As I walked out of a screening for Woody Allen's new film Vicky Cristina Barcelona, a friend cracked that Allen only gives us a decent film every 10 years, and implied that VCB had successfully staked its claim as the decade's quota. Me, I'm not so sure. Certainly Allen's prior two films, Match Point and Scoop, weren't anything to write home about. But it's tough to say if VCB is the triumph we've all been waiting for.

Tags: Annie Hall, Javier Bardem, Match Point, Patricia Clarkson, Penelope Cruz, Rebecca Hall, Scarlett Johansson, Scoop, Woody Allen

More casting has been announced for Rob Marshall's planned big screen adaptation of the Tony-winning musical Nine. According to today's Hollywood Reporter, Judi Dench and Nicole Kidman are reportedly climbing aboard the train. (Dench and Kidman? Three guesses what company is producing the movie and the first two don't count. Hint: The company's namesake rhymes with whinesign. Already cast are Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz, Sophia Loren and Marion Cotillard, though no word if Cotillard actually will bother to do her own singing this time. Now, I've admittedly never seen a stage production of Nine, based on Fellini's great film 8 1/2 in case you were unaware, but while Maury Yeston's score is fine, this is not a show that screams commercial appeal. Hell, would a re-release of 8 1/2 itself even be profitable? Nine isn't a crowd pleaser such as Chicago and even one that would seem tailor made to be one can land with a thud when it's transferred as poorly as The Producers was. I love movie musicals, but I fear if Hollywood goes crazy making films of ones that seem doomed to fail, they may disappear yet again.

Tags: javier bardem, judi dench, marion cotillard, nicole kidman, nine, penelope cruz, rob marshall, sophia loren

Zap2it is reporting that Javier Bardem has departed the cast of Nine. The film version of the Broadway musical is loosely based on Frederico Fellini's 1963 film, 8 1/2. The No Country For Old Men star is citing "general exhaustion after a year of acting, promotion and the award season gauntlet" as the reason for bowing out of the production. He was to have played Guido Contini in the movie musical.

I'm not familiar with the musical, but if the character is based on Fellini's Guido Anselmi, then the departure may seem somewhat familiar. In the movie, Guido is a frustrated director who encounters pressure from every corner of his life. The opening of the film shows him "escaping" a symbolic traffic jam by simply floating above it. That's an incredibily simplified summary, but the basic idea is probably one that Bardem could relate to.

At the other end of the spectrum, Ewan McGregor recently signed on for another movie, because he had to fill up that dead space between lunch and dinner with something. This time it's a supporting role in the upcoming DaVinci Code sequel, The ReVincining: This Time It's Personal. Actually, it's called Angels & Demons, and he'll be playing Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca, described as a "close aide to the recently deceased pope."

McGregor is so reliably prolific as to be nearly omnipresent. He's in almost everything. I wouldn't be surprised if he showed up in that Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants sequel as one of the sisters. Or the pants. If you reached the end of 2004 and felt like something was just a little "off" about that year, it's because no new Ewan McGregor movies came out. Aside from that anomalous year, he has been putting out at least one--and sometimes four or five--movies a year since before Trainspotting brought him to the moviegoing public's attention.

Angels & Demons is expected to begin production this June in Europe, so if McGregor has a spare moment when he's not making another movie, perhaps he could take a muffin basket to the recuperating Bardem.

Tags: Angels & Demons, Ewan McGregor, Javier Bardem, Nine