Manic kewpie Amanda Bynes has begun a two picture deal with Screen Gems, starting with Easy A, a high school comedy starring Emma Stone. Bynes will play a "puritanical queen bee" who shuns Stone after she does it with a boy. When I was 23 I got laid off from selling tickets to Menopause the Musical and moved back in with my parents, on my birthday. So, you win Bynes. You always do. [Variety]

Ah a reunion of friends. Jack Nicholson may team up with writer/director James L. Brooks for his next movie, which already stars Reese Witherspoon, Owen Wilson, and Paul Rudd. Nicholson and Brooks made beeyooteeful music together in Terms of Endearment and As Good As It Gets. Someone go grab Holly Hunter too. [THR]

Oh, twee and tweed and PBR and hand-drawn opening credits. Dmitri Martin's Important Things show on Comedy Central has been picked up for a second season. Most successful show involving an easel since The Joy of Painting. [Variety]

Dear God. That 80s movie Valley Girl (starring Nicolas Cage) is getting remade as a Romeo & Juliet-themed musical with a New Wave soundtrack. It'll be directed by theater vet Jason Moore. And don't worry! This won't be the last exhumation of an old 80s flick. MGM is launching a campaign to revive a bunch of old titles, from RoboCop to Red Dawn. So, good. [THR]

Ohhh nooo. I thought the above news was bad. The guy who wrote that Angelina Jolie thriller Salt has been tapped to pen a remake of... Total Recall. Why? That movie is perfect! With the exploding lady head! And the three boobs! Cohaaaagen! [Variety]

OK, I'm about to give up. Catherine Hardwicke (Twinkle: A Vampire Ballet) will direct Emile Hirsch in a modern retelling of Hamlet set in present day America. With, one hopes, classic lines like "Why don't you go to nun school or something?" and "Oh my god, yo, I knew that fool Yorrick!" [THR]

Oh, and Zac Efron's guesting on Entourage. World, ended. [EW]

Deadline Hollywood Daily is reporting that earlier today, star Emile Hirsch informed UTA, his agency of seven years, that he would no longer be using their services. They write: "[Hirsch] is planning to park himself with his manager Sam Maydew, I'm told. 'He claims he just doesn't want an agent.'" His agent Shani Rosenzweig, meanwhile, is described as "gobsmacked" by the news, a state of shock that falls somewhere between "flabbergasted," "blindsinded," and "OMFG" on the stunned-reaction spectrum. It will certainly be a sad moment this coming awards season when he and Rosenzweig aren't able to share in any accolades bestowed upon the young actor for his physically taxing performance as an overcaffeinated AV club geek in Gus Van Sant's Milk.

• More 'Speed Racer' Fallout: Emile Hirsch Exits United Talent; "Total Shocker" [Deadline Hollywood Daily]
• 'Speed Racer' comes in 3rd as 'Iron Man' maintains grip [AP]

It might be self-serving of us to suggest they publicize their films, and in a way, we empathize with their reclusion; Larry Wachowski has been the subject of sex-change and dominatrix-dating speculation since a feminized version of himself — earrings, plucked eyebrows, manicure — showed up on the Matrix Revolutions red carpet in Cannes five years ago with mistress Ilsa Strix (née Karen Winslow) on his arm. The siblings later sneaked into the New York premiere of V For Vendetta (which they wrote and co-produced), and last week in Los Angeles they went positively presidential with subterfuge at the debut of Speed Racer. "They did not do the red-carpet press line at the Nokia Theatre on Saturday, and were well-camouflaged during the after-party," wrote Borys Kit in The Hollywood Reporter. "Photographers were sworn to secrecy as to their whereabouts, and Warner Bros. assigned handlers the mission of keeping journalists off the scent."

Like it matters; the Wachowskis haven't granted an interview in the decade since The Matrix, deferring to mega-producer and de facto representative Joel Silver and their casts to flog their work publicly. Their crews sign non-disclosure agreements. The duo's contracts entitle them to a luxury rarer than final cut — an opt-out provision shielding them from the promotion of their films. It's Stanley Kubrick/Terrence Malick/Eric Rohmer stuff, but with one crucial exception: Their films aren't that good.

Or at least they haven't been in nearly 10 years; Speed Racer is no different. But what is good about it are the things to which only they can speak — the practice of reinventing the source cartoon, the relationship of vision to execution, the extraordinary scene transitions eschewing cuts for something closer to a scrolling-head montage (like "bullet-time," you just have to see it), or, on the most basic of levels, directing a standout cast (and even a goddamned monkey) against one green-screen backdrop after another. Unlike Iron Man or Warners' even more anticipated summer offering The Dark Knight, the brands work in concert with personalities to acquire traction. Emile Hirsch's abstract praises are not enough.

Warner Bros. faced the similar scenario with Kubrick for nearly three decades, covering the director's final five films from A Clockwork Orange through Eyes Wide Shut. Obviously, his death in March 1999 put a pretty irrevocable kibosh on promoting the latter film, but he did speak out from time to time about the intervening work; his daughter Vivian's behind-the-scenes documentary about The Shining was a broadcast TV event in 1980, and he did a few select interviews in 1987 on behalf of Full Metal Jacket. Moreover, he was always involved with people — actors, writers, other filmmakers — and his 15 years of work prior to his British exile in the late '60s had installed him permanently among the world cinema vanguard.

Not so for the Wachowskis, a couple of ex-carpenters from Chicago whose one-two dynamos Bound and The Matrix boosted expectations from 1996 to 1999. Their work since has lapsed into the type of indulgence that further evokes itself in those clauses guaranteeing their immunity to press, and by extension, their audience. That audience has had nothing to latch onto for too long now; no taut narratives, no singular parallel universes and certainly no visual benchmarks that can and/or should speak for themselves. Their self-containment borders on alienating, their aloofness sharing breath with its conjoined twin, arrogance.

As the most public recluses working today (and at the highest budgets), their godfather Silver can only buy the Wachowskis their privacy for so long — especially as another of their putatively visionary summer efforts meets diminishing returns in a culture craving voices with faces and faces with names. If the Viral Era has taught us anything, it's that every mystery needs a payoff, and you have to earn your mystique if you expect to exploit it.

[Photo Credits: Wireimage, Getty]

What's replacing them isn't that surprising either, but the mind reels nevertheless when we see it in print:

[T]here's a sense now — evident in multiple boxoffice metrics and comments uttered privately by the dozens of agents, managers and producers interviewed for this report — that the interplay among consumers, celebrities and entertainment dollars is changing. The new dynamics are a challenge the next generation of up-and-comers — Shia LaBeouf, Seth Rogen, Emile Hirsch and Katherine Heigl often are cited — could face.

"As audiences get younger, they don't care about movie stars in the same way," Sony Screen Gems president Clint Culpepper says. "The idea of seeing a beautiful movie star on the big screen just isn't the same to them."

Yikes! Katherine Heigl will pretend she didn't hear Culpepper — the man responsible for the recent no-name hit revival of Prom Night, incidentally — just say that. Meanwhile, we're looking at Speed Racer's sluggish tracking and wondering if fledgling leading man Emile Hirsch isn't facing that challenge as we speak. On the bright side, his generation already has Orlando Bloom, so he doesn't have to worry about plunging into that niche. Sky's the limit, kid.

• Hollywood's top stars face devaluing of A-list currency [THR]

if you're not in line already, reading Defamer from a dodgy wi-fi signal on South Main, odds are you'll have to fight, buy or chew your way in. But the theater is also hosting a giveaway for VIP tickets, winners of which get to melt in a sobbing, quivering heap at Rain's winged heels actually meet Rain in person (and, of course, send us a spoiler-rific review with lots of dirt about how the singer thought his best scenes were cut). Runners-up get a video game — a slap in the face if ever there was one, but we suppose it's the thought that counts. You have to register here, though, by next Tuesday, April 22. After that, you're on your own. Good luck with it.

• Speed Racer Sweepstakes [ImaginAsian TV]

In the scene, Penn cheerfully offers flyers to passersby, saying, "We'll have smiles around the city. A healthy mouth is a happy mouth!" (a milk-related campaign slogan?), in a Professor Frink-ish voice at least one observer thinks is true to Milk's own. Not long after, Emile Hirsch saunters by in a math club getup, throws his arms around dramatically (we hear the camera takes ten pounds off wild gesticulation), then delivers a line in which he calls Penn's character an "old man." We realize this may be a hastily drawn conclusion, but we smell 2009 Oscar.

• Making Milk [YouTube via GoodAsYou]

[Josh] Brolin will play Dan White, the rival politician and supervisor who shot Milk and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone to death at City Hall.

[Emile] Hirsch has been cast as gay rights activist Cleve Jones, an intern and close ally of Milk's, who went on to found the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt. [James] Franco will play Scott Smith, Milk's lover and campaign manager.

To clarify, it appears Brolin will be taking over from Matt Damon in the Twinkie-defense-pleading pivotal role of assassin White, Sean Penn remains intact as Milk, while Bryan Singer's take on the story, The Mayor of Castro Street, remains in "active development," according to The Studio System, with assassinated gay municipal politicians currently taking a back seat to Nazi resistance fighters and Kryptonian samaritans who accidentally get their girlfriends pregnant before disappearing from the planet for about 5 years.

• Hirsch, Franco, Brolin got 'Milk' [THR]

[Mach 5]

[not via the Official Site]

Related:
Cosplay Time: Be a Demon on Wheels in Your Own Mach 5 [internal]