I was watching my local news last night on Fox when during their entertainment portion (we love ya Toni Senecal), they absolutely bashed Tom Cruise. Which is odd for them because they don't usually go after someone hard like that. Toni? What's up? Over the weekend, Cruise's latest film Lions for Lambs -- and his first for the revived United Artists -- took in a little over $6 million. You have to go all the way back to 1986 (The Color of Money) to find another film starring Tom Cruise that opened so poorly. And this was a big deal for Cruise and United Artists; they went and snagged Robert Redford to direct, star; they got Meryl Streep and even Cruise stepped in to up the ante. They wanted raves. They wanted Oscar nods. They got ... $6 million and bad reviews.

To add insult to injury, when Fox was done ripping apart Lions for Lambs and its poor box office take, they next went after Valkyrie saying the buzz was not good and making fun of Cruise for wearing a "silly" eye patch, with a weird hairdo. Of course they spoke about the film with little to no information -- as if their core audience were a bunch of third graders who would stay away from a film simply because Cruise wears an eye patch throughout. While folks might not dig seeing Cruise in an eye patch, one thing is for sure -- they like to see the guy in action/adventure films. Mission Impossible 3 ($133 million), War of the Worlds ($234 million), Minority Report ($132 million) and even The Last Samurai ($111 million) all did very well at the box office. Are the people trying to send the man a message? And does that message go something like: "Look dude, we're not crazy about your off-screen antics. The Scientology thing is a little warped, you may have brainwashed Katie Holmes and your new baby may or may not be an alien. But we like it when you run and blow stuff up. The whole talky drama thing? Not so much. How can we take one of your films seriously when we don't take you seriously? So stick to that and we'll pay to see your movies." So, should he stick to action flicks? Should he try a comedy? Or, quite possibly, could Lambs' poor opening spell the beginning of the end for Mr. Cruise?

• Art Buchwald (1925-2007) - Pulitzer Prize-winning humorist who wrote some English dialogue for Jacques Tati's Play Time and co-wrote Stanley Donen's Surprise Package. He also sold a treatment to Paramount that was the uncredited basis for Coming to America, and he successfully sued the studio for a share of the film's profits. He appears in the documentaries Around the World of Mike Todd and Year of the Woman and in Robert Altman's mini-series Tanner '88. He passed away January 18.
• Ron Carey (1935-2007) - Actor who appears in Mel Brooks' The History of the World: Part I, High Anxiety and Silent Movie. He also appears in Fatso, The Out of Towners and Johnny Dangerously. He died of a stroke January 16, in Los Angeles. (NY Times)
• Jack Coffey (c.1931-2006) - Former boom operator who became an important union leader in Hollywood during the '70s and '80s. He died of prostate cancer December 13, in Sherman Oaks, California. (Variety)
• Harvey Cohen (1951-2007) - Composer who scored the theatrically distributed short Santa vs. the Snowman 3D, the direct-to-video Beauty and the Beast sequel Belle's Magical World and the feature Ghost Town. He also arranged music for Bicentennial Man and orchestrated the music for Mission: Impossible III, King Kong (2005), The Patriot and Hudson Hawk. He also has an Emmy for his work scoring for television. He died of a heart attack January 14. (AP)
• Darlene Conley (1934-2006) - Actress who appears in The Birds, Lady Sings the Blues, Tough Guys and Valley of the Dolls. She died of stomach cancer January 14, in Los Angeles. (NY Times)

• Holy crap, it's supergigantic, megacolossal Summer Movie Preview issue! Everything you need to know about all the big pics, including Superman Returns, Mission: Impossible 3, Clerks II, X-Men 3, Little Miss Sunshine, The Da Vinci Code, and 4 millon others, including smaller, independent films (note: above link goes to EW's list of movies they're anxious to see -- buy the issue for the whole summer preview guide).
• Steve Carell on mastering the squirrel and finding his nuts.
• Owen Glieberman on which actors and actresses have surprised him the most with their movie singing.
• New movies: they give United 93 an A-, American Dreamz a B , and a C- to The Sentinel.
• Just as The Da Vinci Code is about to open in theaters, Dan Brown says his follow-up book won't be ready by the end of this year as originally planned. I guess this means that everyone will have to find some other book to read.
  
• Augusten Burroughs talks about the movie adaptation of Running With Scissors, having kids, and why James Frey is like Milli Vanilli.

Well, at least they're not asking Limp Bizkit to do it again.

The Chicago rapper has been picked to pen yet another updated version of the classic TV theme for the third installment of the series. Apparently, director J.J. Abrams wants this new film to be "familiar, but absolutely brand new" and thinks Kanye is just the man to handle the task of re-interpreting the main theme. As long as Abrams is trying to make the movie "familiar, but absolutely brand new" he should also try making it "lengthy, but brief" and "riveting, but dismissible."

• The mag gives a sneak peek of all the big movies coming up this year, including Superman Returns (with coverboy and girl Brandon Routh and Kate Bosworth), Mission: Impossible 3, The DaVinci Code, The Departed, Stranger Than Fiction, Thank You For Smoking, and the Pirates of the Caribbean sequel.
• An exclusive interview with Woody Allen, who talks about filming in London instead of New York.
• They pick some great, Oscar-worthy performances from 2005, including George Clooney, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Heath Ledger, Maria Bello, Joan Allen, and Joaquin Phoenix.
• Sienna Miller talks about Jude Law and living in the public eye.
• None of this is online of course, because Premiere is a little behind with their site.