Four years after Connie and Carla failed to set the world on fire, Nia Vardalos has left the writing to someone else while returning to the safe turf of Greece for her new film, My Life in Ruins. Vardalos plays an Athens tour guide tired of all the grating tourists, obnoxious locals, and scheming colleagues in her life, and if the trailer -- link removed at request of studio -- (for those who don't mind Greek subtitles) is any indication, things might just change for the better soon enough.

There has yet to be any specific Stateside release date announced -- Fox Searchlight tentatively has it scheduled for 2009 -- but the crowdpleaser pedigree of Vardalos and director Donald Petrie certainly doesn't hurt the film's chances of outgrossing the $8 million that Connie raked in theatrically (whether or not the downright loud pairing of Harland Williams and Rachel Dratch will is a different story).

Also in the name of safe-bet follow-ups is I Hate Valentine's Day, a rom-com written and directed by Vardalos that reunites her with My Big Fat Greek Wedding love interest John Corbett. That project also bears an equally vague '09 release date, but I have trouble thinking that it couldn't be out of post-production and in theaters by next February.

It looked like Nia Vardalos' career was over after the crappy, buzz-sucking television adaptation that was My Big Fat Greek Life. Then, a whole slew of years later, we hear that she's coming back with My Life in Ruins. The film hasn't even had its world premiere in Greece yet (it screens on May 22), and she's got another one on the way. At least this time, she's not following a film up with a crappy TV show. (Man, it was such a disappointing adaptation...) To make it even more appealing, she's also going back to her big hit roots.

Variety reports that Vardalos is once again getting sexy with her My Big Fat Greek Wedding co-star John Corbett for the upcoming romcom I Hate Valentine's Day. The project, which was written by the actress and will mark her directorial debut, is being called "a comedy for the romantically challenged." It focuses on "a romantic, carefree florist who charms a commitment-phobic restaurant owner into trying her theory of 'relationship-less' dating."

Ideally, I'd like to see that remain a "relationship-less" scenario, just to be something different, but I'm sure one or both of them will succumb to the throes of passion and fall in lurve. It is a flick for Valentine's Day after all.

But I ask you: Can this live up to their first pairing?

Over a year ago, Erik Davis brought you word that Nia Vardalos was coming back, and that she was gaining rare access to the 2,500-year-old landmark -- Athen's Acropolis. That's not to shabby for a woman who hasn't found any success even remotely comparable to her break-out indie hit -- My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Nevertheless, My Life in Ruins is currently filming under the watchful eye of director Donald Petrie. It follows a Greek tour guide (Vardalos), and co-stars Richard Dreyfuss, Rachel Dratch, Harland Williams, and Alexis Georgoulis. After shooting at the Oracle of Delphi and Olympia* (site of the first Olympics), this past Saturday the cameras finally hit the Acropolis.

Talking to Reuters, Vardalos says: "No one has ever been granted permission to shoot at the ancient sites. This is huge." Apparently, this has been in the works for years, starting with a request during the 2004 Summer Games. "It was a lot of dinners and hand shaking, a lot of requesting permission and really assuring them that we would leave the ruins exactly as we found them." They got what they wanted, but only for one day. How's that for production pressure? It'll make it tougher that the crew won't be allowed to eat or drink on the site. I'm sure it will be a mixture of happiness and huge stress. Let's just hope that they don't have the Valkyrie film woes.

After all of this effort and unprecedented access, will it all be worth it? It's Vardalos' Greek security blanket, which should help it, but it could always become the next Connie and Carla, and being Greek didn't help the Big Fat bomb of a TV show. Anyone want to make predictions?


*Edited to include proper site of first Olympic Games.

Earlier this year, the film world was buzzing about Peter Jackson's lawsuit against New Line for unpaid cash from the huge Lord of the Rings series. Jackson and Bob Shaye batted back and forth for a while, and then the story faded into the ether. Now we've got a new lawsuit to chew on, but this one took a few years to come together. Word has it that Tom Hanks, Rita Wilson and Nia Vardalos have come together to sue one of the producers of their huge hit, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, for owed profits. The suit is asking for full accounting for the film's profits and unspecified damages for the trio, because "The accounting statements rendered by defendants have been vague and inadequate in failing to provide information consistent with industry standards." (Gotta love legal talk!)

As we know, Vardalos wrote and starred in the movie, while couple Hanks and Wilson produced it along with Gary Goetzman. They claim that they are still owed their "share of net profits" -- the lawsuit says that the movie cost $5 mil, we know that the film grossed well over $350 million and they say that Gold Circle Films claims that the gross receipts total $287 million. That's a bit of a discrepancy. Of course, the company is saying that the suit is bull, or rather, "frivolous" and "completely without merit." If they get anywhere with this case, the cash will be awfully handy, since they're coming together again for Vardalos' next project -- My Life in Ruins.

She hasn't delivered anything monumental since My Big Fat Greek Wedding, but actress/Oscar-nominated (ugh) screenwriter Nia Vardalos has been working hard enough to keep her career going. Following Connie and Carla, the bomb that was her follow-up to her big fat successful Wedding, she has written A Wilderness of Monkeys for director Tom Hanks (who co-produced Wedding with wife Rita Wilson), which has supposedly been completed, and the Greece-set comedy My Life in Ruins. Also, she has possibly been working on a Big Fat Greek sequel. Her next script, though, has been announced as I Hate Valentine's Day, another culture-clashing romantic comedy in which she will again star. This one will be directed by Nick Hurran (Little Black Book) and will co-star James Purefoy as Vardalos' love interest.

Purefoy, who is best known for his work portraying Mark Antony in HBO's Rome series, will play a man who dates and then dumps Vardalos' character. The thing is, once rejected, the woman ends up falling in love with the guy. Originally, Vardalos wrote the male role as American, but she has since been rewriting the part for Purefoy, who is British. Now the character is being conceived as a foreigner who doesn't understand American women. Vardalos says the film, which begins shooting in Toronto this summer, will be for everybody (I doubt it will be for me), and will tackle the idea of forced and expected ideas of romance, particularly the kind of ideas that come with the Valentine's holiday.

Woohoo! Happy New Year, DVD junkies! All right! Let's just kick off this year with a whole bunch of fantastic DVDs!

Beer League -- Low-grade softball comedy that's 100% positive there's nothing funnier in the world than poop, weiners, farts, pee-pee, boobs, burps, jugs, sluts, beer, penises and vaginas. Oh, and the word "joikoff," which is mentioned more times in Beer League than John F. Kennedy is mentioned in JFK. Aims (low) for the frat-boy crowd, but I lived in a frat house for two years, and we would have turned this thing off after nine minutes. Extras include an audio commentary, a few featurettes, and a whole bunch of Artie Lange-related wackiness.

The Covenant -- It's like The Craft got a sex change! A gang of goofy young warlocks make trouble for their enemies, or so I've heard; I haven't actually seen this one yet. But I got the "goofy" part from the trailer alone. Upside for schlock-fans: The director is Renny Harlin. Extras include a featurette and a (Harlin!) commentary.

Snakes on a Plane -- The worldwide mega-wild ultra-hip internet buzz sensation of the millennium ... that yielded a $13 million opening weekend and a total haul of about $34m. So much for internet buzz, eh? Still, a perfectly entertaining piece of mindless cinematic fluff, and one that'll almost certainly play better at home, because home is probably where you keep your beer and your bong. Extras include a bunch of featurettes, deleted scenes, gag reels, music videos ... but I just gotta hear the audio commentary between director Dave Eliis and mega-badass Samuel L. Jackson.

Oh, and new re-issues of Glory and My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Hmph. Let's just write this week off as a New Years Hangover. We'll meet here next Tuesday to talk about DVDs worth renting, like Crank, The Night Listener, The Illusionist and (one of my 2006 favorites) Conversations with Other Women.

In today's world, where the internet is all over a film (reporting on its cast, it's production schedule, its plot, its script changes and, in some cases, leaking photos and footage before the pic is even finished shooting), it's become increasingly harder for a movie to arrive out of the blue and transform into a surprise hit (or sleeper hit). As Bob Berney (President of Picturehouse) noted, "Everyone is talking about a film before they see it. That is a new phenomenon."

In a recent New York Times article, Stephen Farber analyzed a disappearing trend, the sleeper hit. According to Farber, "A real sleeper seems to come from nowhere: the audience shows up before the experts and insiders have figured it out." Perhaps the last true sleeper hit came with My Big Fat Greek Wedding, a film that thrived off old school word-of-mouth buzz racking up more than $241 million at the box office. I guess an argument could be made for this summer's Little Miss Sunshine, though movie websites (like Cinematical) were all over this one following its Sundance festival screening, that by the time Sunshine finally slipped into theaters, it was already wrapped up in a good amount of buzz. These days, is it even possible for a film to slide past us and go on to to gradually dominate the box office?

So, I ask you: In your opinion, is the sleeper hit dead? Or is its definition just changing?

Not long ago, Chris told us how Nia Vardalos was considering a sequel to her giganto smash hit My Big Fat Greek Wedding. With only one half-assed film (Connie and Carla) and an equally half-assed TV show under her belt in the four years since Greek Wedding, Vardalos was facing some serious writer's block (which I refuse to believe exists) and slowly inching her way towards an appearance on a future episode of VH1's One-Hit Wonders: Where Are They Now?

Well, the good news (for Vardalos fans) is the writer-actress is once again teaming up with Tom Hanks (who is serving as executive producer) on a film called My Life in Ruins. The two are also paired up on something called A Wilderness of Monkeys, though I'm not sure if these are different films or one in the same. My Life in Ruins finds Vardalos playing a tour guide traveling through Greece with a group of tourists.

Just recently, Greek authorities approved the duo to shoot in the ruins of Athens's Acropolis -- something rarely done seeing as there's a risk of damaging the historic spot. See, it just goes to show that if Tom Hanks is involved, anything is possible. Heck, I just want to know if Hanks and Rita Wilson legally adopted Vardalos as their daughter yet. If not, what are they waiting for?

It has been four years since Nia Vardalos hit it big (really big) with My Big Fat Greek Wedding, the surprisingly high-grossing independent film that she wrote and starred in. So what has she been doing since, you wonder? Oh, you mean you weren't aware that she wrote and starred in another movie two years ago, which tanked almost as tremendously as Wedding scored? It was called Connie and Carla, in case you want to look it up. Now she might be returning to the one thing that could keep her relevant -- a My Big Fat sequel. She claims that she felt pressure to do a sequel after the original film became so successful, but she ran out of ideas and suffered a horrible case of writer's block. She told WENN, "I'm not saying there will for sure be a sequel, but I'm not saying there will for sure not be a sequel." She also mentioned that she could make it about nearly anything as long as she includes the "My Big Fat Greek" part to the title, though it won't be about a divorce.

Obviously, if Vardalos is really going to write a sequel, then she's still out of ideas. It was bad enough that she helped turn her film into a TV series, and the fact that said series was a failure should be enough of a hint to move on. But who in Hollywood really ever runs from a cash cow? Anyway, according to the IMDb, Vardalos has another project in pre-production at Universal called A Wilderness of Monkeys, so it doesn't really seem like she's desperate or being pressured right now.