Tim Burton has cast the title role in the new adaptation of Alice in Wonderland he's working on for Disney. It is not, as was rumored a couple weeks ago, Ryan Nikole Parker, but it's not anyone more well-known, either. The role has gone to Australian actress Mia Wasikowska -- and holy crap, I have nothing but respect for anyone who can break into Hollywood and retain a name like Mia Wasikowska. Up until now, her only high-profile credits have been as a regular on HBO's In Treatment and in the much-hyped but little-seen killer crocodile flick Rogue. But the 18-year-old has parts in the upcoming Defiance (Edward Zwick's latest pitch to AMPAS) and the Earhart biopic Amelia, so she should be recognizable by the time Alice in Wonderland surfaces.

The film will be a combination of live-action and motion-capture animation, and will be released in digital 3-D -- but what big new movie won't be, these days? It was written by Linda Woolverton, who worked on The Lion King, and it starts shooting in November for a 2010 release.

I'm as big a Tim Burton devotee as you'll find (don't believe me? Find me one other person who will admit to liking the Planet of the Apes remake), so I'll gladly swoon over a Burton version of the Lewis Carroll classic. In fact, this is such an on-the-nose project for Burton that I'm kind of surprised it took him this long to get to it. But I'll take it.

Look, I thought The Dark Knight had a lot of strong selling points: Combine a deft pace with thoughtful characterizations and a whopping IMAX design that turns the entire experience into a plot-driven theme park ride, and you've got one hefty dose of Batman adrenaline.

Still, comparisons to The Godfather Part II notwithstanding, The Dark Knight isn't foolproof -- in fact, no single movie in history is foolproof. The subjective experience of movie watching ensures that nothing can be universally liked by everyone, and rules of civility insist that humanity respect that truism. It's acceptable to feel passionately about a great work of art, and defend that perspective with rigorous argumentation, but much of the outrage over the minority perspective that The Dark Knight isn't any good has made such practical thinking impossible.

Deemed the first critic to pan the movie, New York's David Edelstein went out of his way to list the allegations against him sent along by various Batman fans. The House Next Door editor Keith Uhlich, meanwhile, fielded over a hundred rants in the comments section following his astute critique of director Christopher Nolan's questionable portrayals of violence. What's particularly shocking about this frightful deluge of negative responses is that many of these people began posting their disapproval before they even saw the movie.

The whole idea of secret children who come out of the woodwork is challenging as it is. Should the secret be revealed, or should it stay hidden? How do you make up for lost years? How do you integrate them into the family? Now, imagine that you're part of the law, and you find out that your secret kid is in jail. That's the basic idea behind a new indie comedy called City Island, and The Hollywood Reporter has posted that Julianna Margulies, Emily Mortimer, and Alan Arkin have joined the cast.

Andy Garcia had previously signed on to play Vince Rizzo, "a Bronx prison official who realizes that an inmate (Steven Strait) is his secret love child. His efforts to become his guardian lead to comic complications." Marguiles is taking on the role of Garcia's wife, and it seems that the man is also looking to become an actor because Arkin will play a teacher in the acting class, and Mortimer will be a fellow student he becomes friends with. Garcia's real-life daughter Dominik Garcia-Lorido will play his daughter, and Ezra Miller has also nabbed an undisclosed part.

I really don't know how all of this acting works into prison officials and long-lost bad boy sons, but we should see soon enough. The film went into production this week in the Bronx.

Boy, you miss a few weeks work to move 2,000 miles, and you fall behind on all kinds of things going on in the world of Twilight. All you Twilighters have, no doubt, been keeping up to speed with everything that's been going on out there -- you're making plans to attend Breaking Dawn parties, planning what you're going to wear, entering giveaway contests, and getting your Twilight-inspired costumes put together (who knew there were so many varieties of vampire fangs out there?).

I know, you have it much more together than I do on all the Twilight madness, but hey, I've been on the road with four kids, a dog and a cat all crammed into a 1998 Ford Windstar, moving back to Seattle, so I'm just now getting around to catching up. So here's a rundown of all-things Twilight for you -- in case you, like me, have been having a busy summer.

We've seen Bill Murray do a lot over the years, but have we ever seen him as a tried and true, REAL stuntman? Jam! reports that the actor has signed on to parachute from a plane for an appearance at the Chicago Air and Water Show that's taking place next month. If planes buzzing about isn't something that appeals to you, maybe Murray descending from the sky will? He will perform a tandem jump with the Golden Knights skydiving team on August 15. That's a way to get new viewers -- come watch celebrities fall from the sky!

Meanwhile... Are you a Roger Dodger fan? If you haven't seen this flick, you should run out and rent it, pronto. Campbell Scott stars as an uncle who takes his young nephew (Jesse Eisenberg) out on a night on the town to teach him the ways of male adulthood. While at a bar, they come across Elizabeth Berkley and Jennifer Beals, who spend some time with the pair. Now EW has found out that the two ladies are reuniting on the final season of The L Word. Instead of playing friends who do what they can to help young Nick become a man, the Showgirls star will play the straight girl who got away from Beals' Bette in college. Oh, the possibilities!

We've had the racy private photos, then the controversial Vanity Fair shoot, then wishes for a new Sex and the City. Now, Miley Cyrus' name is being attached to yet another racy-themed gig. According to MSNBC, sources are buzzing and rumors are mounting about a new project for the itching-to-age actress -- one that's making the whole racy mag shoot seem like a stepping stone into adult work.

Rumor has it that she's interested in starring in a big-screen adaptation of the annoyingly spelled Undiscovered Gyrl, a novel by Allison Burnett that is currently being shopped around. The novel is a blog from a suburban girl "who descends into a life of reckless partying and promiscuity," and there would definitely be nude scenes. Charming. Chances are, this is a buzz-generator for the book, but it could also be a buzz generator for Cyrus. Even if she doesn't take on this gig, she's getting lots of mileage out of the "Miley wants to grow up" rumor mill.

But really, if she wants to break out of the tween girl persona, the best bet is not raciness and a Britney Spears life path, but rather a few good films that give her some drama, or smarts, at her own age. You can break out of family fare without stripping and showing off the merchandise.

It used to be that the musicians with the beat were the Go Gos. Now the beat is getting manly. The Hollywood Reporter has posted that there's a new indie '80s comedy on the way called We Got the Beat, and Robert Hoffman has just joined the cast. He's been dancing his butt off in a bunch of films and most recently got to groove in the rain with Briana Evigan in Step Up 2.

Written and directed by John Artigo, the film follows "Brad, a high school football player who sets out to prove he's more than just a jock by quitting the team and turning his heavy metal band into a pioneering boy band." But that's not who Hoffman is playing -- he gets to be "Garth, the boy-toy and live-in lover of Brad's mother."

This sounds like one of those films that could be terribly bad, or terribly good. Here's to hoping it's all set to real '80s music and is awesome. The indie begins filming this month.

Top Cow is on a roll! I never actually thought a week would come in which I would have two stories about that publishing company -- but here it is. Who thought sexy, weapon wielding chicks were such a draw for the movie business? Not I! (Yes, that's sarcasm.)

The latest book to be optioned is Magdalena. It's rather similar to Witchblade except with a much more distinguished lineage. The Magdalena is descended from Sarah, the daughter of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene. She's the supernatural defender of the Catholic Church, and can look into the human heart to show people the error of their ways. And because no heroine is complete without a weapon, she wields the Spear of Destiny (the spear which pierced the side of Jesus at the Crucifixion) against the forces of evil. Luckily, nothing in the Magdalena's Catholic contract stipulates that she dress conservatively, so she's allowed to wear the crop tops of a Top Cow heroine.

And according to The Hollywood Reporter, it's already further along in production than Witchblade. No director has been set, but the leads have been cast. Jenna Dewan is currently in talks to play Patience, the spear-wielding holy heroine. (There's been a few, it looks like they're going with the most recent incarnation.) Luke Goss is set to play Kristof, an agent sent by the secret organization that protects the lineage. In the comic, these are cardinals, but somehow I bet Kristof won't be one because that would require way too much chastity -- and the stars are way too hot. Both actors are going to be at Top Cow's panel at ComicCon this weekend. If you're going, you can ask them all sorts of pressing Magdalena movie questions.

It was a bummer to learn that Franka Potente was backing out of Pope Joan back in May, but it looks like she's found herself another weighty gig to add to her plate. Variety reports that she has signed on to star in a new German drama called Flucht aus Tibet, otherwise known as Escape from Tibet. The film, which is based on a true story, will be the big-screen debut for writer and director Maria Blumencron.

Heading out of Che Guevara territory, Potente is moving over to Tibet to play Judy Cronenberg. The woman was a press photographer who led "a group of refugee Tibetan children over the Himalayas to safety nine years ago." There's nothing more being said about the story, which seems to be surprisingly free from the Internet (anyone know the details?), but it is a big German project. The film has received FFF Bayern's largest film funding -- $1.1 million.

It should be a little bit of time before we get to see Tibet, but in the meantime, of course, we can watch her play Tania in Steven Soderbergh's The Argentine and Guerilla.

We've already got The Promotion, but just in case you were itching for more man-on-man office wars, a whole new battling duo is on the way. The Hollywood Reporter posts that Michael Vartan and David Cross are going to play "bitter tire store rivals" in a new comedy called Demoted, that American Pie 2 helmer J.B. Rogers will direct from actor and writer Dan Callahan's screenplay.

In a step down from his character's success on Big Shots, Vartan will play a guy named "Rodney McAdams, a hotshot Treadline Tires sales associate who delights in tormenting his less-than-cool colleague, Ken (Cross)." But wait -- before you think Cross is being relegated to another role where he just gets tormented and takes it, or has a fear of nudity, read on: "When their boss suddenly dies, Ken is promoted and assigns Rodney to a secretarial job as payback, giving the male chauvinist a taste of his own medicine." You just don't cross the Cross!

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