I am in no way a history buff. I like to think I know all I needed to know when I graduated fourth grade -- names, faces, places, dates and documents. It's not that I'm not interested in history, it's just that I never found time to dive into everything. I've enjoyed reading up on New York's history (where I'm from) and I'll enjoy the occasional historical flick (until everyone trashes it for not being accurate), but apart from that ... nada. However, lately I've been pulled into the first two installments of HBO's John Adams, starring Paul Giamatti as that legendary pimp (aka the second President of the United States). Should we just give him the Emmy now?

The mini-series is a great conversation piece; my wife and I stayed up late last night watching the second part, then looking up stuff on Wikipedia and discussing the events just prior to the American Revolution. In case you haven't watched it yet, the first two parts (which premiered this past Sunday) cover everything from the Boston Massacre up to the writing of the Declaration of Independence (loved the scene where Adams, Franklin and Jefferson are reading over the Declaration, sharing notes). Additionally, the cast is pretty awesome -- you have Laura Linney (as Abigail Adams, John's wife), Tom Wilkinson (as Benjamin Franklin), Danny Huston (as Samuel Adams), David Morse (as George Washington) and Justin Theroux (as John Hancock).

The only issue I was having was that the series jumps around in years, and you need to pay close attention to dialogue in order to figure out where we are in time. But other than that, I'm absolutely addicted already. It's intense, it's extremely well-acted, it's beautifully shot and it's definitely something you should watch ... if only to learn a thing a two about how we here in the United States came to be.

How about you? Early reactions?

Last month, I wondered how Jennifer Jason Leigh could sign on for an indie romcom starring Ashton Kutcher -- the man notorious for his bad romantic comedies. She was set to co-star in Spread, the classy-titled indie comedy where Ashton is a serial womanizer and Jennifer would be the thwarted lover -- so, not only a goofy Kutcher movie, but one where he gets to cast her off! But now, however, The Hollywood Reporter posts that one week after signing on, Leigh backed out of the project for undisclosed reasons. Her replacement will be -- Anne Heche.

Rumors suggest that Leigh is pregnant, but you can't help but wonder if she just got cold feet. Production is starting immediately, so it's not like the pregnancy worry would impact things that much right now. As for Heche, well, I'm less surprised about her casting, although maybe a Kutcher film isn't the best thing to follow up her success in Men in Trees. Eh, we'll have to wait and see. Maybe this will be a great romcom, and Jason Dean Hall's script and David Mackenzie's direction will make it all come up roses.

I've got to wonder now... According to IMDb, Laura Linney is attached. What on earth attracted Linney and Leigh to a Kutcher romcom?

The firestorm sparked by Lindsay Lohan's decision to pose naked for a photo spread in New York Magazine is fascinating. The comments in response to Erik Davis' post were mostly negative, either disparaging Lohan's looks or her reputation as a "bad girl." I'm sure her age (21) also affected how people felt about the pictures and her exposure in them. Would the reaction have been the same if she had appeared naked in I Know Who Killed Me, in which she played a stripper who kept most of her clothes on?

We'll never know, but we do know that not every actress who doffs her duds provokes such a heated reaction. And, sometimes, it's not even the actress' body parts on display. For example, initial reports were that Cate Blanchett appeared nude in Elizabeth: The Golden Age, but that proved to be false. The actress didn't feel the nudity was required, and so a "bum double" was called in. None of the other women nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Actress category appear naked in their nominated films, though three of them have done so in the past. In the Best Supporting Actress category, we find only Tilda Swinton has bared all before. Therefore, we'll cheat a little and add screenwriter Diablo Cody, who worked as a professional unclad dancer for a brief period in her life.

We've listed four nominated actresses and a nominated writer, all good women of distinguished accomplishment who, at one time or another, have appeared naked in public, all but one on the big screen. Who's Your Favorite Good Girl Gone Nude? And don't worry, the boys get their turn tomorrow.

Just after we headed into our new century, Bernard Schlink had a selection of short stories published called Flights of Love. One of the tales published in the collection was The Other Man. Just like its title suggests, the story is about a love triangle of sorts. After a man loses his wife to cancer, he receives a letter from her lover. What would seem like a huge blow to an already-mourning man actually does him good. The two men begin a correspondence, and the widower finds comfort in his letters to the other man.

Now Variety reports that writer/director Richard Eyre (Notes on a Scandal) has adapted the story with Charles Wood, and has put together quite a cast to star -- Liam Neeson, Laura Linney, Antonio Banderas, and Romola Garai. Sure, it's way too early to make any real judgments, but I'd be beyond surprised if this doesn't work itself into one hell of a film. However, I'm a bit curious about the plot. The story's layout sounds decent, but Variety describes the film this way: "the story of a husband who starts to suspect he's not the only man in his wife's life, and sets out to track down his rival."

If this is how the film will play out, that means he doesn't find out post-death, and that it's more a story of tracking down the other man than bonding, or finding comfort with him. On the other hand, a synopsis on IMDb says it's "the story of a widower's slowly-developing revenge against his late wife's secret lover," which "reveals to him his own compromises and failings." Who knows?! I guess we'll just have to wait and see. Production will get going next month, appropriately on Valentine's Day, in the UK and Italy.

My pick of the week comes from Brazil: Antonia. Directed by Tata Amaral, Antonia is an engaging, low-key pleasure about four women that live in a poor, crime-ridden neighborhood in São Paolo but have dreams of fame and fortune. As I've written before, "the beauty of Antonia is its down-to-earth nature. These women are not super-heroines, nor do they expect any special treatment just because they can sing like angels. They just want a fair shake." The DVD includes a behind the scenes feature and a music video.

From the Eastern European front, both Czech Dream and The Way I Spent the End of the World have received good critical notices. Czech Dream is perhaps best described as a subversive, activist documentary look at the dangers of rampant consumerism, while End of the World is a "tragic-comic coming-of-age tale." DVD details on both titles are scarce.

An early, entirely distasteful scene in Drama/Mex soured me on the film, yet others have been won over by its stylish excess and primal urgency in telling three related stories in a seaside town. DVD details are not available. Cinematical's Jette Kernion called The Girl Next Door "nightmare-inducing," and not in a good way; it's a family drama set in the 1950s featuring physical torture. The DVD includes two audio commentaries, interviews with the cast and crew, and a "making of" feature.

Ryan Stewart had many things to say about The Hottest State, none of them good, so you may want to check out his review before renting this drama featuring Laura Linney and directed by Ethan Hawke. The DVD includes a commentary with Hawke and the crew and a short film by Hawke. The latest version of Lady Chatterley generated highly enthusiastic early reviews, which did not impress Nick Schager, who said the film "shouldn't be associated with the term 'cinematic' in almost any way, shape or form." The DVD includes trailers and a photo gallery.

Siblings dealing with their dying father trumped a man who can only move one eyelid in a box office battle between two award-worthy independent films. On the face of it, just because of their subject matter, neither would seem likely to draw big crowds, but excellent critical response and festival buzz appear to have paid off.

The Savages opened last Wednesday in four theaters in New York and Los Angeles and earned a very good $38,250 per screen, according to estimates compiled by Box Office Mojo. Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman star as the siblings, with Philip Bosco as their father; Tamara Jenkins directed. Cinematical's Kim Voynar wrote: "There are no easy answers in dealing with aging and dying parents, and Jenkins doesn't try to give us one; she simply takes us into the story of her fascinating characters, and the integrity with which she handles it makes it ring true throughout."

The "one eyelid" movie, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, opened at three locations in New York and Los Angeles; weekend receipts reflect a strong per-screen average of $25,100. When he saw it at Cannes, our own James Rocchi said he found himself "on the edge of tears more than a few times ... [it's] a movie well worth seeing, with images and lessons that strike with power and don't let go."

Four other indies opened in one or two theaters in New York and/or Los Angeles, and Leonard Klady at Movie City News has their estimated per-screen earnings: Jessica Yu's doc Protagonist ($4,920; read Christopher Campbell's review); Miles Brandman's "darkly comic" Sex and Breakfast ($3,850), Robert Stone's doc Oswald's Ghost ($1,830; read my review), and Francesco Lucente's drama Badland ($1,220).

At least four other indies also opened, but financial results have not yet surfaced: ice hockey bio-pic The Rocket, prison escape thriller Chronicle of an Escape, foodie/lesbian romantic comedy Nina's Heavenly Delights and Christian Slater-starrer He Was a Quiet Man.

The first feature from Tamara Jenkins, the Natasha Lyonne-headed Slums of Beverly Hills was a pretty darned decent late-90s film. Alan Arkin. Marisa Tomei. Jessica Walter. Mena Suvari. The cast rocked, and the film was dysfunctional fun. So, hearing that she's finally written another feature, one that stars Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman as a sister and brother who have to care for their dementia-ridden father... Well, that's just too good to ignore.

Just a few days ago, Cinematical posted a great exclusive clip from The Savages, where Nancy Lenehan is a dementia support group leader who doesn't take too kindly to early nibbles at the refreshment stand. (She might have been in a lot of stuff, but I don't know if I will ever see the woman as anything but Pat, the woman who turned demon for Dead Man's Party.) Anyhow, Jenkins and Linney recently took part in Variety's Screening Series to discuss the film, which Jenkins says: "kind of came bubbling up out of my dark recesses, and then I stuffed it in a drawer and didn't think about it for a long time."

Linney says: "It's one of the best scripts I've ever read." You can't get a much better thumbs up than that, since she has had her share of great films. She continued: "With films of this nature, you really just have to throw yourself off a cliff and go. You really don't have time for a lot of exploration. You have to do as much work as you possibly can before you start, and then hit the ground running and you do not mess around." Well, it doesn't sound like they messed around in any way that could possibly hurt it. Kim Voynar gave it a rave from Sundance, and we can finally see it for ourselves when it hits limited release on November 28.

The Savages, starring Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman as a brother and sister who must deal with their aging, estranged father, Lenny (Philip Bosco) who suffers from dementia and has no memory of the sibs' unhappy childhood. I first caught The Savages back in January at Sundance, and I've seen Jenkins speak about the film a couple times, at Sundance and again at Telluride, when she had in intimate early-morning Conversation with Juno director Jason Reitman. As Jenkins has noted, the storyline of The Savages is a challenging pitch to sell -- there's nothing sexy or alluring about dementia and incontinence.

But for folks like myself who are facing the possibility of caring for our own aging parents (and it will be your turn eventually too, younglings), this honest, often funny look at the issues surrounding elder care, brought to life by actors of the caliber of Linney and Hoffman, makes for a great film.

In the scene shown in the above clip, Jon and Wendy Savage have just walked into a support group for dementia ... where they find themselves feeling more than a little uncomfortable ... watch and enjoy. You can also check out Moviefone's great Unscripted session with Hoffman and Linney and read Cinematical's Sundance review of The Savages, to whet your appetite for the film. The Savages opens November 28 in limited release.

It may be a bit early for this, but I wanted to get my two cents in on some of my favorite performances of 2007 so far, especially since most of these will probably get overlooked in the great Oscar crush of December. The awards almost always go to actors who are involved in biopics, message pictures, costume movies or epics, so let's start with the wonderful Alan Rickman, who has yet to earn a single Oscar nomination. This year, he can be seen toiling away once again in the small role of Severus Snape in the fifth "Harry Potter" film, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (283 screens). In the third film, he practically stole the entire movie with the way he read the line "turn to page 394," but in this fifth film, he actually has a scene with some meat to it. In training Harry to block his thoughts, Harry takes a peek into Snape's own mind and finds a disastrously sad childhood. When the flashback ends, the camera lingers on Snape's face for a moment, and Rickman renders an astonishing expression of hurt and hatred that broke my heart and sent chills through my spine.

One costume movie, Becoming Jane (32 screens), was unfairly judged, perhaps because it was too much fun and not somber enough (or not based on a literary source of proper merit). The lovely Miss Anne Hathaway usually lends a kind of smart energy to her best performances, as if she were slightly ahead of the game, and she does so perfectly as the budding Jane Austen. She's playful, but tough, beautiful but restrained. And when she falls in love with her man (James McAvoy), she does so breathlessly and with her whole heart; the movie more or less explains through fantasy how Austen was able to write so passionately from such a dull existence. The real Jane was said to be rather plain, but I'd much rather imagine her like this. Add to this Maggie Smith's delightfully wry supporting performance as the wealthy aunt, who can't understand the impudent youth of today and fires off comically nasty barbs at their expense.

The complete lineup for the latest edition of AFI Fest was announced last week -- indieWIRE was among the first to report on it -- and I've been mulling it over ever since. I've worked at the festival in the past and so it's difficult for me to be completely objective, but even though I won't be attending this year, I can't help but feel intense interest. When it comes to film festivals in general, I prefer to be unreasonably optimistic rather than smugly pessimistic.

Under new Artistic Director Rose Kuo, the programming team has made some adjustments. The Asian New Classics section is gone -- the Asian films have been integrated into other sections -- but other regional sidebars remain (American Showcase, Latin Cinema Series, African Showcase) and a new documentary showcase has been introduced, as well as Milestones, devoted to retrospective films. Beyond the already-announced titles, including Robert Redford's political drama Lions for Lambs as the opener and Jason Reitman's much-loved comedy Juno as the centerpiece gala, Mike Newell's romantic drama Love in the Time of Cholera, starring Javier Bardem (pictured), has been named as the closing night presentation. Tributes have also been announced for Laura Linney and Catherine Deneuve.

North American Premieres include Noise, directed by Henry Bean (The Believer), in which Tim Robbins stars as a New York attorney who takes the law into his own hands when life in the city gets too noisy for him, and The Searchers 2.0, the latest by Alex Cox (Sid and Nancy), featuring two aging actors in search of revenge on an even more aging screenwriter. Doghead stars Juan Jose Ballesta (the excellent Seven Virgins) as a young man suffering from an odd disease who starts a romance that encompasses "the endearing and the bleak," according to the program notes. Please Vote for Me is a documentary from China about eight year olds (!) running for class monitor. AFI Fest runs from November 1-11.

It was just before noon on Labor Day, the last day of the Telluride Film Festival, and heaps of passholders were crowded into the Town Park in Telluride for the big passholder Labor Day Picnic, the second of two big feed parties the Telluride Film Festival throws for its passholders. Storm clouds hovered threateningly, but they were nowhere near as threatening as the clouds hovering on the brows of some of the eight women called there to put on a panel for the fest attendees. The panel topic: "Is There a Woman Behind Every Good Movie? The Gender Shift in the Film World."

An hour or so earlier, panelist Tamara Jenkins, director of The Savages, which sneaked at the fest, had gone off on a tangent during her Conversation with Juno director Jason Reitman over at the Courthouse about this very panel, and how being asked to participate in panels on women in film always makes her feel like she's on the "special olympics" panel. "It's either, oh, look, you made a FILM! Isn't that cute," she drolled in a cutsie "let's talk to the baby like it's an idiot" voice or, "You GO, girl" as she thrust her fists in the air. She laughed about it, but the annoyance wasn't a put on. She joked about all the implications of being labeled a "female filmmaker" rather than just a filmmaker ("Tell us, Tamara -- what's it like to direct a film ... while wearing a BRA?") but she made it clear that given her druthers, she'd far prefer that her gender wasn't an issue at all.

A while later, Jenkins was milling about in front of the platform schmoozing with the seven other female filmmakers who had been persuaded to participate in the panel: Diablo Cody (screenwriter of Juno); Tannishtha Chatterjee (Brick Lane); Alexandra Sun (producer of Blind Mountain); Laura Linney (The Savages); Jennifer Jason Leigh (Margot at the Wedding), Jyll Johnstone (director, Hats Off!) and Sarah Gavron (director, Brick Lane). This formidable group of women got up on the platform, and then we found that this panel about women filmmakers is being led by ... a man. Now, not that I have anything against men (heck, I like some of them quite a lot), but I wasn't the only one who found this a little odd. With all the women writing about film, teaching about film, making films, even staffing this festival, they couldn't find a woman to host this panel? I know Anne Thompson skipped out on Telluride this year, but surely they could have found someone. Anyone? Anyone?

I'm home now from the Telluride Film Festival, and we're heading into our massive Toronto coverage, but I wanted to give a quick wrap up of Telluride and those films heading from Telluride up north to the biggest market fest in North America. Telluride is a both a nice predictor of how those films playing both fests are likely to play at Toronto, and a restive break for the filmmakers and publicists before they have to hit the ground running at TIFF. The two fests are polar opposites: Telluride is a relaxing fest where the focus is all on the art of the film, Toronto is much more about the art of making money off those films. From a film journalist's perspective, Telluride is also where you have a chance to meet and chat with filmmakers in an environment that's not, as more than one filmmaker put it to me over Labor Day weekend, the big "dog and pony show" that is Toronto.

Labor Day, the last day of Telluride, is almost all TBAs, which makes it a nice weathervane for which films really played well at the fest. Those films that sold out screenings, that passholders weren't able to get into, will get TBA slots on Monday so everyone gets a shot at seeing them. Good thing too, because, as I've previously discussed, this year there seemed to be an awful lot of passholders who weren't able to get into films they wanted to see, and the poor folks who were just trying to buy tix had it even worse.

I mentioned the other day that the big buzz at Telluride was about Jason Reitman's film Juno, which sneak previewed at Telluride before heading to Toronto. The biggest indicator of Juno being a hit, aside from it being the film everyone was talking about in line, on the gondola, and in the coffee shop, was that it had not one, but two TBA slots on Monday. Sunday's TBA saw over 200 passholders turned away, so it's a good thing they added two more. The first Juno TBA Monday sold out again, and while I wasn't at the Galaxy for the final screening, I'd bet it was pretty packed as well. Good news also for Tamara Jenkins, whose film The Savages, starring Telluride fave Laura Linney (a tributee a couple years ago) and Phillip Seymour Hoffman, sold out the 600-seater The Palm, with (so I hear) well over 200 passholders turned away. Both films will screen at Toronto, so check them out.

The Hottest State is one of the most inauthentic films I've seen in a long time. Written and directed by Ethan Hawke, and from his own novel no less, the film plays out like some version of hell where everyone is being forced to perform in an acting class skit that will never end. The story follows William (Mark Webber), a 20-year-old aspiring actor who is hanging around the Manhattan bar scene when he runs into Sarah, the girl of his dreams. The casting of Sarah is the movie's fatal flaw. As written, she's an aspiring singer who is gaga over William, but Catalina Sandino Moreno is an actress who, it's clear from the get-go, can't sing a note and worse, seems ready to climb the walls to get away from her co-star throughout the picture. I've seen more sexual chemistry from two doorknobs. Watching this mess, you have to believe that Ethan Hawke, as talented as he is, must have realized he was making a colossal turkey but was too far into the thing to back out.

And that's only the start of it. The Hottest State is structurally odd -- something that's sometimes a necessity in the case of book adaptations, but especially true in this case, since what begins as a romance ultimately takes on the trappings of a thriller in the third act. I won't go into specifics in case you plan to see it for yourself, but let's just say that if the entire movie were on the same wavelength as the third act, I think we'd actually have an interesting, tough little film here. I also think Hawke must have known this too on some level, because it's only in the third act that his personality as a director begins to shine through -- interesting and creative camera choices, powerful acting moments and an earned level of tension that are present only during this part of the movie. The first two-thirds of the film are a cloying, obnoxious romantic fable about two young people bouncing around in Manhattan and down in Mexico, lounging around and pretending, for our benefit, that they actually love each other.

I've been told by a couple of people who've read The Nanny Diaries and seen the film that the latter is a pale, scrubbed imitation of the book -- to which I reply, 'when was that ever not the case?' I've never read The Nanny Diaries, but I enjoyed the film for what it was -- a jelly-lensed portrait of the awful egomania that exists in that biosphere known as the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Be warned -- this film rarely takes a step that's not telegraphed 20 minutes in advance, but that doesn't mean that the presentation isn't solid, the direction focused and precise, and the acting serviceable in the case of Scarlett Johansson and more so in the case of her two, older co-stars -- Laura Linney and Paul Giamatti, who reunites with his American Splendor team here. Linney and Giamatti play Mr. and Mrs. X -- the cheeky, pointless anonymity was granted to them in the book -- a couple of Manhattan blue-bloods who hire Johansson's naive student character as a live-in nanny for their young son, ridiculously named 'Grayer.'

Johansson meets Mrs. X in Central Park, when a slip of the tongue causes her to be swamped by dog-walking UES housewives who think they've happened upon the Rolls Royce of nanny applicants, as opposed to someone who 'barely speaks English,' as one mother complains in the film. She's soon moved into the house and is essentially performing the role of surrogate mother for the precocious Grayer while his mother attends to more pressing issues, like her husband's possible infidelity and finding the right Burberry jacket to put on. Directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini handle this opening act of the film with ease, quickly getting us into the fun stuff without going too far in making Johansson's character a poor Cinderella or another far-out character archetype. Instead, she's just a typical college-aged kid who has absolutely no idea where she's going in the world and thinks she can put off the big decisions for a few more months with some easy nanny work. She doesn't realize she's essentially sold herself into indentured servitude.

The immensely popular 2002 novel The Nanny Diaries had two writers, so it's only fitting that the movie version has two directors. Husband and wife team, Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, who were Oscar-nominated for writing 2003's American Splendor, have adapted the book, which tells the story of a young woman, played by Scarlett Johansson, who puts off some major life decisions by deciding to take short-term work as a nanny in the rare air of Manhattan's Upper East Side, where housewives carry business cards, children are treated as well-groomed fashion accessories and the husbands are rarely seen. I recently had a chance to speak with Berman and Pulcini about the special challenges of bringing this book to life as a movie -- anyone who's read it knows that it's a very interior, non-cinematic tome that even goes so far as to withhold the names of key characters from the reader. (Laura Linney and Paul Giamatti are credited as Mrs. X and Mr. X in the film) Here's the interview.

RS: Is this a world that you have first-hand experience with, or just a good story that came your way?

SSB: Well, we live in New York City. We live on the West side, we live across Central Park from the Upper East Side, which is really close, but like, you need a passport to get there. It's a whole other universe away. So, in a weird way, we were familiar with the world, because we would walk around and see women dressed in Burberry jackets with little dogs in matching Burberry jackets. We would see the world, but we were outside observers. It wasn't a world that we were intimately included in.

RS: So when you sat down to adapt this popular book, how much freedom did you give yourself to take it in new places, to make it your own?

RP: Luckily, we had a lot of freedom, because there had been other writers on the project before us, and the studio had come to the decision that it wasn't the easiest book to adapt. Even though it was immensely popular, it was very interior. It was very much a catalog of great details and observations, you know. So how do you open that up, cinematically? So I think they kind of welcomed our approach, and I know the writers have seen the movie and they're very happy with what we've done with it.