At the beginning of this year, there was news that Drew Barrymore and Ellen Page were setting their sights on Whip It! -- a flick about snarky chicks, toughness, and roller derby action. It sounded like a whole wackload of fun. The rumored March start date came and went without a sound, but now, luckily, things are on track for this summer. Even better: The Hollywood Reporter posts that joining Page and Barrymore on-screen will be Marcia Gay Harden, Kristen Wiig, Juliette Lewis, and Zoe Bell.

Page is playing Bliss Cavendar, a beauty queen who runs away to join the roller derby league in Austin, Texas. Harden will play her mom, an ex-beauty queen herself who wants her daughter out of the skates and back on the beauty circuit. Meanwhile, Wiig will play Bliss' rolling mentor, Malice in Wonderland, Lewis will be top star Dinah Might, and Bell will be "a medical technician moonlighting as derby star Bloody Holly." With first-time feature director Drew Barrymore taking on a role as Page's teammate, that's one heck of a roller roster.

I wonder if 5'1" Page will have to take on 5'8" Bell? Hell, I'm trying to imagine how she'd do against anyone, being as teeny as she is. We should find out soon enough -- the film heads into production this summer in Texas and Michigan.

The now-untitled sci-fi thriller, which used to be called Game (from Crank writer/directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor), continues to put together one heck of a varied cast. They've got top names like 300's Gerard Butler, and even some old faces to spot. Last month, a certain serial killer and ex gay mortician (Michael C. Hall) joined the cast, which also includes Alison Lohman, John Leguizamo, Amber Valletta, and Kyra Sedgwick. (Johnny Whitworth is also involved -- you might remember him as the pensive artist in Empire Records.) Now Coming Soon reports that two more are added to the list -- one Mr. Chris "Ludracris" Bridges, and the toughest chick to hit the movies Zoe Bell (Death Proof). (Movies have tough women, but rarely are the tough women just as tough off the big screen.)

In a dystopian future, the film is about a mass-scale online computer game called "Slayers" where some humans control other humans. The top player, Kable (Butler), is the top warrior, and as everyone tracks his every move, he struggles to regain his self and bring down the imprisoning system. Ludacris will play one of Alison Lohman's "resistance group called HUMANZ that is protesting the way that the prisoners are being used as part of these video games." Bell, well, her character hasn't been shared, but I am pretty sure that she'll be a fellow warrior, or maybe a covert op of the resistance group. The flick is currently in production, but you're going to have to wait until 2009 to see it.

While I am a fan of Quentin Tarantino, I wasn't too thrilled with Death Proof. That is, except for the uber-excellent, arse-kicking ending and the beautifully tough Zoë Bell -- she's the Kiwi stuntwoman who jumped on the hood of the 1970 Dodge Challenger in the flick. If you didn't catch the Grindhouse extravaganza, she's also worked as Lucy Lawless' stunt double on Xena and as Uma Thurman's in the Kill Bill movies. Now there's great news coming from The Hollywood Reporter -- she's going to star in an untitled action flick for Marco Weber's Senator Entertainment.

Based on a story cooked up by Weber, and written by Sarah Thorp (Twisted), the film features Zoë as a U.S. soldier who comes back from an Iraq tour of duty and helps a girl in trouble. Bell says: "This film is a big challenge for me, especially the American accent, which I have to work on. But one thing is certain: I will be doing all my own stunts on the film." I couldn't ask for more. Not surprisingly, she got the gig because of her stint in Grindhouse. Weber says: "When I saw Zoë in Death Proof, I was immediately drawn to her ability and acting talent. Her background and likability made her a perfect choice for our lead." Here, here! Here's to hoping that they cook up a good story and create a great film around her. We don't have enough good, tough, (and female!!) action heroines out there.

Of all the guilty pleasures at Cannes this year -- and there were guilty pleasures at Cannes this year, for all of the art and drama -- surely the most tempting had to be the extended cut of Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof. Originally part of the vast and sprawling Grindhouse experiment, now QT's car-crashin', smack-talkin' carnival of mayhem was going to show on its own. Which, to be honest, it always kinda did; Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror, for all it's sins, nonetheless felt like a '70s trash-gasm; Death Proof, with all the yakkety-yak and funny bits, felt too modern. If I were smarter, I'd say something like I wanted to see Death Proof liberated from the cage of the Grindhouse conceit; really, though, I just wanted a nice snack of all-American cheese in-between the thoughtful, contemplative dramas; a little re-tox, if you will.

And Death Proof does have all the nutrition of a narcotic compound -- and making it bigger didn't mean making it any classier. Death Proof is a misshapen hybrid of early DePalma and '70s car-counterculture epics as a woman-watching killer who executes with his sweet-ass ride plays cat-and-mouse at full throttle. One set of sexy, leggy mice gets killed in what may be the best-shot high-speed car-wreck mass-murder sequence of all time -- a singular, if grisly honor. The next time our high-octane homicide artist goes after a car full of girls, though, the new set of mice are a bit better prepared ...

One of AICN's legion of tipsters appears to have gotten his (or her) hands on a copy of Quentin Tarantino's screenplay for his half of Grind House, the retro-style collaboration with Robert Rodriguez - and, assuming that most sane people won't take the time to make up not only length (127 pages) but also cover art (in case you're wondering, it "features a muscle car with huge twin exhausts and a skull on the hood with some lightning bolts"), the write-up is pretty convincingly real.

According to the writer, QT's half of the film - entitled Death Proof - stars Mickey Rourke and stuntwoman Zoe Bell, and revolves around a guy named Stuntman Mike (that's Rourke) who, well, drives around in his kickass stunt car and kills people with it. Um, ok. If that idea appeals to you, go check out the write-up, because there are lots of spoilers therein. In general, however, the tipster wasn't particularly impressed by the script, describing the dialogue as "flat" and "not very clever" - not a good start for something from Tarantino, a man whose best work relies heavily on crackling writing. That said, however, there's reportedly a super-bloody car crash in the middle of the movie - will that get your asses in the seats?