Beards! They're all the rage these days! Conan and Letterman grew facial hair during the writers strike, Ryan Reynolds has been sporting some, Jonah Hill has that scruffy thing going, Jake Gyllenhaal has a beard (and I don't mean Reese Witherspoon) -- and now the trend has even spread to the womenfolk.

Get a load of Salma Hayek, the dazzlingly incomprehensible Mexican beauty who's now shooting a film called Cirque du Freak, in which she plays a sideshow's bearded lady. The film, based on a series of novels, also stars John C. Reilly as a vampire. (I'm sold!) It's set to open in February 2009, two months after that other vampire movie, Twilight.

Hayek is no stranger to unflattering facial hair, of course. She uglied up her eyebrows to play the title role in Frida back in 2002, and that extra bit of hair was just enough to put her over the top for an Oscar nomination. Eyebrows, now a beard -- what next? The lead in the Magnum P.I. movie? Just a thought.

[Via JustJared, which has a few more bearded-Hayek pics, too.]

John C. Reilly and Salma Hayek starring in a Paul Weitz semi-horror flick / adaptation of a best-selling kids book? Sounds interesting enough to me. It'll be the first movie for Ms. Hayek since she took some time off to have a baby, and she'll be co-starring opposite the Dewey Cox star in Universal's Cirque du Freak. (Check out Monika's previous report right here.)

The film, which is based on a popular 12-book series by Darren Shan, begins production this month. Variety offers us non-readers a handy little synopsis: "Reilly will play a vampire who drafts a 14-year-old to serve as his assistant. The youth is turned into a half-vampire and becomes the catalyst in a battle between vampires and the rival Vampanese. Hayek will play Madame Truska, the bearded lady." According to the IMDB, the adaptation was written by screenwriter Brian Helgeland, whom you'll no doubt remember from L.A. Confidential, Mystic River and (of course) 976-EVIL.

Mr. Weitz's most recent film was American Dreamz, but I choose to focus more on his good movies. Like the first American Pie, the fantastic About a Boy, and the seriously underrated In Good Company.

Hollywood loves talking dogs. And I guess a lot of moviegoers love them too, because otherwise Hollywood wouldn't keep making them. Later this summer, we have a super-powered talking dog in Underdog and in two years, we'll be getting a super-sized talking dog movie called South of the Border. I say super-sized because the live-action Disney movie is going to have a lot of talking dogs in it. Drew Barrymore will be voicing the lead dog, a pampered Beverly Hills Chihuahua named Chloe, who ends up lost in Mexico while on vacation with her owner (Piper Perabo). As you'd expect, the little dog meets a bunch of new friends to help her find her way.

Most of the other dogs will be voiced by Latino actors, including Salma Hayek, who plays a spirit guide who helps Chloe learn her Hispanic roots, and George Lopez, who plays another Chihuahua who attempts to woo Chloe. Other unspecified roles have been cast with Cheech Marin (who voiced the cartoon Chihuahua character in Disney's Oliver & Company), Paul Rodriguez, Plácido Domingo, Edward James Olmos and Eddie 'Piolin' Sotelo. Andy Garcia will also be voicing a dog, one which doesn't seem to be of the Latino variety. The Cuban actor is voicing an ex-K-9 German Shepherd. I assume that the character will have a German accent (as long as they're going so racial) and that he will end up the true love interest for Chloe -- though I don't think this is physically appropriate.

There are about 43 million Hispanics in the United States, and more than half of them speak Spanish frequently. Of course, there are nearly 300 million people total in the country, so for Hollywood, there may not be enough of an audience for movies centered on Hispanic characters, especially if the predominant language of those movies is Spanish. But thanks to the hype surrounding the Mexican filmmakers Alfonso Cuarón, Guillermo Del Toro and Alejandro González Iñárritu, and the prideful excitement of actress Salma Hayek, Latin American cinema is superficially hot right now. Never mind that Spanish-language imports and homegrown indies marketed toward Latinos are not particularly big money-makers, the studios are presently interested in focusing on the "untapped" Latin market.

We've already witnessed partnerships between Lionsgate and Panamax, and between Warner Bros. and Cuaron's Esperanto Filmoj. Now Hayek is setting up another Latino division called Ventanazul; this one will be at MGM. The difference seems to be that neither Hayek or MGM is specifically interested in targeting Hispanic Americans. Instead, they plan to produce and distribute between two and four films with a Latino focus that are geared toward a wide, mainstream audience. I'm not sure how big they hope to be, but they'll have to do better than last year's Quinceañera, which had a lot of mainstream appeal and which was relatively successful considering its budget, but which still only made a couple million dollars. Hayek's last film hit, Frida, did much better, and her television success with Ugly Betty is huge, but neither one is specifically Latin-themed. So we'll have to see if a wide audience is accepting enough of Hispanic-centric movies to make the division work. It is especially interesting that MGM made this deal while Hayek is currently working on a Spanish-language project for Warner Bros.

Leave it to Hollywood to change the basis of a storyline to glam things up a bit. Last year, Martha Fischer reviewed Lonely Hearts for the Tribeca Film Festival. The story is based on the Lonely Hearts Killers -- a murderous and far-from-glamorous duo/couple from the late 1940's. He was a balding, toupee-wearing man with a large scar on the top of his head, she was a 200+ pound woman who had spent her life lonely and ridiculed. That obviously doesn't make for sexy cinema, so the leads were cast with Jared Leto as Raymond Fernandez and Salma Hayek as Martha Beck.

It's actually interesting that the story was so sauced up, since the screenwriter and director is Todd Robinson -- the grandson of Detective Elmer C. Robinson, who was one of the detectives in the case. I guess familial ties can't also ensure accuracy. Now the film, which follows predecessors like The Honeymoon Killers and Deep Crimson, has found itself a U.S. distributor in Roadside Attractions and Samuel Goldwyn films. Beyond Leto and Hayek, there's John Travolta without the Hogs as Detective Robinson, James Gandolfini as his partner, Charles Hildebrandt, Scott Caan as another detective and Laura Dern as a co-worker who is having an affair with Robinson. As Martha described in her review, the story focuses on both sides of the story -- the couple who kill and the police duo who hunt them down. You won't have to wait too long to see the film for yourself, as the plan is to release it next month, on April 13.

Salma Hayek has announced her next project, producing and starring in an independently financed Spanish-language romcom called "La Banda." The film is centered around a type of music known as 'Grupero' music, and will begin shooting in Mexico this summer. The producing team includes Rick Schwartz, a producer on The Departed, and Pepe Tamez. The film is being written and directed by Issa Lopez and Warner Bros. will distribute. The plot: Hayek is a wealthy housewife who gets dumped by her husband and has to take a job as a wedding singer -- hmmm...maybe there's a part for Adam Sandler?

The comedy apparently comes from the fact that Hayek's character tries to hide her new occupation from her high-society friends and family, but it gets harder as her act starts to actually gain in popularity. The story in Variety also notes that the project has been greenlighted in the wake of the success of Hayek's other recent producing project, the television series "Ugly Betty." The show won two Golden Globe awards last week, and much of its success has been laid at Hayek's doorstep.

It's not just because I've done some work for MrSkin.com that I'm a huge fan of the site. I give the Skinbosses credit for making nudity light and fun, especially in an internet world where sexuality is usually as harsh and nasty as you could possibly imagine. But Mr. Skin still recalls a time when 14-year-old boys would go absolutely ballistic (and justifiably so) when a bare of bare boobies would bounce across the movie screen. (We didn't rent Halloween just for the scares, you know...) Plus the website does really fun stuff like The Year's Top Ten Nude Scenes, and who wouldn't enjoy talking about THAT for 25 minutes or so??

So who made the list? Well, I don't want to spoil anything, but this just in: Salma Hayek has one seriously amazing body, and apparently she wasn't too shy about showing it off in Robert Towne's Ask the Dust -- and that's why she earned 2006's #1 spot! Other bare-chested award-winners include Gretchen Mol, Kyra Sedgwick, Jennifer Aniston and one of those amazingly evil hotties from Hostel. For a full run-down of the clothing-deficient cuties, Zap2it.com has a fairly solid breakdown -- although I think it's cheating for Mr. Skin to include direct-to-video titles in the mix. Those flicks deserve their very own category!

So aside from the ten already spotlighted, what stands as your most memorable piece of cinema skin from 2006? (I can only assume the Skinjedi have yet to see Kate Winslet shine in Little Children.) And yes, that includes half-naked men, I suppose. Wouldn't want to alienate the ladies!

[Thanks to USA Today's PopCandy for the tip!]

For the past few months, the horror nuts have had a really intriguing project to look forward to: the two-storied terror tale known as Grind House. The original plan was for Quentin Tarantino to direct one hour-ish-long story, and for Robert Rodriguez to do the other (see reports right here), but there now seems to be a snag in the production. The Quentin Tarantino Archives, which I can only assume is a reliable resource based on the fact that all the other movie geek sites trust its info, indicates that production on Grind House has been unexpectedly shut down.

One alleged crew member mentions "over budget" as a reason for the work stoppage, but those crafty folks at the QT site have another theory: Robert Rodriguez is opening an art exhibit this weekend in San Antonio, which might explain why his attentions are not firmly focused on his half of the Grind House game. Then again, all of this could be just a silly rumor, in which case I'll forever rue the nine minutes I wasted typing this stuff out. By the way, here's a look at RR's artwork, as inspired by Ms. Salma Hayek.

During my thirty years as a movie watcher, my relationship with the Oscars has been through three distinct phases. The first, love and respect, involved passionate interest and rooting - in those days, when my picks didn't win I was befuddled, and would spend days talking to friends, sincerely trying to sort out the reasoning behind each disputed decision. When Dances with Wolves wiped the floor with Goodfellas, for example, I figured I must have missed something. What angle was I not getting that those wise members of the Academy had seen?

Eventually, though, I wised up and entered phased two: desperate hatred. The passion remained, but the respect was completely gone. During this period, I was actually thrilled when Forrest Gump won best picture, because it confirmed how stupid all of the voters were, and allowed me to triumphantly unload whatever projectiles were nearby at the television (eventually I armed myself with a hamper full of balled up socks - too many things were getting broken).