What do you do after Speed Racer fails to bring in the Matrix-like crowds of fan freaks, auto nuts and Ricci stalkers? Well, apparently, if you're the Wachowski siblings, you reunite with Keanu Reeves and bring Plastic Man to the big screen. According to CHUD (who received a tip they're skeptical on, so take this all with a grain of salt), a scooper from Berlin says Joel Silver announced the aforementioned news during an interview on German radio. Now since the Wachowskis had already written a Plastic Man script prior to their Matrix films, that's becoming the foundation for what we imagine will be a hot-to-trot PG-13 flick featuring Keanu Reeves saying "Whoa" every time his arms or legs stretch out. "Whoa, my arms are like plastic. Whoa."

This certainly seems like the logical place to go for the Wachowski individuals, especially since it's a comic property (hot), a script is already written (even hotter) and they can market the whole Matrix reunion with Reeves (hotter than the hottest hot you've even touched). Personally, I'm not a big fan of Reeves and I don't think he has the personality to play someone like Plastic Man, but maybe he'll have fun with it, we'll have fun with it and they'll make seven sequels. Joel Silver will be at Comic Con next week, so if nothing is announced before then, look for several folks to hound him until the man gives.

The upcoming futuristic thriller Franklyn will offer something for the fellas (the gorgeous Eva Green) and something for the ladies (the man-gorgeous Ryan Phillippe). The film will be set simultaneously in both contemporary London and a faith-dominated future metropolis without separation of church and state. According to Variety, the film will tell the story of "four lost souls divided by two parallel worlds on course for an explosive collision when a single bullet will decide all their fates." It's Sliding Doors meets The Matrix! Sounds mighty confusing, but I'm intrigued. The film will co-star Sam Riley, who plays Joy Division lead singer Ian Curtis in Control (read James' positive review here).

First-time director Gerald McMorrow wrote the screenplay and will direct the film. According to IMDb, John Hurt is in the Franklyn cast as well, but since that's not part of the Variety announcement, take that with a grain of salt for now. The movie has undergone a lot of casting changes, it seems. Last we heard about the project, Ewan McGregor was attached to star, but it appears that is no longer the case. Paul Bettany was attached to the Riley role at one point. I don't know much about Riley, but I do know getting Phillippe for McGregor is something of a step down. Phillippe is improving, though, I must give him props for holding his own against an incredible Chris Cooper performance in the too little-seen Breach. Green is probably best known as Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale, but holds a special place in my pants heart for her almost entirely nude performance in The Dreamers. Dreamy.

He reportedly had a lot of help on V for Vendetta. Then he helped out as an 'additional director' on The Invasion. So when are we going to see if James McTeigue can direct a film solo? Possibly as early as next year, actually. The former first assistant director (The Matrix trilogy; Attack of the Clones) has just been hired to make Bangkok 8, a mystery thriller set in Thailand. Based on the first of a series of novels by John Burdett, Bangkok 8 follows the story of a Thai police detective investigating the murder of his partner and a U.S. marine, both of whom died by snake bite. The trail of the murderers takes the Buddhist detective, who is named Sonchai Jitpleecheep, into the seedy underground of the jade, drug and sex trades of Bangkok.

The movie should appeal to anyone familiar with Bangkok, as Burdett, who lives in Thailand, fills his books with plenty of commentary and insight about the city and its corruptions. But despite the fact that it sounds like too much of foreign film to attract the sort of fans McTeigue is used to, the movie will presumably have enough action elements to sell to a wide audience. One thing the novel has going for it, as far as multiplex interests are concerned, is an American love interest, described by Amazon.com as a "sexually frustrated FBI agent." Also, Sonchai apparently has conversations with the ghost of his dead partner. Millennium Films hopes to turn Burdett's series into a franchise of films, so McTeigue will definitely need to deliver something better than V for Vendetta. And since this time he will be without the assistance and guidance of the Wachowski Brothers, who are probably too busy making Speed Racer, I wish McTeigue a lot of luck.

• Breakfast On Pluto - The Crying Game writer-director Neil Jordan never really does get into why Patrick “Kitten” Braden becomes a transvestite, but he does manage to save his film from being a rote and self-indulgent celebration of uniqueness when he bobs and then weaves a political cry (for Irish independence) into it. The criminally attractive Cillian Murphy plays Kitten a little too much like Mrs. Doubtfire, though he does sustain the character, and an incredible glam-packed soundtrack helps create an energetic sense of time and place.
• Deep Blue - While not as stunning as the likes of Winged Migration or March Of The Penguins, this BBC-produced nature film sure is pretty to look at. With a calming, minimalist narration by Pierce Brosnan (supplanting Michael Gambon's from the UK release) and a dreamy score by George Fenton, the underwater photography is stunning. The beast-on-beast violence is a bit intense, with one hapless sea lion meeting his end when two orcas play hacky-sack with his mangled corpse (in slow-motion, no less).

Everyone's talking about the new, loooong Rolling Stone expose of Larry Wachowski, one half of the creative duo behind Bound, The Matrix, and V for Vendetta. Much of its many thousands of words are dedicated to Larry's immersion, apparently ever-deeper since the first Matrix film made him a zillionaire, into the world of sex clubs, transvestitism, and sadomasochism. The article goes into detail into Larry's relationship with Mistress Ilsa Strix, a dominatrix who says her "greatest accomplishment" was "putting 333 needles into a single penis" (it is unclear if the penis in question belonged to the aforementioned filmmaker). Through Ms. Strix, Wachowski has apparently found an outlet through which to experiment with various fetishes, from cross-dressing to torture. None of which are inherently problematic – unless you're of the mind, as some of RS' Peter Wilkenson's sources are, that the latter two Matrix films owe their general suckage to Ilsa's influence.

Sources claim that the most garish and widely criticized elements of Reloaded and Revolutions – particularly the former's over-the-top rave scene – slipped through the Wachowskis' bullshit radar because Larry "was totally concentrating on Ilsa." What began as a professional master-slave relationship developed into more when Larry started flying Ilsa, first class, to Austrailia to "tend" to him on the set of the two sequels. "Larry would pick her up at the airport dressed as [Larry's female alter ego] 'Lana,'" says a source. "He would get depressed and moody when he had to go to the set dressed as a man." By the time the Cannes Film Festival rolled around, Ilsa and Larry were making appearances together as a couple, with Ilsa showing up on the red carpet looking movie-star beautiful – "perfect skin, blond hair falling to her shoulders, white teeth gleaming" – and Larry – "his eyebrows were plucked, he wore large teardrop earrings... his fingernails were manicured" – done up almost as glamourously. Rumors started to swirl that the 6-foot-3 working class boy from Chicago was preparing for sexual reassignment.

Was there any truth to the rumors? Wilkenson's investigation doesn't result in any clear-cut answers. The Wachowskis' friends are (probably smartly) not talking, and though the writer gets statements from many representatives from the LA BDSM community, one imagines at least a few of them have ulterior motives. In the years since the last Matrix sequel, the Wachowski camp has remained curiously silent, even as the brothers lurk behind the scenes of Vendetta, which they are said to be heavily involved in, although aren't directing. In bottom-line obsessed Hollywood, if and when Larry does emerge from exile and show his pretty face, will anyone let a little sex change stop them from letting him make them millions of dollars?

The Catholic Church is confusing me. First they pick this totally conservative, cold German guy to be Pope, and then they get all into The Matrix. How am I supposed to deal with this? I need to either be pissed off about the conservatism or freaked out by the embrace of trendy youth culture (or, at least, the embrace of things that were trendy fairly recently). Doing both is way, way too hard.

Apparently not everyone is having the problems I am, though, because the Neo/priest posters are going like hotcakes. Word on the street is that they make priests and the church cool again - after all, when was the last time a kid hung a picture of a priest on his wall? Just remember, kids:  "As Keanu Reeves fought against the powers of evil, a priest comes to help people fight against sin."