AMELIA
The Story: Hilary Swank stars as the legendary lost lady aviator.
The Pitch: The Aviator meets Erin Brockovich
Who It's For: Old people.
Cause for Hope: Ewan McGregor plays Gore Vidal's father.
Cause for Concern: Another roll-out The Billy Elliot formula: substitute "For piss sakes, let the boy dance" with "For piss sake, let the (insert oppressed group) (insert unlikely vocation.)
Defamer Enthusio-Meter: 3

SAW 6
The Story: That wacky prankster Jigsaw is back at it again with his rollicking game of Horrible Mutilation or Death. Good times ensue for all.
The Pitch: Blood Feast meets sticking your head into an electrical outlet.
Who It's For: People whose souls have been so whittled down to nothing by media over-stimulation that punching themselves in the face is the only thing that can prove to them they are actually alive.
Cause for Hope: Saw 6 must be closer to the end than Saw 5 was.
Cause for Concern: The society that made the Saw films controls a nuclear arsenal large enough to destroy the world thousands of times over.
Defamer Enthusio-Meter: Negative infinity.

ANTICHRIST
The Story: You've read about the well-hyped controversy, now see the movie. When a couple (Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg)'s baby falls out the window, they retreat to the woods to launch into a frenzy of self-abuse and recrimination.
The Pitch: Salo meets Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Who It's For: Anyone who either wants to feel superior to rubes who can't appreciate art or who wants to feel superior to sheep-like intelligensia who have convinced themselves that this is art.
Cause for Hope: Despite his public clownishness, Lars von Trier can still pack a visual punch.
Cause for Concern: After all the ruckus, is there still any point in seeing the actual film? And critics widely warn that when Gainsbourg breaks out the self-mutilation kit is the point where any sane person should call it a day.
Defamer Enthusio-Meter: 6

CIRQUE DU FREAK: THE VAMPIRE'S ASSISTANT
The Story: A young man joins a traveling freak show as an assistant to the show's most mysterious member (John C. Reilly) and gets caught in the middle of an underworld battle.
The Pitch: Buffy meets Agent Cody Banks
Who It's For: The whole family, if looking for a movie this weekend that doesn't feature extreme mutilation.
Cause for Hope: Anything about vampires earns a "C" just for signing its name; directed by the half of the consistently better-than-average Weitz Brothers.
Cause for Concern: Looks too light and fluffy to be trusted not to float away from the screen.
Defamer Enthusio-Meter: 4

ASTRO BOY
The Story: An inventor creates a robot boy to replace a lost child, but then rejects his creation. The child robot goes out to fight the demons of his future world to prove his worth.
The Pitch: AI meets Underdog
Who It's For: Childrens and anime fetishists.
Cause for Hope: The animation looks not uncool.
Cause for Concern: As the years pass, it gets harder to see the world through the eyes of a seven-year-old Japanese boy.
Defamer Enthusio-Meter: 4

MOTHERHOOD
The Story: A blogger (Uma Thurmond) struggles to maintain her creative identity beneath the detail travails of raising children in New York City.
The Pitch: Knocked Up meets Julie and Julia
Who It's For: Ladies who want to know that someone understands.
Cause for Hope: Inspired the single most annoying sentence in the history of film criticism from AO Scott: "Watching "Motherhood," in which Uma Thurman plays a Manhattan mom juggling kids, dog, marriage and blogging duties, I could not help but recall some of the many distinguished literary explorations of similar predicaments: "A Room of One's Own," by Virginia Woolf; Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "Yellow Wallpaper"; the poems of Sylvia Plath and Adrienne Rich; and especially the short stories of Grace Paley, set in the same West Village streets through which Ms. Thurman's character, Eliza Welch, steers her Volvo and schleps her stroller."
Cause for Concern: Uma clearly is not willing to fully commit to dowdiness judging from the trailer.
Defamer Enthusio-Meter: 3

• Tila Tequila's life's been a bit hectic as of late, but we had no idea how hard she was taking it all: she's been tweeting about taking her own life because "God spoke to me and told me I am needed up there." Oh boy... Tequila also wrote that a friend stopped her from doing the deed, but she plans on doing it in two weeks. Someone help this woman. [Ace]
  
  
• A man in a thong manhandled Kate Moss at Simon Cowell's birthday and all she got for the trouble was an angry boyfriend. [Page Six]
  
  
• Tyler Perry admitted on his website that he was sexually abused as a child. No punchline there. [NYDN]
  
  
• Katie "Jordan" Price's sexy fighter boyfriend Alex Reid enjoys dressing up in women's clothing. Yes, seriously. [Mirror]
  
  
• After 22-years of strutting her stuff, Claudia Schiffer says she'll retire from the catwalk. But don't worry, she insists she'll still model for print ads, the poor dear. [The Sun]
  
  
• Guns N' Roses are being sued by some musicians who claim the band stole tracks for Chinese Democracy. If Axl and company really did steal the tracks, that's sad: it took the band about a million years to make. [NYDN]
  
  
• Police found what they're calling a suicide note penned by Ryan Jenkins, the reality star who killed himself after being accused of killing his wife, Jasmine Fiore. The note makes not mention of Fiore. [People]
  
  
• Brian Littrell, who's in a bygone band called the Backstreet Boys, has swine flu. [Us]
  
  
• Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes temporarily moved to Boston and no one cares. [MSNBC]
  
  
• Nicole Richie was hospitalized after a minor car accident. She'll be fine. [People]
  
  
• The security surrounding Michael Jackson's tomb has been "scaled back." Grave robbers, start your pillaging! [TMZ]
  
  
• President Obama never picks Democratic Sen. Bob Casey for his basketball team. See? He doesn't play partisan games. [Page Six]
  
  
• Mad Men actor Bryan Batt's marrying his boyfriend. How fabulous! [Perez]
  
  
• Lars von Trier's new movie, Antichrist, will give you a seizure and send you straight to hell. [Page Six]

Even though she's all grown up now, Mayim Bialik just can't get away from the teen stuff. The Blossom star has nabbed a recurring role on Brenda Hampton's dreadful ABC Family series The Secret Life of the American Teenager. She'll play a guidance counselor. Just like Jennie Garth does on the new, dreadful 90210. Can we say two's a trend? [Variety]

Guys, wasn't the problem with Watchmen that it was just too darn short? Didn't you want even more turgid, churning blitzkrieg 80s superhero angst? Well, you're in luck. A special 25-minutes-longer director's cut of the film will be screened in New York, Dallas, Minneapolis, and LA a week before Comic-Con in San Diego starts. Those extra 25 minutes really ought to make the movie sing. Hopefully it's just 25 extra minutes of hideously awkward owl-mobile sex. [THR]

Speaking of short-term releases, Lars von Trier's new gross-out horror flick Antichrist will bow, pre-Halloween, in New York and LA on October 23rd. Nothing says "Let's go get some Twizzlers in eight days" quite like Willem Dafoe and bloody ejaculate. [Variety]

All that hoo-haw about how teenagers are too busy Twitter-texting and YouTube-sexting to watch TV, so let's do a whole big media shift? Bunk, says the Nielsen Co. They just released a study that found that our pimpliest are no different from our wrinkliest, really. This was all part of something that Nielsen organizes annually, called the What Teens Want Conference. Which is sort of creepy. [THR]

Snide Canadian of the hour Ryan Reynolds is taking a slight detour from his successful career as young romantic whippersnapper and dual weapon holder to star in something dark. He'll play the lead in Buried, about a private contractor who is kidnapped in Iraqistan and wakes up buried in a coffin with only a candle, a cellphone, a knife, and his chiseled-like-the-glaciers-of-Baffin Bay physique to help him escape. So, two hours of Ryan Reynolds squirming around in a box. Quite a literal interpretation of what the ladies have been asking for. [Variety]

This (500) Days of Summer movie is apparently pretty good. [THR]

OMG you guys, Bob Orchard left the ART! [Variety]

ABC has officially announced its new schedule. Mondays are basically the same. Tuesdays will feature new reality show Shark Tank, plus Dancing with the Stars results shows (to be replaced by Better Off Ted and Scrubs once the Dancing season ends) and The Forgotten, a new Jerry Bruckheimer crime type drama that features a guy I know. So, congrats Anthony! Wednesday night will be a big ol' comedy block of new sitcoms (including the Courteney Cox vehicle Cougar Town—which features Dan Byrd from Aliens in America and, um, A Cinderella Story). Buzzed-about Flash Forward replaces Ugly Betty in the Thursday 8pm slot. That gay fantasia on fashional themes has moved to Friday 10pm. [Variety]

NBC has yet to formally announce their new season, but Law & Order has already been renewed for a big-time 20th season. Let's put that this way: babies that were born when the show started are now going to be juniors in college. Hooftie! Time! [THR]

DreamWorks has gone and bought the rights to the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and will produce a biopic about him. And, actually, forget that George Clooney whispering. We hear that Johnny Depp is in talks to play the civil rights martyr. [Variety]

At Cannes, two George Clooney projects are all the buzz! Oooo! First his Men Who Stare at Goats (costarring Jeff Bridges, Ewan MacGregor, and Kevin Spacey) has been picked up by Overture. Clooney also inked a deal to star in the movie adaptation of Martin Booth's novel A Very Private Gentleman, about a quiet Englishman named Mr. Butterfly who lives in Italy and secretly makes weapons for assassins. So it's The Jackal meets Under the Tuscan Sun. Terrific. [Variety]

Finally, Lars von Trier is still an asshole. [THR]

In Antichrist, the new Lars Von Trier movie, Willem Defoe's balls are banged and then Charlotte Gainsbourg jerks him off until he cums blood. (Lane Brown describes it much "better" but I thought the quicker you read that without dwelling the better.) That's a weird thing to do and also not very nice (at least the first half). Defending himself to an angry journalist Von Triers said, "It's the hand of God... And I am the best film director in the world. I'm not sure if God is the best God in the world." Needless to say, Maradona and the entire nation of Argentina objected.

Then there's Bob Dylan whose video of a hot girl being beaten up (and also beating up) a balding man (played by Eliot Spitzer!) then kissing him passionately, was a partnership with the Independent Film Channel. Whatever happened to the Dylan from Nashville Skyline? That guy was so sweet!

So! Here's the question: why all of a sudden are middle-aged to elderly white men interested in depicting women perpetrating violence against men and then either handjobbing or kissing them? Is it a function of the bleak economic landscape or perhaps, Kink's MeninPain.com has finally penetrated popular culture.

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The lineup for Cannes has been announced, with only two American films entered into formal competition. Those would be Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds and Ang Lee's Taking Woodstock, which curiously stars mild comedian Dmitri Martin. Other movies, in and out of competition, that we're interested in: provocateur (with only middling success) Lars Von Trier's horror movie Antichrist, Terry Gilliam's Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, and a new creeper by Michael Haneke called The White Ribbion, an allegory about fascism set at a German boarding school in 1913. [Variety]

Naomi Odenkirk, who reps a bunch of SNL stars, and Marc Provissiero, who has repped many sitcom writers, have come together in a blessed Hollywood business marriage to form Odenkirk Provissiero Entertainment, a representation firm for funny people. So you hear that class clowns and Rude Mechanicals in college productions of Midsummer's everywhere? There is a place for you in California. [Variety]

Oh good. Speaking of comedy! Comic genius Cameron Diaz has signed on to play the lead in Bobbie Sue, about a "hard-charging female ambulance chaser" who becomes the face of a big firm that is being sued for sexual discrimination or something, so she probably learns a lesson about being a woman instead of chasing a paycheck and isn't that terrific. [Variety]

If you were to consider one actor the younger Dustin Hoffman, you would immediately think of James Marsden, right? Good. Director Rod Lurie agrees with you. He's just cast the Second Noah star in the Hoffman role in a remake of Straw Dogs. Instead of rural England, the new version will take place in the deep South. Hm. [THR]

The inevitable third Twilight movie, called 'Pire Walk With Me, has found a director. David Slade has experience with the vampire genre, as he directed the Josh Hartnett Alaskan boondoggle 30 Days of Night. Only in that movie the vampyrs ate your face off. In Vamps 3: Hardbodies, they just sparkle at you and refuse to boff. So, slight nuances. [THR]

Oh, fun. Director/writer Rian Johnson has posted the opening sequence from his new film The Brothers Bloom on Hulu. We lurved Brick and have been excited for this movie for some time. And the clip doesn't disappoint. [EW]

nutmeg's new line beats the original, Bedlam On Set Of Latest Lars Von Trier Film