Deadline reports that the story will be set in the 1960′s so we at least don’t have to worry about the characters interacting with the modern world and discovering gangsta rap.

I think we should give it a shot and see what develops though it’s understandable that this news might set you off if you’re a fan of the original sitcom. However to put things in perspective, a few years ago Bow Wow would have been a viable casting option to play JJ. Dodged a bullet here.

The issue at hand in the exchange isn’t really important, but it’s worth laying out for the sake of the bigger story. When critics are invited to screen movies early so that they may write a thoughtful review that coincides with the film’s public release, they are usually subject to an embargo, an explicit or understood agreement that they won’t discuss the film’s content until a certain date. If embargoes didn’t exist, reviewers would be racing to beat each other to the presses with their thoughts, which is bad for two reasons. First, they wouldn’t have time to write a thoughtful review, and second, the reviews would come out way before the movie, undermining their utility.

Ok. In this instance, Rudin caught wind that Denby was planning on breaking the embargo, releasing a review earlier than everyone else. Rudin is pissed because these embargos serve a purpose and if one critic doesn’t abide by them, then ultimately no critic will have to, and the scenarios I discussed above will become very real, very quickly.

Denby doesn’t have an ethical leg to stand on. He agreed to something as a condition of his invitation to a screening, then he went back on his word. It’s not complicated, nor is it very interesting. Rudin’s film will do fine, and Denby is something of a dick for choosing to disregard a common practice to which he agreed, all for the sake of his self-interest.

What is interesting is Denby’s rationale for going rogue and publishing his review early. In the exchange he cites the flawed studio system that compresses all of the prestige pictures into the last month of the year so that they may be at the apogee of their buzz going into awards season. His exact words:

Scott, I know Fincher was working on the picture up to the last minute, but the yearly schedule is gauged to have many big movies come out at the end of the year. The system is destructive: Grown-ups are ignored for much of the year, cast out like downsized workers, and then given eight good movies all at once in the last five weeks of the year. A magazine like “The New Yorker” has to cope as best as it can with a nutty release schedule. It was not my intention to break the embargo, and I never would have done it with a negative review. But since I liked the movie, we came reluctantly to the decision to go with early publication for the following reasons, which I have also sent to Seth Fradkoff:

1) The jam-up of important films makes it very hard on magazines. We don’t want to run a bunch of tiny reviews at Christmas. That’s not what “The New Yorker” is about. Anthony and I don’t want to write them that way, and our readers don’t want to read them that way.

2) Like many weeklies, we do a double issue at the end of the year, at this crucial time. This exacerbates the problem.

3) The New York Film Critics Circle, in its wisdom, decided to move up its voting meeting, as you well know, to November 29, something Owen Gleiberman and I furiously opposed, getting nowhere. We thought the early date was idiotic, and we’re in favor of returning it to something like December 8 next year.

In any case, the early vote forced the early screening of “Dragon Tattoo.” So we had a dilemma: What to put in the magazine on December 5? Certainly not “We Bought the Zoo,” or whatever it’s called. If we held everything serious, we would be coming out on Christmas-season movies until mid-January. We had to get something serious in the magazine. So reluctantly, we went early with “Dragon,” which I called “mesmerizing.” I apologize for the breach of the embargo. It won’t happen again. But this was a special case brought on by year-end madness.

This stupid little insider quibble has brought to the attention of the public a standard and frustrating practice that has been in place for decades, but has now become exacerbated given the current climate of the film industry. Children’s films and mindless tentpole releases still generate good money, but more esoteric or niche fare generating lower returns have been culled, and the few that remain are considered awards fodder, saved until just before the Oscar eligibility deadline of December 31.

Scott Rudin is the guy in this picture that isn't the lead singer of Nine Inch Nails.

This practice makes sense to a degree. If edgy, smart films could be released in June to a profit, then I’m sure studios would release them then. But as it stands, the edgy, smart films need the buoy of Oscar buzz and the media attention lavished thereon to help them sell tickets to these films. Since the Oscars deadline is at year’s end, the logical move is to shoehorn the releases in as close to that deadline as soon as possible.

Of course, when ten or so “good” films are all duking it out in the month of December, they will quickly begin to cannibalize each other. No one except film critics go to the theater ten times in a month, so that means quality fare will be overlooked either in the near term or indefinitely by moviegoers.

This studio practice is a self-fulfilling prophecy in that, yes, if ten movies are all trying to steal each other’s thunder in December, then they probably will require that sweet, sweet Oscar buzz to stand out from the pack. But a good film released in July, like last year’s The Kids Are All Right, will manage to prove durable enough to not be forgotten during awards season, and also stand out from the pack of typical mindless summer fare to actually generate some decent cash.

Sure, it didn’t set any records, but it earned $21 million off of a $4 million budget.

While dumping a film in December will pit it against countless others to garner a slice of a relatively small pie, it also lends credibility to a film that might otherwise not be so well-received. “Oh, it’s a December film! The studio must think this is good enough to be in contention for awards,” is a common understanding, as is “Why is this coming out in February? It must really suck.”

One can argue that audiences have the above expectations, and then someone else can argue that they only maintain those expectations because the studios reinforce them. And on and on and on and on and on we would go.

To break this cycle, the studios are the ones that are empowered to effect change. People will begrudgingly scramble to see the year-end films they want to, and critics will dish the lion’s share of their “important” reviews in this small window because, after eleven months of substandard films, both parties are probably excited enough about some decent films that they will go above and beyond to get their fix, but that doesn’t mean it’s the best system.

Studios don’t like to break new ground, so don’t expect anything to change in the near future, but while Denby’s actions are weasel-y and self-serving, his contentions are spot on. There is no reason why decent films can’t come out steadily throughout the year. While premiering immediately before the Oscars probably does offer an advantage, a strong film can and has remained in the collective consciousness for six or seven months. The studios would find that giving audiences a little more credit would improve their bottom line and make life a lot easier for the people that are paying their bills.

Which is why I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if Denby himself was the one who leaked this exchange in order to spark the discussion. And because he’s a jerk.

The Terrorist Search Engine tells the true story of Evan Kohlmann, who at the age of 23, was able to sift through massive amounts of data and turn up pertinent information, leading to the arrest of myriad radicals, culminating in ove 24 convictions.

Will Jesse Eisenberg be able to play such a cold, disaffected analyzing machine? Every role he’s had in the past points to “yes.”

“‘Engine’ details how the downy-cheeked-but-web-savvy Kohlmann — dubbed “the Doogie Howser of Terrorism” by an FBI agent when he was just 23 — has helped convict 23 defendants in federal courts and Guantánamo Bay tribunals with his expert witness testimony. Now 31, Kohlmann is a controversial figure who has made testifying at such trials his principal source of income and earned a reputation in some circles as “working in the ‘guilty-verdict industry.’”

It remains to be seen if Eisenberg will actually take this part. It’s superficially reminiscent of Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network, but it also appears to be a very interesting character in its own right. In any case, apparently Eisenberg is waiting for a script before he makes a decision. Maybe he’ll take it if his girlfriend breaks up with him. (Vulture)

“[T]two thirty-something New Yorkers who go to Amsterdam to rekindle their friendship and get away from the serious dramas in their lives (break-ups and illnesses), but a run-in with a Red Light district prostitute, alters their lives forever.”

Sounds like a pretty intriguing premise, so it’s no wonder that Ruffalo is interested in the part:

“Yes. I want to do it. They’re still putting that movie together, it’s based on a play, I think it was nominated for a Tony a couple of years ago, on Broadway.”

Well, there you have it. So will it be too long before you’re reading about Mark Ruffalo getting confirmed for Red Light Winter? That’s up to him – if he can pay the price. Either way, there’ll definitely be more pimp jokes! (The Playlist)

And that’s about all he said. As he began to give away too much information, he added, “But I don’t know if I should talk about what it is.”

Oh, come on, man. We’re not going to steal it. Whatever.

At least he gave up some info about House Of Joel, the horror comedy he was working on with Judd Apatow. Though he doesn’t know exactly where the project is at, he gave some details about the plot:

“I play a guy who finds out that his girlfriend was basically a Laurie Strode-type [Jamie Lee Curtis' character] from Halloween. She’s been hiding the fact that 15 years ago she survived this horrible night and the way I find this out is that I inadvertently take her back to her home town as a surprise and reawaken all the evil. It’s kind of about getting over your girlfriend’s past kinda thing. It’s sort of like having to deal with, ‘You did what!?’”

That’s exactly why I never surprise my girlfriend. That and thoughtlessness. (The Playlist)

Scorsese has a lot coming up right now, too. Hugo Cabret is opening in November, and he’s attached to several other projects, including The Irishman with pallies De Niro and Pesci. So it might be a while before he gets to Sinatra.

As for the big question of who’s going to attempt to do justice to Frank on the screen, it’s still in the air. I’d suggest James Franco, but you’d think I was just making a joke about how he’s in everything now. Seriously though, he’d be good. Maybe he could play all 4 members of the Rat Pack, plus Kim Novak. (via Deadline)

With filming to begin in June, one can safely pencil this one in as an Oscar nominee come January 2013. In the nearer term, expect rampant anticipation on who will land the possibly star-making or award-winning role of Martin Luther King. I wish we could rule James Franco out for this role, but he’s simply proved me wrong too many times before.

Greengrass has also been closely linked with the super-ultra-mega-tentpole release Cleopatra, but no news has surfaced in months, so it would appear that whichever way that decision goes, Memphis will get priority.

The juggernauts that are Paul Greengrass and Universal Studios should kill many of the other MLK projects that were rumored or in pre-production, namely, the Dreamworks and Lee Daniels-led Selma, which was circling the drain even before this news came about.

Enlisting the help of his girlfriend and another girl, both NASA interns (pimp), Thad planned an Ocean’s Eleven-style heist to steal heavily-guarded moon rocks. Seems like a lot of trouble, but to each their own. He could have just bought some on Amazon for $170.00 plus shipping. Or $130.00 if he’s approved for the Amazon.com Rewards Visa Card. (Deadline)

Oscar winning producer Scott Rudin has set his sights on Angelina Jolie for an upcoming adaptation of Cleopatra: A Life. Like the book by Stacy Schiff, the film promises to be a detailed look at one of antiquity’s most famous women.

If the project comes together, it will not be Jolie’s first foray into the ancient world. In 2004, she starred as the mother of Alexander the Great in Oliver Stone’s critical and box-office flop, Alexander. Seeing as how that outing went over like a led zeppelin, why not give Angelina another shot? While we’re at it, get Kevin Coster on the phone. I’ve got a special effects-laden post-apocalyptic love story I’d like him to direct. I hope he can keep it under budget. (First Showing)