She might not be able to wear animated miniskirts and fly around as Tinker Bell, but Brittany Murphy is going to get the chance to have a breakdown. The Hollywood Reporter posts that Murphy is teaming up with Thora Birch, Tammy Blanchard, and Marc Blucas for a new psychological thriller helmed by Sean McConville called Deadline.

Similar to The Shining, Deadline stars Murphy as a writer who decides to go to an abandoned house to write a screenplay. But instead of serial killers who don't die or weird kids on trikes, a "bout of writer's block and other unforeseen events lead her to a psychological breakdown." I assume that the rest of the players are accompanying her to the house, or live nearby or something, unless there are flashbacks or weird apparitions.

However it's being done, it'll be great to see both Murphy and Birch get creepy again. My favorite Brittany film was Don't Say a Word, and Thora handled eerie fare well in The Hole (that British school kid movie that also starred Keira Knightley and had both of them locked in a hole in the ground). (It'll also be nice to see Birch in something again -- her last films came out in 2006, although she has a handful of projects in the works now.) And also, Blucas -- will he be good like Riley, good with a tough shell exterior like Animal in Prey for Rock & Roll, or bad, bad, bad? Shooting began Wednesday in Louisiana.

Oh, the struggling and dreaded Tinker Bell movie. Two years ago, we learned that Brittany Murphy had signed on to bring words to Tinker Bell in a new series of films. Last year, there was behind-the-scenes, executive trouble. This year, in April, pictures were released. Now, poor Brit is out.

Hollywood Newsroom reports that Brittany has been canned, and Mae Whitman is in. The post details all the woes with the Tink series, as well as Murphy's current decline -- from Ashton dumpage, to rumored drug use and a marriage to a man with a lot of legal trouble. This isn't exactly Disney-desired behavior, and it seems that her voice was lacking some sort of magic in the role -- not entirely surprising. Also, get this: "The story didn't work, too many fart jokes and lesbian innuendos." Fart jokes for Tink? What were they smoking when they originally put this together?

But now John Lasseter is working through this new Tink series, and one of the big changes is the voice -- Mae Whitman. HN mentions her role in Independence Day as the President's daughter, and her voice work on flicks like The Jungle Book 2, but she's also the strange teen paramour Ann Veal from Arrested Development. Remember her?

The post also includes a Lasseter-introduced clip from the upcoming movie, so you can check her out in action over at HN. Tinker Bell hits shelves this October.

In these supposedly progressive times, gender equality is one of those touchy issues relegated to the last paragraph of a trend piece nobody reads. When Katherine Heigl suggested to Vanity Fair that Judd Apatow's movies were sexist, the assertion came across like an after-the-fact shrug of acceptance. Ever the galvanizing provocateur, New York Times critic Manohla Dargis confronts the issue head-on with a thorough analysis of the gender bias in this year's summer blockbusters.

With "Iron Man, Batman, Big Angry Green Man" and other massive expressions of virility invading the box office, female roles appear to be relegated to the back of the multiplex. Dargis touches on the rumors that Warner Bros head Jeff Robinov believes no woman has been able to sell a movie since Julia Roberts (a point that Natalie Portman might contest, but not Paris Hilton) before sizing up numerous upcoming studio releases, with particular attention paid to Anna Faris, "who could be the next Judy Holliday but without the right material will, alas, probably end up the next Brittany Murphy." It's the kind of pronouncement that hits you in gut.

It was never a big surprise when Brittany Murphy lathered herself in a bunch of comedy -- her roots were in sitcom land. There was Drexell's Class, Kids Incorporated, Parker Lewis Can't Lose, Blossom, Sister, Sister... Still, most of her comedies have been pretty crappy, and nothing like the wonder that is Clueless, so I'm always happy to hear about another thriller she's signed onto. (I loved her in Don't Say a Word.) Variety reports that the actress has signed onto a new indie noir thriller called Across the Hall.

Heading into production next week under the directorial eye of Alex Merkin, the thriller focuses on "a love triangle between a young man, his best friend and his fiancee." Murphy is starring along with Mike Vogel (Cloverfield) and Danny Pino (Cold Case) -- who I presume will be the friends. If you're familiar with Merkin, this should sound familiar, as it's an expanded feature from his Adrian Grenier-starring short film of the same name. Have any of you seen it?

Meanwhile, Murphy's Ramen Girl is slated for release some time this year, and the period drama The White Hotel next year. The latter will be interesting -- she's playing an opera singer.

You know, we're leading with Brittany Murphy and Jason Lee, but they're only the mainstream, comedic tip to the talent that is coming from the upcoming fantasy comedy The Other Side. There is Giovanni Ribisi (Lost in Translation), and I wouldn't be surprised if he got the gig due to his connection with Lee -- they were both in I Love Your Work, plus an untitled short that Lee directed last year and he's appeared in a few eps of My Name is Earl. But the cast also boasts Jim Broadbent, Tim Roth and Lili Taylor listed in the news from Variety, and IMDb lists even more -- Anjelica Huston, Fiona Shaw, Eddie Izzard, Rupert Friend, Eddie Griffin, Dave Matthews... You get the picture.

Directed by producer David Michaels, Other Side comes from the pens of Michaels and Phil Reeves, and it focuses on a grad student (Murphy), who is spending her summer working at a science institute on a remote northern island. While there, "she discovered an eccentric community of characters who are hiding a secret about a terrible tragedy that took place many years before." Lee, for one, is playing: a hippie, chauffeur, pilot, butler, bartender and bait shop clerk. Between him and the rest of the cast, I would say that they picked just the right people to pull off an "eccentric community," although I find it smirk-worthy that Murphy will play a scientist. This is a comedy, so I imagine she will be a very, very cute and giggly scientist. However, how interesting would it be if she was the one believably serious actor in the piece? I mean, she has completely 180'd before.

There's this fantastical film made a few years ago called Neverwas that, aptly, almost never was. While it had an all-star cast, the movie never saw the light of day, save a screening at TIFF and some releases outside of North America. After a few years in the never-ether, the film is finally getting an absolutely bare-bones release on DVD. The directorial debut of Joshua Michael Stern, who previously penned a little-known thriller called Skeletons, Neverwas is the next generation of Hook. If you think back to 1991, you might remember when Robin Williams was a grown-up Peter Pan, heading back to Neverland. Although the green-tighted hero was played by an adult, Hook was definitely a clear-cut family film. Neverwas, on the other hand, has its grown-up hero, but it is not the children's film that it seems to be.

Aaron Eckhart plays Zach Riley, an up-and-coming psychiatrist who is adamant to take a job at a mental institution, and convinces the head doctor (William Hurt) to hire him. One of his patients is Gabriel Finch (Ian McKellen), a strange old man who is convinced that Zach is Zachary Small, a children's book hero who will help him save his kingdom of Neverwas. He is partially right -- Zach's father was the book's writer, T.L. Pierson (Nick Nolte), and he used his son as the model for the heroic character. Pierson is actually the reason for Zach's interest in the hospital. The writer suffered from depression, and killed himself while Zach was still a boy. Years later, Zach is haunted by his memories of his father, surely amplified by the reminders around him, and the fact that Pierson spent time in the same institution.

We hear it on the news twice a week, it seems: A young dead woman has been found on the road, in a ditch, back behind someone's barn, etc. We give the news a casual listen, perhaps offer a brief bit of sympathy to the girl's family, and then throw our focus back into our own lives. The world can be an ugly place; best not to dwell on the more horrific aspects of it ... until we have to.

Karen Moncrieff's follow-up to 2002's Blue Car is a decidedly unique take on the "serial killer movie." The Dead Girl is not a mystery, nor is it really a thriller. It's more of an anthology piece that introduces us to a collection of people on the periphery of a horrible murder. It's not a movie about the killer, per se, nor is it a character study of the victim ... except when it is. It's a tough movie to describe, a tougher movie to "enjoy," but an easy one to recommend -- provided you don't mind a little darkness, gloom and sobriety mixed in with your indie-style ensemble pieces.

I really don't know where I stand on Brittany Murphy. I actually watched Almost Home for lack of something better to do. When she made her way to Clueless, she seemed fun, but I think my interest waned with her weight. However, I found myself seeing Love and Other Disasters at TIFF, and was actually entertained. I'm not sure if it was the movie itself, the crappy film I had seen earlier in the day, or if I was under the influence of fan girl exuberance. Regardless, I'm actually intrigued by her upcoming movie, Ramen Girl.

Earlier this year, Erik Davis shared casting news. Now, Movies Online has released part of an interview they conducted with the waif. While the short synopsis does the film no justice, it sounds like more than a bubble-gun remake of Lost in Translation. The start is typical -- girl follows boy to foreign country, he goes off and girl is left to her own devices. After a little wandering, she decides to learn the art of ramen, which is news to me, since my ramen knowledge goes no further than Montana going nuts for it on the Real World: Boston .

I'm sure this is still sounding sketchy, so let me throw in the twist: Since it takes place in Japan, half of the film will be in Japanese, and according to Murphy, she's the only one speaking English for most of it. If she can throw off the silly, romantic comedy gimmicks that seem to hover around her like Pig-Pen's dirt, she might be able to make something new of her career.

You may not know this about me, but I am addicted to IMDb. Every now and then, as I'm sitting here working late on a Saturday night, I stop and think to myself, "Gee, I wonder what Brittany Murphy is up to next?" Actually, it's not always Murphy. Sometimes I'll get the urge to go IMDb Jennifer Jason Leigh, or Sarah Polley, or even Juliette Lewis -- heck, once I even checked in on old Corey Haim. Once I get the idea in my head, it's stuck there like a bad '80s rock ballad, and until I give in and satisfy that IMDb jones, it just sits there in my brain, nagging at me.

Anyhow, this time it was Brittany Murphy for some reason -- perhaps because Chris was recently ragging on her Tinker Bell gig -- so I checked her out. And, holy cow! She's got a LOT on her plate these days. In addition to aforesaid Tinker Bell madness, Murphy has no fewer than five films on her slate (if you count the voice work in Happy Feet, that animated penguin flick from Warner Bros.) -- and some of them actually look to be (potentially) good.

Last fall Disney unveiled a line of merchandise called Fairies, which follows the company's successful Princesses franchise. As part of the series of products and licensing deals, Disney will release straight-to-video animated films featuring Tinker Bell (since when is her name two words?), the tiny pixie duster from Peter Pan, and her fairy friends. As if J.M. Barrie isn't rolling around in his grave enough after the video sequel Return to Neverland or from the fact that Disney has created a clique of friends for Tink (unlike with the Princesses line, Disney doesn't already have a bunch of fairy characters to mine from), Disney is further ruining the playwright's iconic characters by having Tinker Bell speak. And providing her voice is Brittany Murphy.

Maybe some people are okay with a talking Tink, but if I'm not one of them. If I remember correctly, a lot of the plot points in Peter Pan have to do with her inability to communicate by any other means than pantomime. Maybe she just is so small that her voice doesn't  project to humans, and she can speak perfectly with other fairies, but it still ruins part of her character to hear her voice, especially if it is the same as Murphy's voice.  What next? Pooh loses weight? Donald buys pants? Oh, I know! Make another Bambi sequel that claims Bambi's mother wasn't actually killed by the hunters.

 

Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban are hoping to elude the paparazzi's lens by getting hitched during the evening. The pair plan to keep their June 25^th nuptials in Australia private by holding the ceremony while the sun sets making it difficult for hovering helicopters to get good pictures. Personally, I'd skip the hullabaloo and simply suggest that Kidman pose sideways for her wedding snaps. Nothing screams "private" quite like "invisible". I'd also give the officiating minister's beard a quick tug to make sure Tom Cruise isn't up to his old Ethan Hunt face-mask tricks.

Brittany Murphy is really, really proud of her super-healthy skinniness. The Uptown Girl admitted to eating upwards of 12 eggs a day in order to bulk up and no longer "feel embarrassed about being too tiny."  Thankfully the starlet doesn't feel self-conscious anymore and is quite comfortable in her own skin (hear that Camryn Manheim? Fat girls no longer rule Hollywood!). Explaining her alleged weight-loss, Murphy claimed, "I'm the same size I was in Clueless; it's just that weight in your face changes as you get older." It sure does! And just like magic, all the fat starts wiggling into your upper lip and your arms get scarily toned and your hair turns blond!

Quick, turn the hemp factories back on! Woody Harrelson and his wife welcomed their third daughter, Makani Ravello, into the world this weekend and she's going to need something to wear!

There's a lot more going on at Cannes than staring at the red carpet (even though I'm in New York, I'm totally addicted to doing this thanks to IFC TV's damn Le Cannes Cam) and watching movies until you're bleary-eyed. In addition to trying to sell distribution rights to their films, studios and directors take the festival as an opportunity to make casting announcements, both because the press is there and because, well, stars help sell movies, right? So here's a sampling of yesterday's name-dropping:

• King Kong's ladyfriend Naomi Watts will star alongside Viggo Mortenson in David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises, a thriller about the "seamy underside of life" in London, something that features dead prostitutes and sex-trafficking, apparently. Watts will play a midwife who gets caught up in the whole mess while investigating the death of a teenager. Michael Haneke also announced that Watts will star in the English-language remake he's doing of his 1997 horror thriller, Funny Games, about "a middle-class family on holiday who are terrorized by two young men." Go Naomi.

• None other than miss Scarlett Johansson is set to star in Brilliant, a heist film from Barry Levinson about a jewel thief and the conman she joins forces with to pull off the proverbial big score. Unsurprisingly, the relationship between the two is "fraught with twists and turns." And by "twist and turns" they mean "flirting and sex," because that's what happens in every movie that features the teaming of a mismatched team.

• And finally, Brittany Murphy will star in The Ramen Girl, an indie flick that sounds very anti-cliche. In the movie, she'll play "an American woman who's stranded in Tokyo after breaking up with her boyfriend. Searching for direction in life, she trains to be a ramen noodle chef under a tyrannical Japanese master." The nice thing (so far, anyway) is that the master will be played by Toshiyuki Nishida, a 60-year-old, not hot Japanese actor. So maybe, just maybe, this one will have a point other than fairly tale love. Maybe.