Considering how much Kevin Smith hates having his surprises spoiled online, he got really lucky with the new on-set photos from his latest comedy, Zack and Miri Make a Porno. Slashfilm is now hosting a couple photos taken on set at a local mall, as well as some shaky camera footage of the man at work. Nothing groundbreaking, but hey, Smith always brings a smile to my face, so I'm not complaining.

Zack and Miri is the story of two childhood friends who are brought together again at their high school reunion. The two then come up with the idea of making a porn flick together. Seth Rogen stars as Zack and Elizabeth Banks plays Miri. Originally the role had been written for Rosario Dawson, but she backed out to work on Eagle Eye with Shia LaBeouf.

Rehearsals for the film started back in January, and judging by Smith's posting on his personal blog, things seem to be going well. Smith wrote that, "I've got a guy whose inflections I wrote for/to reading the scenes and sounding like he's not acting at all, as much as being the character. I've got a chick who could read the Bible aloud and make it seem charming. They're naturals. They're excellent". OK, so Smith has never been known to be less than totally committed to his films for better or for worse. Luckily, it looks like this one is going to be one of the better ones. Zack and Miri Make a Porno is scheduled for release later this year.

Lame because: Big budget B-flicks are a contradiction in terms. Not to mention that making excuses for bad box-office is never cool. Who releases two straight-up horror flicks on Easter weekend anyway? How to turn it around: Maybe leave it to the midnight madness crowd boys, because no one should ever take bad movies that seriously. Tarantino and Rodriguez are so in love with themselves, they've kind of forgotten what we used to love about them.

Next up: Um ... time for a new agent!

Where did they rank?

Well, since it is Halloween after all, it makes perfect sense to get a little horror-related news. The Hollywood Reporter announced that Artfire Films and Romero-Grunwald Prods. have already given the go-ahead to a follow-up of George Romero's Diary of the Dead. This means they must be pretty eager considering the first film is not expected to be released until next year. Diary of the Dead centers on a group of young filmmakers in the middle of making a low-budget zombie flick who have the unfortunate luck of running into the real thing. According to THR, the sequel will focus on survivors from the first film, "Fighting their way out of a mansion through a horde of ravenous zombies, the survivors of "Diary" escape to a remote island only to be plunged into another battle with the dead".

So if you are not a fan of zombie movies (and I know there is at least one of you out there), it's going to be a rough year at the box-office . Only yesterday, Zack and Deborah Snyder confirmed that the follow-up to Dawn of the Dead now has a completed script and that they are on the hunt for a director. So we can add Diary of the Dead 2 to a growing list of films about the 'living-challenged' slated for 2008 (with my personal votes going to Brad Pitt's take on World War Z and the Vampire-Zombie hybrid, Virulents). Diary of the Dead is slated to begin principal photography this coming Spring.

I can't be the only one who saw this title of the film and thought of the old joke about "master debaters," but that is probably not the best association to make when you are talking about a family film. Variety reports that Kimberly Elise has signed on to the period flick The Great Debaters. The movie is the second directorial effort from Denzel Washington and centers on a small East Texas debate team that challenged Harvard's famed team to a debate. The film is set in the 30's, which will probably add an extra "feel-good" element to it, as its sure to be not only a story of triumph over adversity, but some deep-seated discrimination. The cast also includes Nate Parker (Pride), Forest Whitaker and Washington who will play the coach of the debate team. Elise is set to play Whitaker's wife and the mother to the team's star debater.

Elise must have had an inside track on the role since one of the film's producers is media queen Oprah Winfrey, who gave Elise one of her first big-screen roles in the adaptation of Toni Morrison's Beloved, and Elise has already worked with Washington on The Manchurian Candidate. After shooting has finished in Louisiana, Elise will return to work on the international drama Red Soil. The Great Debaters is set for release in 2008.

Hey, remember last winter when you and your kids ran out to see Arthur and the Invisibles and nobody liked it? Oh wait, that wasn't you. You're American. Nobody in this country went to see it. And director Luc Besson is not only well aware of that fact, but he also places the blame squarely on the Weinstein boys. (The numbers don't lie: Arthur barely broke $15 million in North America, yet it pulled in over $90 million outside of North America.)

In a recent interview with Dan Epstein over at SuicideGirls.com, Mr. Besson had precisely this to say: "I've worked in the movie business for 30 years now and for each film I work 40 different distributors around the world. The American distributor on Arthur [The Weinstein Company] was the worst I have worked with in my entire life, in any country. I think this is the essence of all the problems. Why the critics didn't like Arthur was because they changed so much of the film and tried to pretend the film was American. The critics aren't stupid. They watched the film, they vaguely smell American but they can feel the film is forced for an American audience. The film is European. It's made by a Frenchman. This was the only country where the film was changed. The rest of the world has the same film as France."

Yowch. Besson got one thing right: The critics were pretty unkind. According to Rotten Tomatoes, only 17 out of 83 polled critics gave the flick a positive review. (That's a 20% approval rate.) I saw the American version -- and I thought it was a really sloppy mess for the most part. Guess I'll be renting that French version as soon as possible.

So yes, you've probably heard more about Michael Moore in the last two days than you ever needed to hear in, say, a month: First there was the announcement of the June 29 release date for Moore's health-care documentary Sicko, then the news that Moore is under federal investigation for taking Sept. 11 workers to Cuba, and let's not forget the Weinstein Company's hiring of a political strategist to run interference when Moore inevitably gets sued.

But finally we have something actually related to the movie itself -- yup, we've snagged key art from the poster for Sicko. We're told that the tagline for the poster, when it's finished, will be "This might hurt a little," and while I can't wait to see what sort of treatment the title is going to get, I have to say the sight of Michael Moore pulling on the rubber gloves is already creeping me out enough. (Click on the art for a larger image.)

Want Moore? (Sorry, couldn't resist.) Check out three exclusive photos from Sicko, after the jump.

Eli Roth's extremely twisted faux trailer for Thanksgiving was one of the many highlights of Grindhouse. It uncannily captured the scuzzed-out look of most 1980's horror films. For those of you who thought you'd like to see that premise expanded to a feature for real, you may be in luck. Roth thinks the expanded Thanksgiving would make a perfect double bill with an expanded version of Edgar Wright's trailer for Don't. The combination would make for something akin to Grindhouse 2. Roth has already talked to Wright about the proposition and says, "We're talking to Dimension about it. I think they're still trying to figure out Grindhouse 1 before we think about Grindhouse 2, but I've already been working on the outline for it and I would do it in a heartbeat." Roth wants to do the movie without much of a script and with people in their 30's portraying the "teenagers" - 90210-style.

The Weinstein Company has publicly expressed unhappiness with the box office return for the Tarantino/Rodriguez Grindhouse, are they going to take a chance on similar material? Box office/schmox office, says Roth: "My feeling is that three and a half hours, it was a long time at the movies for people. The movie itself was three hours and 15 minutes and then there's 20 minutes of trailers and then parking and everything, it suddenly became a four hour evening for people. So there's only so many times you can show it in a day and a lot of people getting off work, it was tough for people to find the time to see it. The people that saw it loved it. People were going crazy for it and I think that 25 years from now, everyone will talk about the classic movie Grindhouse and no one will talk about -- the words "box office disappointment" won't even apply. I think the guys made a brilliant film and they should be commended for it and they took a risk." I loved Grindhouse, love Roth, love Wright...I say bring it on! Now! To see the Thanksgiving trailer in all its perverted glory, head here (obviously NSFW). The trailer for Don't is here.

Sure, you have one or two (or three or four) films "under-perform" at the box office and suddenly people start to think things are going down the toilet. Such is the plight of flamboyant filmmakers Bob and Harvey Weinstein these days -- especially after the recent less-than-stellar business of their recent Grindhouse release. And now, as often happens when detractors smell blood in the water, people feel compelled to examine the brothers and their company.

A recent New York Times article does just that. In the article, the author relates the tale of woe that is the Weinstein company's recent track record at the box office. Films like Anthony Minghella's Breaking and Entering, Factory Girl, Shut Up and Sing and Grindhouse have all made far less than expected and their lack of success has been a cause for concern throughout the industry. The Weinsteins, of course, are not oblivious to the situation. "It could be better, obviously," said Bob Weinstein in the article. "Our drive and ambition are to be better than perhaps we've been."

What is stalwart optimist Weinstein's response to how he will keep his company going through the perceived "lean" times? His answer isn't, as you might expect, "make better movies that make more money." Instead, he has another idea -- diversification. Alliances with companies such as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Cablevision, Blockbuster, the aSmallWorld Web site, the Ovation cable channel and the Halston couture house, are all part of the Weinstein plan for world domination. Said Weinstein in the article: "We want to be very much like the bigger companies, in a humble boutique way."

The Weinstein Company wasn't content to just hit people over the head with a Grindhouse-sized double feature from Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino. No, they also thought they'd issue a double-whammy and hit the press over the head with a massive junket, providing no less than fifteen actors, and the two directors, for our pleasure. If you can imagine trying to take notes while Quentin Tarantino goes off on tangents at a million miles a minute, then you have a small taste of what we were exposed to. Next time, bring on the mutant zombies, I say.

Thankfully, we got to sit down with practically everyone in this film (no Bruce Willis or Michael Parks, sadly) and chat. Who surprised me the most? Hands down -- Freddy Rodriguez. He is one cool cat with a really great attitude and background. Who knew he was from Chicago? Well, er ... clearly not me, until he told me. He also seems to have shed himself of the Poseidon baggage as well, and rolled over right into Grindhouse. Get it?

Who seemed the most perplexed at all the hubbub surrounding Grindhouse? Naveen Andrews, without a doubt. He had a bemused attitude about the whole thing, and about the appeal of these types of films. In all honesty, he sounded a bit Lost. Get it? Sorry. It's just too easy. Check out the various interviews below, which should sate you until Grindhouse finally hits theaters. Then we can start the whole "Whose half was better?" debate in earnest.

Plus, as an adding warning -- if you don't like spoilers, then you might not want to read these. There's some juicy information in here, including details about stuff that'll be included in the international and DVD releases of the films. So either avert your eyes, or go full-speed ahead, readers.


Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez

How did you first get into Grindhouse cinema? RR: "He's been educating me in Grindhouse cinema for the past twelve years, showing me all these double features and triple features at his house -- either stuff he'd already seen in the theater back when he was growing up, or stuff he'd discovered, that he turned me on to. Didn't really think to do anything with it, because I'm kind of slow, then about three years ago I started thinking 'wouldn't it be cool to do a double feature?' Because I just finished a 3-D movie, and I was trying to think of something else that would bring people to theaters for a theatrical experience. I went crazy with that idea for a few months, then got sidetracked and did Sin City, then I went to show him my cut I did of his scene in Sin City. I went to his house, and laying on the floor with a bunch of other junk was a double bill poster for Rock All Night and Dragstrip Girl, which was the same one I had at my house, on my floor.

That was inspiration for my double feature, just the layout of it. I said 'I've got that same poster, and it's on my floor! I had this idea I was crazy about, I was gonna make two short features, but you should do one and I'll do the other one,' and he said 'Oh, I love double features -- we gotta call it Grindhouse!' and I said 'allright!' Then later he came up with the idea for the fake trailers. When he does show a double feature at his house, he always puts trailers in between -- it wouldn't be a complete experience without them."

Director Darren Lynn Bousman, who recently announced that he's soon to be helming Saw IV, is also now taking on directing duties on Scanners, a re-make of the 1981 head-exploding horror film by David Cronenberg. According to Variety, Weinstein jumped on the re-make during a recent rights lapse. The film will be produced by 'Saw' veterans Mark Burg and Oren Koules, among others. Bousman is scheduled to begin filming Saw IV on April 15 and will direct a rock-opera called Repo for Lionsgate after that -- screenwriter David Goyer apparently has until the end of that shoot to cough up a Scanners script. No word on casting decisions yet for the project yet.

Scanners, in the parlance of the original film, are telepathic individuals who are turned into walking weapons by a greedy corporation. The film had the creepy tagline -- "There are four billion people on Earth. 237 are Scanners." There's no word on how much of a radical departure Goyer's new script will be from the original. Having recently co-wrote the script for Batman Begins, Goyer was also recently taken off The Flash project for Warner Bros. after they could not agree on a storyline; he has also been working on a treatment for a film adaptation of the Marvel comic Thor, and apparently contributed at least a storyline to the upcoming Batman Begins sequel, The Dark Knight.