Death is the ultimate dramatic device, but great art doesn't emerge from strong devices alone. In Take, the directorial debut of Charles Oliver, the impact of a single, startling tragic death immediately conveys the sense of watching a gravely serious movie, which is definitely the case. However, having immediately provided a tone, Oliver fails to follow up with a story powerful enough to justify it. That's not to say that the experience Ana (Minnie Driver) goes through after her son dies in a freak accident before the start of the film isn't relentlessly bleak, but there's hardly anything distinctive about the circumstances to make viewers care any more than they would if they were glancing at it in the morning headlines.

Still, Olilver has made a quietly observant work solely driven by the specific needs of two downtrodden protagonists with completely believable motives. In flashback, we learn that Ana struggled with her son's elementary school, which wants to put him in a special needs program. Meanwhile, she has a hard time communicating with her husband and finding decent work to get by. Elsewhere, reckless gambling addict Saul (Jeremy Renner) destroys his life in a whirlwind of debt. His misfortune, as it's shown in early scenes at a prison where Saul awaits execution, will lead him to accidentally murder Ana's innocent child, Jesse (Bobby Coleman).

Terminator IV doesn't yet have a replacement title -- but it apparently has a Kyle Reese. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Anton Yelchin is set to star alongside Christian Bale in the franchise reboot, set for release in May 2009.

It seems a bit early to be dragging John Connor's father-to-be into the story, doesn't it? If this is really going to be an ongoing franchise, the "My dad was also my comrade" seems like a juicy plot point that might be worth holding back. Otherwise, you're just remaking The Sarah Connor Chronicles instead of that War Against the Machines saga everyone's been wanting.

But the film has not only gained a new cast member, but possibly a new writer. Paul Haggis is in talks to come on board to work on the script, with production scheduled to begin in early May. Haggis has certainly shown he can handle a franchise reboot with James Bond -- perhaps we'll see a Terminator film in the same style. One can hope.

At any rate, how thrilled must Yelchin be to land Pavel Chekhov and Kyle Reese? They should cast him as Paul Aterides next.

This year, television is going to get one heck of a drama! It's got all the ingredients for a hit. Sex. Dysfunction. Car Crashes. No, no, no. I kid. While I'd love a series based on David Cronenberg's Crash, especially if Elias Koteas was in any way attached, this is about that other one -- you know, the Crash that won the Oscar. Yahoo reports that the adaptation will be cable station Starz's first original drama series, with 13 one-hour episodes planned.

The series even has handful of the film's names coming back behind the camera -- Paul Haggis, Bob Yari, Don Cheadle, and Mark R. Harris. As for in front of the camera -- no cast members have been picked yet, although production is scheduled to begin in the spring.

Now, I'm one of those people who actually really dug the movie. I thought it was interesting, thoughtful, and entirely gripping. I was happy to see it win the big statue. That being said, I wonder how this will play to audiences. Many people have noted it's heavy-handedness, so what will that mean for a weekly series? A few hours of it, sure, thirteen hours -- not so sure. What do you think?

Some major major news on the strike front seems to be leaking out today, with an official announcement expected to come at some point tomorrow (according to Deadline Hollywood). Looks like United Artists (aka the movie studio run by Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner) is in the process of inking a deal with the WGA that's very similar to the one they made with David Letterman's Worldwide Pants. Said deal, if it goes through, would allow United Artists to work with writers on whatever upcoming projects they have planned, making them the first such studio allowed to do this since the strike began. Damn. Score one for Tommy Boy! It's not yet known which films will take advantage of this interim deal right off the bat, but we do know that Oliver Stone's Pinkville was recently postponed due to problems with the script. Chances are, with the cast for that flick already in place, it will be one of the first delayed productions to be back in business. Of course, this is all subject to the deal actually going through.

On the other hand, United Artists could get right to work on a literary property they just optioned for seven figures. While all this interim agreement talk continues, The Hollywood Reporter tells us UA has optioned the film rights to Ranger's Apprentice, a fantasy series written by Australian author John Flanagan. According to HR, it "follows the adventures of an orphan boy named Will who becomes an apprentice ranger and fights to keep the mythical kingdom of Araluen safe from invaders, traitors and other dangers with the help of his master Halt." Yup, that sounds like just about every fantasy series being optioned these days, but what's even more interesting is that writer-director Paul Haggis was in talks to adapt and direct at one point before the strike happened and halted those discussions. Haggis doing big-budget fantasy? Bit of a stretch if you ask me -- what do you think?

Yesterday, we ran the Guardian piece on Paul Haggis and noted that he hasn't yet laid claim to a title for his upcoming Bond film, still called Bond 22. Today there's more to report. This is very sketchy, and I've tried in vain to find the source video to investigate it myself, but here goes -- AICN is reporting the following, from a tipster who watches British television. Daniel Craig was on a U.K. television show called This Morning and some discussion of the title of the upcoming Bond film led to Craig maybe saying the title was going to simply be 007. Again, that's a giant maybe, because even the talkbackers on the AICN boards have noted that this appears to be more of an unfounded conclusion on the part of the commenter than anything with grounding. Specifically, Craig is "paraphrased" by the commenter as saying "It's more of a number. Because the first movie dealt with him earning his 00 status and now he is 007 for the first time."

Okay, what is more of a number? That's what's unclear here. The tipster is maddeningly vague on this point. After pasting the paraphrase from above, he goes on to say that Craig was specifically asked if 007 is the film's title, to which Craig responds that he 'may have said too much'. But did this come in response to the direct question about the title? If the interviewer put the question directly to Craig and he answered with "It's more of a number" then that's something. Otherwise, I think this is nothing more than a wild goose chase. By the way, I really need to get a life, don't I?

Screenwriter and director Paul Haggis gives a pretty good interview over at the Guardian, parting with some amusing anecdotes, like the fact that David Cronenberg is apparently "quite upset" with him over using Crash as the title of his 2004 film, despite Cronenberg already having a film with that title. He also talks a bit about In the Valley of Elah, and defends its box office, saying that it did well in the Midwestern markets, where people go to see a movie because "I like Tommy Lee Jones and Charlize Theron, she's pretty." Gee, who would have ever thought Paul Haggis had a condescending attitude toward red-staters? Haggis also gives his views on the writer's strike and talks a bit about Million Dollar Baby, but the most interesting thing for me to note is that he's still not ready to part with the title for Bond 22, apparently because he doesn't have one.

According to the interviewer -- don't you wish the Guardian would just print Q&As instead of doing everything in profile, by the way? -- Haggis confirmed that the project is "still known only as Bond 22" and that his "contribution is unlikely to include advice on the title. He admits to never knowing what to call his scripts and when writing Crash, only used it as a working title." Although Haggis is known to have been not-quite-finished with the Bond 22 script when the strike happened, the producers were apparently satisfied enough that they decided to push forward anyway. I guess we'll find out how wise that decision was soon enough. In the meantime, what do you think the title of the next Bond picture should be? Take what you know of Casino Royale and Ian Fleming-sounding titles, and add in what you know so far about the next one -- it will be partially set in South America, it will have another Eurotrash villain, and will have Daniel Craig again.

With the writer's strike in full swing, I thought I'd pay tribute to a few of the writers who currently have films in theaters. Quite frankly, you really have to admire some of them. Take Allison Burnett, who adapted Feast of Love (2 screens) as well as this year's earlier Resurrecting the Champ. Burnett received very little love for either movie, but consider how hard it must have been to cut down a novel and expand a newspaper article at the same time? It makes my head spin. It's also quite impressive that Burnett was able to work again after his earlier script was turned into the universally panned film Autumn in New York (2000). But the thing that impressed me most of all about Burnett is his first produced script, Bloodfist III: Forced to Fight (1992), a vehicle for "Z" level action star Don 'The Dragon' Wilson. This is from a guy who studied playwriting and has published a novel. I can only imagine what it must be like to sit down and actually write something like that. Do you tape the paycheck on the wall next to your desk and keep staring at it? Good for Burnett that he made it out of that hole.

Then there's The Simpsons Movie (96 screens), which has at least eleven credited writers, and possibly more who added material without credit. Among them we have David Mirkin, who directed one of my all-time favorite guilty pleasures, Heartbreakers (2001), and James L. Brooks, who won an armload of Oscars for Terms of Endearment (1983). Most of the others are from TV, and I'd like to think they wrote this movie the way they might have written a half-hour episode: by sitting around a big table and throwing out ideas and laughing a lot. Those writer rooms are usually decorated with stuffed animals and novelty items, as well as plates of donuts and other snacks -- perhaps some kind of air freshener as well. It makes me all warm just thinking about it.

The Middle East International Film Festival has wrapped, and the winners of the first-ever winners of the fest's Black Pearl awards have been announced. The closing night of the fest included a screening of In the Valley of Elah; Paul Haggis was on-hand on the red carpet, along with a slew of other talent from Bollywood and the Middle East.

Director/actor Nadine Labaki of Caramel walked away with the Variety Middle East Filmmaker of the Year award,; while the UAE Filmmakers of the Year went to Fadel Al Muheiry and Hani Al Shibani.

Side note: Variety's Mike Jones, who's there covering the fest, has an interesting piece up about prayers in Abu Dhabi, and some pics of the Variety MEIFF party.

The complete list of MEIFF's Black Pearl winners can be found after the jump ...

For years, critics have defined films in terms of their directors, but every so often someone comes out with a book or an article in defense of screenwriters. And a recent book argues for a brand new auteur theory putting screenwriters in the spotlight. Considered one of the world's greatest screenwriters, Jean-Claude Carrière's name appears on one current film, Goya's Ghosts (13 screens). It's one of over 100 produced screenplays he has written, and what's more, he has never had to turn director to protect the integrity of his work (he has one directorial credit, shared, for a 1986 film L'Unique that didn't exactly make or break his career). This is a guy who will never have to worry about his name in the history books. But let's take a closer look.

For one thing, Goya's Ghosts is messy and uneven. Then there's the fact that most of Carrière's films never find United States distribution. On top of that, the vast majority of his work is adaptations of novels. Finally, I think it's safe to say that his reputation rests on the fact that he generally works with acclaimed directors. To go one more, it's probably fair to say that the majority of his entire reputation rests on the six films he wrote with Luis Buñuel from 1967 to 1977. This is not to say that Carrière is a bad writer: on the contrary. Some of his films since Buñuel have been very good, notably Philip Kaufman's The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988) and Jonathan Glazer's misunderstood Birth (2004). I'm using this case to point out the trickiness of ranking and cataloging screenwriters and their films. Certainly they deserve much more credit and respect than they get. But where do we start?

Judging from the weekend box office estimates reported by Variety, David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises was the greatest beneficiary of positive buzz generated by the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). Earning $36,851 per screen, the film known alternately as "the Russian mobster movie" or "the one where Viggo Mortensen fights naked," Cronenberg's latest soared to the top of the specialty charts. You can catch up by reading the review by Cinematical's Ryan Stewart and listening to James Rocchi's interview with the director. As I noted yesterday, Eastern Promises won the People's Choice Award at TIFF.

Julie Taymor's Across the Universe, driven by the music of The Beatles, drew some of the harshest reviews of any gala presentation at TIFF, though some, like Roger Ebert and Anne Thompson of Variety, vigorously defended it. Audiences flocked to see it, to the tune of an estimated $29,783 per screen. Trailing behind in third place, another TIFF gala presentation, Paul Haggis' war-themed drama In the Valley of Elah, still averaged a strong $16,666 per location. James Rocchi was not very enthusiastic, though: "You can tell everyone involved wanted to make an important statement. What they would end up making was a fairly indifferent movie."

Two other films that screened at TIFF also opened this weekend, though neither generated much buzz coming out of the festival. Mike Cahill's comedy King of California, with Michael Douglas and Even Rachel Wood, played at five locations and averaged $7,411 at five locations. While that's not terrific, it's far better than Francois Girard's period film Silk, with Keira Knightley, which tanked, earning just $1,058 per screen at 122 locales.