15. Russian Glamour, June 2009
Beyoncé's skin looked digitally darkened on the cover of Russian Glamour — and the editors had a guide! A magazine called Joy used the same shot in December 2007. Was something lost in translation? Save your "black Russian" jokes until the end.

14. L'Oreal, August 2008
Beyoncé's skin seemed very light in ads for Feria haircolor. One theory: she was washed out by the strong lighting usually used in shooting hair.

13. Vogue, November 2009
The cast of Nine is chock-full of gorgeous women, but this shot is a mindscramble of random rays of sunlight in hair and dresses with edges so sharp they look like they're for paper dolls. As I wrote in October: "I'm guessing [Annie] Leibovitz shot them each separately and then did a composite, but when you have a person who doesn't cast a shadow on the lady next to her, then that person is a vampire." Poor Kate Hudson looks like she was slapped on as an afterthought.

12. Complex, April/May 2009
Kim Kardashian's waist was cinched, her thighs were slimmed, her skin skin smoothed out and her hairline was cleaned up. Plus, her head appears to be a different shape in the "after" image. Who would have thought a skull could be made "sexier"?

11. Self, September 2009
Kelly Clarkson's "Total Body Confidence" came from digitally slimming her waist and behind. Two Self editors explained that the cover: "is not, as in a news photograph, journalism. It is, however, meant to inspire women to want to be their best."

10. King Arthur poster, 2004
Movie marketers felt they must, they must, they must increase the bust. Ironically, Keira Knightley told the Guardian that she lost her chest, doing archery and preparing for the role:

To fight, convincingly, shoulder to shoulder, she had to do that thing that is so de rigueur, which is totally to change your body shape. "I was about three times the size I am now. It worried me, but it was cool, it was a body that was doing what it should do. I haven't got a clue because I don't weigh myself, but it was all muscle and I was big. My neck disappeared. My chest flattened even more. It wasn't the most feminine thing in the world, but it worked for the part, because there was strength there, and it was needed."

Of course, Hollywood can't imagine a world in which people would see a movie starring an athletic, flat-chested woman. So a digital boob job followed.

9. Redbook, July 2007
The crazy thing about the Faith Hill Redbook cover is not that it was Photoshopped — it's that this is the standard amount of digital altering that goes into a cover. Unlike some true Photoshop disasters, there are no alarming mistakes here to tip you off. That makes it easy to accept the retouched image without even blinking. Faith Hill is a beautiful woman. But she needed 11 different kinds of alterations before she could be on the cover of Redbook. What a world.

8. Campari calendar, 2008
Jessica Alba: Just another woman whose real body wasn't good enough. In this case, her waist needed to be nipped in so she could shill liquor.

7. Vogue, May 2008
RoboGwyneth looks like a robot, or an alien, depending on whom you ask. One thing is for sure: Her head and neck are not in the same space-time continuum.

6. Redbook, June 2003
Jennifer Aniston's head was placed on to Jennifer Aniston's body — from another photo shoot. At the time, her publicist, Steven Huvane, said: "It's a combination of three pictures. If you're going to do it, then at least match her head up to her body, and make the neck look like it belongs to her. I still can't figure out which exact picture the face came from." A Redbook spokeswoman downplayed the changes: "The only things that were altered in the cover photo were the color of her shirt and the length of her hair, very slightly, in order to reflect her current length."

The neck does look alarmingly unreal, and her head and waist are out of sync somehow. Angelina is surely to blame.

5.Redbook, July 2003
The month after the Aniston debacle, Redbook was at it again: According to USA Today, "[Julia's] head comes from a paparazzi shot taken at the 2002 People's Choice awards. Her body, meanwhile, is from the Notting Hill movie premiere [in 1999]." Julia's publicist, Marcy Engelman, said, at the time: "It's a shame they didn't use the body that went with the head, because it was a great Giorgio Armani pantsuit (that she wore to the People's Choice awards)."

4. Newsweek, March 2005
The editors used Martha's head and a model's body, because Ms. Stewart was still in jail when the issue was being put together. It wasn't supposed to be a photograph, anyway, it was art: "The piece that we commissioned was intended to show Martha as she would be, not necessarily as she is,'' Lynn Staley, assistant managing editor at Newsweek, told The New York Times. Staley acknowledged that the cover carried a disclaimer: ''In this case, we identified this piece as a photo illustration." As Martha would say, it's a "good thing" you did.

3. Seventeen, May 2003
Think about all the Buffy plots which could have been orchestrated around Sarah Michelle Gellar's weird wrist appendage over there on the left, if her arm actually looked like that.

2. GQ, February 2003.
Some people saw Titanic over and over again — but they never saw those legs, on the left. Kate Winslet was pissed about being trimmed down on this cover, saying:

"The retouching is excessive. I do not look like that and more importantly I don't desire to look like that. I actually have a Polaroid that the photographer gave me on the day of the shoot… I can tell you they've reduced the size of my legs by about a third. For my money it looks pretty good the way it was taken."

1. Ralph Lauren Blue Label ad, October 2009
In which model Filippa Hamilton was turned into a string of spaghetti.

Earlier: Oprah's Favorite Things 2007: The Audience Freaks Out!

Hm. Noted crazy Mel Gibson will star in the film The Beaver for noted lesbian Jodie Foster, who will direct and co-star. The film, once thought to be a project for Steve Carell, is about a man who finds comfort in a beaver hand puppet. So it'll be a cheapish quirky indie type affair, although it will star one of the most vociferously strange movie stars of the past twenty years. Could be great! Could be awful. [Variety]

The Green Lantern is nearing the end of its major casting process, mulling over three actors for the lead role of a hotshot Air Force pilot who meets a dying alien and gets deputized into a space police department. (That is an actual plot of a movie. And a comic book!) Warner Brothers is trying to decide between Bradley Cooper, Ryan Reynolds, and Justin Timberlake, of all people, but is apparently having some trouble reconciling their favorite with the director's. So we'll either get a kind of boring Green Lanternt, a wise-cracking kind of annoying Green Lantern, or a singin' dancin' Green Lantern. None of which sound terribly thrilling. [THR]

The Minnie Driver/Uma Thurman comedy Motherhood, which premiered at Sundance this year, has set an October release date. The movie is about a crazed mommy trying to plan a birthday party for her daughter while the crazy city world provides obstacles along the way. Obstacles like Isn't This Basically the Plot of Jingle All the Way and Uma Thurman Is Never Funny. [Variety]

Quirky comedy queen Zooey Deschanel has signed on to play James Franco's love interest in the David Gordon Green comedy Your Highness, about a lazy prince (Danny McBride) who must go on a quest to save his kingdom. Other than the fact that Natalie Portman plays McBride's wildly disproportionate love interest, this film is weird because it looks as though Gordon Green really is going down this broad comedy route. Will we ever get a George Washington, All the Real Girls, or Snow Angels again? [THR]

Nicole Kidman will star in and produce a movie version of the book Little Bee, about a wealthy British couple who has an encounter with a Nigerian orphan while on an African vacation. No word yet on whether Jerry Seinfeld will voice the orphan character. [Variety]

Everwood surly teen Gregory Smith has joined the cast of that Canadian Grey's Anatomy-with-badges police drama Copper that will air on ABC in the States. Treat Williams is wondering if maybe there's a part for a tough-but-principled chief or something. [THR]

Ugh. Shoulda-been-gone-by-now Napoleon Dynamite star Jon Heder has landed a Comedy Central sitcom. It's about a laid-off IT worker who leaves his urban life to return home to the small town where he grew up. Which has been the idea for basically everything these days. In a nifty little distribution deal, if the sitcom's first batch of episodes do well, an automatic 90 more will be ordered. Yeesh. [Variety]

Remember Madeline Stowe? She used to do a bunch of movies a long old time ago, but she's mostly disappeared. Back in her heyday, she wrote a script called Unbound Captives, about Injuns and the Wild West, that was worth millions of dollars. But she never sold it, because she wanted to star. Well now the movie is finally happening and while she'll direct, Rachel Weisz will star. Alongside sparklevamp Robert Pattinson and Hugh Jackman. Good for you, Stowey. [Variety]

Noted hilarious people Monica Bellucci, Guy Pearce, and Miranda Otto, are going to be in a romantic comedy directed by Bruce Beresford. It's going to be a scream! [Variety]

Perhaps after seeing Whatever Works and thinking "Oh God...", Nicole Kidman has dropped out of Woody Allen's next movie. Probably a wise-ish move. [Variety]

Six and a half million people in America watched a one hour edition of iCarly, called "iDate a Bad Boy" (guest star Charlie Sheen). 6.5 million people. We're all old, America! [THR]

People are evidently watching that show Castle too. I guess Nathan Fillion's talents aren't being wasted! [THR]

Movie stars steal theater folks' roles again! Though Cynthia Nixon and John Slattery played the roles in the well-reviewed Broadway production, square-jawed Aaron Eckhart and bugle-lipped Nicole Kidman will be starring in the film adaptation of David Lindsay-Abaire's play about a dead kid, Rabbit Hole. Oddly, John Cameron Mitchell, of Hedwig fame, will helm. The theateriest movie news ever! [Variety] And speaking of Sex and the City people, Warner Bros. and New Line have finally set a date for the big SATC movie sequel. Set your lipgloss to stun and mark your pink martini calendars, because on May 28, 2010... your sequined dreams will be realized once more. The story of grief and loss and life changes as the three gals make the tough decision to put Samantha in a home is sure to be a crowd pleaser. [Variety]

That twee-looking little indie movie about hipsters and babies and stuff, Gigantic, starring Zooey Bechamel, Paul Dano, and John Goodman, has won the top prize at the AFI Dallas International Film Festival. So, it must be good! [Variety] Meanwhile, in bizarro land, Julian Schnabel and Patton Oswalt have won awards at the same festival. [Variety]

Showtime has picked up two new series. They'll likely run with the comedy Ronna & Beverly, about two middle aged Jewish ladies in Boston (!!), and the Tim Robbins-produced drama Possible Side Effects, starring Josh Lucas. Sadly for someone probably, they've passed on the Matthew Perry series End of Steve. [Variety] More cable bad news: the season two finale of FX series Damages was down 32% from last year in the ol' ratings department. Though, a third season has already been ordered, so no worries. [THR]

The terrific Rosemarie DeWitt is joining the cast of John Wells' Company Man, alongside Chris Cooper, Kevin Costner, Tommy Lee Jones, and Ben Affleck. They're filming in Boston, so I'm gonna have to run home and gawp at them like a regular weirdo or something. [THR] Amaury Nolasco, from Prison Break, has been cast in the Hunter S. Thompson adaptation The Rum Diary, starring Johnny Depp. It's filming in Puerto Rico, so if you're there, go and gawp like a standard strange-o. [THR]

One of the many perks of living in countries like Slovakia, Romania, and the Czech Republic? You get to watch the precious premium cabler the MGM Channel. Well now those of you in jealous Slovenia can relax. They've finally brought the network to you too. So good. All is well in Central and Eastern Europe. [Variety]

Nicole Kidman, plastic bee-stung actress of floundering status, has joined Woody Allen's next movie. Also on board are Josh Brolin, Anthony Hopkins, Naomi Watts, Antonio Banderas, and Freida Pino. Generally Allen's more star-studded movies turn out to be the worst ones (with the exception of Everyone Says I Love You), so this doesn't bode well. [Variety] Meanwhile the so totally still likable Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz are said to be on board a James Mangold-directed movie about a luckless lady love loser who meets a mysterious stranger on a blind date. The movie was originally going to star Eva Mendes and Chris Tucker, so that should speak to its quality. [Variety]

The top 35 ad-based cable networks—Fox News, Food Network, Cartoon Network—are up 7% this year in ratings. Fox, for example, averages a depressing 1.7 million households, up 22% from the same quarter last year. Though other networks like MTV and Lifetime have seen drops, 16% and 12% respectively. Makes sense to us. What with the economy and all, no one has time to pay attention to things like music and women. [Variety]

Hm. Noted conservative 24 producer Joel Surnow (who is responsible for this) is penning a 10-hour miniseries called The Kennedys, which will dig into "the soiled and crooked steps" that the family took to insinuate themselves into the White House. A Canadian distributor plans to shop the idea around Cannes in May. Good luck finding actors! Though, I bet Bruce Willis would look fabulous in a wig and pillbox hat. [Variety]

Area hottie boombalottie Ian Somerhalder (Boone from Lorst) has been cast in a CW pilot called Vampire Diaries. He plays a vampire who is fun one minute, evil the next. And nude. Hopefully nude. [Variety] Former hottie boombalottie Orlando Bloom will be featured in the last unproduced screenplay by the late playwright Horton Foote. He'll play a small town North Carolina policeman. Also joining him in the cast is Andrew McCarthy. [THR]

Donald Sutherland will star in The Eastmans for CBS. [THR] Isaiah Washington is lined up to star in that Lou Rawls biopic everyone's been clamoring for. [THR] The comic American Jesus, about a modern-day bout between the Savior and the Antichrist, may be adapted into a film by X-Men director Matthew Vaughn. [THR]

After a botched press tour, a less-than-rapturous box office take, and a tarring of director Baz Luhrmann as the new "black hole of cinema" (to say nothing of the bounty set on Kidman's ovaries), most of the film's principal players would be content to lay low and make no more noise until Australia begins its DVD afterlife. An insecure Kidman, however, only added more fuel to the bonfire when she confessed that she typically doesn't watch her own films, and being forced to sit through Australia made her "squirm."

Miss Kidman, who attended the premiere with country singer husband Keith Urban, said: 'I can't look at this movie and be proud of what I've done.

'I sat there and I looked at Keith and went "Am I any good in this movie?"

'But I thought Brandon Walters (an 11-year-old Aboriginal boy) and Hugh Jackman were wonderful.

'It's just impossible for me to connect to it emotionally at all.'

Fortunately for Kidman, she only has one more of her upcoming performances to sit through: Nine, in which the Weinstein Co's breakthrough advances in crotch-veil technology can be expanded upon to produce a private version where Daniel Day-Lewis, Judi Dench, and Fergie interact with a six-foot-tall, Botoxed sheath.

• 'I squirmed in my seat,' says Nicole Kidman as she reveals embarrassment at her performance in Australia epic [Daily Mail]

Luhrmann's postmortem addresses both the risks and challenges inherent in his epic $130 million flop, but more emphatically singles out the haters too cynical to look past the bad dialogue, Wizard of Oz bludgeoning, and generally boring three-hour runtime and embrace Australia's sincere core. So what if the movie wasn't good, he seems to say — and really, why is he explaining himself at all? Isn't this whole thing just your fault anyway?

"There are those that don't get it. A lot of the film scientists don't get it. And it's not just that that they don't get it, but they hate it and they hate me, and they think I'm the black hole of cinema. They say, 'He shouldn't have made it, and he should die'..."This is not (simply) a romantic comedy for 40-year-old women or action movies for 17-year-old boys, and that's not OK with some people. It's not OK for people to come eat at the same table of cinema." [...]

"When you do what I do, you expect to be covered in mud. But there seems to be a lot of misinformation...I'm used to the waves crashing around me. And what I do is stick to a craggy rock as they keep coming. And if you stick to it long enough someone else will stick to it, too, and then someone else and then someone else."

In other words, good intentions are of greater value than poor execution. We'd like to believe him, but it's a slippery slope; such an acknowledgment would potentially let Nicole Kidman's didgeridoo-rocking off the hook, and that is a craggy rock no one wants to cling to. Tough break, Baz, but lesson learned for Gatsby.

• Baz Luhrmann, with a defense as full-throated as Moulin Rouge [THR]

"People are going to see Nicole playing it and think it's all right," award-winning actor, screenwriter and Aboriginal language teacher Richard Green told Tuesday's Sydney Morning Herald.

"It bastardises our culture. I will guarantee she has no more children. It is not meant to be played by women as it will make them barren."

Kidman, who suffered an ectopic pregnancy and a miscarriage during her former marriage to fellow actor Tom Cruise, gave birth to daughter Sunday Rose after marrying country crooner Keith Urban in 2006.

Way to hit her where it hurts, kind Oceania. Fortunately, what Green doesn't know is that Kidman is still planning to birth a child, Athena-like, from her smooth, shiny forehead. Yes, those were not Botox shots but fertility treatments, and once little Tuesday Cauliflower emerges her first act will be to suck on a didgeridoo too, just to be spiteful.

• Nicole Kidman warned after breaking Aboriginal taboo: report [Yahoo]

No, Australians are up in arms because Kidman played the didgeridoo on some wacky German talk show, which women are forbidden to do in many parts of the country (apparently, souvenir shops have special exemptions). Truly, though, this clip of Kidman and Hugh Jackman on Wetten, dass..? is both an amazing extension of Kidman's Awkwardness '08 talk show tour and a surreal masterpiece that can rival the stateside display of our nation's vice president-elect stoning and drowning TV's Elaine Benes under the stewardship of a famous lesbian. Watch as Kidman sits there, having no idea what the hell anyone is saying, eventually realizing that they want her to humiliate herself on-screen. What follows, we imagine, is something akin to how David Lynch might interpret the wedding night between Kidman and Tom Cruise: lots of giggling, tentative blowing, and an uncomfortable man in a three-piece suit dancing on one foot. [The Age]

WHAT'S NEW: Speaking of recipes, Four Christmases sure has a fresh one! Mix Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn. Add two cups of diced ensemble players including Robrt Duvall, Jon Favreau, Kristin Chenoweth and Sissy Spacek. Flavor with ball-kicking, pratfall and baby-vomit jokes. Bake for two hours. Serve lukewarm. It's good for about $40 million over five days. Transporter 2 is a little simpler hors d'oeurve for the guys out there, with Jason Statham liberally seasoned with bullets, quick cuts and decibels, turning out $18 million before the main course on DVD.

But if you're allergic to the multiplex, you may be best best suited to skip ahead to this week's new home video releases; the art-house kitchen appears to be closed to deliveries for the holiday weekend.

THE BIG LOSER: Australia is almost three hours' worth of the expansive (and expensive, at $130 million) hisorical epic no one makes anymore. And despite Oprah Winfrey's lavish endorsement, there's a reason for that: It's one in a generation that actually finds any traction in the two female quadrants whose repeat viewings push it toward box-office longevity and, almost necessarily, Oscar luster. Fox needs half a Titanic here (thus its Hugh Jackman heartthrob push at non-starter Nicole Kidman's expense) to make this work, and for the sake of the studio and director Baz Luhrmann and all involved, we hope they get it. But the middling, $26 million reality — especially on Twilight's likely second week at No. 1 — is what it is.

THE UNDERDOG: Instant-message quibbles aside, Milk is far and away the best thing opening this weekend; expect sell-outs and a per-screen average of at least $39,000 in 17 markets. (It opens wide Dec. 12.)

FOR SHUT-INS: This week's new DVD's include Will Smith's brooding hero Hancock, the summer champs Meet Dave and Space Chimps, more Vaughn holiday frolic in Fred Claus, the TV knockoffs A Colbert Christmas and 24: Redemption, and just in time for the holidays/white-elephant gift exchange, Beverly Hills 90210: The Complete Sixth Season.

So will your Turkey Day food coma overlap into moviegoing? Is it more of a football-and-shopping weekend, or will the budgie-smuggling pull of Australia be just too challenging to withstand? In any event, have a fantastic holiday, and should you brave Space Chimps, please let us know what we're missing.

To be fair, Kidman (made up to look like an insane cross between a pilgrim and the Baroness from The Sound of Music) attempted to be diplomatic about the appearance, but Regis refused to have it, placing the blame for the encounter squarely on Letterman. Careful, Regis — a war with Dave is one that few walk away from as the victor. Just look what happened to John McCain! [Live with Regis and Kelly]

Hard to say exactly what went wrong, but things simply seemed off from the start, as Kidman seemed acutely unable of more than two-word responses, and repeatedly failed to pick up on David Letterman's conversational cues. "I'm just smiling!" Kidman insisted. Oh, so that's what that was!

• Late Show [CBS]

· It's... OK! Todd McCarthy has the most substantial review so far in Variety, starting off:

The beauty of the film's stars and landscapes, the appeal of the central young boy and, perhaps more than anything, the filmmaker's eagerness to please tend to prevail, making for a film general audiences should go with, even if they're not swept away.

That's pretty much the consensus, in fact; THR blogger Steve Zeitchik invokes "the schmalztier parts of The English Patient," while Anne Thompson sighs Australia is "well done for what it is, assuming that you like old-fashioned Hollywood movies of the sort they do not make anymore."

·It's a melodrama! "Snidely Whiplash" comes up in both McCarthy's and Thompson's reviews of Australia's cattle-baron villains, and THR reviewer Megan Lehmann cites some "cringe-making Harlequin Romance moments between homegrown Hollywood stars" Kidman and Jackman. But roll with it, says Patrick Goldstein: "[It's] hopelessly cornball if you're not willing to embrace the material with the same childlike abandon you felt when you first saw Brigadoon or Singin' in the Rain."

·It's long! "A bladder-burster at 165 minutes," complains Lou Lumenick. It's a unanimous observation across the board, and not always in a critical sense — though Variety's McCarthy emphasizes a succession of lags after the big second-act cattle drive and a drawn-out ending. And Zeitchik writes, "[W]ith many slo-motion shots accentuating melodrama, one can only wonder if it would have might clocked in at 1 1/2 hours had all scenes been shot at regular speed.

·It's got bad CGI! Lumenick decries "a special-effects laden Japanese attack on Darwin that looks like rejected test footage from Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor, and an even phonier-looking cattle charge toward a cliff." How phony-looking? Says McCarthy: "A dramatic stampede so CGI-heavy that it may as well have been animated."

·Nicole Kidman overachieves! Even Lumenick, one of the Oscar-winners most consistent critics, acknowledged "she gives the first performance I've liked since Cold Mountain." But how does she stack up against Jackman? "Pin thin and ramrod straight, Kidman gives one of her most engaging performances, occasionally harking back to the comic highs of To Die For," Lehmann writes. "Meanwhile, Jackman looks good in his Akubra bush hat."

·The Aboriginal kid is great! McCarthy says of young star Brandon Walters, "Eleven when the film was made, the attractive non-pro has a natural ease and winning way before the camera as the character who represents the tension in the country's racial divide and historical conscience." Lehmann gushes further, suggesting the "breakout star" lends Australia "its true heart."

·It's got a happy ending! Which, as you might already have heard, should make for a great series of DVD extras.

The Oscar-winning actress [...] acknowledged some of her recent films had not been a great success, saying she had "quirky taste."

"In terms of my future as an actor and stuff, I don't know," she told a news conference. "I am in a place in my life where ... I've had some great opportunities and I may just choose to have some more children. I've no idea what is in my future but I am very at peace with where I want to be. There are many things I want to do besides act."

Great. Kidman joins Angelina Jolie, Joaquin Phoenix and a surprisingly large surge of others currently diagramming their escapes from Hollywood — a celebrity trend we prefer to, say, Malawian adoption safaris, but which nevertheless gives us bittersweet pause. After all, for every break this might accord Naomi Watts, we just know Andy Dick is in a conference room somewhere slobbering through a callback for Captain America. Let's hope cooler heads prevail, even if Australia's box-office prospects don't.

[Photo: Getty Images]

• Stars walk the red carpet for 'Australia' premiere [Reuters]

• Nicole Kidman says she's unsure about future acting [Reuters]

• Baz Luhrmann's Australia is good, but not a masterpiece [The Australian]

The Daily Telegraph reported yesterday that "disastrous reviews from test screenings" rejected Australia's original ending, in which Jackman's character dies:

One test-screening audience member described the film as "an action-filled tragedy'' and urged Luhrmann to change the ending.

"If they can tastefully tie this movie up into a solid story, with a nice pace - Baz will have a winner here,'' one reviewer wrote.

"And there is no reason to kill off Wolvie (Jackman) in this one - come on.''

Desperate for a hit and apparently not remembering the conclusion (or success) of their previous tragedy Titanic, execs at 20th Century Fox spent much of the week persuading Luhrmann to rewire a "more uplifting" ending. Thus the Telegraph's blunt headline, "Baz bows to Hollywood," a mournful reminder that a nation's pride, history and artistic ambitions are no match for the monolithic will of the men who brought you Meet Dave, Space Chimps and The Rocker.

As far as next week's deadline, the visionary Luhrmann remained coy: "I wouldn't say we are within schedule, but it's possibly within reach," he told the paper. At least he's retained creative control over uniquely unconvincing optimism. Look for Fox to have massaged that by the end of the day as well.

• Baz bows to Hollywood [Sunday Telegraph via The Guardian]

And that's not even counting the four Oscar winners on display: Nicole Kidman, Sophia Loren, Marion Cotillard and Dame Judi Dench. And look at Kate Hudson! Even the PA's get to be all dressed up on this movie! Dec. 11, 2009, can't come soon enough!

• Notes from the 2008 American Film Market: Part One [FilmJerk via TFE]

Last month Luhrmann told The Age that he was expecting to hand the 170-minute film to Fox one reel at a time while he tightened "mechanics of storytelling." (The Kidman/Jackman romance, though? Totally believable!) Over the weekend, though, he vaguely hinted that the Nov. 19 date was just another porous deadline:

[W]ith its much-vaunted release date just weeks away, on November 26, nobody has seen a final print of the film. Why? Because one doesn’t exist.

“We always thought it was extremely precarious,” Luhrmann admits. “We’re going to give it our all and at the moment it’s an absolutely real date. But I would not be truthful if I didn’t say it’s a little like landing a jumbo jet on an aircraft carrier in a storm…”

Which is to say... impossible? Fox, meanwhile, urged calm today; "We're not missing a deadline," a rep told Thompson. And even if they do, have you seen those recent Luhrmann-directed, state-financed tourism spots? The creepy ones with the Aboriginal kid from the movie? That's what this guy's rush jobs look like, so seriously — let him have as long as he wants.

• 'Australia': Where Is It? [TOH]

• Baz Luhrmann's epic gamble [The Age]