• The 66th Venice Film Festival kicks off today. Variety says guests are in store for "a daring and diverse selection that comprises more countries, more newcomers, more Americans, more genre pics and what the fest boasts will be more 3-D on display than at any other nonspecialized event." Among the most anticipated US representatives are the festival's day of celebration of Disney and Pixar, the Weinstein Company's adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's The Road and Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story. Spoiler spies who have sneaked peeks at the Moore film inform us it is their guess that the title in fact may be just a tiny bit ironic. Who woulda guessed? [Var]

• Director Paul W.S. Anderson of Resident Evil honors has signed on to shoot a 3-D version of The Three Musketeers. Anderson says he will create a contemporary feel for the classic tale while retaining its period setting. Just picture Too Fast, Too Furious with funny feathered hats and perhaps a pie fight or two. [THR]

• HBO has ordered 11 episodes of the Martin Scorsese produced 1920's gangster series Broadwalk Empire. [The Wrap]

• Jerry Springer has singed a deal to host a live Vegas stage version of America's Got Talent at the Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino. Nick Cannon, you may relax now. [Var]

• Iron Man BFF's Jon Favreau and Robert Downey Jr. are reuniting for Cowboys and Aliens, a sci-fi Western. The Dreamworks project will be Favreau's first directing gig after he finished Iron Man 2. [THR]

• Doug Wright is turning his acclaimed 1987 documentary Hands on a Hardbody into a stage musical at the La Jolla Playhouse. [Var]

Feeling bad for the museum, the Hollywood Foreign Press Time Warner Cable (who's teamed up with Ovation TV) have looked within their entertainment-loving hearts and are each donating give the museum $75,000 to keep the 40-year old program alive. And, as if that's not enough, Time Warner and Ovation are spending $1.5 million to market the program to the masses.

For its part, the Hollywood Foreign Press was "persuaded" by an open letter penned by Martin Scorsese.

So, rest easy, for the program's safe — well, for now: museum officials say they have enough money to last through the 2010 fiscal year. After that? Who knows...

Image via pedrosimoes7's flickr.

Judging by the just-released trailer, anyway. Basically Mark Ruffalo and DiCaps sport rickety Boston drawls and go to a badly-CGI'd island off the coast of Beantown and... creepy stuff happens. People jumping out of cages and saying ominous things in whispered tones, and then apparently everyone goes camping with Patricia Clarkson.

So many questions we have about this one. Is this some sort of stab at J-horror relevancy by the aging Scorsese? Did he try to get Sarah Michelle Gellar but she was just busy or something? What's with the really bad special effects? Maybe is it just going to be a fun thriller with a particularly bad trailer? Only time will tell.

The only thing we do know for certain is that we're a lot less enthused about the project than we were just a day ago.

The good people over at Vulture (butNikki Finke told us first!!!!) tell us that Universal wants to cast Johnny Depp, though Scorsese would rather go with his beautiful blonde boyfriend who he kisses all the time, Leonardo DiCaprio. If this is an origin story, though, then isn't Depp a little too old?

Meanwhile the Observer suggests four actors: James Franco, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Simon Baker, and Jon Hamm. Any of those could work, we guess, though probably the best course of action is to find some unknown, like from the world of theater or something. The actor doesn't have to sing—Universal got the song rights and will use the original tracks in the film—but he does have to look like he knows how to perform on a musical stage.

But, all things considered, we think it should go to the reigning king of music biopics. Jamie Foxx, whaddaya say?

Who do you think would be good?

Yes, that sound you just heard was a pizza pie falling to the ground.

Universal and Mandalay have been working on getting the crooner's life rights for some time now, and they've finally succeeded. So all things are a go. Now they just have to find their Frank. Hell, it's probably just gonna be Chris Pine or something.

The best thing about this news, however, is that hopefully it means that this abomination won't get off the ground.

After the jump: Kung Fu Panda reups in 3D, Fringe reups in 2D, and crisis! grips! Bollywood!

· Jack Black and Angelina Jolie will return for a 3D Kung Fu Panda sequel, prompting the Chinese scientists so humiliated by the first one to ramp up their pursuit of a fourth dimension for their eagerly awaited response. [THR]
· The number of new DVD titles released through August is down almost 15% from the same time last year, 8,661 to 7,381. Come on, Hollywood — let's get going! Harvey can't keep up this pace all by himself! [THR]
· The Bollywood film industry is in a standstill today after 147,000 workers in 22 unions (even the dancing girls!) went on strike to protest substandard pay and work conditions. In related news, Warnari Bros. Studios drew fan wrath after the stoppage forced them to delay the release of Hari Puttar 2 to summer 2009. [Variety]
· You wanted it (we think), you got it: Fox ordered a full season of JJ Abrams's Fringe. [THR]

But we digress! DiCaprio's biographical obsessions — from his baby-faced turn as Tobias Wolff (This Boy's Life) to his overbearing Howard Hughes (The Aviator) to his beguiling swindler Frank Abagnale Jr. (Catch Me if You Can) — have us reconsidering his slate of upcoming roles. Is Leo actually determined to spend the next five years portraying video game mavens, ex-presidents, spy novelists and Wall Street crooks? And will they get him any closer to the Oscar such roles seem to court? Follow the jump for our convenient oddsmaking guide to Leo's biopic prospects.

PROJECT: The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt

BACKGROUND: The eldest of DiCaprio's gestating biopics, Roosevelt was announced back in Sept. 2005, with Martin Scorsese set to direct a script based on Edmund Morris's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography. Then they did The Departed and Shutter Island (and announced another collaboration in-between; see below). Roosevelt, meanwhile, remains dead.

OSCAR-PANDERING?: Very much (and very expensively) so, but not any worse than, say, The 11th Hour.

ODDS IT'LL BE MADE WITH LEO: 75-1 before 2012; 50-1 afterward.

PROJECT: The Wolf of Wall Street

BACKGROUND: DiCaprio optioned high-flying (literally — he once piloted his chopper while strung out on coke) finance kingpin Jordan Belfort's rags-to-riches-to-prison memoir before its publication in 2007. Again, Scorsese was touched to direct.

OSCAR-PANDERING?: Leo already did showy with Howard Hughes; the Academy is over it.

ODDS IT'LL BE MADE WITH LEO: 20-1. We're much more interested, though, in whether or not Tommy Chong will play himself as Belfort's real-life cellmate.

PROJECT: Fleming

BACKGROUND: Appian Way last month jumped aboard the biopic of James Bond creator Ian Fleming, which will focus in part on the author's Naval Intelligence background during WWII. DiCaprio is reportedly bringing in a new writer, though, which could mean anything from "Let's play up Fleming's spanking fetish" to "Let's take this off the market just in case."

OSCAR-PANDERING?: Only if Leo masters Fleming's accent and gets to spank Kate Winslet.

ODDS IT'LL BE MADE WITH LEO: 100-1. Seriously — have you ever seen Ian Fleming?

PROJECT: Atari

BACKGROUND: Announced this weekend, DiCaprio signed on to produce and star as Nolan Bushnell, the heartthrob who brought you Pong.

OSCAR-PANDERING?: Only if the Academy remembers Atari is a brand and not Leo's character. The Chuck E. Cheese thing is a problem as well.

ODDS IT'LL BE MADE WITH LEO: 1-4. And Uwe Boll will direct.

• Leonardo DiCaprio to star in 'Atari' [THR]

[Minion's Wikipedia page] mentions that the film included some "minor details" borrowed from Joe Frank, and that Frank successfully sued over it. But the theft was far from minor. Many of the details in the film's first half hour are similar, if not copied outright: the chance meeting of a man and a kooky but sexy woman; the woman's offer to set the man up with some of her artist roommate's plaster of paris bagel-and-cream-cheese paperweights; the man's late-night phone call to the woman; his cab ride to meet her, at the end of which his only cash flies out the window; her wearing of a loosely tied bathrobe when she answers the door; her tale of having been raped by man who came down the fire escape; and so forth.

We're also directed to a 2000 profile of Frank pointing out that he was "paid handsomely by producers of a Hollywood film (which he won't name) that plagiarized his dialogue." We've often wondered if this had anything to do with Scorsese's tendency toward straight book adaptations, remakes and biopics since then; Hearst will surely have an answer for that one by Independence Day.

• The Scandalous Origins of Martin Scorsese's 'After Hours' [Panopticist]

· Miss Guided casualty Jude Greer was cast in Barry Sonenfeld's HBO pilot Suburban Shootout, about a woman who finds "herself caught between two rival gangs of homicidal housewives as they vie for control of their idyllic town." [THR]
· For the first time, Fox was the overall winner of the strike-marred 2007-08 TV season. [Variety]
· Sony Pictures Releasing launched the Hot Ticket, which will distribute live shows to digital-cinema-equipped movie theaters, giving musical theater lovers who can't be bothered to catch the touring production a viable, Rent-seeing alternative. [THR]

Al Pacino over Denzel? When Al doesn't win for Godfather I, Godfather II, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon — they fucked him over at least five times, I know. Then he does Scent of a Woman. Denzel [nominated that year for Malcolm X] already won for Glory: "He's young, he'll be back, he'll be all right. We fucked over Al, we'll give it to him." [Whispering] "Denzel, we'll hook you up, we got you." Training Day! He wins for Training Day. So we don't get it for Malcolm X. It's like the makeup call in basketball. It messes everything up. ...

If you don't get it when you should, it messes everything up. The problem is, you don't get it when you need to get it. And when you get the makeup call, then you're fucking somebody else over and it just keeps going on and on and on. Now I love Marty [Scorsese] — does he think Departed was the best film? Hell, no, he knows that, but would he give it back? Hell, no!

Of course, there are alternatives to Lee's Makeup Rule: the Crash Rule of Hollywood's Conscience Elite concluding Oscar night with its long-rehearsed, autoerotic grand finale; the Three Six Mafia Rule of being the best alternative in a shitty year... We'd love to hear your own rules below. That said, Lee is a Makeup-Rule candidate all the way, positioning himself for that day 10 years from now when his risky collaboration with Diablo Cody, Mo' Batter Blues, results in his best work since 25th Hour.

• Spike Lee on Why He'll Win an Oscar in 2025 [Vulture]

We thought of asking Richards to nudge silent, somnambulent drummer Charlie Watts awake for a quick picture, but opted instead to inquire about Scorsese's own cameos in the beginning and end of the film — the latest contributions to an increasingly public persona we've seen him develop everywhere from TV spots to causes célèbres including the environment and film preservation. Sure, there are more famous directors, but we can't imagine Steven Spielberg ever interjecting himself as a dramatic counterpoint to, say, Indiana Jones the way Scorsese plays off Mick Jagger. We haven't seen an actual auteur ham it up like this since Alfred Hitchcock.

"We had a lot of trouble working out the ending of the film," Jagger told us. "Marty had to go to a lot of different acting coaches to do it."

"It was sad," Scorsese deadpanned. "It was sad, yeah. But I do it on my own pictures. I'm kind of [like] Edgar Kennedy — the slow burn, the guy who always used to go like this?" He slapped a palm over his face, grimaced and gradually pulled away. "That's what happens when you make films, so one of the things to do is make use of that, and literally send up the 'hapless director,' so to speak. And very often you do feel like a hapless person sitting there. The actor's doing one thing, the camera's doing another. It started to snow the other night when we were shooting. It wasn't supposed to snow. Things like that. Do we continue shooting? But that's the nature of what it is, and you have to have fun with it. There are so many documentaries and so many sections of concert films where you see the actual setting up of the concert and interviewing people, and we thought, 'Let's have fun with it.' Let's get straight to the tension — and the humor of that tension."

But does it work? You tell us; Shine a Light opens Friday.

· Great news for all those out-of-work actor friends you've been slightly concerned about since they duct-taped themselves inside their homes to explore the medium of peanut-butter-and-Cap'n Crunch sculpture: TV's hiring again, in a pilot casting frenzy. [THR. THR]
· Phil Collins's 18-year-old daughter Lily Collins has been hired by Nickelodeon to "appear in interstitial programming spots airing throughout the day and night." Or, as her father might put it, "I can see Lil' Collins with Squarepants tonight...Oh lord..." (Wow. That was pretty bad.) [THR]
· SNL's return after a three-month strike hiatus brings that show its highest ratings in two years, with their impressions of presidential hopefuls ranging from bang-on (Mike Huckabee as Mike Huckabee) to the desperately in need of fine-tuning (Fred Armisen's Obama). [THR]

· 20th Century Fox TV handsomely rewards Bones executive producer Hart Hanson for his services, extending his overall deal for three more years. Recognizing that nothing can make a guy feel more loved than getting an eight-figure contract with a strike looming, Hanson gushed, "They've been very good to me and have made me feel important to them." [THR]
· NBC Universal yanks its content from the YouTubes in preparation for its move to similar-sounding video-sharing site Hulu.com. [Variety]

The place was packed and security was tight but it was worth it. I saw several Oscars floating around the party.

Leonardo DiCaprio made the rounds with Bar in tow. He donned his usual ball cap. He's a really gracious person. He recognized us and said hello. Just a brief encounter.

Martin Scorsese made a quick appearance.

Djimon Hounsou as sprawled out on a chair drinking a beer, meeting a girl.

Live action short film Oscar winner Ari Sandel celebrating the night away. I got to hold his Oscar (they really are heavy) while he was congratulated by Vince Vaughn. Ari directed Vince's comedy show documentary. Vince posed for photos with our group. He arrived at the party in the wee morning hours and stayed for a few hours. He spent most of the time chain smoking and talking to a buddy. He seemed to practically avoid women at the party.

I found my self sandwiched between Jamie Foxx and Forest Whitaker. I congratulated Mr. Whitaker and as humble as usual he turns my attention back to Foxx. Jamie introduced himself and we chatted briefly about Texas as we're both from the same area. Foxx was definitely on the prowl. He tried to chat up my Paris Hilton-look-alike friend but she was having none of that.

As we make our way back to the shuttles we saw Forest again. His crew was loaded into a shuttle with Carmen Electra and friend.

The rag mags' favorite party crew was there too: Nicole Richie lounging and snuggling with her boy (Joel right?). She was drinking and having a good time. She even chowed down a plate from the buffet with Mischa Barton. Paris Hilton was looking very out of it, talking on her cell. We talked to her a bit. (One of the girls in our group looks like her twin.) Later saw her arguing with Stavros. He looked like he was "over" her. He kept trying to walk away and she kept pulling him in. There was an obvious disagreement. It ended with Paris running into the bathroom. Nicky Hilton was around too. She was hanging with some guy, looked like a boyfriend.

Lindsay Lohan was looking sober and chatting to a male friend. She wasn't the crazy party girl I've read about.

Other sightings ...

Jessica Biel still in her Oscar attire. No sign of Justin in sight.
Kirsten Dunst looking a bit out of it.
Reggie Miller looking - well — tall.
Cameron Diaz. I didn't see her talk to anyone significant.
Rosario Dawson in a long white coat.
Amy Smart
Naomi Campbell was there. She looked amazing, as a model should. Hung out with some girlfriends. Didn't seem to be with a guy.
Stacy Keibler and boyfriend. They danced the night away. She was *super* social. Seemed to talk to everyone.
X men guy ... James Marsden partied to the wee hours. He's single and was lookin'.
Adam Brody looking dapper in a 3-piece suit.
Scott Speedman (I noticed him because I just think he so cute. No one in my group knew who he was.)

People that made me think hmmm ...

Dog the Bounty Hunter was there.
Courtney Love (she looks like she looks in every picture I've seen of her. A mess. Her boobs were falling out of her dress - no surprise there.)

The music world represented ... besides Courtney:

James Blunt and girlfriend (what's her name? She was stunning looking.)
Jon Bon Jovi - he was very nice.
Kid Rock - I don't know who he is with but that woman had some BIG teased-out hair. They kept to themselves.
Danced to the tunes of DJ AM but no signs of Mandy Moore. If she was there I didn't notice. (By the way, he's dance mix lived up to the hype.)

• Complete Oscars Coverage [Defamer]

After the jump, a YouTube clip of the incident (occurring at about 3:52), which should satisfy all of your prurient, Eastwood crotch-patting needs.

• Complete Oscars Coverage [Defamer]

· The Carpetbagger sits down with Academy President Sid Ganis. Among the bombshells: The Academy doesn't have its own Oscar pool, Sid finds out the winners at the same time as the rest of us, and, we strongly suspect, The Carpetbagger spent the night before screaming his lungs out at a Justin Timberlake concert. [The Carpetbagger]
· The Santa Barbara International Film Festival gave its indie cinema American Spirit Award to Man in the Chair, and a Gold Vision Award to Spiral, a long overdue cinematic exploration of the world of telemarketing. [THR]

*Leelee Sobieski was an ingenue prominent in the late 1990s.