Baby, when I met you there was peace unknown. I set out to get you with a fine tooth comb..

Okay, sorry. I couldn't resist. Like Ryan back in January, I had to start this with a little "Islands in the Stream," Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers style. (Btw: Did you know it was written by the Bee Gees?) Anyhow, back in January, we learned that Tommy Lee Jones was circling a new adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's first posthumous novel, Islands in the Stream. Now The Hollywood Reporter posts that Jones has signed on to adapt, direct, produce, and star in the project, which will be presented to buyers at Cannes.

Stream follows an American painter, Thomas Hudson, tucked away in the Bahamas. Through three acts, the reader is introduced to Hudson's life, from the arrival of his sons to his island getaway, to alcoholism and naval reconnaissance during WWII, to Hudson's desire to pursue a ship of German soldiers who killed an entire village. At one point, there was also a fourth part, but it was removed and became the epically popular The Old Man and the Sea.

So far, there are only a few actors officially attached to Oliver Stone's W., the epic biopic about our current commander-in-chief. Josh Brolin was cast as President George W. Bush back in January, then recently Elizabeth Banks was chosen as his wife, First Lady Laura Bush, and last week James Cromwell and Ellen Burstyn were locked into the roles of former President George H.W. Bush and former first lady Barbara Bush, respectively. Unofficial casting bites, though, include a lot of other big name actors. Jeffrey Wright is reportedly in negotiations to play Colin Powell, Tommy Lee Jones is supposedly being sought for Donald Rumsfeld, Robert Duvall has been rumored to be the choice for Vice President Dick Cheney and now both Paul Giamatti and Toby Jones are being named as potentials for the part of Karl Rove (who Giamatti may have already channeled for his character in Shoot 'Em Up).

The double-role has been a favorite for movie audiences for a long time. Actors as different as Lon Chaney and Ronald Colman have indulged in the two-actors-for-the-price-of-one roles. In The Dark Knight, Aaron Eckhart will get to do a two-fer, playing a character who didn't get nearly enough to do in that Joel Schumacher fiasco. (Though I did very much enjoy the bifurcated Tommy Lee Jones' use of the pluralis majestatis, the royal "we.") Few double-roles, however, are as roundly a good time as Brian De Palma's Raising Cain, a reviled but rich melodrama derived in equal parts from Psycho and the equally scandalous Peeping Tom. Preposterous, invigoratingly silly, and done to a technical turn by Hitchcock's most devoted fan, this forgotten thriller gives John Lithgow -- kindly actor and easy-going TV star of Third Rock from the Sun --a chance to show his hulking, evil side.

I

Last week, I picked two actors who should have won Oscars for their performances, but were terribly and horribly robbed. This week, I'm picking two old films that a few of this year's nominees should have been nominated for before. The Academy -- man, they never get it right. It shouldn't be the likes of Michael Clayton or No Country for Old Men. Forget that. George Clooney and Tommy Lee Jones had much, much more deserving roles. They should have received best actor nominations for Return of the Killer Tomatoes and Volcano. Sinister, slow-moving villains and earnest, fight-to-the-end good guys -- that's what the Oscars should be lauding.

Return of the Killer Tomatoes



With an impressive and untouchable viewer rating of 4.7, Return of the Killer Tomatoes is the next step in the saga of the vegetables of doom. (Well, they're really fruit, but who wants to split hairs?) George Clooney and Anthony Starke star as Matt Stevens and Chad Finletter, two dudes who have to stop a mad scientist (John Astin) and yuppie pervert (Steve Lundquist) from launching the second coming of the Great Tomato Uprising. Things are complicated, however, when Chad falls for a girl-shaped tomato named Tara.

It's got everything the Academy could ever want in an Oscar winner (and a Clooney role) -- heart-breaking romance, intrigue, amazing dramatic performances, flawless direction and cinematography, memorable writing, state-of-the-art special effects, stunning costume achievements, and of course, the best intro song to ever be.

Sing along: Returrrrn of the killer tomaaaatoooooes!

Pizza joints without tomatoes and hot women who want to make love.

A good tomato is a squashed tomato. Period.

The vets come back to fight, with cowboys and ninjas.

Clooney makes the pizza.

The decision for any actor or actress to appear naked, whether on screen, on stage, or in photographs, can sometimes help, sometimes hurt, and sometimes not make any difference at all to the performer's career. In the case of Lindsay Lohan, her freckle-baring photos in New York Magazine may reinforce the public's perception of her as a "bad girl." We saw a very different reaction when "good guy" Daniel Radcliffe, better known as Harry Potter, stripped down for a production of the stage play Equus. While some decried the example he was setting, young women reportedly attended in droves for the opportunity to admire his (acting) form. From a career standpoint, he widened his future possibilities far beyond the family market.

On the big screen, Viggo Mortensen's deadly naked spa duel in Eastern Promises caught everyone's eye. Playing a "bad boy" with a good heart, Mortensen's willingness to display every inch of his physique only expanded his appeal. His performance earned him a nomination for an Academy Award as Best Actor. Portraying both "bad boys" and "good guys," none of the other Best Actor candidates appeared in the buff in their nominated films, though all have in the past.

As we did yesterday with the women, today we offer a selection of five Academy Award-nominated men. All have appeared naked on the big screen, either this year or in the past, with their most revealing appearance noted. Whose career benefited the most from their willingness to bare all?

Finally Josh Brolin received an award for his excellent performance in No Country for Old Men. He and the rest of the film's actors won the Screen Actors Guild Award for best ensemble cast Sunday night, giving No Country its second big win of the weekend (Joel and Ethan Coen received the top Directors Guild of America award Saturday). Along with Brolin, trophies went to cast-mates Tommy Lee Jones, Woody Harrelson, Garret Dilahunt, Tess Harper and Javier Bardem, who also won the SAG award for best supporting actor. While I'm not sure how many of No Country's performers actually received their own trophy, I'm hoping that both Kelly Macdonald and Barry Corbin were also included. No Country is one of those movies that wouldn't be the same without all of its main and supporting actors, and it is certainly fitting for it to have picked up this honor.

Other film winners from Sunday night include Daniel Day-Lewis, who surprised no one by being honored with the leading actor trophy. Even I'm getting a little bored with all of his awards, despite my agreement that his is the best performance of the year. I didn't even notice if any of the other nominees (George, Emile, Viggo and Ryan) showed up to the ceremony, which was one of the first red carpet awards events of the season. Picking up the award for leading actress was Julie Christie, further cementing the fact that I really need to see Away From Her already. The supporting actress honor went to Ruby Dee, who deserves it just for being the cutest old lady on screen last year, let alone for going up strong against both Denzel and Brolin in American Gangster. Finally, The Bourne Ultimatum won the new SAG award for best stunt ensemble and Charles Durning -- one of Cinematical's favorite character actors ever -- received a lifetime achievement award. Be sure to check out Moviefone's coverage of the awards for plenty of red carpet and ceremony photos.

No, it won't be a movie based on the duet between Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton. It will be a movie version of the Ernest Hemingway novel, posthumously published in 1970, about an American painter who lives the quiet life in the Bahamas and ends up getting entangled in some naval activities-adventures at the tail end of World War II. The book has already been filmed once, in 1977, with George C. Scott in the pivotal role but that version wasn't well-received. Tommy Lee Jones tells The Telegraph in a new interview that this project is likely to be his directing follow-up to 2005's very well-received The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. Jones says of the project "In the 1970s it was made into a bad movie. I reckon there's a good movie in that book and that's the one I want to make." The actor-director is currently at work on a script for the film, but offered no other details about how far along in the process he is.

The interview also contains some other interesting tidbits, such as Jones' assertion that his character in In the Valley of Elah is intensely dislikeable. "I was really interested in the more disgusting aspects of the man," Jones says. "Old Hank is the kind of character that I, personally, would dismiss. He's certainly ethnocentric and blindly, unquestioningly patriotic. I looked upon him as typical of the sort of person who can be led by the nose by jingoistic headlines into a fraudulent war." He also gets into the subject of No Country for Old Men and how he approaches acting and working with directors -- all in all it's a pretty interesting read.

The best movie year since 1999, 2007 offered a staggering bounty of cinematic delights. I keep track of all the movies I see in a given year and give each a letter grade, "A" through "F". Usually my Top Ten list consists of all of the "A's" and a few "B's." This year, "A" pictures made up my top twenty. With so many great films, I won't wallow through a "Worst of the Year" list, I'll simply present you with a few that didn't fully satisfy:

The Biggest Disappointment: The Darjeeling Limited -- A Louis Vuitton commercial stretched to feature length. The Darjeeling Limited is a perfect title for the film because it makes plain what a limited filmmaker the once great Wes Anderson has become. Hey Wes, people running in slow-motion while a Kinks song plays is always going to look pretty neat. But if there's absolutely nothing else going on in the scene, then that's all it is -- people running in slow-motion while a Kinks song plays. We all think it's really cool that you like The Kinks. Hell, I love those guys! The Rolling Stones are awesome, too! But I wouldn't ask them to do my job for me.

and...

The Biggest Question Mark: There Will Be Blood

Undoubtedly one of the year's most impressive technical achievements, There Will Be Blood is frequently stunning. It's so stunning, in fact, that it's easy to overlook how infuriatingly empty it all is. The film focuses on two main characters, and neither one changes a lick in thirty years and 158 minutes. How did Paul Thomas Anderson, creator of such deeply emotional rides as Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and Punch Drunk Love come up with a movie completely devoid of human emotion? (I'm not counting greed.) Beautiful, brilliant, and boring in equal doses, I've seen Blood twice, and I still don't know if it's a masterpiece or a mess. I just know I felt...nothing watching it. It's as hollow, as frustrating, as difficult to know as its "hero," Daniel Plainview.

On to my list. First, ten that didn't quite make the cut. Here's #20 through #11: (#20) Breach, (#19) Once, (#18) The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, (#17) Sicko, (#16) Sweeney Todd, (#15) The Lives of Others, (#14) Eastern Promises, (#13) Zodiac, (#12) Atonement, (#11) Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

And my Top Ten is after the jump...

For some horrible reason Josh Brolin continues to be left out of the awards season party this year, despite his terrific performances in No Country for Old Men, American Gangster and In the Valley of Elah (he was also in Planet Terror, the Robert Rodriguez half of Grindhouse). All I can say is that I hope he continues to be offered great roles and never has to go back to being in movies like Hollow Man and Into the Blue. Meanwhile, his No Country co-stars Javier Bardem and Tommy Lee Jones have been nominated for Screen Actors Guild awards for their supporting roles. Bardem's presence in the category is not surprising -- he's the front-runner for the supporting Oscar, isn't he? -- but it's great to Jones here, since he's been ignored by the Golden Globes, the Golden Satellites and pretty much everything else.

Another surprise with the SAG nominees is Ryan Gosling as best actor for Lars and the Real Girl, beating possible contenders Johnny Depp, Denzel Washington, Phillip Seymour Hoffman (also missing from the supporting category) and Tom Hanks. Also, there's sweet little old Ruby Dee in the supporting actress race for having the cutest reaction to being given a mansion (and for later putting Denzel in his place) in American Gangster. She goes up against the usual 2007 supporting actress contenders Cate Blanchett, Amy Ryan and Tilda Swinton, as well as somewhat surprising addition Catherine Keener, who helped to make Into the Wild the top receiver of nominations with four -- others include Emile Hirsch, Hal Holbrook and ensemble cast. Other ensemble casts nominated include those of Hairspray (no single acting noms), 3:10 to Yuma (no single acting noms), No Country for Old Men, and American Gangster. Very, very, very surprisingly left out of this category is Juno (Ellen Page is nominated for best actress, however).

This year the SAG Awards are introducing two new categories. They are both for best stunt ensemble, one for film and one for television. The film category features nominees The Bourne Identity, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, I Am Legend, 300 and The Kingdom. The rest of the motion picture nominees and categories can be found after the jump or over on Moviefone.

While I may be in the minority, I actually kinda enjoyed Batman Forever when it first came out back in 1995. This was before the franchise went through a much-needed reboot, taking on a darker and more serious tone, and I had fun with Jim Carrey and Tommy Lee Jones in the roles of The Riddler and Two-Face, respectively. But that was then and this is now: AutoUnleashed tells us that the Batmobile from Batman Forever went up for auction recently, and the car sold for $297,000. Sounds like a lot, right? Well, consider the fact that the car's worth was estimated at around $800,000 and that it cost roughly $2,800,000 to make.

However, the car that sold is not the actual car featured in the movie; instead, it's the promotional vehicle used only for promotional tours. Yes, they spent $2.5 million on a car to promote the movie only. Now before you imagine how awesome it would be to own a Batmobile (from any of the Batman films), and be able to cruise up and down main street whilst trying to impress your crush, Warner Bros. shelled out a whole bunch of rules under a contract that had to be signed by the buyer. The biggest (and most) annoying rule? "The Batmobile may be driven solely when necessary for maintenance purposes and may never be driven while in public view." Yup, you can own it, but you can't drive it. You also can't sell it, or make changes to it, but you are allowed to show it at auto shows, parks and schools, but not at shopping malls, department stores or commercial locations.

So that sucks. Would you spend $300 grand on a sweet ass car you couldn't drive?

[Photo courtesy of AutoUnleashed]