I was watching my local news last night on Fox when during their entertainment portion (we love ya Toni Senecal), they absolutely bashed Tom Cruise. Which is odd for them because they don't usually go after someone hard like that. Toni? What's up? Over the weekend, Cruise's latest film Lions for Lambs -- and his first for the revived United Artists -- took in a little over $6 million. You have to go all the way back to 1986 (The Color of Money) to find another film starring Tom Cruise that opened so poorly. And this was a big deal for Cruise and United Artists; they went and snagged Robert Redford to direct, star; they got Meryl Streep and even Cruise stepped in to up the ante. They wanted raves. They wanted Oscar nods. They got ... $6 million and bad reviews.

To add insult to injury, when Fox was done ripping apart Lions for Lambs and its poor box office take, they next went after Valkyrie saying the buzz was not good and making fun of Cruise for wearing a "silly" eye patch, with a weird hairdo. Of course they spoke about the film with little to no information -- as if their core audience were a bunch of third graders who would stay away from a film simply because Cruise wears an eye patch throughout. While folks might not dig seeing Cruise in an eye patch, one thing is for sure -- they like to see the guy in action/adventure films. Mission Impossible 3 ($133 million), War of the Worlds ($234 million), Minority Report ($132 million) and even The Last Samurai ($111 million) all did very well at the box office. Are the people trying to send the man a message? And does that message go something like: "Look dude, we're not crazy about your off-screen antics. The Scientology thing is a little warped, you may have brainwashed Katie Holmes and your new baby may or may not be an alien. But we like it when you run and blow stuff up. The whole talky drama thing? Not so much. How can we take one of your films seriously when we don't take you seriously? So stick to that and we'll pay to see your movies." So, should he stick to action flicks? Should he try a comedy? Or, quite possibly, could Lambs' poor opening spell the beginning of the end for Mr. Cruise?

I'm not going to take this opportunity to say that I always believed M. Night Shyamalan is a hack. Sure, I never bought into the hype that he was the next Spielberg or Hitchcock, but I do like one of his films (Unbreakable) and I think he has some brilliant scenes in two others (The Sixth Sense and Signs). After two flops, though, he seems to be running out of good ideas and out of loyal defenders. Of course, he's still a talented director of suspenseful scenes, and he's still pretty young.

In a post about the biggest flops of last year, I wrote that it is probably a good time for Shyamalan to try directing someone else's script. And maybe he was reading (I doubt it), because two weeks later the announcement came that he was, yes, directing someone else's script. Or, at least adapting someone else's idea and then directing that. However, it now appears he's still trying his luck (and his own ideas). Insiders told TMZ recently that Shyamalan is shopping his latest original script around Hollywood, and so far he isn't seeing a lot of interest.

Man, it must be terrible to be a 12-year-old child superstar and realize you can't rest on your laurels, but instead, must think about the future when your looks start to go and you just aren't the cutest thing around anymore. What's a pre-teen actor to do when this kind of problem inevitably arises? Thus is the current issue apparently confronting the precocious Dakota Fanning who was asked, according to a recent AP story, what she might want to do when she grows up. Her answer? Are you sitting down? Good. She wants to direct.

According to the article, Fanning was asked about her future career plans during an interview for Time Magazine promoting her upcoming films Charlotte's Web and the indie-drama Hound Dog. "I would love to direct someday," Fanning told the magazine. "I've learned a lot from watching directors I've worked with, like Steven Spielberg and Gary Winick, whom I worked with on Charlotte's Web. I would love to have that relationship with another actor." Well, I guess if you've spent that much time with talented directors like those, something is bound to rub off, right? What a great way to learn.

Besides, there are many directors working today who started out as actors -- the most successful probably being Ron Howard. But there's also, of course, Mel Gibson, Kevin Costner, Danny De Vito and one of my personal heroes Orson Welles. I'm sure I missed a bunch more. To be honest, Dakota Fanning is one of the few child actors who doesn't bug me when I watch her films -- I especially liked her in Man on Fire. Maybe its her or more the directors or actors she works with. Whatever the reason, if I had to bet on someone making a successful transition from actor to director I would have to bet on her. Plus, she's just so darn cute -- and that never hurts either.

Over at her Risky Biz Blog, Anne Thompson has a piece up on the big scoop around United Artists. United Artists has been a studio in limbo ever since Sony acquired both MGM and UA in April of last year. No one was sure if Sony would simply absorb the other company, or whether they would continue to use their brand and logo as a distribution arm. Today the mystery is over, with MGM announcing today that Tom Cruise and his partner Paula Wagner will help relaunch the new United Artists as partner-operators. This finally lands Cruise at a new studio, after being released by Paramount following the disappointing box office take for M:I3, and displeasure over Tom's couch-jumping antics. The new deal gives Cruise and Wagner the ability to greenlight their own projects, and will serve as a pipeline for them to distribute their own content. What remains unclear is how this newly announced deal will affect the new Cruise/Wagner production company that was cobbled together by investors once Tom left Paramount.

Since 1919 United Artists has had a storied past since inception and creation by four of the film world's biggest stars at the time: Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford and director D.W. Griffith. It enjoyed both success and failures in the intervening years, giving birth to such franchises as the Rocky, James Bond, and Pink Panther films as part of its highs, and being the studio behind the Heaven's Gate debacle as part of the lows, which left it essentially bankrupt in 1980. The press release lauds Cruise as, "one of the most successful, critically acclaimed and sought after movie stars in the world. Cruise's films have resulted in worldwide box office totals of approximately US$6 billion and his last two films, War of the Worlds and Mission: Impossible III have grossed nearly US$1 billion worldwide." United Artists is hoping that both Cruise name and star power will help bring them home some of that bling.

Well, this is weird. For the bulk of my 30+ years on this planet, there's been no such thing as a "televised horror awards" presentation, and now, not 15 minutes removed from geeking out over the newly-announced Fangoria Chainsaw Awards nominations -- I come across the Spike TV Scream Awards nominations! Cool!

Now, with all due respect to Spike TV and their cool new concept, I gotta say the Fango Chainsaw noms are just a little bit cooler. But hey, there's no law that says the horror freaks can't hang their hat on TWO new awards presentations. Frankly I think we could use a few more enthusiastic celebrations of juicy genre filmmaking.

Anyway, the Screams seem to run a lot like the Chainsaws do: Check out all the categories and nominees (after the jump) and then head on over to SpikeTV.com and cast your own votes! This is particularly amusing for the horror nuts -- because we're nothing if not passionately opinionated on which horror flicks rock and which ones suck the proverbial egg. Spike TV broadcasts their Scream Awards on the evening of October 10th.

It's not too often you hear news of a lawsuit over a property that's in the public domain, but here we go: Pendragon Pictures, the folks who put together this movie version of H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds is filing suit against Dark Horse Comics. The moviemakers claim that the comicmakers have cribbed a whole lot of visuals from their flick, and they've even gone so far as to set up this website to illustrate their arguments.

So what do you think: Is it a simple coincidence borne from the fact that both works are based on a common source? Or did the Dark Horse artists actually sit down and copy from Tim Hines' overwhelmingly "faithful" Wells adaptation? Either way it's good press for the Pendragon flick, a film which I'll not share my opinion of at this time ...

Ask your average hardcore horror geek if they're familiar with "The Asylum," and watch a bemused grin crack across their melon. Production house, distributor and loony bin all wrapped into one (hence the name), The Asylum has recently grown into somewhat of a production-line outfit, which only serves to make the studio feel a whole lot like the big Hollywood boys. The Asylum inmates are simply a little more forthcoming with their schlock, and they wear their cinematic influences (not to mention affections) on their frequently gore-soaked sleeve.

I had a chance to pick the brain of Mr. David Michael Latt, currently the head crazy over at The Asylum. As old buddies, we shot the breeze in laid-back and movie-geek style, focusing mainly on the indie studio's more recent crop of "blockbuster piggy-backs" -- some of which are actually more entertaining than their big-budget brethren. Some.

It would be such easy marketing for a Fantastic Four movie to open on the 4th of July. The original even had it down at first: Four on Four! It was the easiest release date to remember since Independence Day. Ok, so last year the 4th was a Monday and no films opened, and ID4 opened on the 3rd of July back in 1995. Sometimes it is just the general neighborhood of time that studios need us to remember. Still, F4 didn't get to open close enough to the holiday last year to seem appropriate, because War of the Worlds took control of the big date and pushed the little comic book blockbuster out of the way to the 8th.

Now, as you know, 20th Century Fox is making a sequel (which said out-loud sounds like a Hitchhiker's Guide reference) and seemed to be hoping for a July 4th, 2007 opening, as the date is on a Wednesday and therefore ripe for releasing. Unfortunately, the franchise is still too weak to claim the big-league day as its own. With the Michael Bay-directed Transformers scheduled to come out on the 4th, Fantastic Four 2 has once again been shoved to the side, this time two weeks earlier (June 15th). So, now Fox might want to do a little planning. The next time the holiday falls on a release day is 2012. I'm not sure they should wait for Part 3 or just keep it going up until then, but either way, they need to take siege now. And if any other films attempt another bit of bullying, I say its clobberin' time!

In a little over a week, Mission Impossible 3 will crash-land in theaters marking the official start of the summer blockbuster season. Why are you not excited about this? C'mon, it's summer! It's time to escape the heat and cool down in front of a film that cost more money than you or anyone you know will ever see in their entire life. What's NOT fun about that?

While some feel this year's crop of popcorn flicks are a bit smarter than previous years, like with every summer, we're bound to walk away from it sad, lonely and depressed because that one film we were anticipating so much left an awfully sour taste in our mouths. Last year, Michael Bay's The Island tanked, despite its gigantic budget. And, even though it made a killing at the box office, some felt Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds just wasn't up to par.

This year, it's completely up in the air. Personally, I don't have a very good feeling about Superman Returns. Sure, you can throw a ton of good buzz my way, claim Brandon Routh will revive the Man of Steel in a way that would make Christopher Reeve proud and tell me Bryan Singer made a good choice when he stepped away from the X-Men series -- but it just doesn't feel right. I'm calling it now -- this film will disappoint.

So, that leaves me wondering: Which summer blockbuster do you feel will turn out to be the most disappointing?

A good parody is hard to spin beyond the here and now. Take "Weird Al" Yankovic, for example. The pop-music jokester has put out 11 regular albums since 1983, when the accordian-playing nice guy's spoof of The Knack's "My Sharona" (titled "My Bologna" and recorded in the men's room of his college radio station) started his career as a musician, comedic icon and food fetishist when it blew up on The Dr. Demento Show. However, every hilarious and unforgettable cut like "Eat It", "Like A Surgeon" and "Smells Like Nirvana" that hit was matched by fade-away tracks like the New Kids jape "The White Stuff" (an ode to Oreos), the Rocky III goof "Theme From Rocky XIII (The Rye Or The Kaiser)" or the misjudgment "Taco Grande" (a riff on Latin rough-boy Gerardo's only hit, "Rico Suave"). The secret to a successful parody is complex, involving a careful balance of picking a song that is big enough, worthy of a good-natured dressing down and most important, funny. The same is true with movies, and the latest in the popular Scary Movie series is a great example of what can go right and wrong with such an attempt.