I was talking with a friend the other day about the shocking decline in the quality of Kevin Spacey's films. It seems as though that Oscar for American Beauty was some sort of horrific curse, sending him into a long run of ill-advised, disastrous movie projects. Look at the man's filmography pre and then post Beauty. It's distressing! But Variety is reporting on a flick that sounds like it might turn things around. HBO Films' Recount will tell the story of the Florida results in the 2000 election, one of the most controversial political events of recent years. As Monika recently told you, Sydney Pollack was supposed to direct but dropped out due to "an undisclosed illness." Jay Roach, a director primarily known for broad comedy (Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, Meet the Parents, and their lesser sequels), will now direct. Danny Strong wrote the screenplay. The film will document "the legal and political maneuvering from the point of view of both the Bush and Gore camps."

Spacey will star as Ron Klain, "former chief of staff to vice president Al Gore and one of the lead attorneys who challenged the voting results in Florida." In addition to Spacey, Recount has lined up one hell of a supporting cast: Laura Dern will play Katherine Harris, the Florida secretary of state who certified that George W. Bush had won the state. Denis Leary (what went wrong on this season of Rescue Me, DL?) plays Michael Whouley, a Democrat pollster. John Hurt plays Warren Christopher, a key player for Gore. Tom Wilkinson plays James Baker, brought in by the Republicans to see that the disputed results held up. And two Christopher Guest alums will duke it out in the courtroom. Ed Begley, Jr will play David Boies, the lawyer who appealed the results and argued for the Democrats. Bob Balaban plays Ben Ginsberg, head attorney for George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. See what I mean about that supporting cast? You won't have to demand a Recount -- look for the film on HBO during the 2008 presidential election.

(Little bits of) the week in gossip, for your viewing pleasure.

• Denis Leary and Lenny Clarke -- both massive Red Sox fans -- got to spend some time in the NESN broadcast booth this week, watching the Sox lose to the Tigers. During their visit, Clarke and Leary discovered, much to their surprise (and overflowing pride), that Sox first baseman Kevin Youkilis is Jewish. That, combined with a great defensive play by Youk shortly after the revelation, led to a massive explosion of hilarity primarily focused on, yes, poor Mel Gibson. (You can hear the audio at the link; the video keeps getting yanked down.)

• Early in the week, the ever-reliable New York Daily News reported that, contrary to popular opinion, Tom Cruise has been crazy for years. Word is that back in the heady, I'm a Flawless Superstar! days of the early 1990s, Tom got it into his head that he needed to spend some quality time with one Joe DiMaggio, an impulse that any baseball fan can respect and understand. The problem, however, is that Joe D. wasn't having it -- he was completely uninterested in talking to Cruise, so Mav did the logical thing, and started lurking around at DiMaggio's signing events and, um, outside the places the man was trying to eat. How did old-man Joe deal with it? "This guy is following me around everywhere I go. Next time, I'm going to call the cops." Nice.
  

• James Woods, who spends most of his time trying to convince me that my affection for him is appallingly misguided, actually corrected his most recent disaster this week, albeit a bit late: He dumped Ashley Madison, his infant girlfriend (Ok, actually she's 20. But when you're 60? 20 is an infant.) after she reportedly acted like a fame whore (No!) at the funeral of Woods' brother. Try to read this description without thinking of the worst kind of 16-year-old girl: In addition to showing up in a tiny miniskirt and smoking non-stop, Madison reportedly spent the funeral figuring out "the amount of magazines she was in ... Jimmy was on his knees with tears staining his shirt, and she was showing pictures of herself." Gee, and I'm sure he expected so much more when he hooked up with a chick fully 1/3 of his age.

Let's be perfectly fair here: I didn't hate Ice Age 2: The Meltdown. That isn't to say I loved it, either. More like I was just mostly indifferent to it, in much the way that I'm mostly indifferent to grilled cheese-and-tomato sandwiches. Admittedly, the film got off to a bit of a rocky start with me, with its opening scene of a gang of thuggish Ice Age animal children picking on and beating up on Sid the sloth, their camp counselor. Note to people in Fox script department: parents really hate it when you encourage their tykes to truss up the nearest adult and play pinata with him with a wooden baseball bat. Even my kids were appalled by that bit; my six-year-old son, eyebrows knitted in his "worried" look, whispered, "Mommy, why are those kids being so mean to Sid? That's not really very nice, right, Mommy?"

As you can probably guess from the title, the sequel to the popular Ice Age is about the global warming that caused the end of the Ice Age. You could probably get all scientific and actually prove that because Ice Age 2 had a (insert extinct mammal of your choice here) in it, there's no way the end of the Ice Age was happening by Ice Age 2, because everyone knows that (extinct mammal) was extinct well before the end of the Ice Age. I don't care. Things are warming up, the ice is melting into natural waterslide parks, and the thick fur coats are starting to feel a little out of season. Nobody's too worried, though, until a traveling salesman comes by warning of a gargantuan flood that's going to engulf the cozy valley you call home. The only way out, he says, is through the end of the valley, where a giant boat is waiting. Um...a boat? A flood? Wait, did I walk into a Veggie Tales movie by mistake?