Quick: Name the last live-action film starring Nicole Kidman that absolutely rocked the box office? Okay, that's a tough one, I know, so how about the last live-action Nicole Kidman film that was any good? Hmm, that's also pretty tough. Fine, how about you just name the last live-action film that starred Nicole Kidman. That's pretty easy. The Golden Compass. It debuted last month. Yes, it's pretty clear that Kidman's appearance in a film is not all that it used to be, and fans aren't exactly flocking to the theater just because a film includes her name in the credits. Straight off filming the latest Baz Luhrmann epic, Australia, comes word from the sometimes-reliable Page Six that Kidman has dropped out of her next flick, The Reader, which was due to begin filming this month.

The reason? Well, they claim it's because the gal is pregnant, and she doesn't want to take on any work that could potentially harm her unborn child. Of course, Kidman, nor her reps, have confirmed that she is pregnant, and so I wouldn't go and take this news as official word. Page Six describes The Reader as being about "a man who carries a longtime sexual obsession for an older woman who's later prosecuted for war crimes after it emerges she was a member of the SS and a guard at Auschwitz." The film is based on Bernhard Schlink's book, and it co-stars Ralph Fiennes and Bruno Gatz. A rep for The Weinstein Co. said the "status on The Reader has not changed," so who knows what the real truth is.

As Page Six points out, perhaps now is a good time for Kidman to take a much-needed break. Her last three films, The Invasion ($15 million), Margot at the Wedding ($1.8 million) and The Golden Compass ($59 million) didn't exactly break any box office records, and so some time away to nurse that bun in the oven might be the appropriate move.

So I just returned home from checking out the New York Film Festival's closing night film, Persepolis, which is an amazing little animated flick about a girl coming of age during the Islamic revolution. Sony Pictures Classics is releasing it in December, it might get nominated for a Best Foreign Language Oscar (it's currently France's selection, so we'll see), and, heck, it might even win. An Oscar! For a film starring an animated girl from Iran! Go figure. The theater was pretty crowded, because from what I gathered people were still interested in films featuring women in the lead roles. I know I am. By now you probably see where I'm going with this -- in case you haven't heard yet, Warner Bros. chief Jeff Robinov is still simmering in some hot water over comments he allegedly made; how, ya know, he doesn't want to make any more female-driven films because ... The Invasion and The Brave One didn't do so well? Yeah, I don't get it much either.

Nikki Finke, the blogger over at Deadline Hollywood who broke the story, continues to go on and on about the fiasco, while, I imagine, folks over at Warners are scrambling to correct this PR nightmare. Finke reminds me of that girl from Can't Hardly Wait who runs around throughout the entire film trying to get people to sign her yearbook. Whatever happened to that girl after everyone completely dissed her? Where did she go after high school? What is she doing now? Let me take a wild guess ... Anyway, I'm still having trouble wrapping my head around this whole thing. If it's true, and Robinov did say those things, then why is he blaming the actresses? I asked a friend of mine, who saw both The Invasion and The Brave One, if he didn't like the films because of Kidman and Foster. His answer: "I didn't like them because they sucked. Kidman and Foster had nothing to do with that." And why did he go to see them in the first place? "I like Kidman and Foster." Heh. (I wonder if they changed the name to Legally Blonde: Invasion of the Purse Snatchers, if, then, people would've showed up to see it?)

I tried reading Finke's reports, but I just got a headache. They're filled with lines like, "And then a Warner Bros. rep told me ..." and "Three studio insiders claimed to have ..." and "When I got off the phone with the agent whose rep used to be a studio exec ..." Who gives a sh*t? Should we care about this story at all? Seriously. Warner Bros. could make 70 films in a row about homosexual kangaroos from Egypt, and it still wouldn't change the fact that my electric bill is too high. Should we boycott Warners? No. Why? There are very few guarantees in life: 1. A lot of folks making the decisions in Hollywood are morons. 2. 300 is and will always be a pile of crap. 3. Female-driven films simply don't do well at the box office unless they star Reese Witherspoon doing her best Valley-girl accent, and 4. There will always be something better worth seeing on any given weekend, be it on DVD or in the theater. Like Persepolis. So let Warners make their testosterone-laced, male-driven films, and the rest of us can go about our lives knowing there will always be a choice when it comes to what we watch, when we watch it and who we watch it with. Isn't that what's most important here?

L.A. Weekly columnist and blogger Nikki Finke claims that she has received, from three different sources, copies of an internal Warner Brothers memo from president of production Jeff Robinov. In it, Robinov claims "we are no longer doing movies with women in the lead." From a historical standpoint, it's bad; this was the studio that the films of Bette Davis (above) helped establish. From the standpoint of a civil rights issue, it's worse, The memo, Finke says, is a response to a pair of fiscal disappointments: the Jodie Foster vengeance opus The Brave One, and The Invasion, the most recent (and worst) version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers with Nicole Kidman in the lead: "as if three different directors didn't have something to do with the awfulness of the gross receipts," Finke suggests.

"But now the official policy as expressly articulated by Robinov is that a male has to be the lead of every pic made." Finke concludes by noting that famed anti-discrimination attorney Gloria Allred has been appraised of the situation. You don't have to be Finke to note that women's pictures are recent underperformers, compared to 2007's hit bromance movies about the love between men (300 to Superbad to 3:10 to Yuma). In Finke's column, Allred suggests a boycott of WB might be the answer. What do you think? However this comes down, there'll be plenty of actresses who'll be grimly satisfied to see in print what they might have suspected already.

An unusually nasty piece over at The Guardian is causing revulsion, even among seen-it-all types like Jeff Wells at Hollywood-Elsewhere, who calls it "one of the meanest and most heartless" celebrity journalism pieces he's ever read, as well as being "insensitive" and "pointless." I have to agree. Let me start by saying that, as a long-time fan of Nicole Kidman's -- check out the three-part retrospective of her early career I did a while back -- I share the originating sentiment of the Guardian piece, which is that Kidman is of late taking a wrecking-ball to her film career with one inexcusably awful choice after the other. From dreck like The Stepford Wives and The Human Stain to almost-unreleasable garbage like Bewitched and The Invasion, she's practically daring fans to turn away from her. Even her latest prestige project, Margot at the Wedding, is completely awful. After seeing Margot in Toronto, I declared this to be Kidman's "annus horribilis."

All that said, however, this piece reads like it was written by some fourth-grader, undercutting whatever serious intent it may contain with a ton of personal smears. Kidman is referred to as a "former Scientology hostage bride" who only won an Oscar for wearing "a false hooter" and who is now "box office poison." Soon enough, the piece warns, "Hollywood's powers that be -- or their accountants -- will rise from their crypts one morning and realize it's time to cut their losses." The article also urges Kidman to retire before she becomes "Joan Crawford 1944" and is way too harsh on Birth, the one semi-decent movie Kidman has produced in the last three years.

Kidman is also on the cover of this month's Vanity Fair, but that piece is hardly any more worthwhile. It's entirely oriented around her personal life and content to elicit from the actress fortune-cookie aphorisms about how to handle a long-distance relationship and the like. Is there no place left for a serious critique of an actor's career, or lack of one?

Summer's nearly over, school is about to begin and Hollywood is counting its money. Looking back, we could assume the studios made bundles this season; almost every weekend seemed to deliver a new record-breaking blockbuster. In order of enormity, there was Spider-Man 3, Shrek 3, Pirates of the Caribbean 3, Transformers 1 (it will have sequels), Harry Potter 5, 300, Ratatouille and finally another threequel, Bourne 3 (which should gain on at least that numberless Pixar movie). According to Box Office Mojo, the grosses for 2007 are up 7.2% over last year, and 13.7% over 2005 (aka the year of the slump).

Now, normally about this time of year, we can also look back and see a number of disappointments, bombs and otherwise failed releases. In fact, Entertainment Weekly should be giving us its annual rundown (my favorite) any week now. But Business Week has already announced the biggest losers of the season: Evan Almighty and Stardust. And as dishonorable mentions, it points to The Invasion, Grindhouse, The Reaping and The Number 23. Of course, the latter three were released much earlier in the year, and shouldn't be counted -- they seem to be thrown in as other mistakes of the year in general.

What, you expected something different? Nicole Kidman has spoken with Entertainment Weekly (and by extension The Sydney Herald), seemingly to quell a firestorm that I didn't even know was raging -- concerns that New Line's The Golden Compass will upset Catholics. Kidman strongly suggests to EW that the film adaption of Philip Pullman's blatantly anti-theistic His Dark Materials books will not retain material that would upset religious folks. She says the religious message put forth in the film version of The Golden Compass "has been watered down a little," and she goes on to say that "I was raised Catholic, the Catholic Church is part of my essence. I wouldn't be able to do this film if I thought it were at all anti-Catholic." So in other words, 'nothing interesting to see here -- move on.' This movie just continues to fall lower and lower on my 'to see' list.

In other Kidman news, she's faced with a real career speedbump after The Invasion made only about one-third of her $17 million paycheck in its opening weekend. The film was released in a state of complete disrepair, with unfinished scenes, bizarre flashbacks to action scenes that hadn't happened yet, action-scenes staged with total incompetence, a completely stupid political subtext and an ending that's money-back terrible. I think it's safe to say that Kidman's priorities and choices are completely off-the-wall these days, but here's hoping she pulls it together and maybe gets herself a new agent -- the one she has isn't doing her any favors.

Okay, if we're going to get technical, that title should read "Superbad Expected to Do Super Well," but that just doesn't have quite the same ring to it, does it? Over at Hollywood Elsewhere, Jeff Wells is reporting that the Judd Apatow-produced teen geek sex flick, (helmed by Greg Mottola, who's probably sick of everyone talking about Apatow and Seth Rogen's roles in his film by now) should do even better at the box office than original predictions were targeting. Sony, according to Wells, had been projecting about a $25 million weekend take for the film, but it looks like the film is going to hit more like $30 million, maybe even as high as $33 million.

This is pretty interesting -- it would seem that the appeal of the geek guy has not yet run its course, probably because there are a lot more geeky guys out in the real world (and chicks who dig geeky guys) than Hollywood anticipated, even after the success Apatow had with 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up. Films about your average dorky protagonist are appealing, in part, because real guys like to watch films where guys like them have fun, succeed in life, and get the girl, and real girls like to watch films where the guys are characters they can like and relate to.

Clearly, both sexes also like to watch Jason Bourne kick the crap out of the bad guys, his muscles rippling beneath his shirt (yrrrrrooooww), as Wells also notes that The Bourne Ultimatum (loved it!) is set to exceed the previous two in total box office. (Just as clearly, nobody wants to see Nicole Kidman be body-snatched, as The Invasion is, predictably, tanking -- did anyone really think that one was going to be good?) But while guys might like to fantasize about being Bourne or Bond or a superhero in tights, they know those things are purely in the realm of fantasy, whereas Apatow, et al, show them how real guys can live the life the beautiful people would like us to think is reserved for them.

Long live the geeks!

After watching The Invasion, I sincerely hope that Nicole Kidman becomes the next test case for the new Jim Carrey-style Hollywood deal, where talent receives no money up front and must live or die by the quality of the film they make. An actor with her star power, while not in a position to challenge the Warner Bros. decision to replace director Oliver Hirschbiegel and remake large portions of this film after what they deemed to be an unacceptable first cut, could certainly have taken some kind of stand for basement-level quality control that doesn't exist here at all. The Invasion is a borderline-unreleasable mess, with unfinished scenes, absurdly rushed exposition, and a plethora of random bad decisions that could only be the product of a hugely stressed production. Whose idea was it, for example, to embarrass Kidman with a Carmen Electra-sized Wonderbra that she totes around for most of the picture? Also, this has to be the first time I've ever seen an adrenaline-syringe-in-the-heart scene filmed with the casualness of a blocking rehearsal.

The set-up: A returning space shuttle explodes upon re-entry and the pieces are scattered over Nowhere, America, leading to a montage of the great unwashed reporting the crash to the news media. I'm not sure if the body snatchers crashed the shuttle on purpose or if they were just hitching a ride and something went wrong, but either way their mission is accomplished -- they are now extant on Earth and can get down to their business, which is infecting all of us through liquid contact and turning us into Democrats. You see, we're told repeatedly that body snatchers are peaceful and that once they rule the roost, there will be no more war and violence. As they begin to turn more and more people, we start to see 'positive' news on television screens -- President Bush warmly meeting with Hugo Chavez, for example, with Bush having presumably been turned. By the last act, the recurring visual of a smartly-dressed Kidman being chased through D.C. parking garages by the aggressive peaceniks plays like a reel of Ann Coulter's nightmares.

The Invasion's troubled path to theaters - in which German director Oliver Hirschbiegel (Downfall) apparently submitted an unacceptable cut of the film to the studio, leading to covert additional script-work and shooting by the Wachowski Brothers and V for Vendetta's James McTeigue - have at this point been well documented. Yet while it's easy to pinpoint such issues as the explanation for the mess that is this latest version of Jack Finney's classic sci-fi novel The Body Snatchers, it's much tougher to see how Dave Kajganich's screenplay could have ever been turned into something great, what with its near-total lack of character development and downright embarrassing stabs at injecting its tale with modern political subtext. Hirschbiegel's film is simultaneously cursory and heavy-handed, a lethal combination compounded by a pervasive disjointedness seemingly brought about by endless post-production re-configurations of the material. Labeling it a mess would be to understate the case; a more apt description would be that it's chaotic to the point of being anarchic, a handsomely photographed pulp fiasco that squanders its strong cast as well as any modestly intriguing ideas rumbling around in its head.

In a set-up so quick it's liable to give one whiplash, The Invasion outlines the origins of its alien incursion: a space shuttle explodes upon reentering Earth's atmosphere, and its debris is contaminated by an extraterrestrial organism that enters human hosts' bloodstream and then, when people fall asleep and enter the REM cycle, combines with night sweat to do something or other to their DNA to make them act like stiff, detached robots. Self-serious scientific mumbo jumbo spreads throughout the film like a contagion, corrupting any fun that might be had from the patently supernatural proceedings - or, at least, any intended fun, as there are a few mean-spirited pleasures to be had at watching a project flail about in such patently absurd and incompetent ways. Such as watching Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig (as a psychologist and doctor, respectively) pretend to be infected by showing no emotion, a state that seems no different from their normal comportment. Or trying to figure out why Craig's doctor, who works at a hospital, is close friends with upper-crust foreign diplomats. Or how, with one laughable cut, Kidman goes from fleeing a group of pursuers on a quiet suburban street to running - still at full speed - through downtown D.C.

No big surprises for last weekend, though Stardust did less business than I was expecting. Rush Hour 3 took top honors, but made $17 million less than Rush Hour 2 did on its opening weekend, and The Bourne Ultimatum held strong for its second week. Here's the break down:

1. Rush Hour 3: $50.3 million
2. The Bourne Ultimatum: $33.7 million
3. The Simpsons Movie: $11.1 million
4. Stardust: $9 million
5. Underdog: $6.5 million

This week's releases bring aliens, gladiators and teenage horn dogs. Yeah, sounds like my prom too. Here's what's coming:

The Invasion
What's It All About: For the fourth time Invasion of the Body Snatchers -- Jack Finney's novel about aliens creating duplicates of people -- is adapted for the screen, this time featuring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig.
Why It Might Do Well: Usually three times is the charm, but the third adaptation of Finney's book -- 1993's Body Snatchers -- was a fairly forgettable exercise. With two really strong leads, The Invasion may be a worthy successor to the excellent 1978 version, and this tale of subversion and paranoia seems to be tailor-made for today's audiences.
Why It Might Not Do Well: A third remake? They may have gone to the well once too often.
Number of Theaters: 2,700
Prediction: $12 million

The Last Legion
What's It All About: The Roman Empire is in mid-tumble and a deposed child emperor seeks out Excalibur, a sword once possessed by Julius Caesar and which will one day belong to the legendary King Arthur.
Why It Might Do Well: The trailer promises a lush production with lots of action.
Why It Might Not Do Well: Some folks may assume The Last Legion is a sequel to something called The First Legion. Stranger things have happened.
Number of Theaters: 2,000
Prediction: $7 million

Superbad
What's It All About: Two high school buddies are accepted into different colleges and must contemplate life without each other as well as desperately seeking to rid themselves of that pesky virginity.
Why It Might Do Well: Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen -- both of whom brought us this summer's hilarious Knocked Up -- are involved respectively as producer and writer, with Rogen also acting in the film. Rottentomatos.com is giving this one a whopping 95% fresh rating.
Why It Might Not Do Well: Star Michael Cera was also on a smart and funny series called Arrested Development that failed to pull in ratings. Might the curse have followed him onto the set of Superbad?
Number of Theaters: 2,800
Prediction: $28 million

My method for predicting this coming weekend's top five involved taking the ages of the directors and dividing them by the number of writers, and adding the number of brothers in the Baldwin family. Don't scoff, it's all very scientific.
1. Superbad
2. Rush Hour 3
3. The Bourne Ultimatum
4. The Invasion
5. The Simpsons Movie

Here's the ranking from last week's competition. Congratulations to Ethan and Bubba for getting perfect scores.
1. Ethan Stanislawski: 16
1. Bubba8193: 16
2. Josh: 13
2. Ian: 13
3. Matt: 12
3. Anna07: 12
4. Ray: 9
4. Corey: 9
4. Curt: 9
4. jasonsmusicpage: 9
5. Skyler: 8
5. Porcalina: 8
5. Nathan Mathieu: 8
6. Mayorjimmy: 7
6. El Borracho: 7

Please post your prediction for the top five films in the comments section below before 5:00 PM on Saturday. One point for every top five movie correctly named, two points for every correct placement, and one extra point for the top movie. Greatness awaits you.