One always gets the sense that these James Bond movies are scripted by a team of whiny supervillains who live together in an underground lair that occasionally rises above sea level to fire a laser beam at something. But even casual fans noticed a serious dip in quality between Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace. So we’re happy to read that Peter Morgan, playwright and screenwriter of The Queen and Frost/Nixon, has just reported for duty.

Cinematical has the new poster up for Cold Souls, a forthcoming thinker starring Paul Giamatti. Honestly, it’s such a brilliant piece of design, we’d rather not tell you how mediocre the movie is. Just gaze at the poster.

Finally, courtesy of Rope of Silicon and embedded below: the teaser trailer for the new, as-yet-untitled Michael Moore bailout documentary that got theater audiences riled this weekend. (Warning: NSFPeopleWhoCan’tStandMichaelMoore.)

Kiyoshi Kurosawa is best known stateside for his end-times horror movie, Pulse. Tonight at BAM Rose Cinemas, you can watch him working in a slightly different key with his recent family drama, Tokyo Sonata. Our own Joshua Rothkopf praised the film upon its initial release, noting that:

“Kurosawa is growing up, modulating his formula, successfully moving into Magnolia-like domestic-meltdown territory. That is, of course, until he reverts to the Cassandra we know and love.”

So it’s a potent mix of the old and the new. Whether you’re a Kurosawa regular or newcomer, what better choice for an evening out?

Here’s three for your viewing pleasure this weekend from Team Film. First head down to the Landmark Sunshine and check out Francis Ford Coppola’s latest—the self-financed, self-produced Tetro, starring Vincent Gallo and Alden Ehrenreich, above. From there, head up to Cinema Village and catch the stateside release of Jean-Jacques Beineix’s three-hour director’s cut of the art-movie-cum-sex-romp Betty Blue. Finally, check your local listings for the sci-fi thriller Moon, which proves you can never have too many Sam Rockwells.

There are barbarians at the gate, and one of ‘em is soon to hit cinemas. Variety reports that Marcus Nispel, director of the Friday the 13th and Texas Chainsaw Massacre redos, has been signed to helm a new version of Conan the Barbarian. Governor Schwarzenegger is out of the running for the lead role, we’d think. So tell us, who would you like to see as the muscled warrior who likes to crush his enemies, see them driven before him…and to hear the lamentation of their women?

More director news, though this one’s still in talks: Cinematical says that Neil Marshall, director of The Descent and Doomsday is a likely candidate to make Predators, a reboot of, whaddya know, another Schwarzenegger vehicle.

Finally, IMDb notes that in the Alvin and the Chipmunks sequel (it’s about time!), Christina Applegate, Anna Faris and Amy Poehler will voice Alvin, Simon and Theodore’s female counterparts, The Chipettes. Christmas, Christmas time is here!

That Martin Scorsese kid has a new film coming, and a trailer has just been released. Click here to catch a first glimpse of Shutter Island. Anyone else getting a hyped-up Hour of the Wolf vibe, especially with Max von Sydow in the cast?

Here’s a fascinating concept: an Italian film opening an Italian film festival. For the first time in 20 years, as indieWIRE reports, the Venice Film Festival will kick off with a countryman’s work, in this case Giuseppe “Cinema Paradiso” Tornatore’s Sicily-set epic, Baaria.

More signs of the precarious times: Variety reports that Senator Entertainment’s distribution president, Mark Urman, has vacated his post. Senator’s sole release was the Bret Easton Ellis adaptation The Informers, which flopped. The company now has several films in release limbo, including Antoine Fuqua’s Brooklyn’s Finest and the Julia Roberts starrer Fireflies in the Garden.

Finally, Dave Kehr offers a clarification on the whole Andrew Sarris situation. Turns out he’s not really “fired”…he’s just “freelancing.”

Adorable-dog alert. But here, too, is one of screwball’s most equitable couples, Nick and Nora Charles, sparring, bantering and (endlessly) drinking. Deftly played by William Powell and Myrna Loy, the crimebusting pair constitute a vision of Manhattanite sophistication never rendered as sharply—even through Hollywood’s prism. (Plus, the pooch, Asta, seriously adds value.) W.S. Van Dyke’s 1934 comic mystery screens tonight at 92YTribeca, a venue you should seriously make friends with.

Terrific news from the Museum of Modern Art, which has just announced its upcoming Tim Burton retrospective. He’s most popularly known as a more-than-slightly off-kilter film director, but this series—which runs from November 22, 2009 to April 26, 2010—will encompass more than just his 14 features. As the MoMA description notes:

“This major career retrospective on Tim Burton, consisting of a gallery exhibition and a film series, considers Burton’s career as a director, producer, writer, and concept artist for live-action and animated films, along with his work as a fiction writer, photographer and illustrator. Following the current of his visual imagination from his earliest childhood drawing through his mature work, the exhibition presents artwork generated during the conception and production of his films, and highlights a number of unrealized projects and never-before-seen pieces, as well as student art, his earliest non-professional films, and examples of his work as a storyteller and graphic artist for non-film projects.”

Mark your calendars, kids, and be sure and tell ‘em Large Marge sent ya.

Breaking news, picked up by IFC Daily from a broader report at WWD. Our colleague Andrew Sarris has been laid off from his longtime film-reviewing position at The New York Observer. He’s one of several: Also let go were managing editor Jesse Wegman; executive editor Peter Stevenson; national correspondent Joe Conason; editors Damian Da Costa, Matt Haber, Chris Shott and John Vorwald; reporters Spencer Morgan and Doree Shafir; writer George Gurley, and photo editor Alana Kaloshi.

Go Sweden! Variety reports that the Statens Biografbyra, the Swedish board of film censors, will be closed in 2011, 100 years after its inception. Barring any infringement on, say, child pornography laws, any film can now be shown in its entirety in the country of Bergman.

The French Institute Alliance Française is dedicating every Tuesday night in June and July to the great French actor Michel Piccoli. He’s built an impressive body of work over his long career, collaborating with such directors as Jean-Luc Godard, Manoel de Oliveira and Luis Buñuel. Tonight at 7:30pm, you can catch him in the intriguingly titled The Prude (1986), directed by Jacques Doillon, in which he plays a theater director whose estranged daughter is about to pay him a visit. He rehearses their encounter with his theater troupe, but things go terribly wrong when the girl finally shows up. Also starring in the film is the fine, fine, fine Sandrine Bonnaire, fresh off her turn in Agnès Varda’s 1985 masterpiece, Vagabond. And director Doillon is best known stateside for his award-winning 1996 feature, Ponette.

Here’s Jeff Goldblum, looking mighty intense in front of the Apple Store on Fifth yesterday, toting a bottle of mineral water and yapping into a cell phone. The Roger Michell–directed Morning Glory is currently shooting; the movie (which costars Diane Keaton, Rachel McAdams and Harrison Ford) examines the comedic travails of TV execs as they try to revive a wilting morning show.

Yesterday’s scene involved Goldblum marching in front of FAO Schwarz—in about three long, gangly strides, past a gaggle of impossibly attractive extras—while carrying on a serious-looking phone call. Even when the DP yelled “cut,” Goldblum carried on talking to whoever was on the other end of the phone (his mom? thin air?), right through a dozen or so takes until shooting wrapped. Method acting? Just avoiding having to talk to the gathered throng? Jeff, call us.

Variety is reporting that Liam Neeson and the hot-overnight Bradley Cooper are “working out money issues” to star in a movie version of The A-Team, to begin shooting this summer. Of course, we use the term star loosely, in that the pivotal casting will be that of “B.A.” Baracus, the role immortalized by Mr. T—who’s probably free. Seriously, why not?

Via Twitch, Nippon Cinema brings us the superbizarre trailer for Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Air Doll, recently at Cannes. It’s about a man falling in love with his inflatable sex doll. Here it is. As if you really need subtitles for this one.

I can’t even hide how geeked out I was to meet the director of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Poltergeist this weekend. (I once interviewed him on the phone, but this was better.) Hooper, a soft-spoken Austinite with terrific, jaw-dropping Hollywood stories, was, as always, a gentleman and definitely the highlight of my trip to Fangoria’s Weekend of Horrors convention. Is there photographic evidence? You betcha.

“Do any of you know what a bed sausage is?” asked Rosa von Praunheim in sly, Teutonic tones at Anthology Film Archives this Saturday. The answer—it’s a wiener-shaped pillow for your head, of course—was part of the director’s “I’m a Tomato” performance, which wrapped up the venue’s retrospective of his work.

The provocateur and film director, who adopted a woman’s name to create such titles as 1971’s It Is Not the Homosexual That Is Perverse but the Society in Which He Lives, took the stage armed with a bag of poems, some plastic tomatoes, two drag queens and a gaggle of stuffed animals. He also treated the audience to a selection of clips from his oeuvre. It was the perfect Von Praunheimian primer. Read more »

Slow times in Hollywood today. The biggest news, as Variety reports, is that Javier Bardem has joined the cast of Eat, Pray, Love, an adaptation of a memoir by Elizabeth Gilbert. Bardem joins Julia Roberts and Richard Jenkins in the project, which is to be helmed by Nip/Tuck creator Ryan Murphy.

In Screen Daily, Nancy Tartaglione writes that the critically beloved Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami begins shooting his latest movie today in Italy. Titled Certified Copy, the film stars Juliette Binoche as a British author who gets involved in a seemingly innocent bit of role-playing with a French art gallery owner that soon spirals out of control.

Finally, click here for an oldie but goodie: a classic Dick Cavett interview with Mark Frechette and Daria Halprin, the stars of Michelangelo Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point, which was just recently released on Region 1 DVD. This clip comes via Glenn Kenny, who offers some thoughts on his blog.

Children of the night, sad as it is to say, Film Forum’s Tod Browning festival concludes this evening with Dracula (duh). We bow in gratitude. But please, adventurous programmers: Let’s one day have a complete Browning retro of newly struck prints. Even though it’s somewhat creaky, 1931’s Dracula deserves props as the first thriller superproduction—an extremely atmospheric one. Of course, Bela Lugosi casts a superb warp on the film. (If you’ve been watching these Browning movies, imagine Lon Chaney in the role; rumors persist that he would have played the Count had he not died the year of shooting.) Dracula is the beginning of Hollywood’s golden age of horror and an essential for any viewer. And if you remember Martin Landau’s advice in Ed Wood, it’s also very romantic. Date movie!

Honestly? We don’t like to watch so much this weekend. Kind of a drag when that happens. But advising you to go see Land of the Lost, My Life in Ruins or The Hangover would be, in the eyes of our critics, visiting a kind of hurt upon you. And you would hate us for it. Still, leave it to that crafty Keith Uhlich to pick a winner in the Chinese semidocumentary 24 City, now at IFC Center. There’s also some way-cool Miyazaki animation at the same venue on Saturday and Sunday; click here for details. Or take the advice of Josh and revisit some crazy Las Vegas movies in the privacy of your own home. That’s the place where Showgirls works best—since innocent audiences needn’t be scarred by it. Only connoisseurs.

Ah, these slow, rainy Fridays, when news is so scarce that you’re reduced to reporting a possible big-screen adaptation of Full House. John “Uncle Jesse Katsopolis” Stamos is looking to bring that ’80s sitcom classic (of a sort) to cinemas with an all-star cast. Among the names mentioned: Steve Carell as patriarch Danny Tanner (formerly played by Bob Saget) and Tracy Morgan as the endlessly inventive Joey Gladstone (originally channeled by Alanis Morissette’s “down on you in a theater” paramour, Dave Coulier). Will there be room for the original cast, à la The Brady Bunch Movie? Not that those Olsen twins need the paycheck…

On to more manly things: Clint Eastwood’s latest, the Nelson Mandela epic now titled Invictus, has been set for release on December 11 of this year. Morgan Freeman plays Mandela and Matt Damon costars as Francois Pienaar, captain of the rugby team that the South African president calls upon to help unite his apartheid-ruled country.

Finally, some recommended reading at Jonathan Rosenbaum’s personal site: His own DVD liner notes deconstruction of a Rainer Werner Fassbinder essential, The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant. We think Uncle Jesse would approve.

There’s nothing like a frightumentary about corporate-run agriculture to get us eating salads for a day or two. Our sister blog The Feed has an exclusive interview with Robert Kenner, director of the forthcoming Food, Inc. Check it out, then eat a single leaf of fresh basil. Tonight’s screening of the documentary at the Times Center (presented by Museum of the Moving Image) is long sold out, but maybe you can sneak in—you’ll be rail thin!

Is tonight the night you finally go see Rashomon? Yes. We think it is. You’ve been putting it off, putting it off—yeah, it’s a biggie, but you had to go see Star Trek first, and also that Pixar movie, etc. But tonight you’ll commit. Film Forum is a lovely place to be, especially on a Thursday. You’ll feel like a real connoisseur. And this new restoration of Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 breakthrough is pretty tops. Subjectwise, the movie is about as modern as they come: Truth can shift and bend, depending on your perspective. So who cares that the film is close to 60 years old? You can appreciate older things. You can see value in cinema’s history. You’ve heard about samurai and Japan and Toshiro Mifune and want to learn more. See? You’ve totally psyched yourself up to go see Rashomon.

Sad, sad news: The AP is reporting that David Carradine, best known for his role on TV’s Kung Fu and in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill movies, was found dead in a hotel room in Bangkok early this morning. Carradine was in Thailand to work on an unspecified movie that had begun production this week; while nothing has been confirmed, police have suggested that he took his own life. He was 72. We’ll miss him.

Like a Gallic Energizer bunny, Jean-Luc Godard seems damned near indefatigable. The Hollywood Reporter leads with news that the septuagenarian filmmaker has his sights set on adapting The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, Daniel Mendelsohn’s Holocaust tale. We eagerly await biographer Richard “Godard is a big ol’ anti-Semite” Brody’s response.

Oh, awesome: a remake of Short Circuit. Just what we’ve always wanted.

It was inevitable, but we didn’t think it would happen this quickly: Sacha Baron Cohen is already being sued by someone over their inclusion in his new gonzo comedy, Brüno. And it hasn’t even opened yet!

If seeing Woodstock tonight feels a little too grandpa-y, maybe you want to dial your time machine forward, to the early ’80s, when the almost-famous Anvil flirted with success. The band is still toiling at its art, and Sacha Gervasi’s fine documentary, Anvil! The Story of Anvil, is still in theaters. Our critic loved it, saying “it turns the nail-biting tension up to 11″; we also chatted with the band, a winningly sincere combo. The doc calls to you tonight for a special screening at the Village East at 10pm—after which Anvil will emerge, triumphantly, and play a live set! There will be no more cathartic a moment ever.