While you suffer through those back to school blues ...

Guitar Hero: The Movie -- I have to start with this one. Have to! Because not only are we talking about a possible big-screen movie based on the popular video game, but we're also about to tell you who wants to direct the thing. Can you guess? Here's a hint: It's not Uwe Boll. And if it's not Boll, it has to be ... Ratner! YES! (I really do think I love this maniac in a totally platonic, yet sadistic way -- sorta how you love a great movie villain.) Anyway, Brett Ratner tells MTV that he'd love to make a Guitar Hero movie, possibly about "a kid from a small town who dreams of being a rock star and he wins the 'Guitar Hero' competition. One of these dreams-[come-true] kind of concepts." Ratner adds, "I would love to do a 'Guitar Hero' movie, if Activision would ever let me. I'm trying to convince them, but why would you have a movie screw up such a huge franchise? Not that I would make a bad movie. So that would be cool, to do a 'Guitar Hero' movie. " I'm leaving this one to you, folks -- have at it!

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time: In case you're interested in seeing what a standard Persian-esque set looks like, Korben.info has put up a few select shots (see one above) of the Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time set. Based on the popular video game (hurray for themes in posts!), Prince of Persia stars Jake "I didn't know he was Persian" Gyllenhaal as a young prince who teams up with a hottie princess (Gemma Arterton) to stop an evil ruler from doing evil things.

A director has been chosen to remake Poltergeist and Cinematical says we likey him ... after the jump ...

I haven't quite processed the notion of a Poltergeist remake just yet -- it still seems more conceptual than actual to me. Yet the fact that they've picked a pair of screenwriters, and that the late Heather O'Rourke has condemned the remake from the grave, tell me that it's about as actual as it gets. Now Bloody-Disgusting has started a rumor that Vadim Perelman -- quasi-arthouse director of House of Sand and Fog and The Life Before Her Eyes -- is in "heavy talks" to direct the new movie. That would be a heck of a contrast to the screenwriters of Boogeyman.

I'm as down on this project as everyone else -- the original film is a moment in time that ought not be disturbed -- but I like the idea of Perelman, mostly because I like the notion of otherwise "respectable" directors trying their hand at genre films. His brooding, portentous style might be a good fit for Poltergeist, I guess. And maybe this will wind up like the doomed adaptation of The Talisman, to which Perelman was attached for a while (and which he seems far better suited to), never making it past the development stage.

Anyway, I emphasize that I'm commenting on a rumor, not relaying hard news. Make of it what you will.

Suffering from the Hollywood blockbuster blues? Have I got some indies for you! All three are newly available this week on DVD.

Kim Voynar called Vadim Perelman's The Life Before Her Eyes "a lovely, nuanced film packed with imagery, and bracketed by an intriguing storyline." The story revolves around the survivor of a school shooting; Uma Thurman plays her as an adult and Evan Rachel Wood as a teenager. Kim wrote in part: "I'd expect the director's commentary on the DVD to be intriguing." The DVD does indeed feature an audio commentary by the director, joined by production designer Maia Javan. Also included are deleted scenes, an alternate ending, and several other mini-features. A Blu-ray edition is also available.

Kim also reviewed Tommy O'Haver's An American Crime when it debuted at Sundance last year. Based on the true tragedy of teenage Sylvia Likens (Ellen Page) who was "brutally beaten, burned, starved and tortured to death" in 1965 Indiana, Kim said the film was difficult to watch. "The real question ... is not just how the Sylvia Likens case could have happened, but why situations like this happen at all -- and still do." Catherine Keener and James Franco also star. The DVD doesn't appear to have any supplemental material.

On the lighter side, Bharat Nalluri's Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day "is a nearly perfect piece of entertainment for grownups," according to James Rocchi. Frances McDormand plays a down-on-her-luck British governess and Amy Adams essays her employer, an American singer / actress in late 1930s London. The DVD includes a "making of," deleted scenes, and "Miss Pettigrew's Long Trip to Hollywood."

Well, here's some news I've been hoping to write up for a long while now ... director Vadim Perelman has officially dropped the adaptation of Atlas Shrugged, which is presumably still set to star Angelina Jolie as Dagny Taggart. Perelman signed on to the project last September, and as recently as April ComingSoon.net reported that the project was still a go. It may or may not still be moving forward, but I have it from the most reliable source possible -- Perelman himself -- that it will not be going forward with him at the helm.

CHUD wrote up this piece about Angelina Jolie supposedly telling MTV that Perelman was never signed to direct at all -- something Perelman finds interesting, since he had a signed contract that attached him, and Lionsgate (not Perelman, as CHUD asserts, though Perelman has done interviews about his attachment to the project) had put out many press releases announcing him as the director. Perelman was attached, and I can say with as much certainty as one can possibly have about a situation like this that the decision to step down was on Perelman's side.

It's been five years since Vadim Perelman's critically acclaimed feature debut with House of Sand and Fog. Now the director is back with his newest film, The Life Before Her Eyes, starring Uma Thurman, Evan Rachel Wood and Eva Amurri. The film is about Diana, whose life starts to crumble as the 15th anniversary of the school shooting she survived nears; it flashes back and forth between older Diana (Thurman) and the younger Diana (Wood) and her best friend Maureen (Amurri) in the weeks leading up to the tragic event. Cinematical sat down with Perelman and Amurri at AFI Dallas to talk about the film, which opens in limited release this weekend.

Cinematical: Eva, can you talk about the challenges of playing this role, which is much more of "nice girl" than you've played in your previous films?

Eva Amurri: The earlier roles I'd had just happened to be more bad girls. This is the first role I'd had where the role was basically all good, this very pure, selfless girl. What's funny is that Vadim really cast us against type – in real life, I'm much more the "bad" girl, while Evan is the serious "good" girl. I was a little worried about it, but I trusted Vadim, and he did a great job guiding us through it. It was an interesting exercise.

(Editor's note: This review originally ran during AFI Dallas. It's being rerun this weekend in conjunction with the film's release.)

I loved House of Sand and Fog, and I've been waiting five long years to see what director Vadim Perelman would come up with next. His latest effort, The Life Before Her Eyes, starring Uma Thurman, Evan Rachel Wood and Eva Amurri, is a lovely, nuanced film packed with imagery, and bracketed by an intriguing storyline. The film revolves around Diana, played as a teenager by Wood and an adult by Thurman; the younger Diana was a survivor of a high school shooting, as as the 15-year anniversary of the tragic event nears, the older Diana begins to unravel.

Perelman is not a director who hand-feeds his audience easy answers. With House of Sand and Fog he made heavy use of its moody, gray and brown pallette to set a dark and unsettling mood. With The Life Before Her Eyes, he turns to brilliantly saturated hues of flowers and water to create a sublime tone that evokes what's going on with Diana. The perfect life with professor husband Paul (Brett Cullen) and daughter Emma (Gabrielle Brennan) that she's worked so hard to create is a fairy tale fantasy built on an unstable foundation of unresolved guilt, and we know from the first frames that, hard as she works to sustain it, it's as fragile as the petals of the flowers that embower her garden.

I've been mulling over the whole issue of the Atlas Shrugged film adaptation, which, at the moment at least, seems to be churning ahead to start filming later this year, and I wanted to talk about something several commenters have mentioned: whether it would be better to film Atlas as a miniseries, as opposed to a two-hour-or-longer movie. Of course, attempts have been made to bring Ayn Rand's most famous book to the screen before, and they've never made it past the script stage.

Why? Well, first of all, there are a lot of politics around this book. The Ayn Rand Institute and Leonard Peikoff have been notoriously protective of it for years, and trying to make a film that's going to please both the hardcore Objectivists (those who follow Rand's philosophy) and the average moviegoer who just wants to be entertained is, in my opinion, just an exercise in futility. Then I read this interview over on The Atlasphere with John Aglialoro, producer and CEO of Cybex, International, who paid $1 million for the film rights to Atlas.

Despite the talk and the buzz, I never thought it would actually happen. If any novel merits the term "unfilmable," certainly Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged is it. I mean, the climax is a 60-page radio broadcast! And the entire thing is what can charitably be called a screed, preaching Rand's extremely unliberal "objectivist" political philosophy. So when I heard that Vadim Perelman (The House of Sand and Fog and the upcoming The Life Before Her Eyes) was developing the project, with Angelina Jolie attached to star as Dagny Taggart, my reaction was quite simply: Pfffffft.

But it looks like I pfffffted too soon. Comingsoon.net talked to Perelman this week, and he told them that he's finishing up the script, and that Lionsgate wants to start shooting in December. So, uh: it looks like this might actually happen.

I would commit atrocities to get my hands on a copy of Perelman's screenplay. I can only imagine what it does to condense the thousand-page-plus book into even a very long movie. What worries me most is that the novel doesn't really exist without Rand's politics, if that makes any sense: they're so integral to the story that cutting them out would make everything else pretty much pointless. And I'm not sure Hollywood -- even the relatively adventurous Lionsgate -- has the stomach for a politically faithful adaptation.

I loved House of Sand and Fog, and I've been waiting five long years to see what director Vadim Perelman would come up with next. His latest effort, The Life Before Her Eyes, starring Uma Thurman, Evan Rachel Wood and Eva Amurri, is a lovely, nuanced film packed with imagery, and bracketed by an intriguing storyline. The film revolves around Diana, played as a teenager by Wood and an adult by Thurman; the younger Diana was a survivor of a high school shooting, as as the 15-year anniversary of the tragic event nears, the older Diana begins to unravel.

Perelman is not a director who hand-feeds his audience easy answers. With House of Sand and Fog he made heavy use of its moody, gray and brown pallette to set a dark and unsettling mood. With The Life Before Her Eyes, he turns to brilliantly saturated hues of flowers and water to create a sublime tone that evokes what's going on with Diana. The perfect life with professor husband Paul (Brett Cullen) and daughter Emma (Gabrielle Brennan) that she's worked so hard to create is a fairy tale fantasy built on an unstable foundation of unresolved guilt, and we know from the first frames that, hard as she works to sustain it, it's as fragile as the petals of the flowers that embower her garden.

I'm in Dallas for the second AFI Dallas Film Festival, and having a great time so far. The fest has worked through some of those first-year kinks and things seem to be sailing along smoothly, though I know there's probably lots of finagling going on behind the scenes that makes whatever glitches do come up invisible to most of us here. Shuttle service for passholders this year is making it much easier to navigate the fest quickly and efficiently between venues. The festival lounge is great this year -- the space is nicely decorated, there are always yummy snacks on hand, the drinks flow all night long, and Guitar Hero battles happen nightly.

I kicked things off here on Tuesday moderating a panel on women filmmakers for a private event held for a group of high-powered corporate women. Filmmakers SJ Main (Luck of the Draw) and Robin Bliley (Circus Rosaire) made my job super easy; both had many insights to share about being independent filmmakers and women working in the business, and the women (and their husbands) in attendance had many thought-provoking questions that kept the tone conversational and interesting.