mob -- directing them to the locations of different witnesses under protection. For his efforts, he gets thousands of dollars, which he hides in the back of his yard. But this is only the tip of Jack's moral failings. While he has a wife named Natalie (Annabella Sciorra) at home, he's also acting out fantasies with his grating girlfriend, Sheri (Juliette Lewis).

Where do you think you're going? Nobody's leaving. Nobody's walking out on this fun, old-fashioned family Christmas! No, no. We're all in this together. This is a full-blown, four-alarm holiday emergency here! We're gonna press on, and we're gonna have the hap-hap-happiest Christmas since Bing Crosby tap-danced with Danny f**king Kaye. And when Santa squeezes his fat white ass down that chimney tonight, he's gonna find the jolliest bunch of a**holes this side of the nuthouse!

-- Clark W. Griswold (Chevy Chase)

After European Vacation, no one had any reason to believe the Vacation series would get back on track. Not to mention, almost without exception, movie series tend to get worse as they go along, right? Well, not this time.

National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation ranks just slightly behind the original in terms of laughs, and it packs in even more heart without resorting to schmaltz. Again, I'm going to give a lot of the credit to John Hughes, the sole writer this time out. He makes just about every line funny, memorable, and quotable. He gives us a whole lot of characters, each well-defined and amusing. Hughes may have hit his peak here unfortunately, because after the following year's Home Alone, the man never wrote a great script again. (I think Dutch is hilarious, but even with all my Hughes love I can't call it "good.")

It was a "last hurrah" of sorts for Chevy Chase, too. Chase is really terrific here in what is, I'm sad to say, his final funny starring role (although I didn't see The Karate Dog). Oh, Chevy. What happened? Beverly D'Angelo returns, and is typically great ("Clark! Slow down! I don't want to spend the holidays dead!"). And my Lord, does Randy Quaid step it up here as Cousin Eddie. Chase's exchanges with Quaid are some of the film's funniest moments ("Can I refill your eggnog for you? Get you something to eat? Drive you out to the middle of nowhere and leave you for dead?"). If Quaid's delivery of gems like "Merry Christmas! Sh*tter was full!" and "That's the gift that keeps on giving the whole year!" don't make you laugh, well ... lighten up.