[Photo removed at request of 20th Century Fox]

This is too good not to share. It's no secret that I wasn't pleased with the last round of Amelia pics that hit the net. Hilary Swank just looked goofy, and the images did nothing to drum up excitement. In fact, it did just the opposite. But man, the picture above, part of a slew that went up on Oh No They Didn't, is definitely worth it.

Finally, we've got Swank in the flying ensemble! She's got on the obligatory leather jacket, cap, and goggles, although the wardrobe gurus seem to have decided against Earhart's oft-worn scarf, and selected a striped tie instead. But that's not all. We know that it's Richard Gere standing on the right, but do you recognize the woman on the left? I've loved her since Fire with Fire, but didn't notice at first that the lady in red is, indeed, Virginia Madsen. Okay, I'm a bit more excited now.

You?

With all the bad Iron Man news floating around this week, it seems fitting that we take a glance back and remember when all the rumors circling around his debut were fun.
If you remember, there was a flurry of interest surrounding Iron Man cameos, and one of the confirmed names was Hilary Swank. Speculation was rampant as to who she would be, the guesses ranging from She-Hulk to Black Widow. And then Iron Man came and went, with no Swank to be seen. I assumed she had been left on the cutting room floor, and would show up on the DVD.

When I first heard that Hilary Swank was going to take on Amelia Earhart for a new film, Amelia, I looked at pictures of both of them. While I'm not a big fan of Swank's period work, there's no denying that they hold a decent resemblance. Then there were the pics that popped up last month -- not too bad. But holy crap, I really don't like the new image of her as Earhart.

Cinema Blend threw up a picture of Swank that apparently popped up in the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly. It looks like Swank is wearing either a hideous knit cap made by grandma, or a weaved Halloween placemat on her head. Man, they should have stuck with the leather flier's cap. CB also pointed out that it's a fairly ... awkward ... picture of her as it is. All around, it looks like a total mess. I guess they're waiting awhile, but if they really wanted to make people excited, show her in the whole flying getup. Even if the film is all about the romance, give people the Amelia everyone remembers.

After tons of speculation and millions of votes counted, the results are in -- Richard Gere is still The Man. Seriously, how many people do you know who look 33 when they're actually 106? None. Gere. That's it. And Variety tells us he's signed on for not one, but two more films. The Pope turned 81and he's riding around in a little bulletproof car. Gere is 106 and he's doing two movies! Who do you think is more awesome? Hint: His name rhymes with Fear??

First up, he'll star opposite Hilary Swank in Amelia -- a biopic on the famed aviatrix, Amelia Earhart, which will be directed by Mira Nair off a screenplay by Ron Bass. Gere will play Earhart's husband, publisher George Putnam, and the film will document their rocky relationship. Additionally (and this is something we already reported), Gere will co-star in the cop flick Brooklyn's Finest, alongside folks like Don Cheadle and Ethan Hawke. Antoine Fuqua will direct. (Currently, there's no word on which young actress Gere will be shaggin' in that film, but we'll let you know when more info is released ...)

Amelia Earhart -- we hardly knew ya. But we're about to know the gal a whole lot more as it appears that planned biopic starring Hilary Swank (as Earhart) has brought on a new director to replace Phillip Noyce (who recently left the project). Yup, Moviehole (who've been all over this film) reports that Mira Nair has signed on to helm the flick, which will most likely begin shooting soon. Nair is a solid director; she's the woman behind The Namesake (which I liked very much), and definitely knows how to work with period films (see: Vanity Fair).

The film, currently titled (I believe) The Story of Amelia Earhart, is due out in 2009 and will star Swank as the American aviation pioneer. Earhart is probably most known for disappearing over the Pacific Ocean while attempting a circumnavigational flight across the globe in 1937, but she was also the first woman to receive the Distinguished Flying Cross, which she was awarded as the first woman "aviatrix" to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, so says Wikipedia. She also wrote best-selling books and helped launch The Ninety-Nines, which is an organization for women pilots. Needless to say, it's about time Earhart got the glossy, big-screen Hollywood treatment -- and with Swank and Nair involved, I'm sure this will be a film we hear a lot more of come Oscar time.

Dysfunctional families and indie films go together like peanut butter and chocolate, and Birds of America, directed by playwright Craig Lucas, has dysfunction in abundance. Morrie (Matthew Perry), who raised his younger siblings Jay (Ben Foster) and Ida (Ginnifer Goodwin) after their father's death, now lives in the family home with his wife, Betty (Lauren Graham). Morrie is a college prof desperately seeking tenure, and the person who is most in a position to make that happen for Morrie is his friend Paul (Gary Wilmes), who lives right next door with his wife, Laura (Hilary Swank), in their perfect house, with their perfectly maintained flower bed, with their perfectly adorable infant.

Morrie is one of those guys who carries the weight of the world on his shoulders, and he represses his emotions so tightly that the stress of it all has manifested itself in a case of constipation so extreme he has a home office set-up in his bathroom so he can work while trying to ... work all that out. Betty, meanwhile, wants desperately to have a perfect life and a child like Laura, but Morrie won't consider parenthood until he makes tenure. Since their whole future happiness is dependent upon whether Paul recommends Morrie for tenure, both Morrie and Betty go overboard in trying not to offend Paul and Laura -- even to the extent of not complaining that Laura's dog does his business in Morrie and Betty's yard. Unlike Morrie, the dog does not have a constipation issue, so they are constantly cleaning up after it.

The Sundance Flu, The Sundance Cold, The Sundance Fever ... how about The Sundance I Feel Like Complete Sh*t ...

Looks like J.J. Abrams does plan to go all Wonder Years for his Star Trek flick! Coming Soon reports that 11-year-old (about to be 12) Jimmy Bennett has landed a role as Young Kirk in Abrams' upcoming Star Trek film, due out at Christmas. Bennett has played a little kid in films like Hostage, Firewall, Poseidon and Evan Almighty. A young Spock will also be featured, leading this writer to believe both characters will appear in the film and talk about how much they "like, like" Winnie Cooper. Fingers crossed.

The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed (what was already previously reported) that New Line is in talks with Platinum Dunes to re-launch the franchise that helped secure their name as one of the big players in town, A Nightmare on Elm Street. Dunes partners Michael Bay, Brad Fuller and Andrew Form will produce, and a writer will be hired once the strike comes to an end. Since it's a full-out re-do, expect Robert Englund to not play Freddy Krueger, though we imagine he'll still have a role in the film (perhaps as part of Freddy's family). God bless the guy they get to fill his shoes; he'll have to convince tons of hardcore fans that he's the real deal. Dunes and New Line are also prepping a re-launch of the Friday the 13th franchise, with Marcus Nispel directing.

And finally, though it's not really a fanboy film (but I needed one more thing to throw in here, so cut me some slack), Moviehole reports that director Phillip Noyce has officially dropped out of that planned Amelia Earhart biopic starring Hilary Swank. MH spoke with Noyce, who gave the following reason for his departure: "I had worked on Amelia for 5 months from July to end of December 2007, finding all the locations and extensively storyboarding the flying sequences - When it didn't appear that the film was going ahead, I had to make a painful decision to move on and returned to a project that had long fascinated me... Mary Queen of Scots. Scarlett Johansson will play Mary in a film to be shot on location in Scotland, England and Ireland during 2008." Apparently Swank is still attached to the film, which we all thought was moving ahead as planned (script issues, maybe), so we'll keep you updated and let you know what happens.

Variety is reporting that Phillip Noyce has signed on to direct Scarlett Johansson in Mary, Queen of Scots, a long talked-about project that will focus on the Roman Catholic Scottish queen who conspired in the Babington Plot to murder her cousin, Elizabeth I, and was eventually beheaded as a traitor in 1587. It's hard to understand what the excitement could be in telling this tale again -- we've seen it innumerable times in the past few years, right up to last year's bloated disaster Elizabeth: The Golden Age, in which the character was played by the hugely talented Samantha Morton. I also can't be the only one who thinks the casting here is bizarre in the extreme. Johansson is not a bad actress, but can she really play a French-accented monarch from the Elizabethan age? Isn't that something of a stretch? I guess we'll find out. The Variety story also says nothing about how this impacts Noyce's involvement in the Amelia Earhart biopic he's supposed to be helming.

The word from Hilary Swank's own mouth last month was that her Oscar-bait biopic of the doomed flying ace was set to begin filming in February -- so how is Noyce going to start helming Mary, Queen of Scots in April? Obviously something is screwy here. Numerous outlets have been reporting Noyce's commitment to the Earhart biopic over the last couple of months, but details about the project -- including official confirmation about basic cast and crew details -- have not been forthcoming. It certainly can't be true that Noyce is filming a major show like an Amelia Earhart biopic in the same season as Mary, so maybe his involvement was never so firm in the first place or he just dropped out of one and moved to the other. Such has been known to occur.

Once upon a time, back when I started out this line of work, it was my aim to see every movie ever made. Then came the VHS player. Once the direct-to-video market began, numerous filmmakers stopped thinking of the pleasures and rigors of making films for the big screen. Instead, they started thinking of a quick payoff. VHS financed the rise of the indie movie for good (or often, ill). It all added up to a huge increase in the number of films released. Eventually, I realized if I wanted to do some ordinary things--hoisting an ale, listening to music, reading a book--I was going to have to let a few films slide. Coming attractions have been a huge help in picking which ones to avoid, particularly the ones that reveal every single plot point and the most likely resolution of the problem. So how can I really do a worst of 2007 list? I ducked a lot of contenders. Underdog, for instance.

I missed P.U., I Hate You, as those slashing wits at Cracked magazine will be calling it, but I really felt James Rocchi's personal agony at witnessing the last of Hilary Swank's trio of evil movies this year. Though some would call it a duo; some people fell for Freedom Writers. Maybe this kind of story can be told without Room 222-levels of obviousness and manipulation...perhaps from the POV of one of the students, instead of the earnest white teacher? I'm not going to get any prizes for prescience by saying Swank's agent needs to be renditioned to some country with deep dark dungeons. Swank's Lost Year has already been celebrated elsewhere.

But The Reaping (#1) was the worst of the three; no one wants to see this actress's career reaped anymore. The low-water mark of this swamps-of-blood Christian thriller was the scene where Swank is told by a yokel, "Some people just don't want to go to heaven." Meaning her, and the atheists, agnostics, and Odin-worshippers in the audience.

It's a fact of modern movie watching: as bland storytelling becomes more and more ascendant, you have to be on the lookout for clichés. And most of the time, we remember that -- and occasionally lose sight of the fact that there really are no cliché plots, just cliché execution of the moments within those plots. I can't think of a better example of that fact than the new big-budget tear-jerker P.S. I Love You, starring Hilary Swank and Gerard Butler as a young couple torn apart by untimely death. As P.S. I Love You opens, we witness young married couple Holly (Swank) and Gerry (Butler) fussing, feuding and fighting before they kiss and make up; then, after the credits, we jump ahead to ... Butler's wake. And while that leap is a little brusque, the real indicator of the movie we're in for comes soon after. A priest introduces the playing of Gerry's favorite song, and the opening chords of the Pogues's "Fairytale of New York" fill the air ... and then the song jumps ahead several bars, skips selectively through the verses, and then leaps to the chorus. Really? The music Jerry wanted played at his wake was a clumsily-edited version of a song, cut for no other reason than to move the movie forward faster? This is not playing a character's favorite song; this is cheap manipulation, designed to engage your feelings as swiftly and cheaply as the filmmakers can. And so goes the movie.

I have no objection to a film trying to warm my heart; what I object to is a film trying to microwave it. P.S. I Love You barrages us with high-frequency waves of cheap sentiment, lazy writing, absolute fabrication and only-in-the-movies nonsense, a purely mechanical process designed to make us feel sadness as swiftly as possible, imbuing the sort of emotional heat that, like the hot patches in a microwaved burrito, doesn't really spread through the entire film or endure beyond a few seconds. And I know it's unfair to compare one film to another, but P.S. I Love You is so clumsy that I found myself thinking of far better films about terminal illness (My Life Without Me) or the unexpected loss of a loved one (Truly, Madly, Deeply) not immediately after but, in fact, during the film's agonizingly long dead spots and bland, off-the-rack montages.