The cast and crew of New York, I Love You keeps growing and growing. There's not even enough room on the headline to list all the names that were just added. New York is a collection of short stories, part of a "Cities of Love" anthology that was begun by Paris, je ta'ime. New York will reportedly be followed by Shanghai, and then cities in South America and Africa.

The stories are showcasing an incredible variety of actors and directors. Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson are both making their directing debut, there's a good representation of international talent, and Brett Ratner hasn't been driven away by pitchforks and torches. Variety reported that Orlando Bloom, Olivia Thirlby, Hayden Christensen, and Ethan Hawke had climbed aboard the film. No word on who's segments they will appear in yet -- but a far better choice for Bloom's career than Prince of Persia, wouldn't you say?

Take from this what you will, but Cinema Blend is reporting on a tip they received from someone who was hanging with Adam Brody in a bar up in British Columbia. What's Brody doing there? Well, apparently some of the cast is with George Miller scouting locations for Justice League Mortal. (Not sure why they'd be up there with the director scouting, but let's roll with it for now ...) Anyway, Brody, Miller and a few others were in a bar, getting wasted, when this girl (who wrote into CB) asked him what they all were doing there. Naturally he said they were scouting for Justice League Mortal (which recently had to shift production from Australia to Canada). Then it gets interesting.

Here's her full quote: "George is our director. He said he's playing The Flash, Common is playing Green Arrow (or Lantern, one or the other), Armie Hammer (sounded like Arm and Hammer) is Batman, someone from "mad max" is Martian Man-hunter (didn't catch the name) and Hayden Christensen is Superman. Brody also nodded to the woman to his right and said "she (he said her name but I didn't catch it) is in it too". Oh, and they had lots of drinks." While I'm very reluctant to believe this one, on the other hand I could totally buy them wanting Christensen to play Superman. He'd bring some more "celebrity" to the cast, even though the fanboys who hated him Star Wars would hate him again -- even more this time -- for Superman. Should be interesting to see this one play out, as Justice League Mortal is supposed to begin shooting this summer.

What do you think about Hayden Christensen playing Superman?

Sometimes, casting alternatives seem to come out of left field, like this latest one. According to MTV, before Hayden Christensen was cast in the new science-fiction flick Jumper, it was... Eminem -aka- Marshall Mathers. What the F***?! I've heard of strange possibilities before, but this pushes those strange boundaries. It would be like hearing Mick Jagger was up for a role Christopher Walken got, or Debbie Harry instead of Mia Farrow.

Sure, Eminem did alright in his movie, but it's not a stretch to pretty much play yourself. Anyway, writer/director Doug Liman says that the two met and they were having "conversations" about his participation. It was back in 2006, right after Liman was tapped to adapt the sci-fi book by Steven Gould. As Liman describes it: "The thing is that you're like, 'Oh my God, what would that movie have been like? But you've got to understand that Nicole Kidman was originally cast as the lead in Mr. & Mrs. Smith, and Brad Pitt was originally the lead in Bourne Identity." Wow. I'm sure both of those actors are thrilled that their possible casting is being equated to Eminem -- a guy who has only acted as a version of himself. Anyway, when Hayden entered the picture, Marshall's shot faded, and Christensen got to jump around the world all fancy-like.

Who would you have liked to see: Hayden or Eminem?

"A guy can teleport."

That's the basic plot of Doug Liman's alternately dry and ridiculous new action thriller Jumper, and the film takes great pains to NOT introduce anything that might distract from that one paltry premise: One really uninteresting guy can teleport wherever he wants (including bank vaults, beaches, and the head of the Egyptian Sphinx) -- up until the day that a ferocious (but also ridiculous) villain shows up to ruin all the teleport-y fun. And then we get a half-decent chase, a bunch of hyper-kinetically edited action, and a sequel teaser. For a 90-minute flick that focuses on a guy who moves real quick, it sure doesn't move all that slick.

Frankly, I expect a little more creativity from Doug Liman at this point, who seems to be coasting on fumes after delivering rock-solid action flicks like The Bourne Identity and Mr. & Mrs. Smith. Jumper feels like it was made with a test-screening audience in mind, and those who consider themselves fans of the source material -- a series of novels by Steven Gould -- will probably find themselves sorely disappointed in the movie version.

The screenplay (which was cobbled together by professional script surgeons Jim Uhls, David Goyer, and Simon Kinberg) feels like 11 or 12 isolated sequences that were simply lifted from Gould's books, regardless of how well they actually mesh together into one cohesive movie. Once the heavy-handed voice-over narration subsides ... just give up. The movie stabs wildly at a small collection of plot points, finds none to its liking, and then just keeps on chugging towards the end credits.

I don't mind Hayden Christensen. I actually liked him in The Virgin Suicides, Life as a House, Shattered Glass, and Factory Girl. That being said, I, like many disgruntled Star Wars viewers out there, wasn't so pleased with the whole Episodes 1-3 phenomenon. You'd think that if the actor has learned anything over his career, it is not to enter into any really big fanboy fare where expectations are high and tolerance is nil. Or, that he'd at least be wary of such projects. That's why I'm hoping that this news bit courtesy of JoBlo is nothing more than a rumor.

One of their sources says that Christensen will star in the big-screen adaptation of William Gibson's huge cyberpunk novel, Neuromancer. Joseph Kahn is set to direct, and it's being seen as a big-budget indie -- no studio, but $70 million ready to work with. What's worse than trying to tackle Vader and stick with it while fans cringe? I'd say trying to take on the lead role of Case in this confusingly intricate story. And, why would the people behind this production want to risk it?

Sure, Keanu Reeves initially seemed like a terrible choice for the Matrix, and he did pretty well for himself, but this isn't starting a phenomenon -- it's continuing it. I've said my peace, so what do you think about this casting possibility? Who would you suggest instead?

You would have thought that if 20th Century Fox was going to go to all the trouble of staging a Jumper press event on top of the Luxor Hotel, then they might have at least included their latest international poster. But they didn't, and now Empire Online has the new poster for Doug Liman's film adaptation of Steven Gould's young adult sci-fi series. Jumper stars Hayden Christensen as David Rice, a young man with the ability to teleport himself. So of course, he catches the attention of a secret society that wants to kill off 'jumpers' everywhere, and he is dragged into one of those eternal battles -- the kind that always seems to be going on in the movies. Rachel Bilson also stars as Christensen's childhood love, and Samuel L. Jackson plays the head baddie.

The first poster for the film was definitely a little more 'kid friendly' but now it looks like they are definitely pushing the action angle again. Some of the more obvious tricks include name dropping The Bourne Identity and Mr. and Mrs. Smith. They have also thrown a leather coat into the mix, and suddenly Christensen has morphed into Neo -- and it's not like I'm the only one who has noticed this. Since I haven't read the original novels or obviously seen the movie yet, I'll have to reserve judgment on what Liman has planned. However, it always makes me a little nervous when it seems like the people who made the movie aren't even sure what the film is supposed to be. Jumper hits theaters on February 14th, 2008.

The holiday weekend was a good one for ticket sales. The Disney magic is apparently still working, with Enchanted pulling $35 million for the weekend and a total of $49 million since its release on Wednesday. The holiday themed This Christmas has already turned a profit, pulling in a total of $26 million, roughly twice what it cost to make the thing. I underestimated that one in my prediction, and overestimated the performance of The Mist which came in ninth, making $8.9 million for the weekend and a total of $12.8 million. Not too shabby for a movie with a budget of only $18 million. Here's the final tally:

1. Enchanted: $35.3 million.
2. This Christmas: $18.6 million.
3. Beowulf: $16.2 million.
4. Hitman: $13 million.
5. Bee Movie: $12 million.

If you absolutely must see something new this weekend, pickings are slim, but there are still plenty of movies in release to suit many tastes. This week's newbie poses perhaps the greatest philosophical question of our age: what might happen if a Jedi Knight married a member of the Fantastic Four?

Awake
What's It All About: Hayden Christensen plays a victim of anesthetic awareness, a phenomenon in which a patient remains conscious but paralyzed under anesthesia. While in this state, he hears his surgeons plotting to murder him and pretend his death was the result of complications. Jessica Alba stars as Christensen's wife.
Why It Might Do Well: Being this week's only new wide release certainly won't hurt the film's chances.
Why It Might Not Do Well: I'm betting Enchanted still has legs enough to pull off a second week in the number one spot, so I think Awake may have to settle for the silver.
Number of Theaters: 2,000
Prediction: $14 million

Last week's Thanksgiving dinner and the steady stream of turkey sandwiches that followed have left me chock full of tryptophan, a substance commonly found in turkey and believed by some (well, me at least) to enhance a person's precognitive abilities. The turkey has given me visions of the future, and here's what I think next week's box office take will look like:

1. Enchanted
2. Awake
3. This Christmas
4. Beowulf
5. Hitman

Participation in last week's competition was on the light side. Sure, cast me aside in favor of spending time with your loved ones. Here's how everyone did:

1. Ray: 11
2. yoyo456: 9
2. Mario: 9
3. Matt: 7
3. Chris: 7
4. Gregory Rubinstein: 6
4. L: 6
4. Chloe: 6
5. Aaron/ABIRD0006:5

Now's your chance to wow the world with your box office prediction prowess. Don't forget to post your prediction in the comments section below before 5:00PM on Saturday. One point for every top five movie correctly named, two points for every correct placement, and one extra point for the top movie.

The Hollywood Reporter announced that Hayden Christensen will produce and star in Beast of Bataan. The story is based on Lawrence Taylor's book A Trial of Generals and was adapted for the screen by Chris Carlson and Mark Jean. The script will focus on the war crime trials that took place after the infamous Bataan Death March during WWII. Fred Schepisi (Six Degrees of Separation) has already signed to direct and Christensen will produce the indie-drama under his Forest Park Pictures banner.

Now for a little history lesson: On April 9th, 1942, General Edward P. King surrendered approximately 75,000 troops (mainly wounded American and Filipino soldiers) to the Japanese as prisoners of war that were to be transported from Mariveles to Camp O'Donnell, a prison camp in the province of Tarlac. Instead what happened was the men were marched without food and water, were tortured and beaten, and of the original 75,000 men only 54,000 reached their destination. Ultimately, the Japanese general responsible for transporting the soldiers (Lt. General Masaharu Homma) was convicted of war crimes and executed just outside of Manilla in 1946 (I guess I should have labeled that a spoiler, but it is history after all, so it's not like it was a secret).

Babel star, Koji Yakusho, is in talks to play the Japanese general, Lt. General Homma and Christensen will play his rookie defense attorney trying to save Homma from the death penalty -- although I guess we all know how that one turns out. Also joining Christensen are William Hurt and Willem Defoe, but there was no word on their roles. Beast of Bataan is scheduled to start shooting in Australia this February.

After watching the new trailer for Awake, I can't say I'm any more likely to shell out my hard-earned dollars to go see this movie. But, I will give writer-director Joby Harold credit for coming up with a premise that is pretty disturbing if you think about it. I should tell you though, this is one of those trailers that makes the creative decision right up front to show you as much of the plot as possible -- I can't be alone in thinking it's a bad idea to give away any of your surprises if you can help it.

Awake stars Hayden Christensen as an affluent young man who has the unfortunate luck of being one in 700 people who stays 'awake' during a surgical procedure. As if that isn't bad enough, while paralyzed under the knife, he overhears his doctors discussing a conspiracy involving his own murder. Jessica Alba stars as his somewhat 'dazed' fiancée. I'm not really sure why she spends most of the trailer staring blankly. All I do know is that it probably won't help Christensen out in the chemistry department. Rounding out the cast are Terrance Howard as Christensen's friend and surgeon, and Lena Olin as his mother.

Both Alba and Christensen enjoyed other trailer releases this month with the US remake of The Eye and Doug Liman's Jumper. This is Harold's first feature film, although he had been attached to a Zack Snyder sequel to Dawn of The Dead. Snyder already has his hands full with his big screen version of The Watchmen, so it's doubtful we'll hear about the Dead project any time soon. Awake opens November 30th.

[via ComingSoon.net]

It's a sci-fi action flick starring Hayden Christensen, and it's called Jumper. Sound like something you'd want to see? Eh, maybe. But if I went on to explain that the flick comes from the director of Go, The Bourne Identity and Mr. & Mrs. Smith ... and all of a sudden the movie sounds just a little more intriguing. (To me, anyway. I'm a Doug Liman fan.) Based on the novel by Steven Gould -- and adapted for the screen by the eclectic team of David S. Goyer, Simon Kinberg and Jim Uhls -- Jumper is about a young adult who has the power of teleportation. Which leads to all sorts of espionage mayhem and chases and such.

Co-starring alongside the former Anakin Skywalker are Diane Lane, Jamie Bell, Rachel Bilson, Tom Hulce, Michael Rooker and Samuel L. Jackson in a wig that looks like white astroturf. Fox presently has Jumper scheduled for that coveted February 15 release date, but if you'd like to click through the newly-updated official site, please do so right here. The brand-new trailer is also included, so stop back and share your thoughts. I hate to sound so negative, but I'm getting a distinct Operation: Stormbreaker vibe on this flick. Either way, the teleporting stuff looks really cool.

It's Wednesday, and you know what that means -- time for The Write Stuff! This week Cinematical spoke with screenwriter Captain Mauzner. Mauzner has an interesting perspective on screenwriting because he's written two major films based on true events and actual people. He co-wrote 2003's Wonderland -- the story of the infamous "Wonderland Murders," which starred Val Kilmer as legendary porn star John Holmes. And he wrote last year's Factory Girl, the tale of Edie Sedgwick (played by Sienna Miller), Andy Warhol (Guy Pearce), and a Dylanesque "Musician" played by Hayden Christensen. We spoke about Mauzner's scripts, process, and the trickiness of writing scripts based on fact.

Cinematical: Are you working on anything right now?

Captain Mauzner: I am working on something right now, yeah. I'm adapting a book. It's a small book, it's called The Food Chain, by Geoff Nicholson. A friend of mine runs a small company and I'm adapting it with the hopes of directing it. It's kind of about food, sex, and cannibalism. Revenge, food, sex, and cannibalism.

Cinematical: Well, alright!

CM: It's a little dark comedy. It's fun. And what was nice about it was -- I've written so many things and a lot of them are true life stories, and they all seem to be about kind of deplorable human beings. And I think that my comfort zone is really kind of in the dark side -- the drug addicts, the deviants. And I think that as I've kind of gotten older and left that world myself, I guess you could say I've become less and less interested in it. You see these movies like Wonderland and Factory Girl and you could say "oh, they're like an argument against doing drugs." But I know for myself, there's always a glamorizing element to it. And as much as you want to say this is the downfall of these people, which it is -- and obviously there's nothing glamorous about the drug lifestyle, or the party lifestyle because it does lead to bad things. But just the act of writing about it or making these the main characters or trying to explain these people, I feel like that somewhat glamorizes it, or at least in my mind it was very glamorous. I had a very romantic notion, at like 14-years-old I discovered Bukowski and I was kind of off to the races. So I think that as I get older I'm ready to move on to maybe something light and happy. My family's always like "Why can't you write something that we can take Grandma to?"

Cinematical: So do you find when you're writing about drugs and debauchery, that you're not looking to condemn it and point a finger, you're just looking to present it and let the audience decide?

CM: Absolutely. I'm not looking to condemn it at all. I'm not looking to be moral about it. I believe in experimentation. I believe in doing kind of what you want and not having anybody else tell you what to do. I think that my fascination with it is always the "why." Why do people do this? I think that's kind of the fun of being able to do those kind of things is that you can live kind of vicariously through these people, and try to figure out the "why" without being judgmental.

Now that The Bourne Ultimatum has broken box office records, I have to say again that I like Doug Liman's Bourne Identity -- the first of the trilogy -- best. Still, I don't mind that he left the franchise in the hands of Paul Greengrass, because it allowed him to make the brilliant Mr. & Mrs. Smith and the upcoming Jumper, which I'm really looking forward to. I've loved everything directed by Liman since Go (yeah, Swingers was fine but nothing great), and I hope Jumper continues the streak. Based on a series of young adult novels by Steven Gould, is a sci-fi adventure thriller about a teenage jumper -- or someone with the power to teleport -- in search of his mother's killer while also being tracked by the NSA. It has a script from David S. Goyer (Batman Begins), Simon Kinberg (Mr. & Mrs. Smith) and Jim Uhls (Fight Club), and a great cast that includes Samuel L. Jackson, Diane Lane, Jamie Bell (Billy Elliot) , Rachel Bilson (The O.C.), Tom Hulce (Amadeus), Michael Rooker (Slither) and Hayden 'Anakin Skywalker' Christensen. The movie now also has a website.

The thing I love best about the Jumper site is that it's easy to navigate. It's one of these websites that pans through a location (here someone's room/office) where certain objects can be clicked on to reveal things like a synopsis, a cast, etc. But for those of us who are impatient or have slow computers, or just simply aren't good at finding every last hidden link, there's a menu at the top of the screen that gives us pretty much the same stuff the link-objects do. Well, it doesn't include the site's clock links, which go to a site that gives us the exact time in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, St. Petersburg (Florida), Tokyo and ... Tokyo (because the New York one also accidentally links there, too). I'm surprised that Rome isn't one of those provided, since the city features prominently in the movie. The in-site links include a back story about jumpers and Paladins, who hunt and kill jumpers. There's also a photo gallery, a wallpaper download and a character guide. One of the link-objects, a group of video cassettes, don't really give us anything special, so I'm guess that's where the trailer will appear once it is available. I guess the site isn't too amazing, but it's given me some more background, and I'm now even more interested in seeing the movie. Jumper hits theaters on February 18, 2008.

Viewing George Hickenlooper's Factory Girl a second time on the DVD which will be released Tuesday, my opinion has gone up a few notches. It's not so much because the restored material -- a few snippets -- does a great deal to let the movie breathe. Instead, I found myself reading between the lines of the insightful director's commentary, in which Hickenlooper takes pains to point out to the viewer exactly which parts of the movie were the results of his original cut, and which parts were introduced at the whim of Harvey Weinstein. Invariably, it's the Weinstein-mandated changes that slow the movie down and make it sometimes seem commonplace and uninspired. (Hickenlooper is carefully to say how great the Weinstein-changes were, even as he's dutifully pointing them out.) One big problem is the 'Warhol montage' near the beginning that takes great pains to point out to us that there was a guy named Andy Warhol who was a great pop artist of the late 20th century -- as if anyone in the film's audience wouldn't know that.

Another unwelcome element is the Gia-like 'Edie in a mental hospital' bookends -- a drastic stylistic departure from the fast-paced, Oliver Stone-like cutting rhythm of the rest of the film. A lot of exposition is proffered during these moments, but to what end? Do we really need to know more about Edie's homelife than we've already learned during the A-story? I don't think so. There are a few other Weinstein-elements scattered throughout, and having seen the film twice now, I think we can conclude two things: Hickenlooper is a genuine talent who made a good film under unbearable pressures and he would have made a substantially better one if not for the heavy-handed studio honcho standing on his head. His visual chops are, while a little too close to his admitted mentor, Oliver Stone, still very sharp. He has a masterful knowledge of camera minutia and spends much time during his commentary talking about how he chose certain camera grains and lenses in order to complement the tone of a particular scene.

Factory Girl is a 60's film heavily influenced by another 60's film -- Oliver Stone's The Doors. Like Stone's intriguing plastic vision of Jim Morrison's perpetual-bender world, this is a film seen from the inside of a jelly-lensed fishbowl, where beautiful people with vanilla helmet-hair hold court in infrared corner booths at Max's Kansas City, stabbing out cigarettes and talking in maddening, rapid-fire generalities about 'art' and getting 'beneath the surface' of things and so forth. The civil rights struggle is a television show that they ignore as they walk past it -- it's a prop to settle us into the time period, along with the curly-q phone cords and big, spongy acid cubes. Andy Warhol and Edie Sedgwick have a microphone stuck in their faces at an event and are asked: "What do you think of the war in Vietnam?" "We prefer I Dream of Jeannie," Edie spits back. But as turned-on by superficiality as Warhol was, this film, coming in the age of Paris Hilton, stumbles by settling for a pair of superficial portraits.

Outer and Inner Space, a Warhol film that critic Amy Taubin called an "ingenious memento mori," shows Sedgwick being forced to confront video footage of her own chattering head; Warhol is mocking the fundamental imbalance contained in the heiress -- wealth and privilege and social access without any ambition or character. Factory Girl is largely uninterested in Warhol's artistic pursuits, however, and Guy Pearce was clearly nettled into delivering an amusing spin on the Warhol 'character' -- during confession, he pops Hershey's Kisses and daydreams about whether Norman Mailer will ever punch him. The Sedgwick of this film, played with ability by Sienna Miller, is also somewhat misrepresented. She's portrayed as a fragile fawn, with the woundability of Audrey Hepburn and the go-along, casting-couch enthusiasm of a groupie. The real Edie seems to have been more of a fighting spirit -- when you look for her in the endless detritus of unfinished Warholia-footage that exists, you're less likely to find her fluttering like a damsel than play-wrestling, pulling growl-faces and flexing her horse-riding muscles.