Now we're talking! Javier Bardem will bring Anton Chigurh, his character from No Country for Old Men, roaring back to life in the sequel to Oliver Stone's Wall Street. The hired assassin with the funny haircut will stalk financial company executives, using a fire extinguisher to put the fear of God into those heartless suits who stole America's money and refuse to give an accounting for their actions.

Unfortunately -- at least to my way of thinking -- that's not quite how the Wall Street sequel will play out, but it's not that far from the truth, either. Instead of playing a bad guy who sets things straight, Bardem will, in fact, play "a stock-shorting worldwide hedge fund manager," according to Nikki Finke at Deadline Hollywood Daily. He is the villain of the piece, held responsible for the suicide of the hero's mentor.

UPDATE: Nikki Finke clarifies today (via Fox) that Bardem is not onboard ... yet ... though that's who they want for the role.

Although it seems as if I've been hired exclusively to write articles about or concerning Tarantino-themed projects, I assure you it's merely a private obsession. That said, it feels necessary to announce that on August 25, 2009, Warner Home Video will release the Natural Born Killers Director's Cut on Blu-ray and DVD. The forthcoming set features a collection of all-new bonus materials and a 44-page booklet on the production and its cultural significance.

Perhaps even moreso than director Oliver Stone's theatrical version, The Director's Cut has something of a storied history; rather than the director's or extended cuts that DVD and Blu-ray producers churn out purely as a cash-in, this was in fact the original incarnation of the film that was truly Stone's vision, and was changed because the MPAA balked at the inclusion of some four minutes of material, including images such as a horrifically comic point of view shot through the bullet hole in a character's hand. On the other hand (no pun intended), it remains subjective which version is truly better than the other; once you've succumbed to the visual onslaught that Stone unleashes, it's tough to determine what additional impact such shots and sequences really effect.

The single disc Blu-ray will be available for the MSRP of $28.99, while the two-disc DVD set will retail for $20.97. Both sets will feature the following extras (located after the jump):

Gordon Gekko has been planning his comeback since 2007, when word hit that the man was getting out of jail and getting a new Wall Street movie called Money Never Sleeps, with Michael Douglas returning to his role. At that time Oliver Stone, the co-writer and director of the original, was not being swayed by Douglas' begging, and had given a big fat NO to the idea. When the movie was fast-tracked last October, he still wasn't interested, and that wasn't really surprising ... but something seems to have changed.

MSNBC reports that not only is Douglas reprising his role, but that 20th Century Fox spokesman Gregg Brilliant says that Stone is on-board. He went on to say: "We need to keep the story line under wraps, but it's literally ripped from today's headlines. It's going to be very big and very cool." Apparently, big and cool enough to lure back Mr. Stone. In addition to Stone, Entertainment Weekly tells us Shia LaBeouf is in negotiations to play a young stock trader in the film.

Does the filmmaker's inclusion help your interest in the film? What about LaBeouf? I must say, for me, it's not so much the fact that Stone's involved, but the why -- is he simply getting a sweet paycheck, or was he lured in by a story we'd actually want to see? Could this be a sequel project that's actually worthy? It'd be a nice change.

Technically, the news here is that the charges against W. stars Josh Brolin and Jeffrey Wright -- who were arrested last July at a Shreveport, La., bar for interfering with the arrest of another crew member -- are being dropped. A Shreveport City Court spokesperson told E! News that Brolin, Wright, and five others arrested at the same time are on what's called "district attorney's probation," meaning that as long as they stay out of trouble between now and their next court date, in March, all the charges against them will officially be dropped at that time.

Accounts of what happened at the bar that night vary wildly, but apparently the film's cast and crew were celebrating the end of shooting, things got rowdy, the cops were called, and a W. crew member, Eric Felland, got arrested. Wright and Brolin tried to talk the cops out of it, and they got arrested, too. A round of arrests for everyone! On the house!

But that's not all. In the process, Brolin was pepper-sprayed and Wright was Tasered. Now video footage of this has shown up, hosted at the sleazy-but-occasionally-useful TMZ.com. (We can't embed it, but you can watch it here.) In the video, you can see a post-spraying Brolin, now mellow and subdued, still trying to talk the cops into letting everyone go, and being handcuffed. Meanwhile, out in the street, Wright -- who appears to already be handcuffed -- is on the ground, being Tasered repeatedly for the duration of the video. What possible reason the police could have for Tasering a suspect who's already restrained and behaving calmly, I cannot imagine. No doubt "you weren't there, you don't know what happened" will be cited as justification for it.

Oliver Stone might be done with Dubya, but he's not about to leave the world of Presidential intrigue. Variety reports that he's moving onto another controversial political figure -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. But this time around, the project won't provide a fictional look back in time to young rabblerousing. Instead, it's a documentary that Stone has been working on for six months, to be ready next year.

Surprisingly, this won't be a feel-good doc, even though Stone and Chavez seem to be quite chummy. Instead: "It's about Chavez and the South American revolution," Stone says. The documentary will detail the opposition Chavez has faced, including the distaste from the Bush administration. (Stone just loves the Dubya.) That being said, it'll probably still be a Chavez-friendly picture.

And that's not all -- he's also got another doc in the works, one that he's keeping to himself for the time being. Rumor has it that it would be about Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but Stone has denied that. Any ideas? Chances are it'll be another notable figure.

Oliver Stone's docudrama W. opened last week to mixed critical response (including our own review) and a modest box office take of just over $10 million. Now, as Stone has promised in interview after interview, a rather thorough fact guide has been posted online, a bibliography with which one can corroborate several facts in a film admittedly filled with all manner of re-enactment and artistic license.

For those much more inclined than I, there are over eighty pages to delve into regarding where dialogue was lifted from actual quotes and where inference was otherwise made, like an exhaustive scene-by-scene commentary or (I'm guessing) a similar supplement for the eventual DVD release.

To quote Stone off his MySpace profile: "I am not trying to be a historian; I'm a dramatist -- and sometimes one who does a dramatic interpretation of history." Even those who enjoyed the film can't deny that statement as being just as accurate -- if not more so -- than anything in the film, and as for those who didn't, they might now struggle to say it was for lack of research.

Well, what do you know: I was right, sort of! Oliver Stone's W. didn't remotely flop. Its $10.6 million opening weekend on just over 2,000 screens is very respectable for a political, current-events-themed drama. In case you're just joining us, those have not been doing well. W. was a couple million away from matching the first weekend gross of the Scott-DiCaprio-Crowe offering Body of Lies (which fell to sixth place this week). Of course, conservative blogs are already spinning its (completely unsurprising) slip from second place on Friday to fourth for the weekend as some sort of referendum on Oliver Stone's politics. Fat chance.

There were other winners this weekend. $18 million is a good number for an inexpensive actioner like Max Payne, though if you think it underperformed a bit you're probably right. $11.1 million in semi-wide release for The Secret Life of Bees is gold. Beverly Hills Chihuahua continues to do well, approaching $70 million. Even Eagle Eye is still kicking down in fifth place; it'll just miss the $100 million mark.

The weekend's only flop was such a foregone conclusion it can hardly be called a flop. Summit's Sex Drive opened to 9th place with $3.6 million. With no stars and no real marketing hook (choosing a picture of the protagonist in a donut suit as the film's main piece of branding probably wasn't the best thing), it could have been worse, and the thing will break even eventually.

The full estimates after the jump.

We've got two portrayals of U.S. Presidents vying for Oscars this year: Josh Brolin as W in W. and Frank Langella as Richard Nixon in Frost/Nixon. I've yet to see either one, though I did see Langella in the Broadway play, which I hear the movie faithfully replicates. On the eve of W.'s release, it seemed like a good time to get a discussion going on Best Screen Presidents, real or fictional. Here's my list, which is surely missing some obvious choices -- but that's part of the fun.

1. President Jackson Evans (Jeff Bridges) - The Contender
For the past couple of elections, pollsters have asked people which of the two presidential candidates they would rather "have a beer with." Inevitably it is pointed out that the person you would rather have a beer with is frequently not the person you would want to run the country. Jeff Bridges's President Jackson Evans, though, wins at life: he's the guy I'd want to have a beer with, and the guy I'd want running the country. Seriously, I would vote for Jackson Evans over either John McCain or Barack Obama. He's charming, and funny, and a bit of a jerk when called for, but he stands up for what's right and gives the best Rod Lurie Speech to date. My favorite movie president -- though for the record, I think The Contender is only pretty good.

After seeing Oliver Stone's W., I found myself wishing I had a little more time to think it over before writing a review; then again, I'm sure there are some involved with the film who found themselves wishing they had a little more time to think over the Bush administration before making it. Distance grants perspective, or so we're told; what could a film about the life and presidency of George W. Bush released while he's still in office really have to say about his life and times? If distance grants perspective, though, you could also argue that proximity grants immediacy, and argue that Stone's W. is not meant as a somber, serious look back but rather a cautious, nervy attempt to peer into the recent past, a film with, in the words another Presidential candidate recently borrowed, "the fierce urgency of now."

But W. has plenty of urgency; you could argue that what it lacks is a point of view, or rather a point of view other than Freudian family psychodrama, with George W. Bush (Josh Brolin) fighting for the presidency and fighting in Iraq as a way to earn the respect and love of his distant, driven father George H. W. Bush (James Cromwell). But to many, examining the inner life of George W. Bush is like asking yourself about the source of the lumber when you're being hit in the head with a baseball bat. We get a lot of dialogue in W. about the difference between the external and the internal, between ideology and identity; Laura Bush (Elizabeth Banks) offers that "I don't think politics should define a human being ..." while George H.W. notes that "I've always believed in leaving personal feelings out of politics." But in W., it feels like Stone doesn't even want to let politics define politics, and leaving the politics out of the personal feelings he's exploring.

It's the question of the week. Lionsgate took a considerable risk in snapping up Oliver Stone's rushed-to-production W. with the plan of releasing it just a couple weeks before the election, when the country -- and especially the film's target audience -- has already been living and breathing presidential politics for months. On the other hand, Lionsgate's marketing effort has been very solid, giving the jokes and conventional wisdom (Bush as a beer-guzzling frat boy, etc.) plenty of play while successfully pitching it as a serious historical saga. I think they've succeeded in making people curious, which is the best they could have hoped for. And the positive buzz that has started to surround the film in the last week or so will only help.

So let's talk turkey. How much money will W., opening on 2,000 screens with Max Payne as its main competition, make this weekend? There's no real precedent for this, so the prediction is very difficult. Stone's World Trade Center managed to open to $18 million despite the subject matter, though it had 1,000 more screens to work with. I could be way off, but I still think this release is precarious enough that $15 million would be a big victory, and $10 million not a disappointment. I suspect the reality will be somewhere between those two numbers.

What do you think? Do people want to see this? Will they actually be able to bring themselves to go?