The movie Be Kind Rewind is being released on DVD today. Even if you didn't see the movie, you probably remember the delightful trailer, in which Jack Black and Mos Def shoot their own low-budget, low-everything versions of blockbusters like Ghostbusters and Driving Miss Daisy. In addition, another movie about the joy of making movies is still playing in some theaters -- Son of Rambow, where two boys are inspired to shoot their own version of Rambo complete with flying dogs, nursing-home residents bribed as actors, and a fabulous French exchange student.

I can think of dozens of enjoyable movies about moviemaking (and a few clunkers, but we'll ignore them for today). But I decided to focus on seven of the most characteristic films. I didn't include films about screenwriters, because I think those would be fun to list another time, or films about moviegoing like Cinema Paradiso. Instead, I focused on the inspired and sometimes crazed filmmakers. Afterwards, you can tell me which of your favorites I left off the list.

The last time Willem Dafoe appeared on the big screen as a vampire, he was Nosferatu, and his performance scored him an Oscar nomination. Now he's got not one, but two vampire films on the way. Daybreakers has entered post-production, and now ShockTillYouDrop reports that Dafoe has signed on for a role in Paul Weitz's Cirque du Freak.

The film focuses on a kid who visits a freak show with his best friend, and then has to become an assistant to the vampire Mr. Crepsley to save his bud's life -- which means leaving his family and life forever. While in the freak show, he ends up in the center of a vampiric turf war. Dafoe will play Gavner Perl -- a Vampire General and old friend of Crepsley's.

This whole production just got even sweeter. Other names attached to the film include Salma Hayek, John C. Reilly, Jane Krakowski, Ken Watanabe, and Patrick Fugit.

What kind of horror movie can you get from the uninitiated? We're about to find out.

The Hollywood Reporter posted an interview with Wim Wenders yesterday, which discusses his current Cannes film, Palermo Shooting. However, in this whirlygig of conversational fun, the director also talks his next film.

"But my next film will be a genre movie. Full on. It will be a horror film." But wait, he goes on to say: "Horror is one genre that is used much less than others to transport other things. Lots of people have used great thrillers to transport political messages but the horror film is rarely used to transport anything but fear." Wenders has made a bunch of great films and has a good deal of talent, so I'm going to assume that he just hasn't seen very many scary movies, and has based his opinion on minimal fact.

Heck, I'm picky with my horror movies, and I've seen a good deal of political and social commentary in a number of them. Anyhow, it gets more interesting. It's called Miso Soup, and will be based on "the famous Japanese novel." I assume that means that it's In the Miso Soup, about a Japanese tour guide who is leading around a disturbing American client who might be a murderer, and has superhuman strength and metallic skin (vampire perhaps?).

What really makes this intriguing, regardless of Wenders' lacking horror knowledge -- Willem Dafoe is attached to star. Production will begin in Tokyo next spring.

College professors rule! Well, at least the one that Richard Jenkins plays so well in Tom McCarthy's The Visitor (Overture Films). The comedy-drama expanded to 18 theaters in its second week of release and averaged $9,055 per-screen to remain in the #1 position, according to estimates compiled by Box Office Mojo. Check the film's web site to see where it will be opening in the next couple of weeks (click on "in select theaters now").

Debuting indie films did not fare so well, judging strictly by per-screen averages, but it's notable that Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (Rocky Mountain Pictures), opened on more than 1,000 screens and made $2,997 per location for a total of more than $3 million for the weekend. The doc follows Ben Stein as he chases down Ferris Bueller ... oops, wrong movie! This one's about "intelligent design" in the classroom.

Opening on just one screen, Anamorph (IFC Films) grossed $3,000. Willem Dafoe stars as an NYPD detective investigating a serial killer. Critics were not kind: Anamorph scored just 28% positive at Rotten Tomatoes. David Hudson at GreenCine Daily rounds up pertinent quotes.

Two other holdovers did better as they expanded their runs. Young At Heart (Fox Searchlight), the "elderly folk chorus that sings modern rock songs" documentary, increased its theater count to 33 and averaged $4,393 per screen. Hou Hsiao-Hsien's gentle drama The Flight of the Red Balloon (IFC Films) proved its appeal beyond New York City, making $3,572 per-screen at 11 locations.

Ah, serial killer movies -- always becoming more and more convoluted by the second. It seems like every film has to have the worst killer ever known to man, or the most bizarre motivation, to keep the audiences interested. The Hollywood Reporter announced that IFC has picked up the rights to the crime thriller Anamorph. The film stars Scott Speedman (Underworld or Felicity, depending on your age group) and Willem Dafoe, and centers on a bizarre and vicious killer who re-creates anamorphic paintings in his crime scenes. After a quick Wikipedia search, I discovered that anamorphic painting is a style that uses a "distorted projection or perspective requiring the viewer to use special devices or occupy a specific vantage point to reconstitute the image." So, if our killer is using this technique in his crime scenes, I can only imagine how freaky some of it might get.

The film was written and directed by Henry Miller, who has only worked on a few comedy shorts up until now; Anamorph will be his first full-length feature film. Joining Speedman and Defoe in the cast are Peter Stormare as an art gallery owner and Clea DuVall (Heroes) as a troubled girl put in danger by the killer -- what were you expecting? She might as well be listed as bait/love interest in the credits. It looks like the film was originally set for release in 2007, but they didn't quite make it. Speedman has wrapped up two films since finishing Anamorph, just to give you an idea. But, I guess the old adage of better late than never is still in full effect, and the film is scheduled for release this November.

The Hollywood Reporter announced that Hayden Christensen will produce and star in Beast of Bataan. The story is based on Lawrence Taylor's book A Trial of Generals and was adapted for the screen by Chris Carlson and Mark Jean. The script will focus on the war crime trials that took place after the infamous Bataan Death March during WWII. Fred Schepisi (Six Degrees of Separation) has already signed to direct and Christensen will produce the indie-drama under his Forest Park Pictures banner.

Now for a little history lesson: On April 9th, 1942, General Edward P. King surrendered approximately 75,000 troops (mainly wounded American and Filipino soldiers) to the Japanese as prisoners of war that were to be transported from Mariveles to Camp O'Donnell, a prison camp in the province of Tarlac. Instead what happened was the men were marched without food and water, were tortured and beaten, and of the original 75,000 men only 54,000 reached their destination. Ultimately, the Japanese general responsible for transporting the soldiers (Lt. General Masaharu Homma) was convicted of war crimes and executed just outside of Manilla in 1946 (I guess I should have labeled that a spoiler, but it is history after all, so it's not like it was a secret).

Babel star, Koji Yakusho, is in talks to play the Japanese general, Lt. General Homma and Christensen will play his rookie defense attorney trying to save Homma from the death penalty -- although I guess we all know how that one turns out. Also joining Christensen are William Hurt and Willem Defoe, but there was no word on their roles. Beast of Bataan is scheduled to start shooting in Australia this February.

G-rated films are rare enough these days, but a G-rated film not meant strictly for kids? Intriguing. It was the one aspect of Mr. Bean's Holiday that caught my attention. The movie is obviously meant to appeal to a wide audience -- an international audience, in fact. Unfortunately the humor is uneven and generally tended to annoy me more than it entertained. However, fans of Rowan Atkinson's Mr. Bean character, from the TV show or the other movie, might feel very different about the film.

The film's humor is strictly physical, in a way that often pays homage to classic silent-film comedy or the films of Jacques Tati -- with varying degrees of success. The story is not especially important, as it's all a setup for the title character's shtick. Mr. Bean (Atkinson) is a very British, very clumsy man who rarely speaks, and then mostly in incoherent mumbles. At a gloomy church raffle, Bean wins a trip to the south of France -- specifically, to Cannes. He also wins a video camera, with which he becomes obsessed. You get the impression that the sad little man has never left his neighborhood; when he gets lost in Paris, he sets a compass in the direction where he wants to go, and walks in mid-street, over cars, through stores, to get to his destination. (I found that to be one of the funnier conceits in the film.) Through a series of misunderstandings, Bean ends up stuck in rural France with a small French boy, and they have to find a way to get to Cannes, videotaping their antics all the way. Bean also keeps running into the lovely French actress Sabine (Emma de Caunes) and a crazy American actor/director (Willem Dafoe).

The filming has now wrapped on Adam Resurrected, the movie which I last posted about back in December starring Jeff Goldblum (Adam Stein) and Willem Dafoe (Commandant Klein), and the buzz is beginning. The film is about a clown who is taken to a camp and must entertain the victims who are going to be killed -- he plays the violin for them. While this sounds like never-released The Day the Clown Cried, it's a bit different -- his time in the camp is only the start of the story. He survives his internment and after the war, he goes to Israel. After suffering a nervous breakdown while trying to find his last surviving family member, he enters an asylum for Holocaust survivors.

The latest word is that the film, which also stars Run Lola Run's Moritz Bleibtreu and Munich's Ayelet Zurer, is that it's planned to premiere at the Berlin Film Festival next February. While it might seem like any other Holocaust movie, Resurrected is a pretty big deal because it's said to be the first time that German and Israeli filmmakers have come together to film the subject. It's also considered quite risky; a German critic wrote that it is a "risky tightrope walk which, if it is too funny, is in danger of mocking Holocaust survivors, if it is too serious, misrepresents the character of the book." Personally, I love the mix of the story and the cast, and can't wait to see Goldblum and Dafoe on-screen together. Hopefully it will have a better initial reception than Yoram Kaniuk's book originally did -- it had flopped: "At that time no one in Israel wanted to hear victims' stories."

She isn't too well known in America, but Star Wars fans may recognize Claudia Karvan as the actress who played Padmé's elder sister Sola in Revenge of the Sith. Now the Australian actress, who is a popular television star in her native country, has landed herself another Hollywood role sure to make her more familiar to audiences in the States. She has been cast as the female lead in the futuristic vampire movie Daybreakers, in which she'll co-star with Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe and fellow Aussie (slash New Zealander) Sam Neill. The casting of an up-and-coming Australian star makes perfect sense since the movie will be shot Down Under by Australian filmmakers the Spierig twins (Undead), who also wrote the screenplay.

According to Moviehole, Karvan will be playing a human love interest for Hawke's vampire character. The movie is set in 2017 when the world is mostly populated by vampires, a race that may become extinct once the blood-supplying humans are also extinct. Hawke is some sort of good guy vampire who is researching a way for his people to survive with a blood substitute. Dafoe plays his rival. Still no word on who or what Neill will be playing. If Karvan's part is correct, I think we can assume that once Hawke falls for her, he begins to think twice about feeding on humans. Of course, he could just turn her into a vampire and then live happily for eternity with her, but narratively that idea lacks conflict. Daybreakers begins filming soon and is set to release next year, which will be long after we've already seen I Am Legend, 30 Days of Night and Bloodrayne II. Hopefully we'll still be interested in vampires by that point.

A veteran screenwriter once told me never to write a script about vampires. "People will laugh at you; the vampire genre is dead," he said. Really? Then how come every time I turn around, another vamp flick is gearing up for production? And how much can you really do with vampires that hasn't already been done ... and done ... and done? Well, for one, you can stick them in the future; in a world that's populated by vampires who are running out of real humans to suck dry. We already told you that Ethan Hawke signed up to star in Daybreakers; a futuristic vampire flick set to shoot in Australia. At the time, it was being reported that he wasn't going to play a blood sucker, but instead some sort of research guy. According to Star Pulse, that's changed ... and some new blood has just been added to the cast.

Says Hawke: "I'm going to make a vampire picture and I'm going to chew on some necks. Willem Dafoe and I are dueling vampires. It's a vampire movie set way in the future where everyone is a vampire and we're all eating our own resources, so we're trying to get off on foreign humans. We're trying to get off of trying to create blood substitutes. It's a big analogy about what's going on now. It's really dark and weird and everybody's sucking each other's blood." That sounds ... interesting. I am pretty stoked about Dafoe joining the cast; in my opinion, the guy is already living as a vampire in secret -- and, heck, he's also got a pretty good vampire-related track record having starred in Shadow of the Vampire back in 2000. Hawke, on the other hand, I'm not so sure about. Hopefully he won't break a record for being the most boring vampire of all time. Sam Neill has also been cast in the flick, which was written and will be directed by the Spierig Brothers. A 2008 release is currently planned.