Yes, believe it or not, the Mighty Aphrodite Academy Award winner Mira Sorvino is making a sports movie. However, the twist is that "making" doesn't mean "starring," but rather jumping into her first directorial gig. According to a press release received by AceShowbiz, she will be helming the feature for her baseball player-turned-actor husband, Christopher Backus. No title has been given for the project, and right now, it just looks like a romantic passion piece that might get made.

Sorvino says: "The day we penned the first five pages was so exciting. We'd been talking about it for years, but then one day we just hired a babysitter to take the kids to the museum and sat there and banged stuff out." Yes, that means that she wrote it with her aspiring actor husband. If you can't find a good gig -- pen one with your Oscar-winning wife! Whether this just remains the couple's dream, or becomes a reality, remains to be seen. I imagine they're just trying to drum up some buzz to take to studios.

Meanwhile, you can catch Sorvino in Multiple Sarcasms later this year, which has her starring with a pretty sweet cast -- Timothy Hutton, Dana Delany, Stockard Channing, Chris Sarandon, Mario Van Peebles, and Joan Jett.

Specialty distributors scrambled to find enough screens to accommodate their titles as a flock of adult dramas expanded into the hinterlands. When the dust settled, Wristcutters: A Love Story emerged victorious among new releases, averaging $12,800 per screen at three locations, according to estimates compiled by Box Office Mojo. When it played at Sundance in 2006, Karina Longworth called it "a bold first effort, with a distinct, swaggering sense of style and humor that's hard – even for a cynical blogger sick to death of indie 'quirk' – to resist."

The much-more heralded Reservation Road, directed by Terry George, starring Joaquin Phoenix, Mark Ruffalo, Jennifer Connelly and Mira Sorvino, came a cropper, averaging just $2,830 per screen at 13 locations. Considering the high-profile talent, that's got to be considered a major disappointment for distributor Focus Features. Nick Schager felt the film "seems determined, whenever possible, to resort to preposterous plot twists at the expense of actually plumbing its grief-stricken characters' anguished psyches."

Earning just a little bit more per screen, but without star wattage and very many advertising dollars behind it, the performance of O Jerusalem, about the birth of the modern state of Israel, can be considered satisfying to distributor IDP. Unfortunately, the reviews so far -- at least as indexed by Metacritic -- are far from enthusiastic, which doesn't bode well for future word of mouth.

Ian Curtis biopic Control added one theater and increased its take to $18,250 per screen, the highest average for the week, while the reissue of Blade Runner: The Final Cut fell 60% yet still made $13,00 at each of its two screens. Lars and the Real Girl added 14 theaters and continued its good performance, taking in $8,809 per screen. The remake of Sleuth added 12 theaters but declined to an average of $1,880.

Among the September holdovers that expanded, The Darjeeling Limited ($6,534 each on 202 screens), Lust, Caution ($4,688 each on 125 screens), Into the Wild ($3,267 each on 658 screens) and Across the Universe ($2,812 each on 960 screens) performed well.

If you've been a steady reader of this blog for at least four days, then you know I have a strong affection for the complete works of Ms. Jennifer Connelly. And by complete works, I mean her talent, her face, her body of work AND her body, thank you very much. (Plus she's still so beautiful...) Anyway, as I was perusing through the Toronto Film Festival titles and jotting down which flicks I wanted to see ... there it was: Jen's name! She's got a movie called Reservation Road at Toronto ... and it looks pretty good!

From writer/director Terry George (In the Name of the Father, Hotel Rwanda) comes the story of ... well, I'm trying to remain relatively 'spoiler-free' for this movie, but the IMDb tells us it's "a drama that revolves around two fathers whose families and lives tragically converge with the death of a child." Sounds like your typically uplifting festival fare, but with Mr. George's track record -- and a cast that includes Joaquin Phoenix, Mark Ruffalo, Mira Sorvino and the aforementioned mega-goddess -- it sounds like a title I'll definitely be taking in next month. Plus the film was co-written by the author of the novel, which in my opinion is always a positive sign.

Focus Features will release Reservation Road on October 19, but if you're as intrigued as I am, you can check out the new trailer over at IGN Movies. I however will NOT be watching the trailer, so please let me know what you think of it. (Without spoiling anything.)

Movie folk usually don't put enough effort into naming their flicks. While there are a lot of great movies out there, many of them have the blandest and simple names you can get. The Spider-Man series is a group of blockbusters, yet they don't even get a secondary title. It's just "2" or "3" tacked onto the name. No one seems to be happy with the name "Live Free or Die Hard," but that won't stop anyone from going to see Bruce Willis kick some arse. So, when a title comes out that seems particularly witty, different, innovative or fun, there's a good chance I'll shell out cash to see what it's all about. If it has a good cast, that's all the better, and the upcoming Multiple Sarcasms seems to have both.

Variety has released the cast list for the cheap, $2.5 million upcoming film -- Timothy Hutton, Mira Sorvino, Dana Delany, Stockard Channing and Mario Van Peebles. You can also add Tom Skerritt to that list, as Hutton listed him among the cast in a recent interview. The film is about an architect in 1979, played by Hutton, who decides to completely give up his career as an architect and become a playwright. He risks everything to write his play, and finds his life falling apart when he does so. His only support lies with his best friend, played by Sorvino. He finishes the play while damaging his other personal relationships and then gets it on-stage. Hutton describes it as "an interesting story of the choices you make and what you sacrifice along the way." I can dig it. I know someone who did something very similar, so it's definitely a believable story. Sarcasms will be the debut for Paramount alum-turned-writer/director Brooks Branch, and is filming in New York.

With a handful of roles full of Oscar potential, Reservation Road is putting together a decent little cast to go along with its powerful storyline. Mira Sorvino has signed on to star opposite Joaquin Phoenix, Mark Ruffalo and Jennifer Connelly (yes, it appears she's now officially attached) in the pic, which will be directed by Terry George and begin shooting sometime this fall.

Road, which is based off the novel written by John Burnham Schwartz (who also penned the script) tells the story of two families who collide when one father (Ruffalo) accidentally kills the son of another (Phoenix) in a tragic hit-and-run accident. Things heat up when Ruffalo battles with the decision to either turn himself in or quietly disappear, while Phoenix makes it his mission to find the man who killed his son. Sorvino will play Ruffalo's ex-wife, with Connelly playing Phoenix's wife. Sounds like a real upper, huh?

Related Posts:

Ruffalo Joins Phoenix on Reservation Road

George Has Reservations

A Reservation for Phoenix

Mira Sorvino was made deputy sheriff of Lackawanna County, PA yesterday, as part of a ceremony that, as Rush & Malloy tell it, seems to have been primarily intended to fill the spank banks of the local officers. Whilst the township's real sheriff is all a drool ("[Sorvino] would be a nice addition to the force," John Szymanski said. "She's a very beautiful young lady") he makes it clear that the honor doesn't really mean anything. A deputy sheriff, Szymanski says, doesn't have "any police powers." But as Sorvino's father, actor Paul Sorvino, tells the gossipmongers, that hasn't stopped him from fighting all kinds of crime. Sorvino, who was made deputy sheriff of Scranton in 1982, says, "I know I've stopped at least two robberies...Another time, I saw a guy driving in a very dangerous way. I followed him for 5 miles and called it in...Whenever I can help, I do."

Are you thinking what I'm thinking? Somebody call the producers of COPS – we need to pitch a Sorvino Family Crime Stoppers reality show, stat!