Oh, Taryn Manning. Sure, she occasionally tackles a different role here and there, but for the most part, she's made her career on a mixture of cinematic drugs, sex, and hooking over and over again. It's gotten to the point where you kind of wonder if that's what her career will amount to. But maybe it'll change now that's she trading in the needles for some flashy robotics. She is co-starring with Bill Pullman in the recently-wrapped Your Name Here, which Cinematical first told you about last year. (Note: The Matthew Wilder who wrote and directed this film is not the music guy.)

It's sort of a biography of Philip K. Dick, but it's being done sort of like Fur -- using his writing and fake world rather than being a straight-out biopic. (Pullman's name in the movie is William J. Frick.) MTV recently talked with the actress and got the scoop on the movie, which is currently being submitted for next year's Sundance. She plays Nikki, who is based on Victoria Principal (the woman Dick wanted to play the lead in Blade Runner).

As Manning describes it, Frick is "infatuated with my character... she starred in that movie Earthquake, and he is obsessed with her even though he has a wife. All around his office you see pictures of me. One day, he does a huge line, and the next thing you know he's in the back of a limo, and there I am!" Well, there she is as a robot. Manning says Frick "can't tell if it's a dream or I'm really there, and the next thing you know, I'm taking him into my world. [He thinks] we're going to live happily ever after." It's zany enough that it could actually be entertaining, and if Taryn is believed, it will be: "It's deep; the writer is great; and it's kooky. I think it'll be another cool cult movie."

Back in June, while talking about Anna Faris' new Playboy film, our Erik Davis said: "Calm down there guys, her career hasn't tanked enough for Anna Faris to begin entertaining the same ideas you were entertaining after reading the title of this post." Well, now she is -- kind of. MTV has reported that the actress is in a rush to get a feature on Linda Lovelace in production, before the looming strike. For the handful of you that don't know -- Lovelace is the gal behind the epic porn film Deep Throat.

As if Faris playing a porn star, an uber famous one at that, wasn't enough -- she says: "It's a really deep, dark drama -- and it would be cool for me to do." The film is called Inferno, she's putting it together "alongside a first-time filmmaker," and she says that Matthew Wilder will direct it. No other big names have been added to the cast, but Faris says that they are currently struggling to cast the role of Lovelace's manager and husband, Chuck Traynor.

After playing a woman whose clitoris is in her throat, and becoming world-famous, Lovelace became an anti-porn activist. But her life was a heck of a lot more than that role. In the biz, she was involved in bestiality and pretty hardcore sex, and she claimed that her first husband, Traynor, forced her into porn at gunpoint (similar to how he acted with second wife, porn star Marilyn Chambers)*. With all this in mind, who would have ever guessed that Anna Faris would be the actress to take it on? Can you see her in the role?

*Proof that even writing about porn rots the brain: Mixing up the names Boreman and Traynor. Thanks to those who spotted that!

In the 45th case this year of (at least) two competing movies about the same historical figure being made at the same time, another biopic of sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick has been announced, just weeks after news of a similar film surfaced. The first Dick biopic (That just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?) was written and will be directed by 1980s one-hit wonder Matthew Wilder, and stars boring Bill Pullman as Dick. Wilder's film, entitled Panasonic, will reportedly be a comedy in which "The lines between reality and perfection blur ... Paranoid conspiracy theories of the highest order, drug-fueled interdimensional shifts, and 1970s pop-culture combine for the mind-bending adventure of the century." Got that?

The new Dick project, on the other hand, is fully authorized by Dick's estate, and is being co-produced by the estate's Electric Shepherd Prods. Currently untitled, the film is described as a "nontraditional biopic [which] will interweave the prolific author's life with his fiction and incorporate elements of his last unfinished novel, The Owl in Daylight", and will be written by Tony Grisoni (who, having also helped write Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, seems the perfect choice). The increasingly prolific Paul Giamatti, already on board as a producer, is currently in negotiations to star in the film.

There's no word yet on a start date for either project, but since the screenplay for Panasonic is already done, that one would seem to have a head start.

Remember that awesome 1980s song about the guy who "sailed away to China/in a little rowboat to findya" (possibly the greatest slant-rhyme in the history of slant-rhymes), only to find that his girl had to get her laundry cleaned? Yeah, it was a fantastic song. For those of you who, like me, can't remember, it was by a guy named Matthew Wilder. Rather than disappearing off the face of the earth, it turns out that what Wilder has been doing all this time is ... putting together a comedic film about Philip K. Dick. Well of course he has!

According to Saturday's Production Weekly, the film is entitled Panasonic, and will star Bill Pullman as Dick. Panasonic is described as a "comedic journey" into the author's mind, and Wilder is dreaming big. Get this: "The lines between reality and perfection blur ... Paranoid conspiracy theories of the highest order, drug-fueled interdimensional shifts, and 1970s pop-culture combine for the mind-bending adventure of the century." [Emphasis added.] Whoa. Man, I don't care if Chris De Burgh is directing -- I am totally sold on this one.

The movie is due to begin shooting next month.