Whether you like it or not, the success of Sex and the City has breathed new life into the so-called 'chick flick' landscape (heck, it even gave The Women another shot at the multiplex). So get ready for more 'Ya-Ya Sisterhood' on the big screen, because Hollywood is finally starting to figure out that women like to go to the movies. Next up, according to Variety, is Lauren Weisberger's novel Chasing Harry Winston for Universal and Mandalay Pictures. You might recognize Weisberger as the author of the best-selling novel, The Devil Wears Prada, and Winston is her latest book to spend some time on the NYT's best-seller list.

Winston "revolves around three young women who each vow to change their entire lives for the better in the course of the next year" -- and you can probably guess how each of them is going to 'change' their lives. One glance at the cover art gives this gal a quick education in what this book probably has in store for its readers. Gina Wendkos (The Princess Diaries) has already been signed to write the script, and Andy Tennant will direct.

The addition of Tennant is probably where the last of any desire I might have had to watch this movie disappears all together. Call me judgmental if you must, but Tennant was the director behind films like Sweet Home Alabama, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, and Fools Gold; so I doubt this film is going to deviate from form. Plus, if you are anything like me (and I know there has to be some of you out there) this current crop of 'movies for girls' is starting to get a little insulting. I like shopping as much as the next girl, but there is more to our gender than marriage-mania and rampant consumerism; isn't there?

The fairly adorable Isla Fisher may have already won some hearts in this past February's Definitely, Maybe, but now she's developed a taste for the Prada lifestyle in next February's Confessions of a Shopholic, the trailer for which we've embedded above (sorry that it's slightly squeezed).

I'm a little less sure what the name of producer Jerry Bruckheimer is doing on this next big chick-lit adaptation -- which looks like The Devil Wears Prada infused with Legally Blonde and some ungainly slapstick -- though the man did make some modest bucks off of Coyote Ugly back in the summer of '00. Though next winter seems slight in terms of fluffy rom-com-petition, this puppy will be facing off against the considerable star power of He's Just Not That Into You for Valentine's Day box office glory.

However, with any luck, this role could prove that Fisher is the next Amy Adams (or, at the very least, someone not to be merely mistaken for her).

If you were going to make a movie that's part The Princess Diaries and part The Devil Wears Prada, you'd have to cast Anne Hathaway in the lead. Well, hopefully HarperCollins knows enough about movies to understand that obviousness, because the News Corp-owned publishing company is officially in the film biz. Well, Sharp Entertainment, a banner headed by producer Jeff Sharp (Boys Don't Cry) and housed at HarperCollins, is anyway. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Sharp has announced its inaugural slate of projects. This includes a movie about the private lives of astronauts based on Jay Barbree's memoir Live from Cape Canaveral -- described as The Right Stuff meets Almost Famous -- and a movie described as "a next-generation Nashville" (hmm, we'll see). Publisher's Weekly also reported recently that Sharp at HarperCollins will be adapting Eli Gottlieb's new thriller Now You See Him.

The Princess meets Prada movie is another in the pipeline. Based on the Queen of Babble series (Queen of Babble, Queen of Babble in the Big City, the upcoming Queen of Babble Gets Hitched), which is written by Princess Diaries author Meg Cabot, the movie will follow a "fashion-obsessed" American girl who travels to London to spend time with her British boyfriend. But he isn't the guy she thought he was and so she heads over to France and falls for someone new. Unlike Cabot's Princess books, the Babble series is more grown-up. In fact, the Publisher's Weekly review (via Amazon) of the first book points out there's some "blunt dialogue about oral sex." Again, if HarperCollins knows anything about movies, it will be sure to do away with most of that stuff in order to make this movie at least PG-13, for the kids, or if it plans to make the Babble books into a trilogy.

The Globes are underway, and -- no surprise to anyone, judging from the comments on my last Globes post -- Jennifer Hudson picked up a Best Supporting Actress statuette for her inspiring first performance in a film, as the shoved-aside Effie in 'Dreamgirls.'

And when Meryl Streep accepted her award, she listed the names of the other nominees and complimented them. How gracious. She can afford to be, can't she? She is an acting genius. Did you see 'Devil Wears Prada'? She made that movie.

Oh, hey -- Prince IS in the house. Wonder why he didn't go up on stage to accept his award when he won for Best Song? Maybe he's on Team Cameron and just wanted to make JT look bad?

Oh, no. 'The Departed' just lost (Best Adapted Screenplay) to the 'The Queen.' Not what I was hoping for, Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed and admired 'The Queen,' but really? Over 'The Departed' and its killer dialogue? I'm just a little disappointed. That's all I'm gonna say.

And now that 'Babel' beat out 'The Departed' for Best Drama I'm REALLY disappointed. At least Scorsese won for Best Director. And if that happens with Oscar, I'll be happy. It would be his first Academy Award for Director. See? Now that the Globes are so two minutes ago, I'm thinking ahead. Oscars, baby. Oscars.

POST: What do you think of the Globes so far?

POST: What have been the Globes surprises?

Even if you consider Borat (full title not necessary) to be primarily a scripted work, it is still a film that works best in its unscripted sequences. This is debatable, sure, but I would like someone at the Writers Guild to tell me what was so great about the actual screenplay used. Personally, I think the scripted parts, as well as the adherence to the plot, are the weakest elements.

Nonetheless, Sacha Baron Cohen and his five collaborators are nominated for a Writers Guild Award for Adapted Screenplay. And despite my questioning of this recognition, I don't really prefer any of its competition. The other titles in the adapted category are Little Children, The Departed, The Devil Wears Prada and Thank You for Smoking. If I had to choose, I'd go with the last of these, but I think the prize will go to the overrated Little Children.

I also don't think the Original Screenplay category is that great, either. The nominees for that award are Little Miss Sunshine, Babel, United 93, Stranger Than Fiction and The Queen. Again, I'd have to go with the last of these, but predict the overrated first.

Hopefully, unlike with other guild awards, the WGA's honors will not reflect the Oscar nominations, which may recognize foreign films Volver and Pan's Labyrinth, which were ineligible here.

Tooling around online this morning, I came across a cutesy little story on Variety in which Robert Vernini tells us (with a wink and a nudge) which recent films will eventually be remade, who will star and how the whole thing will go down. He begins in the year 2012 where, according to Vernini, we will see a new version of Volver set in New Orleans, and starring Halle Berry. Ooohh, and Dakota Fanning takes over the Anne Hathaway role in a remake of The Devil Wears Prada (with John Travolta in drag as Miranda Priestley), while the Olsen twins attempt an updated version of The Holiday ... but the project gets canned when the girls keep forgetting who is playing who.

Having fun yet? Next up is the year 2017, where Steven Soderbergh remakes his own The Good German -- but this time, he finds a way to digitally add in performances by Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Berman and John Hodiak. After Happy Feet: The Musical hits Broadway, folks think it's time to bring that box office beast back to the big screen. Al Gore teams up with Aardman for An Inconvenient Truth: The Animated Musical, with Billy Crystal as the voice of Carbon Dioxide. And, whaddya know, Ms. Fanning is back -- this time as director -- for a remake of Dreamgirls, rewritten to follow the story of the Dixie Chicks.

It keeps going from there -- 2032 and 2057 make appearances -- and the remakes turn even more bizarre (Flags of Our Grandfathers?), but it poses an interesting question (one I shall ask you): Which of todays films have the potential to be remade in five, ten or twenty years from now?

Last year, AFI dove eagerly into a sea of drama and politics. They cuddled with Brokeback Mountain and got whiplash with Crash. With only an old virgin to keep them afloat, it seems that the AFI powers-that-be started to sink into the drama, and were happy to be rescued by the smiling lifesaver of 2006. Unlike the heaviness of the groups previous choices, this year's choices are ... different to say the least.

First comes the familiar -- the films that aren't surprising. There's some overseas drama with Letters from Iwo Jima and Babel. For home flavor, there's the indie teacher drama, Half Nelson, Spike Lee's Inside Man, United 93, and some music with Dreamgirls. So far, so not surprising. It's a decent range of dramatic choices, although by no means complete.

Then comes the smiling life saver. There's a penguin with Happy Feet, for starters. Top that off with two huge indie hits -- Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan and Little Miss Sunshine, and you hit some mainstream, some satire, and one hell of a Miss Sunshine performance. But then -- and this is where I get really confused -- there is The Devil Wears Prada. When I wiped away the eye-rolling feelings of superiority from her friends, the fat comments (which may be accurate, but are still scary), and a few other too-cheery moments, I liked the film. I wasn't sad to have seen it, or to have even spent the extra coin to see it in a cushy theatre with seat service. However, that being said, is AFI so desperate for relief from last year that they went a little too far in the other direction?

It's been awhile since we've seen the debate over release-windows. Maybe now that the Box Office Slump of '05 has long since past, and the issue with day-and-date releases has made the debate almost obsolete, theaters just aren't complaining as much. At least in America, anyway. Last week, distributors and exhibitors throughout Italy were furious about Universal's plan to release Miami Vice on DVD exactly two months after its release in cinemas there. The movie, based on the '80s TV-show, opened in the country on October 6 via United International Pictures and it was planned to be out on video December 6. The head of the Italian exhibitors' association ANEC threatened legislative intervention and Warner Village Cinemas actually stopped playing the pic.

All the protesting and boycotting helped. On Friday it was announced that Universal would change the DVD date to January, which would lengthen the window to the usually honored three months. Unfortunately, the win by distributors and exhibitors probably won't change the success of the movie at the box office. In its first four weeks, Miami Vice made only a little more than $4 million. Comparatively, in the same amount of time Woody Allen's Scoop made almost $5 million, World Trade Center has made $6.5 million and The Devil Wears Prada has made close to $15 million. And obviously, Miami Vice didn't even figure into the top 20 this past weekend thanks to it being pulled from so many screens. So, maybe, just maybe, Italians aren't that into the movie, and it wouldn't really matter if the DVD came out next week. Or, it could be the matter of it opening so late, since in countries like the UK and France, where it opened closer to its release in the U.S., grosses were pretty decent.

[via In Focus Magazine Newswire; box office numbers courtesy of Box Office Mojo]

Having spent one cold, stormy winter of my youth fetching coffee and shuffling faxes at a fashion magazine whose name you would know, I was interested to see what details The Devil Wears Prada would get right. Beyond that, there were no expectations. I never picked up the popular book and couldn't tell you if realism was one its selling points, or even if the actual, biblical Lucifer was Meryl Streep's latest character. Turns out the fallen angel never makes an appearance, but this movie does demand a huge suspension of disbelief from us right off the bat. We are supposed to go along with its assertion that Andrea, the green gamine played by the fetching Anne Hathaway, is "fat." This charge is laid against her specifically and repeatedly throughout the film. Since she never gives the obvious retort, I'll give it: What are the clues that identify her as obese? The waistline that would turn storefront mannequins green with envy? The shoulder blades that seem ready to punch through her skin? The arms that could be mistaken for Pixy Sticks? Lest we think the movie is kidding, there's even a Personal Triumph Moment that comes in the third act, when Andrea thrills her aerodynamic colleague Stanley Tucci with the news that she has dropped a dress size. Instead of quickly administering a jelly doughnut and phoning for an ambulance, he squeals with satisfaction.

In his first studio role since blowing up HBO as the lovable (why can't they all be like Mandy Moore?) womanizer Vincent Chase in Entourage, Adrien Grenier will now trade in that ugly Aquaman suit for a rather expensive Prada one. The pay-cable hottie has been cast alongside Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway and Emily Blunt in the adaptation (minus Charlie Kaufman) of Lauren Weisberger's chic-lit fav, The Devil Wears Prada. Shooting is set to begin this Monday in New York City with a story that centers around a lowly assistant (Hathaway) who works for one of them crazy/sexy/cool fashion magazines and, to her delight, is forced to deal with a "devil" of a boss (Streep). Grenier, of course, will play our hero's love interest.