As we mentioned back when it was announced that director Steven Soderbergh was making a Liberace biopic, the helmer would first take on the low-budget The Girlfriend Experience, which tells the story of a high-price call girl, for Mark Cuban and 2929 Entertainment. That production is finally underway in New York City, and news came out today that the director is staying fairly close to his source material, casting porn star Sasha Grey as the lead.

Here is a bit of Academy Awards trivia for you: Did you know that since the Oscars started being televised in the early 1950s, movie studios were not allowed to advertise any of their films during the telecast? Did you ever notice? Me neither. And it's too late to look for it, too, because this year, that's all about to change. In years past, the worry was that letting studios advertise during the show might appear as though the studios were influencing the outcome of the awards, despite the fact that votes had already been cast and collated. Still, the fact that Hollywood was actively trying to defer even the hint of impropriety is really rich. There's a first time for everything!

People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, but I guess it's fine if they watch movies. Two people, Suresh Joachim of Toronto and Claudia Wavra of Germany, have broken the world record for continuous movie watching, racking up 57 films in 123 hours in a plastic-glass house in New York's Times Square. The previous record, held by Ashish Sharma of Mathura, India was 120 hours and 23 minutes. Though a representative for Guinness World Records said that it would take two weeks to officially verify (doesn't it make it easier to verify if they did it in a glass house in the middle of Times Square?), I'm going to go ahead and say they've done it.

I'm not going to lie. For a very long time, I pronounced the word "biopic" wrong. I think I knew that I didn't quite have it right because I avoided saying it. When I did say it, it rhymed with "myopic." Luckily, I learned to say it correctly about the same time the genre started winning people Oscars. I'm proud to say (correctly!) that Forest Whitaker is about to put in his bid for a hopeful nomination in the now classic Oscar Bait: Musician Biopic Edition. He's signed on to star in and direct What a Wonderful World, a Louis Armstrong biopic, for Legende, the French production house behind La Vie en Rose.

Dear Miss Bette Davis,

Only you could appreciate me writing you. After all, in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, you sang, "I've written a letter to daddy/His address is Heaven above." I'm sure your address is Heaven above too, but just in case I'm wrong, I'm sending a fireproof version of this letter to my eternal resting place as well. Your biggest fan is here to ask you two favors: Say hi to Barbara Stanwyck for me (hubba hubba!! Sorry...) and PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE forgive me for not noticing a crucial detail about your new postage stamp. I wrote about it before, and am using it to mail this letter. Please have a look at it. I know, I know! How could I have missed that you've been censored in it? Your second most famous attribute is missing: They removed Margo Channing's cigarette! Ms. Channing has been castrated by the politically correct post office! Holy Marlboro Man, Miss Davis! Your hand looks as if you should be screaming out "WESSS' SIIIIIIIDE!"

Here at the Moviefile, we have a whole category just for remakes, reboots, and "reimaginings"--and it's stuffed pretty full. From Fame to Robocop and everything in between, there's a bountiful crop of reworked properties. As "old hat" as it can be to those of us with long enough memories (or long enough Netflix queues) to remember the originals, remaking the movies of yesteryear can make good financial sense for studios. A remake from a 20- or 30-year-old property can draw in brand-new young audiences, as well as the nostalgic viewers of the originals. For example, 24 years passed before Bedtime Story was remade as Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and now that another 20 years have passed, they're remaking the remake. But now Hammer Films and Overture Films are bucking the trend by remaking a movie that hasn't even been officially released yet. Talk about the Hammer striking while the iron is hot.

Do you ever read about all the remakes, reimaginings, and reboots of films from the relatively recent past and wonder if maybe Hollywood has kind of a short memory? If you answered "yes" to that, then it looks like Hollywood might actually agree with you. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Warner Bros. "plans to rerelease its blockbuster Batman sequel in January, the height of Academy Awards voting season." A "studio insider" is quoted as saying, "'It's just a matter of bringing it back as a reminder for people.'" Because if there's one movie that people won't remember a few months from now, it's The Dark Knight, right? It's not like it's already made more than half a billion dollars domestically or is still in the box office top ten two months after its premiere. It's not like there won't be a huge media blitz leading up to its December release on DVD to remind people of its existence, or anything. Seriously, even my grandma knows about The Dark Knight, and she hasn't been to a movie theater since Sean Connery had most of his original hair.

If you've ever been to Hollywood, you know that prices can run pretty high on some things. A prime ZIP code in the Hills will set you back several million, easy. Chic clothes, regular spray tans, and the perfect veneers don't come cheap. Even dinner at a decent restaurant can cost a pretty penny. But it's possible to find a bargain, if you've got the right connections. For example, a mere ten bucks buys you a golden-skinned man with a perfectly ageless physique. On the down side, he's only a little over a foot high. On the plus side, he's highly portable! The man in question is none other than the famous Oscar statuette, and, unfortunately, only the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences can snag this deal. Or so says the Academy.

Have you always wanted to walk the red carpet at a glitzy movie premiere? Have you dreamed of meeting movie stars? Is it your fondest wish to hang out on the set of a huge movie production and be treated like a VIP? Were you unfortunately born without the acting talent or at least the family connections that would make these things possible? Well, good news! Thanks to Stand Up To Cancer, if you're the winning bidder on its eBay auction, you not only get to walk the red carpet at the Iron Man sequel's premiere, you get to be in the movie! ...Oh, and benefit cancer research, too.

Venice is sinking, and this time the rising tides aren't to blame. This time, the decline has to do with the 65th Venice Film Festival, which, according to The Hollywood Reporter, is suffering from subpar business, high prices and a "relative lack of red carpet star power." Somewhere in the distance, Brad Pitt is saying to a journalist: "What am I? Chopped liver? I saved a kid from the canal the other day!" Or maybe he would be saying it, if he were giving interviews beyond the obligatory 30-minute press conference he and co-star George Clooney gave for the Coen brothers' Burn After Reading.