Let's begin by saying that Josh Brolin can do no wrong, and if there's one man who could be trusted with a John Brown biopic, it's the man who didn't shy away from playing George W. Bush or Dan White. Cinematical caught up with Brolin on the set of Jonah Hex, and he revealed that one of his next projects may be producing and starring in a biopic about the radical abolitionist.

"It's a great, great project. The script was already out there; I read the script, I loved it. It would be a very tough character for me to play. We're going to do some tests once I'm done with this, but it's a great script and story. Somebody who I know, because of Howard Zinn's thing [The People Speak], and I know the character really well. Mark Gordon and I had a conversation, and we said, 'Let's do this, let's get this done.' People have been wanting to do it forever and there's a lot of directors who'd love to be involved, so I think now's the time."

Hopefully, you didn't sleep your way through American history and remember that John Brown was the man who launched a violent raid on Harper's Ferry in a bid to start an armed slave revolt. That was only one of many violent skirmishes he was involved in, and he remains a controversial figure to this day. It's the kind of story just begging to be told on the big screen (why Hollywood continues to reboot and remake the 1980s and 1990s instead of digging up stories from the previous century, I'll never know), and frankly it touches on a historical era that has had a lot of relevance this year. Let's hope it happens.

[via Edward Douglas at ComingSoon for transcribing the quote before the rest of us could get to a computer]

Warner Bros' Jonah Hex gained some really interesting casting today (yes, realThe Hollywood Reporter casting, no April Fool's stuff). According to , Will Arnett and Michael Shannon are joining the cast, which already includes Josh Brolin, John Malkovich, and Megan Fox.

Arnett will be playing a Union soldier named Lieutenant Grass who enlists Hex to kill Turnbull, Malkovich's Confederate voodoo practitioner. Per an old casting notice, Grass is a man who's blindsided by the dirty fighting style of his enemies, a man more interested in new styles of warfare than really understanding his enemy. The role isn't meant to be funny, so Arnett will be toning down his style. Even when he's funny, he's got a bit of the creep about him (no offense, Mr. Arnett) which seems perfect for Jonah Hex, where everyone is a little ... off.

Shannon, fresh off his Oscar nomination, will be playing Doc Cross Williams, the bizarre ringleader of a brutal gladiator / circus event. Williams' is one of Hex's recurring nemesis in the series, whose finest achievement is making Wild Bill Hickok into a zombie. THR says he's likely to appear in sequels which is the first time anyone's mentioned a Jonah Hex franchise. While we're still a long ways away from being able to say "Hell yeah, bring it on", it's little touches like Wild Bill Hickok zombies that makes Jonah Hex such an enticing project.

For a 70+ year-old man, Woody Allen knows how to reinvent himself and keep us on our toes. These last few years, he's really upped the ante as he broke out of New York -- tennis, journalism, brotherly intrigue, and vacation romance. But while he might have gone back to Manhattan and back to his beloved May-December theme with Whatever Works, this is not a slip back into a New York state of mind. Word hit last month that Allen's next project would be an ensemble piece, with Josh Brolin and Anthony Hopkins leading the cast. And now his next London-based project is getting even better.

The Hollywood Reporter posts that Nicole Kidman has signed onto the cast, which also now boasts an international array of drool-worthy actors -- Antonio Banderas, Freida Pinto, and Naomi Watts. THR points out that this mixes Spain, India, Britain/Australia, Austrailia, Britain, and USA. While an international cast is notable, I wonder if this is some hint towards the theme of this yet-untitled, plot-under-wraps project.

Then again, Woody likes to keep us guessing, so anything is possible. I just hope it has the same sort of bright whimsy as Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Production kicks into gear this summer, so we should hear more then.

I'm wary of movies that try to be instant cult/camp classics, with intentionally overdone dialogue and outrageous costumes and actors who are metaphorically winking or even non-metaphorically mugging for the camera. When the characters are in on the joke, it isn't all that funny. And when I learned that the writer-director of Women in Trouble also co-wrote Snakes on a Plane, I grew even more skeptical. But the actresses who populate Women in Trouble tend to play it straight, even when they're wearing assless spandex pants or smoking invisible cigarettes, and that's what keeps this film fun instead of tiresome.

Women in Trouble has a multi-story, anthology-like structure. Writer/director Sebastian Gutierrez said before the SXSW screening that he originally had one ten-page sequence that he wanted to shoot, then thought it might be easy to shoot several of them, all with different actresses, to make a good movie quickly. Apparently it wasn't all that easy, but the result is a large cast of mostly actresses playing a variety of the traditional exploitation "women in trouble." These include porn stars, tag-team hookers (one in a Catholic school uniform, natch), stewardesses (they're not flight attendants when we're poking fun at the exploitation genre), unmarried-and-pregnant women, and a very understanding masseuse.

Megan Fox knows how to please her fans -- and it isn't by trying out for edgy indie fare, romantic comedies, or soul searching dramas. It's by sticking to the "boy movies" based on comic books or transforming cars.

So it should come as no surprise that Fox has signed for not one, but two comic book properties. The first is Fox Atomic's long-rumored Fathom, which casts Fox in the lead role of Aspen Matthews. The film doesn't have a director yet, though it once attracted James Cameron. Jordan Mechner (creator of the video game Prince of Persia) is writing the script. To Fox's credit, she's been a fan of the comic since its start in 1998, and is helping to develop and shape the big screen adaptation. Will her ex-fiancee Brian Austin Green stay on as producer, as listed in The Hollywood Reporter?

Fox is also set to join Josh Brolin and John Malkovich in Warner Bros' Jonah Hex -- which brings a really promising project down a notch or two in my eyes. (Hey, she's perfect for Fathom. But I would have preferred Hex steer cleer of such pandering.) Fox will play Leila, a gun-wielding beauty and love interest for Jonah. I don't believe she ever appeared in the original series, though Hex's mythology is so uneven that she very well might be a current character. (There was a female supermodel who claimed to be Jonah Hex, maybe she's inspired by that.)

But hey -- THR reveals that Malkovich's Turnbull will be a voodoo practioner who is trying to raise an undead army of Confederate soldiers. So not even the gratutious inclusion of Fox and her smoking guns can really dim my enthusiasm. Who knows? She might even end up cool as well as hot.

Once you realize that Academy Awards and quality correlate only sporadically, the only reason to watch is the hope of seeing something surprising or controversial. People slagged last year's weird Pilobolus shadow-puppet interludes, but what the hell: at least it was something I hadn't seen before. Seeing as how a lot of the substantive results seem like even more of a foregone conclusion than usual this year, there's even less motivation to watch. So here are seven pleasant surprises I'll watch for on Sunday in the hopes of keeping entertained.

1. The ceremony comes in at three hours or less. It hasn't happened in the modern era; the shortest ceremony since 1996 happened in 2005 -- the year of Million Dollar Baby -- and it ran three hours and fourteen minutes. Last year's festivities took 3:21. Look, I'm generally skeptical of accusations that the Oscars are "self-indulgent": it's an awards show put on by the industry for the industry. Of course they're self-indulgent. They're also boring, which seems to me the more relevant accusation. Ratings have been steadily declining, with last year an all time low. Shorter and snappier please. That they've offended Peter Gabriel by asking him to trim his nominated song performance to 65 seconds for the show seems, I hate to say it, like a step in the right direction.

Wanna convince Josh Brolin to be in your movie? Just let him cast it himself and he'll be putty in your hands!

You might remember that Brolin was having a hard time deciding whether he wanted to do Jonah Hex back in November. He was; he wasn't; he wasn't sure; he couldn't decide. Brolin said: "It's so ridiculous. But once I started putting people in my mind and saying what if I put Malkovich in this role then what does this movie become?" It might have been musing back then, but three months later, it's a reality!

Variety reports that John Malkovich will play Turnbull in the film, a rich plantation man mourning the loss of his son Jeb by Union soldiers in a whole complicated ordeal. Naturally, he blames Hex, Jeb's best friend, and enemies are made. Oh lord, bring on the tongue in cheek wonder! It sounds like Brolin is getting just what he wanted -- a fun movie with some acting chops.

Brolin tempted me towards this project, but with Malkovich has definitely been piqued. I just keep imagining Dr. William Block and Osbourne Cox locked in a room together. Add Danny Trejo as El Papagayo and I think I'd die in delight. How about you?

It seems like an entire lifetime ago since Josh Brolin popped up in Woody Allen's Melinda and Melinda. That's the pre-superstar life, before he dazzled grindhouse audiences with his Dr. William Block, and critical audiences with Llewelyn Moss. But now he's returning to the Allen fold.

Variety reports that Brolin and Anthony Hopkins have signed on to star in Allen's next film. But of course, in this early stage, both the title and the plot are being kept under wraps. (Which may be a smart move considering all the kerfuffle over his Vicky Cristina retitiling.) All we know is that it's an ensemble cast, and will shoot in London this summer.

Since Allen went back to his classic May-December theme for the upcoming Whatever Works, I can't help but wish that he decides to do the same for Brolin and Hopkins. It would be a new way to take Woody's ever-prevalent romantic urge and sass it up a bit. And come on -- Brolin and Hopkins would make for one heck of an interesting couple, or at least one that could really rock some classic Allen wordplay. A modern day Annie Hall!

It won't happen, but we should find out what this new one is all about once production gears up.