Like many recent thrillers, Vantage Point is set against the war on terror, as U.S. President Ashton (William Hurt) arrives in Salamanca, Spain to announce new international treaties and efforts in the fight against freedom's enemies. We open in a news van, as harried, hard-bitten producer Rex Brooks (Sigourney Weaver) is orchestrating her camera team and reporters on scene. When reporter Angie Brooks (Zoe Saldana) breaks from the celebratory mood to talk about the protesters outside the courtyard where the crowd awaits the President's words, Rex is miffed about the departure from the script. "We're here for the summit, not the sideshow." Rex has a very definite plan for the day in her head. As shots ring out, the President goes down and explosions ripple through the courtyard, it's clear someone else does, too. ...

Directed by Pete Travis, Vantage Point's plot unfolds as a series of recollections and first-person stories; we begin with Rex's by-the-books coverage turning into a nightmare of murder and mayhem; we flash back to follow Secret Service veteran Thomas Barnes (Dennis Quaid) as he and partner Kent Taylor (Matthew Fox) transport the President to the location; we follow American tourist Howard Lewis (Forest Whitaker) as he winds up accidentally videotaping what may be the key to the attempt on the President's life; we follow President Ashton as he weighs the security risk of the speech against the importance of what he's going to say. ...

I've heard of people learning English from watching movies and television shows -- usually friends of friends, as the stories went -- but I didn't realize it was such a cottage industry until I typed "Learning English from movies" into a search engine. (Go ahead, try it. I'll wait.) The search results from Google show that a lot of people have put a lot of thought into this idea, far beyond teaching somehow how to say "I'll be back" with a menacing Teutonic air that might one day vault you into the California governor's mansion.

In a similar way, some movie buffs have learned French or Italian in hopes of better appreciating their favorite auteurs, while even I have picked up a couple of Cantonese phrases just from watching movies -- though when I've tried them out on native Cantonese speakers, they look at me as though I'm speaking Martian. So why not try to learn Japanese by watching Akira Kurosawa movies?

The folks at Mahalo.com have assembled what is, in effect, a lesson plan based on the notion that "listening to Japanese in a dramatic setting can provide an emotional and contextual background absent in textbooks." They outline activities for watching and learning from the Kurosawa classics Rashomon, Ikiru, Yojimbo, and Drunken Angel. In Rashomon, for example, it suggests noticing the difference between how an old man and a young girl might say "I don't understand," which might be a very useful phrase for a new Japanese speaker. Personally, I'd like to learn this quote from Ikiru: "I can't afford to hate anyone. I don't have that kind of time." That might be helpful if I get drunk in a karaoke bar and insult a yakuza. How about you? Have you ever learned any helpful foreign-language words from watching a movie?

We've reported a couple of times on the slow and steady casting process for Columbia's Vantage Point, a thriller that examines an attempted presidential assassination from multiple perspectives, ala Rashomon. So far, the cast consists of President William Hurt, as well as Dennis Quaid, Matthew Fox and Forest Whitaker as people who, well, aren't president. According to the trades, though, the movie is no longer a boys' club: Sigourney Weaver is on the scene, apparently hired to reprise her "ambitious woman who is a raging bitch" role from Working Girl. The Hollywood Reporter revealed this morning that Weaver will play "a TV news producer for a CNN-type network who will do anything to get the story."

Even though the movie has yet to get off the ground -- it stars shooting next week -- thanks to our readers (who know more than anyone else on earth), we've already heard a couple of impressions of the movie, based on various drafts of his script: Either it's boring boring boring, or reasonably well-written, with a perfectly-cast Quaid. Anyone else with script access care to weigh in?

Remember that episode of The Simpsons where Marge tells Homer that they saw Rashomon together, and he says "I don't remember it that way"? Ah, foreign film humor. Since the movie is now culturally integrated enough to become a Simpsons joke (and thus press conferences and interviews can contain wise references to Rashomon that people might get) Columbia pictures has decided that it's now completely safe to make their own multiple-views-on-the-same-event movie. Their Rashomon-esque flick is entitled Vantage Point, and will explore an attempted presidential assassination through five sets of eyes.

Currently set to star are Dennis Quaid and Matthew Fox, which means it'll be a while before this one gets off the ground - as soon as he escapes from this season of Lost, Fox will head right into McG's movie about the Marshall football program; Vantage Point has to be on his personal back burner at the moment.