Baby, when I met you there was peace unknown. I set out to get you with a fine tooth comb..

Okay, sorry. I couldn't resist. Like Ryan back in January, I had to start this with a little "Islands in the Stream," Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers style. (Btw: Did you know it was written by the Bee Gees?) Anyhow, back in January, we learned that Tommy Lee Jones was circling a new adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's first posthumous novel, Islands in the Stream. Now The Hollywood Reporter posts that Jones has signed on to adapt, direct, produce, and star in the project, which will be presented to buyers at Cannes.

Stream follows an American painter, Thomas Hudson, tucked away in the Bahamas. Through three acts, the reader is introduced to Hudson's life, from the arrival of his sons to his island getaway, to alcoholism and naval reconnaissance during WWII, to Hudson's desire to pursue a ship of German soldiers who killed an entire village. At one point, there was also a fourth part, but it was removed and became the epically popular The Old Man and the Sea.

So far, there are only a few actors officially attached to Oliver Stone's W., the epic biopic about our current commander-in-chief. Josh Brolin was cast as President George W. Bush back in January, then recently Elizabeth Banks was chosen as his wife, First Lady Laura Bush, and last week James Cromwell and Ellen Burstyn were locked into the roles of former President George H.W. Bush and former first lady Barbara Bush, respectively. Unofficial casting bites, though, include a lot of other big name actors. Jeffrey Wright is reportedly in negotiations to play Colin Powell, Tommy Lee Jones is supposedly being sought for Donald Rumsfeld, Robert Duvall has been rumored to be the choice for Vice President Dick Cheney and now both Paul Giamatti and Toby Jones are being named as potentials for the part of Karl Rove (who Giamatti may have already channeled for his character in Shoot 'Em Up).

The double-role has been a favorite for movie audiences for a long time. Actors as different as Lon Chaney and Ronald Colman have indulged in the two-actors-for-the-price-of-one roles. In The Dark Knight, Aaron Eckhart will get to do a two-fer, playing a character who didn't get nearly enough to do in that Joel Schumacher fiasco. (Though I did very much enjoy the bifurcated Tommy Lee Jones' use of the pluralis majestatis, the royal "we.") Few double-roles, however, are as roundly a good time as Brian De Palma's Raising Cain, a reviled but rich melodrama derived in equal parts from Psycho and the equally scandalous Peeping Tom. Preposterous, invigoratingly silly, and done to a technical turn by Hitchcock's most devoted fan, this forgotten thriller gives John Lithgow -- kindly actor and easy-going TV star of Third Rock from the Sun --a chance to show his hulking, evil side.

I

Last week, I picked two actors who should have won Oscars for their performances, but were terribly and horribly robbed. This week, I'm picking two old films that a few of this year's nominees should have been nominated for before. The Academy -- man, they never get it right. It shouldn't be the likes of Michael Clayton or No Country for Old Men. Forget that. George Clooney and Tommy Lee Jones had much, much more deserving roles. They should have received best actor nominations for Return of the Killer Tomatoes and Volcano. Sinister, slow-moving villains and earnest, fight-to-the-end good guys -- that's what the Oscars should be lauding.

Return of the Killer Tomatoes



With an impressive and untouchable viewer rating of 4.7, Return of the Killer Tomatoes is the next step in the saga of the vegetables of doom. (Well, they're really fruit, but who wants to split hairs?) George Clooney and Anthony Starke star as Matt Stevens and Chad Finletter, two dudes who have to stop a mad scientist (John Astin) and yuppie pervert (Steve Lundquist) from launching the second coming of the Great Tomato Uprising. Things are complicated, however, when Chad falls for a girl-shaped tomato named Tara.

It's got everything the Academy could ever want in an Oscar winner (and a Clooney role) -- heart-breaking romance, intrigue, amazing dramatic performances, flawless direction and cinematography, memorable writing, state-of-the-art special effects, stunning costume achievements, and of course, the best intro song to ever be.

Sing along: Returrrrn of the killer tomaaaatoooooes!

Pizza joints without tomatoes and hot women who want to make love.

A good tomato is a squashed tomato. Period.

The vets come back to fight, with cowboys and ninjas.

Clooney makes the pizza.

Finally Josh Brolin received an award for his excellent performance in No Country for Old Men. He and the rest of the film's actors won the Screen Actors Guild Award for best ensemble cast Sunday night, giving No Country its second big win of the weekend (Joel and Ethan Coen received the top Directors Guild of America award Saturday). Along with Brolin, trophies went to cast-mates Tommy Lee Jones, Woody Harrelson, Garret Dilahunt, Tess Harper and Javier Bardem, who also won the SAG award for best supporting actor. While I'm not sure how many of No Country's performers actually received their own trophy, I'm hoping that both Kelly Macdonald and Barry Corbin were also included. No Country is one of those movies that wouldn't be the same without all of its main and supporting actors, and it is certainly fitting for it to have picked up this honor.

Other film winners from Sunday night include Daniel Day-Lewis, who surprised no one by being honored with the leading actor trophy. Even I'm getting a little bored with all of his awards, despite my agreement that his is the best performance of the year. I didn't even notice if any of the other nominees (George, Emile, Viggo and Ryan) showed up to the ceremony, which was one of the first red carpet awards events of the season. Picking up the award for leading actress was Julie Christie, further cementing the fact that I really need to see Away From Her already. The supporting actress honor went to Ruby Dee, who deserves it just for being the cutest old lady on screen last year, let alone for going up strong against both Denzel and Brolin in American Gangster. Finally, The Bourne Ultimatum won the new SAG award for best stunt ensemble and Charles Durning -- one of Cinematical's favorite character actors ever -- received a lifetime achievement award. Be sure to check out Moviefone's coverage of the awards for plenty of red carpet and ceremony photos.

No, it won't be a movie based on the duet between Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton. It will be a movie version of the Ernest Hemingway novel, posthumously published in 1970, about an American painter who lives the quiet life in the Bahamas and ends up getting entangled in some naval activities-adventures at the tail end of World War II. The book has already been filmed once, in 1977, with George C. Scott in the pivotal role but that version wasn't well-received. Tommy Lee Jones tells The Telegraph in a new interview that this project is likely to be his directing follow-up to 2005's very well-received The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. Jones says of the project "In the 1970s it was made into a bad movie. I reckon there's a good movie in that book and that's the one I want to make." The actor-director is currently at work on a script for the film, but offered no other details about how far along in the process he is.

The interview also contains some other interesting tidbits, such as Jones' assertion that his character in In the Valley of Elah is intensely dislikeable. "I was really interested in the more disgusting aspects of the man," Jones says. "Old Hank is the kind of character that I, personally, would dismiss. He's certainly ethnocentric and blindly, unquestioningly patriotic. I looked upon him as typical of the sort of person who can be led by the nose by jingoistic headlines into a fraudulent war." He also gets into the subject of No Country for Old Men and how he approaches acting and working with directors -- all in all it's a pretty interesting read.

The best movie year since 1999, 2007 offered a staggering bounty of cinematic delights. I keep track of all the movies I see in a given year and give each a letter grade, "A" through "F". Usually my Top Ten list consists of all of the "A's" and a few "B's." This year, "A" pictures made up my top twenty. With so many great films, I won't wallow through a "Worst of the Year" list, I'll simply present you with a few that didn't fully satisfy:

The Biggest Disappointment: The Darjeeling Limited -- A Louis Vuitton commercial stretched to feature length. The Darjeeling Limited is a perfect title for the film because it makes plain what a limited filmmaker the once great Wes Anderson has become. Hey Wes, people running in slow-motion while a Kinks song plays is always going to look pretty neat. But if there's absolutely nothing else going on in the scene, then that's all it is -- people running in slow-motion while a Kinks song plays. We all think it's really cool that you like The Kinks. Hell, I love those guys! The Rolling Stones are awesome, too! But I wouldn't ask them to do my job for me.

and...

The Biggest Question Mark: There Will Be Blood

Undoubtedly one of the year's most impressive technical achievements, There Will Be Blood is frequently stunning. It's so stunning, in fact, that it's easy to overlook how infuriatingly empty it all is. The film focuses on two main characters, and neither one changes a lick in thirty years and 158 minutes. How did Paul Thomas Anderson, creator of such deeply emotional rides as Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and Punch Drunk Love come up with a movie completely devoid of human emotion? (I'm not counting greed.) Beautiful, brilliant, and boring in equal doses, I've seen Blood twice, and I still don't know if it's a masterpiece or a mess. I just know I felt...nothing watching it. It's as hollow, as frustrating, as difficult to know as its "hero," Daniel Plainview.

On to my list. First, ten that didn't quite make the cut. Here's #20 through #11: (#20) Breach, (#19) Once, (#18) The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, (#17) Sicko, (#16) Sweeney Todd, (#15) The Lives of Others, (#14) Eastern Promises, (#13) Zodiac, (#12) Atonement, (#11) Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

And my Top Ten is after the jump...

For some horrible reason Josh Brolin continues to be left out of the awards season party this year, despite his terrific performances in No Country for Old Men, American Gangster and In the Valley of Elah (he was also in Planet Terror, the Robert Rodriguez half of Grindhouse). All I can say is that I hope he continues to be offered great roles and never has to go back to being in movies like Hollow Man and Into the Blue. Meanwhile, his No Country co-stars Javier Bardem and Tommy Lee Jones have been nominated for Screen Actors Guild awards for their supporting roles. Bardem's presence in the category is not surprising -- he's the front-runner for the supporting Oscar, isn't he? -- but it's great to Jones here, since he's been ignored by the Golden Globes, the Golden Satellites and pretty much everything else.

Another surprise with the SAG nominees is Ryan Gosling as best actor for Lars and the Real Girl, beating possible contenders Johnny Depp, Denzel Washington, Phillip Seymour Hoffman (also missing from the supporting category) and Tom Hanks. Also, there's sweet little old Ruby Dee in the supporting actress race for having the cutest reaction to being given a mansion (and for later putting Denzel in his place) in American Gangster. She goes up against the usual 2007 supporting actress contenders Cate Blanchett, Amy Ryan and Tilda Swinton, as well as somewhat surprising addition Catherine Keener, who helped to make Into the Wild the top receiver of nominations with four -- others include Emile Hirsch, Hal Holbrook and ensemble cast. Other ensemble casts nominated include those of Hairspray (no single acting noms), 3:10 to Yuma (no single acting noms), No Country for Old Men, and American Gangster. Very, very, very surprisingly left out of this category is Juno (Ellen Page is nominated for best actress, however).

This year the SAG Awards are introducing two new categories. They are both for best stunt ensemble, one for film and one for television. The film category features nominees The Bourne Identity, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, I Am Legend, 300 and The Kingdom. The rest of the motion picture nominees and categories can be found after the jump or over on Moviefone.

No Country for Old Men, the new film from Joel and Ethan Coen, is an unquestionable return to form. It is scary, funny, moving, violent, and meaningful, in pretty much equal measure. The Coens' take on the Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name is a pairing as successful, as seamless, as delicious as that of chocolate and peanut butter.

Josh Brolin gives the finest of his four excellent performances this year as Llewelyn Moss. Moss is a struggling everyman who stumbles upon a circle of trucks and dead Mexicans in the desert -- a heroin deal gone bad. Real bad. The lone survivor asks Moss for some agua, and Moss ignores the request. He surveys the scene and eventually comes upon a suitcase filled with $2 million dollars. Moss' response upon finding the money? A simple "Yeah." It's a perfect moment in a movie packed with them. Moss takes the money and returns home to his trailer and his wife Carla Jean (Kelly MacDonald). Soon, his conscience begins to nag at him, and he decides to head back to the scene of the crime to give the dying man a drink. A compassionate decision, but not, as you can probably imagine, an intelligent one.

Javier Bardem plays Anton Chigurh (start to say Chicago and then growl and you're close to the pronunciation). I'll leave his specific involvement in the proceedings up to you to figure out, but just know that he really wants that $2 million. Moss will come to refer to Chigurh as "the ultimate badass," and that's about right. Chigurh is a classic screen villain, the kind we haven't seen in far too long. Every time he appears on screen, cattle stunner in tow, it just makes your heart sink -- somebody is going down. Much like Hannibal Lecter, the guy is a vicious, remorseless killer, but he has a strangely sensible logic and one can't help but be seduced by him. Bardem, sporting a Prince Valiant haircut, gives a flawless performance here, one that will likely be noticed come Oscar time. He completely disappears into Chigurh.

One of the 78th Oscars clip montages was devoted to films about big social and cultural issues, and when the clips were done and the cheering muted, host Jon Stewart gave a resigned smile to the camera and delivered a cruel, cutting, it's-funny-because-it's-true joke about Hollywood high-mindedness: " ... And none of those issues were ever a problem again." And that moment came to mind watching In the Valley of Elah. You get a sense of what everyone involved, especially writer-director Paul Haggis, was trying to do -- to make a gripping, engaging drama about Iraq and America -- but as the movie stretches and grasps and strains with sweaty-palmed desperation and clumsiness, you can feel those aspirations slip out of reach. You can tell everyone involved wanted to make an important statement. What they would end up making was a fairly indifferent movie. But hey, if an expatriate Canadian Scientologist who used to write for The Facts of Life can't bring the boys home, who can?

And I may, perhaps, be a little over-the top in the above dismissal, but that might just be because In the Valley of Elah is one of a ever-growing class of movies -- released in the last quarter of the year, festooned with talent, and ostensibly about something -- that desperately want to be seen as 'political' and 'important' modern moviemaking. My initial revulsion at the clumsy coincidences and cardboard characters and cheap tricks in Haggis's previous directorial effort, Crash, gave way to a sort of grudging admiration for the fact that, all things considered, Haggis was trying to talk about race and class. The willingness to look at those topics -- so present in life, so absent on the mainstream big screen -- made Crash seem better than it actually was. And while heaping honors on Crash may not rank on the all-time list of Oscar's worst Best Picture Picks (Forrest Gump, Million Dollar Baby, Around the World in 80 Days, et al.), it's not exactly in the honor roll of Oscar's finest moments.

But we've already given Haggis rewards for his lazy storytelling, his cheap sentimentality, his glib and clumsy narrative tricks -- so who could fault him for coming back to them again and again? In the Valley of Elah is very much in the mold of Million Dollar Baby -- where an older man uses his lifetime of experience to try and do the right thing even though doing the wrong thing would be a hell of a lot easier. It's also got Crash's delusions of moral grandeur. Yes, In the Valley of Elah is about great and mighty topics, but it's somehow both self-satisfied and self-righteous, both preachy and predictable.

An ordinary man stumbles across a ring of corpses surrounding a fortune in cash and a mountain of heroin. A bad man follows in search of the money; a good man follows in search of the man. This is the set-up for the newest film from Joel and Ethan Coen, No Country for Old Men -- an adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name, and a brilliant example of how plot devices as simple as murder and money can be used to explore larger sweeping themes of mortality, morality and more -- while still delivering rousing, intelligent pure entertainment.

Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) is out hunting when he stumbles across a scene of murder -- broken glass, bullet-ridden cars and bodies. A pick-up truck is full of heroin; he tracks his way to a lone corpse under a tree and an attaché case full of cash. It's two million. It's there for the taking. So he does. Soon, Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) comes looking for Moss and the money, leaving a trail of dead men in his wake; local sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) tries to figure out the why and wherefore of the murder scene and tries to track Moss so he can stop Chigurh.

Many will mock or knock No Country for Old Men as Fargo, Texas style -- in truth, No Country for Old Men has much more in common with the lesser-seen Coen films Blood Simple and Miller's Crossing. The money only matters as something for people want; the murder as something that people do. The common perception of the Coens is that they're quirky comedians, but in many ways, they're also methodical moralists -- and No Country for Old Men gives them a canvas to explore in the broad burnished vistas of the West, and in the lives of those who live there.

Ropeofsilicon has six new shots from the Coen Brothers' upcoming crime drama No Country for Old Men. "Coen Brothers' upcoming crime drama" -- just typing those words fills me with excitement! The photos include: a shot of Javier Bardem sporting a Prince Valiant haircut and walking down the road with what appears to be insect repellent (?); the Coen Brothers on set; a mustachioed man that appears to be Josh Brolin walking toward a truck in the desert; a mustachioed man that is definitely Josh Brolin covered in blood and pointing a gun; Tommy Lee Jones looking disapprovingly at something while reading a newspaper; and a pretty shot of a man running at sunset. The film also stars Josh's father and Mr. Streisand -- James Brolin, Woody Harrelson, Kelly MacDonald, and Stephen Root from Office Space, Dodgeball, and one of the funniest sitcoms ever -- Newsradio.

The Coens are responsible for five of my favorite movies of all time, and they've been away from the cinema for far too long. Their last couple films weren't quite up to snuff, but this one promises to be pure gold. Based on Cormac McCarthy's critically acclaimed novel, which I plan to dive into this weekend, Old Men's plot concerns "dead bodies, a stash of heroin and more than $2 million in cash near the Rio Grande." Nobody does that kind of thing better than the Coens. The film is set for release on November 9th of this year, and the wait is just killing me. In the meantime, let me recommend a tiny movie to you that a lot of people missed: The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. With that catchy title, I'm not sure how it didn't find an audience, but it really should have. Written by Guillermo Ariaga, directed by and starring Tommy Lee Jones, it's an excellent film and one that, judging by the photos, appears to have a similar feel to Old Men.

Over the last 40 years, James Lee Burke has been busy penning mysteries, mainly starring a certain New Orleans police detective called Dave Robicheaux. Burke is known for writing mysteries in a "moral wasteland" littered with murder and crude characters -- the creme de la creme of society. In 1996 Burke first made it to the big screen with Heaven's Prisoners, a mediocre feature starring Alec Baldwin. After a number of years, Burke is finally getting a second cinematic adaptation as Chris Ullrich reported in November. However, there won't be a repeat performance from Baldwin, as Tommy Lee Jones is taking over the role. Sorry, Chris!

In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead is coming alive under the hand of French filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier, and Polish screenwriter Jerzy Kromolowski. You might remember his last screenplay, the dreary, yet well-received, The Pledge. His experience with grim subject matter should help the picture since Burke is anything but a cheery writer with uplifting, positive portraits of humanity. In this mystery, Robicheaux wants to link a New Orleans mobster named Baby Feet, currently in town producing a Civil War film, with the murder of a local prostitute. When a corpse of a man that the lieutenant had seen murdered 35 years before pops up, Robicheaux is sure that the old and new killings are connected and tries to bring the mobster down. Jones has already hunted down fugitives, killers and aliens. This should be old hat.

Man, I am so totally stoked about Be Kind Rewind. Everything about the movie -- yes, including the fact that Kirsten "I'm Adorable Even Though the Internets Hate Me" Dunst might be in it -- sounds completely fantastic, and I refuse to let my customary pessimism harsh my buzz about this one. For those of you who have somehow overlooked our previous posts on the subject, the movie is about a guy with a Magnetic Brain (of course he'll be played by Jack Black) who accidentally erases all the tapes in the video store at which his best friend (Mos Freaking Def) works. You know, with his big ol' head. So, in order to not disappoint the store's only regular customer -- an old lady whose mind is going -- the friends do the logical thing, and set out to recreate the movies she liked to rent. Yes, that's right: Jack Black and Mos Def shoot their own versions of Rush Hour, Lion King, and Robocop. And the movie was written and will be directed by Michel Gondry. Have you wet yourselves with joy yet?

The latest update on the film* is that, in addition to Danny Glover (who we already knew would appear), Melonie Diaz and Mia Farrow have also joined the cast, with Diaz as Mos Def's coworker, and Farrow, one assumes/hopes, as the shop's customer. Honestly. The only way this movie can get better is if Tommy Lee Jones joins the cast. If he does, the fact that shooting doesn't being until next month will not stop me from camping out for tickets. Like, now.

*Disturbingly, Dunst's name is not mentioned in the most recent Variety article, so make of that what you will. For the moment, I'm choosing to believe it was an oversight, rather than evidence that her talks to appear didn't work out.

In the best of Robert Altman's ensemble pictures, his sprawling casts fall into a sort of miraculous rhythm. No matter how divergent their storylines might be, there's never a sense that actors aren't on the same page. In MASH, for example, not only are Donald Sutherland's Hawkeye and Elliot Gould's Trapper John completely in sync, but they also share a clear understanding with Sally Kellerman (Hot Lips) and Robert Duvall (Frank Burns). And in The Player, no matter how reptilian and icy Tim Robbins' Griffin Mill gets, he never fails to share convincing connections with every other major actor in the film -- despite its rangy story, never once does the movie feel like anything less than a coherent whole. By the same token, however, when things go wrong for Altman they go very, very wrong. Despite its world-class cast, Prêt-à-Porter is a sprawling mess, full of characters and performances that have nothing to do with one another, and a story that exists simply to give them all an excuse to be in the same movie.

While Altman's latest feature, A Prairie Home Companion, is by no means the aggressive disaster Prêt-à-Porter was, there nevertheless is something off about. Stocked with an all-star cast that includes Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, John C. Reilly, Lily Tomlin, Lindsay Lohan, and Tommy Lee Jones, the movie never congeals into a coherent whole, despite a handful of heart-felt performances. Set backstage at an old-time-style radio show called A Prairie Home Companion (also the name of screenwriter-star Garrison Keillor's long-running show on NPR), the movie takes place during the show's final performance: The Fitzgerald Theater in which it is based has been bought out, and the new owners have no interest in hosting a radio show. As Altman is wont to do, he jumps back and forth among stories that include a pregnant stage manager (Maya Rudolph), lovers planning a tryst (L.Q. Jones and Marylouise Burke), an angel (Virginia Madsen) in search of a soul, singing sisters reminiscing about their careers (Streep and Tomlin), and a star uncomfortable with saying goodbye (Keillor).