Wednesday clip show: Will there be anything good on TV this fall?

Actually, before we get into any of that, just a bit of movie news, because anyone who's been here before knows that "The Other Guys" was my favorite comedy of 2010, and now comes word that stars Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg will be teaming up again.

This time out it will be for something called "Turkey Bowl," a Warner Brothers comedy in which they will play rival football coaches of small-town teams whose big showdown is a Thanksgiving Day game.

Sounds like pretty typical Ferrell sports-related fare and a chance for Marky Mark to shout a whole lot, but out of love for "The Other Guys," I'll probably spring for a matinee ticket for that.

And now rather quickly on to the clips today, since I'm already behind (it is Wednesday, after all), starting with a couple of movie clips and then, as promised, a look at some of what's coming to TVs this fall (and a warning, even though Zooey Deschanel appears, it isn't all pretty).

First up comes the first trailer I've seen for "The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn," the first, I believe, in at least a planned trilogy and set to come out just in time for Christmas. This is just a teaser, but it does raise hopes that Steven Spielberg has indeed come up with a pretty grand adventure for the young Belgian detective, but I have at least one quibble: Does the kid at the end of this clip look anything like the beloved cartoon character created by Hergé? I think not. Enjoy the clip, anyway.



I have to say, of all the wide-release offerings coming this summer, I think J.J. Abrams' "Super 8" has risen to the top for me. Perhaps its clever marketing or I'm must feeling nostalgic for some good, old-fashioned '80s-style (dare I say Spielbergian?) fun. Anyways, enjoy this clip from the movie, which sets up the big crash that unleashes ... well, I don't know, but I can't wait to find out on June 10. Enjoy.



OK, moving on to TV, I try against steep odds to remain optimistic, so let's start with the good and work our way down. Keeping with J.J. Abrams, though he's not directing the pilot, his Bad Robot company is behind Fox's "Alcatraz," starring Jorge Garcia, Sam Neill and somehow Parminder Nagra of "Bend It Like Beckham," too. As you'll see from this promo clip, it involves the titular prison, time travel and some really bad dudes. Sounds like the perfect mix for escapist TV, so I'm in. Enjoy the promo.



I haven't watched "Napoleon Dynamite" for years, but I'm fairly confident that in movie form, at least, it will stand up over time. As an animated series? Not so sure. I have, however, given up on almost all animated offerings now on TV ("South Park" is the lone holdout, but I don't think I'll ever really be able to quit that), so there's a potential hole to fill. Anyways, as you'll see from this Fox promo clip (didn't realize until now that it's all Fox today), all the original cast members return for this, so I guess everyone needed the work. Enjoy the clip, and then stick around for something that never, never should have happened to poor Zooey Deschanel.



OK, instead of saving the best last, I've just put the worst off as long as I could (and hey, I did suffer through a Helen Mirren-less "Prime Suspect" clip, too, but I spared you that). If you told me Zooey Deschanel would be getting her own sitcom and that her character would sing a lot, I'd be hooked. Until I saw this. It just looks excruciatingly (sp?) awful, even though she's a game player in it. "Enjoy" this promo clip for the upcoming Fox show "New Girl," and have a perfectly endurable Wednesday. Peace out.

The impossibility of replacing Helen Mirren, and much, much more

This idea has already died once for the best of all possible reasons: They couldn't find anybody to follow in the footsteps of Dame Helen Mirren in playing the role of Jane Tennison. Of course they couldn't, because it would be impossible.

But that apparently won't stop people from trying. Although the simply awful idea was shelved as a midseason possibility once already, NBC is now trying to revive a "Prime Suspect" reboot once again, this time with its eyes on Maria Bello to play the lead. Take a second or two to think about just how much this would be trading down, though she is obviously a very pretty lady.

If you've seen Mirren in anything, and I'm going to have to assume everyone has, you know she would be hard to follow in any role, but this one in particular really can't be played by anyone else. Along with "The Wire" and "Homicide," "Prime Suspect" is the only other cop TV show that I've bothered to watch in the last 20 years, almost entirely because of the desperate humanity she brought to the role (I meant to watch "Chicago Code," since it comes from the "Terriers" guys, but I simply forgot, as many other people apparently did too.)

So, here's hoping this idea is already D.O.A. Here's what Bello, who recently starred on some incarnation of "Law & Order," apparently, had to tell Entertainment Weekly about the matter:

“There may be interest in me doing it, but I haven’t read anything yet or talked to anyone in-depth about it,” Bello told EW exclusively while attending the 10th Annual Movies For Grownups Awards on Monday. “I’m possibly interested. Definitely nervous to even think about taking over for Helen Mirren. C’mon! How could anyone compete with her? Didn’t she do about 10 of them and win an Emmy every time? I’m open to things right now. I’m just trying to go with the flow of my life and I’ve been going back-and-forth to Haiti trying to help out. That has felt good, but I am also wanting to do something spectacular with my life work-wise and that may end up being it.”

Even with Peter Berg of "Friday Night Lights" apparently roped in to running this, I really can't see how it would be anything but a spectacular failure, so just move on, please!

In much better TV news, Zooey Deschanel, who is one of those women I'll definitely watch in just about anything, is about to sign for a Fox sitcom for the fall, with the rather colorful title of "Chicks and Dicks."

Of all the possibilities that might be swimming through your dirty minds, the "dicks" here are apparently her three roommates. The comedy would have her playing an elementary school teacher who, fresh from a break-up, moves in with a trio of "immature young men." Sounds an awful lot like "The Big Bang Theory" to me, but like I said, for her, I suppose I'll watch at least a few episodes of just about anything.

OK, a lot of stuff to get to today, so forgive the schizophrenia, but I don't have a ton of time to do this in the morning. Paul Dano, who I saw most recently in the engaging little oddity "The Extra Man," is reteaming with "Little Miss Sunshine" directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris for something even odder that springs from the mind of his girlfriend, Zoe Kazan.

Kazan, who just happens to be the granddaughter of Elia Kazan, wrote the script for "He Loves Me," in which Dano will play a writer who wills Kazan's character into existence by writing her to love him. Sounds like nothing but fun to me.

And fans of "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" (I first wrote the first word of that as "assassassination," perhaps distracted by the rather saucy presence of Carla Gugino at the end of this post .. stay tuned) director Andrew Dominik is slowly assembling a first-rate cast for what should be a grand heist flick with "Cogan's Trade."

One Brad Pitt plays Cogan, a hit mans' point person who becomes involved in the investigation of a heist that hits the mob at a high-stakes poker game. Now comes word that the always great Richard Jenkins is joining the game as a lawyer who's collecting information on the game. Definitely keep your eyes on this one ...

And speaking, sort of, of Jenkins, Thomas McCarthy, who directed him in his Oscar-nominated role in "The Visitor," has just signed on with Disney to write the script for what should a really fun baseball movie. "Million Dollar Arm" will be based on "the inspirational story of how sports agent J.B. Bernstein discovered professional pitchers Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel through his Indian reality show.”

If that sounds a lot like "Slumdog Millionaire," so what. Here, courtesy of Collider, is a brief synopsis of the tale:

Bernstein reportedly got the idea for the reality show when he was watching cricket and realized that the throwing motion wasn’t that different from baseball. The show launched in India in 2008 with over 40,000 applicants including Singh and Patel, who were the two finalists. They were brought to the U.S. and improved their English by listening to rap and watching action movies. Singh and Patel became the first Indian athletes to sign professional baseball contracts when they picked up by the Pittsburgh Pirates. Even better, Singh and Patel probably didn’t know they were being picked up by one of the worst baseball teams of all-time.

Wow. No word yet if McCarthy would also direct this, but given the chance, I can't imagine he'd turn it down. In the meantime, McCarthy has one of the movies I'm most looking forward to for 2011, "Win Win" starring Paul Giamatti and Amy Ryan, coming out hopefully wide enough to reach my little corner of the world March 18.

OK, to keep it on movies, here are two rather obvious examples of Oscar bait, one for this year and one for next. First up comes next, and the first photo of Meryl Streep as "The Iron Lady," Margaret Thatcher. The appearance is admittedly uncanny, and I have no doubt that Streep will be great in this biopic, being directed by "Mamma Mia" director Phyllida Lloyd (say anything snarky about that you may want to .. not having seen that movie, I really can't.) The movie has a great supporting cast with James Broadbent as hubby Dennis and Richard E. Grant as Michael Heseltine. Here's the photo, and keep an eye out for the movie sometime later this year.


And getting back to this year's Oscars, former "Homicide" star Melissa Leo is up for a Best Supporting Actress award for her work in "The Fighter," and certainly should be. If I had a vote, however, I'd vote for young Hailee Steinfeld in "True Grit," who should really be in the Best Actress category, but that's not really her fault. Anyways, apparently wanting to win (and why not?), Leo has taken it upon herself to mount her own ad campaign, which is very effective in its simplicity. Enjoy, and "consider" ...


Though this has certainly gone on long enough already today, I'll leave you with two videos that caught my eye. The first is the first trailer I know of for "Elektra Luxx," which beyond the obvious allure of starring Carla Gugino playing a porn star who dresses up occasionally as a nun, has the promise to be a pretty oddly solid little comedy. From director Sebastian Gutierrez, it's a sequel of sorts to his 2009 movie "Women in Trouble," which I enjoyed quite a bit. As you'll see from the trailer, it also stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Adrianne Palicki of "Friday Night Lights" and many other beautiful women, so enjoy, and keep an eye out for this in at least some corners of the world in March.



And finally, saving quite possibly the best for last, here's the first trailer I know of for the Sundance comedy "Submarine," a British coming-of-age tale from first-time director Richard Ayaode. The plot (15-year-old desperate to lose his virginity and keep his parents together) sounds terribly familiar, but as you'll see from the trailer, it has more than a little "Rushmore" spirit to it, and it also stars Noah Taylor and Sally Hawkins as the parents, so bully. Not sure when this will come out in America, but enjoy the trailer anyway, and have a perfectly passable Wednesday. Peace out.

DVD picks of the week: All hail Hal Holbrook and Helen Mirren

Looking at that headline, it's probably as much as anything a reflection that I myself am getting pretty friggin' old, but - by a pretty wide margin - the best two things on DVD this week are a movie starring an 84-year-old man and the complete run of a sublime TV series starring a 65-year-old woman (though on the younger side of the scale, I'm watching vol. 3 of the UK teen series "Skins" streaming on Netflix too, and that's a real treat.)

First up comes "That Evening Sun," a genuine Southern drama that has been around for quite a while. I first missed the chance to see it at the 2009 Atlanta Film Festival 365, but luckily managed to catch it in its rather meager theatrical run (it apparently has made a paltry $281,000 or so at the box office) last spring. The flick also played the Macon Film Festival this year, and is extremely worth catching now on DVD.

The few who have seen this already will know it's a rare starring turn by Hal Holbrook, the kind of treasure that should be savored while it lasts. Holbrook is probably my favorite performer, if I were forced to pick only one, and here he plays Abner Meecham, an aging Tennesseean who bolts the nursing home to try and reclaim the family homestead that his son has sold out from underneath him.

It's really a role Holbrook was made to play, full of anger, pride and, best of all, a dark humor. Returning to the farm, he finds it now inhabited by two of my other favorite Southern actors, Ray McKinnon and Maconite Carrie Preston (aka Arlene on "True Blood"), along with their daughter, played by ingenue Mia Wasikowska.

What ensues is a war of wills that can at times be hard to watch because, as each holds his ground, they each become less and less likable, but that gives the drama based on a short story by William Gay and directed by Scott Teems a natural feel.

Music by Patterson Hood of the Drive-By Truckers makes this all go down even sweeter, so if you wanna take a chance this weekend on a movie that so far hasn't even managed to make a blip on the radar screen, trust me and give "That Evening Sun" a try.

Today's second pick comes with a disclosure: Acorn Media was kind enough to send me the complete "Prime Suspect" to review on DVD, but that doesn't change at all just how great the UK police procedural starring Helen Mirren was and still is.

Though the stories contained in the seven, three-hour-or-so installments are as gritty - and often more so - than anything you'll find on the best of American police procedurals, it's the performance of Helen Mirren at its core that make these so entertaining.

The humanly flawed cop has been played out way past the point of cliche many times, and very well by Dennis Franz on "NYPD Blue" and Dominic West on "The Wire," but Mirren plays it so naturally that it trumps the pattern completely.

Watching how her life's foibles (among other things, her Jane Tennyson battles the bottle as much as she does her inability to have anything approaching a full personal life outside of the police beat) intertwine with the often frustrating and sickening cases she pursues make this the most well-rounded police series I've encountered on TV. It's indeed on a level with David Simon's "The Wire," and anyone who's been here before knows that from me that's the highest form of praise.

These have been available individually on DVD for years now, but I believe Acorn's collection is the first time they've all been collected in one set. They would make a fine gift for anyone who enjoys great TV, or if you're so inclined, perhaps for yourself.

And with that, I have to go now to the job that pays me in something besides promotional DVDS. Peace out.

A "Prime Suspect" remake? Terminate with extreme prejudice!

It's probably good for my fairly under control blood pressure that as I'm first hearing about this idiocy, it also comes with word that NBC has - for now at least - shelved this monstrosity, and for the best possible reason.

Yes, the network whose last big brilliant idea was putting Jay Leno in prime time five nights a week (how'd that work out, guys?) was actually considering a remake of the sublime BBC police procedural "Prime Suspect."

And I can certainly understand the temptation. For sheer intensity matched with characters you actually care about, only "The Wire" and - at its best - "NYPD Blue" have even come close to matching "Prime Suspect" on this side of the pond, and almost all of the credit for that has to go Dame Helen Mirren.

Of all the characters of the last 20 years or so, on big screen or small, very few have been taken over as completely as Helen Mirren dived directly into the role of Jane Tennyson and made it entirely her own. And it's apparently their belated realization of just how impossible it would be to replace her that finally led NBC to abandon this madness.

Unable to find the right actress for this, NBC has now shelved it until at least June, and here's hoping forever. If I had to name one actress who could pull this off, the only name that even comes to mind is Anjelica Huston, but as great as she is, I can't even see that working, if God forbid she'd even be interested.

And if you've somehow never seen "Prime Suspect," I can't recommend it highly enough. If you want to get started, the beginning would be best, but if you only want to watch one, No. 3, with David Thewlis and Ciaran Hinds in a truly tawdry tale about child murder and serious police corruption, is the best of all in my book.

Here's hoping that this NBC "idea" gets aborted for good, and from now on today it's all about a trio of clips that at least managed to catch my eye this morning.

First up comes a clip from the upcoming flick "Date Night" featuring Tina Fey, Steve Carell and, in this clip, a shirtless Marky Mark. Even though NBC's current king and queen of comedy would seem to make a dream team on the big screen, I somehow just can't get all that excited about this. I just get the sinking feeling it's gonna lack any of the truly manic appeal of "After Hours" in chronicling a supposedly "wild" night in NYC. Anyways, enjoy the clip.

Next up comes a TV spot for something I'm much more excited about, "The Runaways." On paper, the idea of Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning playing rockers Joan Jett and Cherie Currie just sounds dreadful, but the buzz about this out of Sundance was mostly positive, and it really does seem music video director Floria Sigismondi has come up with something that will rock when this finally comes out March 19. Enjoy.



And finally today comes a surprise that made me genuinely laugh out loud. I've never found Jimmy Kimmel all that funny at all, but Tracy Morgan can really do no wrong in my book (yes, I'm really gonna go see "Cop Out" just to see how funny he can manage to be in it, even though the reviews are dreadful.) In this clip I have to assume appeared on Kimmel's show sometime this week (after my school-night bed time, of course), he and Morgan make a rap video, and it's absolutely as silly as you might imagine. Here's hoping that Kimmel's turn as Lil' Jim puts the final nail in autotune. Enjoy, and have a perfectly bearable Thursday. Peace out.

TV tidbits and a glorious glimpse of "The Damned United"

Does anyone else remember the fairly great little documentary "Hands on a Hard Body"? It was a contest doco about a bunch of folks who compete to see who can stand the longest with one hand on a pickup truck, with the winner getting the truck.

For a strange little flick I don't even think you can get on DVD, it's had a surprisingly high number of attempts to re-create it. Robert Altman (and no, I'm not making that up) even had his sights on making a fictionalized version of it when he died, but that wouldn't have been nearly as crazy as this latest reinvisioning (is that even a word)?

It seems that Doug Wright, a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, and lyricist Amanda Green have scripted a musical based on the story, which will be staged at the La Jolla Playhouse in California. And no, even if I concentrated really hard, I don't think I could make up anything quite that crazy.

Except for that, it's mostly about TV here today. I suppose I should change the blog's name on days like this, but since it's my space, I write about just about anything that catches my eye.

It starts today with what could only be called excellent news for fans of "Freaks and Geeks" (and if you're not one, I just have to assume you've never seen it.) It seems that Mike White, who served as a "Freaks and Geeks" producer and also wrote probably my favorite episode, "The Little Things," before going on to pen "School of Rock" and other movies, is now returning to TV for HBO with Laura Dern in tow.

The HBO project will star Dern as a woman who troubles those around her when she undergoes a spiritual awakening. And, I apologize for this in advance, but I keep trying to get rid of HBO, but "every time I think I'm out, they pull me back in" with intriguing TV.

OK, so much for the good news. This next bit just makes me vomit in my own mouth, and not just a little bit either (and I must say, orange juice and kashi just taste a whole lot better going down.)

It seems that, unable to come up with any more ideas for its shows that aren't about fat people, NBC is now going to piss all over the great "Prime Suspect" with what might just be the most unnecessary and downright insulting remake of all time.

Without, of course, Dame Helen Mirren or even series creator Lynda La Plante in tow, it seems that "Without a Trace" creator Hank Steinberg has the hubris to take this on. Thankfully, so far at least, it's just a planned two-hour presentation rather than a series, so maybe this just will go away extremely quickly and will be forgotten even faster.

But enough of that bile. In much better cop TV news, it seems that Fox has picked up 13 episodes of a new show from "Burn/Notice" creator Matt Nix.

Though the premise - an ambitious, by-the-book cop is saddled with a drunken, wild-card partner - sounds awfully familiar, from Nix I know it will at least be a fun mix of action and humor, and that's probably enough to get me to tune in when this hits the airwaves.

OK, for the finish, I suppose I should at least make this a bit about movies, especially when it's a glimpse of what is - next to only Spike Jonze's "Where the Wild Things Are" - the movie I'm almost most looking forward to for the rest of this year.

Based on easily one of my favorite books by David Peace, "The Damned United" tells the rather disastrous tale of Brian Clough's 42-or-so days as coach of Leeds United, a team he despised even as he took the job. With a script from Peter Morgan and starring Michael Sheen, I really don't see how this can be bad, and you can see from the trailer below that Sheen has at least captured the manic nature of Clough that drives the book. Enjoy, and have a perfectly passable Thursday. Peace out.

Bullets over brains: The beauty of Shoot 'Em Up

I feel more than a little odd singing the praises of an extremely bloody (albeit equally silly) movie on the sixth anniversary of 9/11, but here goes.

Looking at the box-office numbers, I'm apparently one of the very few people in the world who bothered to see "Shoot 'Em Up" over the weekend (though there were two other people at my Monday afternoon screening.) I knew "3:10 to Yuma" would rule the weekend, but I didn't expect this very funny flick to fall so hard.

I've read a lot of critics' putdowns of this flick, and have to say I'm more than a little baffled. To me, at least, the most common complaints ring hollow. Given the title, what in the world were people expecting? Yes, it is essentially a string of elaborately staged gun battles between Clive Owen and, well, about 150 dudes or so, all led by Paul Giamatti. And it does indeed play out like a video game or an extremely violent music video, but so what?

Writer/director Michael Davis embraces these inherent limitations and injects his story with an uneven dose of wit, tons of adrenaline and one of the most gloriously ludicrous plots in recent memory. Why, at least for me, does this all work so much better than, say, Joe Carnahan's simply awful "Smokin' Aces"? Because not once, unlike Carnahan's flick, does "Shoot 'Em Up" take itself remotely seriously.

The ridiculous plot, in fact, lifts a large chunk of Carnahan's "Aces" story and takes it even further beyond the line of believability. It starts with Clive Owen as a former black ops officer who just happens to be sitting on a bench as a very pregnant woman runs by, being pursued by some rather angry gunmen. After delivering the baby (amid a flurry of bullets, of course), Owen ends up on the run with the youngun and being pursued by Giamatti's gunmen. Through circumstances too silly to explain here, he hooks up with la bella Monica Bellucci, who pulls off her role of looking perpetually annoyed with aplomb.

However, even by the standard of a movie that's paced like a cartoon (with Clive Owen perpetually munching on a carrot, in case you somehow still missed the point), this is far from perfect. Though the bullet ballets are designed to get more and more insane as the show goes on (set to heavy metal and grunge, of course, including Motorhead's always-welcome "Ace of Spades"), it finally reaches a breaking point about an hour in. For me it came when our hero, cornered in a gun factory by at least 20 dudes, manages to escape by using a series of weapons he somehow managed to (sight unseen, by us) string from the cieling. And, simply admitting and embracing the fact that a plot makes no sense doesn't completely excuse it.

That, however, is thinking far too deeply about a flick that's best enjoyed without much thought at all. I was still laughing on the ride home, and from a late-summer flick I can't ask for much more than that.

I'm convinced that if this had come out in June rather than September it would have been a pretty big hit. And if you do bother to see this and are offended by any of it (including an infant in a constant state of peril), just take a second to look at the title and again ask: What in the world were you expecting?

A "Prime" opportunity on DVD

Though the big news for me today in the DVD world is that "The Wire: Season 4" is finally set to come out Dec. 4, there is a police show that's almost as good as that HBO masterpiece coming to a close on DVD today.

Long before U.S. cable programmers realized that people might actually like seeing great actresses beyond the age of 25 on TV, Dame Helen Mirren paved the way for the likes of Kyra Sedgwick, Glenn Close and Holly Hunter as Detective Superintendent Jane Tennison. Through seven searing miniseries, aired on PBS stations in the U.S., she has starred in one of the best police procedurals around.

Now, with 2006's "Prime Suspect: The Final Act" out on DVD today, the story finally goes out on top, even after Jane Tennison hits bottom.

As the seventh chapter opens, retirement is just around the corner for Tennison, and her final case revolves around finding a schoolgirl's killer. This being "Prime Suspect," she and her team follow several wrong turns and disappointing leads along the way, but the ultimate challenge this time is personal. Faced with a challenging case and the imminent death of her father, Det. Tennison dives deeper into alcoholism and almost ruins everything.

It would be more than a little cliched with a lesser leading lady, but this is Dame Mirren at her best, and I highly recommend this DVD. Peace out.

Oliver Stone finally heads back to Vietnam

Although I was really hoping he would jump into the middle of the hunt for Osama bin laden, Oliver Stone has apparently changed course and is now heading back to familiar territory. And that could surely be a good thing.

He is apparently closing a deal with United Artists to finance "Pinkville," a drama about the investigation of the 1968 My Lai massacre that he would direct. Bruce Willis and Channing Tatum will star.

This would be Stone's fourth foray into Vietnam (well, fifth, of course, if you count his actual war service.) Of the the three he's already made, I'd rank "Heaven & Earth" as the best, with "Platoon" a close second and "Born on the Fourth of July" trailing rather badly.

In the new flick, Willis will play Army Gen. William R. Peers, who supervised the investigation into the massacre by U.S. soldiers of as many as 500 My Lai villagers, most of them unarmed women, children and elderly. It's good to hear that, unlike Sly Stallone, Mr. Willis may finally be starting to act his age and not taking to the battlefield.

Tatum will play Hugh Thompson, a helicopter pilot who, upon realizing what was happening below, put a stop to the killing by placing his craft between gunmen and the few villagers who were left, and telling his two shipmates to fire on the soldiers if they shot any more people. They airlifted the survivors and reported the carnage to superiors.

Although they really need to work on that title ("Pinkville" is apparently the description on a military map for the region where My Lai is, but so what?), this could be a welcome return to meaty material for Stone. I enjoyed "World Trade Center" enough as an ode to heroism, but it's been way too long since Oliver Stone challenged anyone or anything on screen, so I can only hope he jumps rights into "the shit," as Max Fischer put it so well, with this one.

Lucas to make two good movies?

OK, that may be a bit harsh, but I'm counting on the Lucas-produced "Indy 4" being fantastic, and this news about a World War II flick sounds almost as good. When's the last time you could really associate George Lucas with two good movies?

The latest, "Red Tails," is a World War II movie he apparently came up with the story for some time ago. The flick, which will center on the Tuskegee Airmen and be produced through Lucasfilm, will be scripted by John Ridley, who is definitely on a roll of late.

Ridley has already written the very funny but underappreciated "Undercover Brother" and the story for "Three Kings," among other flicks, and he came to Lucas' attention after the producer read his script for a movie about the L.A. riots, which Spike Lee will hopefully someday soon finally get around to making instead of toying with more "Inside Man" nonsense.

I really hope Lucas is finally committed to this. What may finally make him follow through with it could be ego. Lord knows what Peter Jackson will do after he wraps "The Lovely Bones," but if it's his long-rumored World War II aviation flick "Dambusters" a fun race to the finish could be on between these two titans.

Paul Giamatti channeling Karl Rove?

The marketing for "Shoot 'Em Up," which has never once shied away from the fact that this movie will be nothing more than an unapologeticly silly hail of bullets, has been just about brilliant.

The latest installment I found was a column by director Michael Davis at MTV Movie News in which, among other amusing things, he reveals the inspiration for Paul Giamatti's hitman in the upcoming flick:

He (Giamatti) says he'd like his character to be based on Karl Rove — a seemingly bookish guy who exercises power behind the scenes. I like it. His character turns out to be way more flamboyant than Rove ... but I like how our free-flowing conversation started making the character better than what is on the page.

If you didn't know it was written by a promising new director, you might think he was just an extremely eager fanboy as he describes meeting Giamatti, Clive Owen and the ravishing Monica Bellucci for the first time, but it's genuinely entertaining reading. And coupled next week with the "3:10 to Yuma" remake, his flick will hopefully blast us right out of the movie-muck that has flowed forth after "Superbad."

TV tidbits

Though I spent probably too much time yesterday fantasizing about the return of Eliza Dushku as Faith the vampire slayer, it seems Tim Minear has other plans in mind for his next TV project. Minear, who was a co-creator of "Angel" and had a big role in the creation of "Firefly," will reteam with his "Wonderfalls" partner Tim Holland for "Miracle Man." It centers on a disgraced former televangelist, a man of no faith, who finds that God is using him to perform real miracles and change lives, starting with his own.

"It's about losing everything and starting over and finding that there is a higher purpose in life," Minear said. "It's about a man who says, 'I don't know how to be good, but I'll try to be better.' "

The premise, frankly, doesn't sound terribly promising, but after the disastrous treatment of "Drive," Mr. Minear needs and deserves a winner, so I'll at least give it a chance.

And, apparently it pays off big to draw extremely crude and smart cartoons. Assuring we will get "South Park" until at least 2011 (huzzah!), Trey Parker and Matt Stone have signed a new $75 million deal with Comedy Central.

The unique deal gives them a 50-50 split on any digital ad revenue. In my fairly many years on this planet I've yet to see anything approaching $75 million, and I really can't even imagine what it might look like, but these guys definitely deserve it. Fifteen years of "South Park"? Bring it on.

OK, it's a long post today, but I'm almost finished, so bear with me. In the mail a few weeks back I got the DVD for the final "Prime Suspect," which I will dutifully review before its Sept. 11 release (but, having already seen it on TV, I can tell you now that it's as good as any entry in the series, and therefore better than at least 90 percent of what passes for entertainment on TV now.)

But "Prime Suspect" does indeed appear to be over, and creator Linda LaPlante is moving on too. She's signed with NBC to pen "Mafia Wives," which revolves around mob wives who take over the business in their husbands' absence. Sounds fairly promising, and it's definitely in the right hands.

And anyone who actually made it this far deserves a reward. Here's the latest trailer for "American Gangster," Ridley Scott's take on the saga of Harlem drug kingpin Frank Lucas. Peace out.