Mornin’ folks!

Hope y’all had a nice long Labor day weekend. I certainly did as my mother in-law and her husband were in town and we had a blast sight-seeing around town and eating fabulous food. Didn’t get to see any flick though, well not at the cinema anyway. But we did rent the excellent thriller State of Play, which means so far I haven’t seen any Russell Crowe flicks I didn’t like (so obviously I skipped A Good Year). I’m working on the review right now, as well as my top-five favorite Gerard Butler roles post to coincide with GAMER that was released this past weekend (which like most of you, didn’t bother to see). I don’t have a lot of time to blog as I’m wiped out tonight, so I won’t shortchange you readers with a half-@$$ed post.

I do have some casting news to share, so I’ll give you those in the meantime:

• Variety: Following Sherlock Holmes, Guy Ritchie has been tapped by Warner Bros. to direct Lobo, a live adaptation of the DC Comics drama about an alien interstellar bounty hunter. Joel Silver (who’s also producing Holmes), Akiva Goldsman and Andrew Rona will produce the movie that’ll begin shooting next year. The character originated in 1983 in Omega Men, and the character Lobo has had several comic incarnations. In the film, he is a seven-foot tall, blue-skinned, indestructible and heavily muscled anti-hero who drives a pimped out motorcycle, and lands on Earth in search of four fugitives who are bent on wreaking havoc. Lobo teams with a small town teenage girl to stop the creatures. So basically it’s James Cameron’s Avatar Na’vi + Terminator hybrid with a loaned bike from Ghost Rider teaming up with a female John Connor. Oh brother!

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  The Hollywood Reporter: If you think that one is bizarre, get a load of this one. Jon Favreau and Robert Downey Jr. are obviously having a blast working together, they can’t get enough of it. After Iron Man 2 wrapped, they want to play Cowboys and Aliens, a sci-fi Western based on yet another graphic novel published in 2006. It explores what would happen if the traditional Old West enemies — cowboys and Native Americans — found the prairie attacked by aliens in mid-1800s Arizona. Imagine Entertainment principals Brian Grazer and Ron Howard (who at one time was interested to direct) will produce the movie. This sounds really peculiar, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. With the duo behind the highly entertaining Iron Man on board, no doubt the studios will anchor Summer 2011 around this movie.

• SlashFilm: Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz re-team again since Vanilla Sky in a temporary-named Wichita project with 3:30 to Yuma director James Mangold. It’s billed as an action comedy on IMDB but it sounds more like a spy thriller about an upbeat Midwestern woman (Diaz) who goes on a blind date with a man (Cruise) who turns out to be a federal agent. She consequently gets involved in a lurid worldwide journey to protect a powerful battery that holds the secret to an infinite power source. Former Buffy star Marc Blucas and Taken‘s Maggie Grace will join the cast. Now, I’m not exactly fond of the Cruister, but I must admit he’s done some kick-@$$ thriller (The Firm, Minority Report), so I’m pretty intrigued by this one.

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  On a related Cruise news, I just learned from Cinematical that he had been interested to be a part of The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. Total Film Magazine reported that “… the actor was lobbying to be cast in the project, hoping it would be the next step in his image update after Tropic Thunder. Gilliam said: “I know there was a period when Tom’s agents were keen. The thing is, I was only interested in people who were friends of Heath. Simple as that. I wanted to keep it in the family.” Personally I’m happy with Gilliam’s decision, as I’d imagine Heath would rather have his friends be in that movie with him, too. Cinematical wonders why the megastar was so keen on being involved, whether he was so desperate to build up his cred both personally and artistically. My gut tells me he just wants people to know he’s still interested to do smaller flicks. But so what, we all know it’s all a calculated strategy anyway, not because he was in it from the heart.

• Variety: Mr Bond du jour Daniel Craig is set to star in the psycho thriller Dream House. Oscar winner director Jim Sheridan (My Left Foot and In the Name of the Father, both starred Daniel Day-Lewis) will helm, which starts shooting January 25. Craig plays a New York publishing exec who relocates his family to a small New England town, only to learn that their new home was the scene of a vicious murder. The English actor is also about to star on a Broadway play A Steady Rain with Tony winner Hugh Jackman. No doubt it’ll be a complete sell-out with the ladies =)

That’s all folks. Interesting stuff, eh?