As was the case with HBO's Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, Lionsgate has very discreetly opened Bill Maher's Religulous in two theaters -- one in New York, the other in Los Angeles -- in an qualifying run for next year's Academy Awards.

As pointed out by Jeff Wells over at Hollywood Elsewhere, the Academy's Rule 12 states that any documentary hoping to qualify must open in both Los Angeles Country and the borough of Manhattan for at least one week prior to the end of August. Having already premiered at the Traverse City Film Festival, the doc will then formally show at the Toronto International Film Festival next month, before opening proper on October 3rd.

However, I'm not sure that I entirely understand agree with the logic that any damage would be done should any enterprising critic (like this guy) head out to one of these wholly public showings and subsequently write up a review. Sure, I'm speaking as a guy who lives in the O.C. of Fla., but seriously: What harm? What foul?

The silliness continues! Vic Holtreman at ScreenRant has passed along a post (sent to them by a poster who's been a steady presence in the comment field on every Punisher: War Zone story -- hi, Nomad) that cinematographer Steve Gainer made on The Raw Board. Gainer is pretty fed up with all the rumors circulating, and insists that Lexi Alexander is not off the film, she's very much involved in the editing process, the film will not be PG-13, and that she did get married. Gainer writes, "When I hear vicious unfounded troll rumors like the "film was unwatchable" or "a total mess" it makes my blood boil. I want to punish the corrupt. People sit on their fat asses trolling the internet, people that have never even looked through a motion picture camera, and make judgements [sic] on a work of art that they've never seen, it's like saying a baby will be ugly before it is born, I can't freaking wait for this film to come out and prove the nay-sayers wrong."

While it's nice to have a rebuttal from someone legitimately associated with the film, none of it makes any sense -- except that someone seems to be fueling, and believing, the "any publicity is good publicity" angle. I still don't understand why, if everything is hunky dory behind the scenes, Alexander scrubbed all mention of the film from her blog, and has been cryptic ever since. Why haven't we had an official statement from her or anyone at Lionsgate? It seems to me that claims that you dumped your director warrant a "No, that's absolutely unfounded!"

I'm still rooting for the film, but I won't be helping to fuel the rumor machine any longer. I won't write another word on Punisher until it comes directly from Lionsgate or Alexander.

[via Ain't It Cool News]

It has not been a good week on the "Movies Elisabeth Wants To See" front. First there was that wretched news that Warner Bros isn't particularly interested in RocknRolla, then Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince was delayed a whole year. And now, producer Gary Lucchesi told SciFi Wire that Game has been pushed back to the increasingly crowded summer of 2009.

Game is a futuristic thriller directed by the insane duo of Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, and stars the ever-so-lovely Gerard Butler. While he's reason enough to see it, it's also the kind of frantic, maniacal movie making we've come to expect from Neveldine and Taylor. We were treated to some footage at ComicCon, and it was a hell of a lot of fun. Later in that same day, Butler described it (and his directors) as being not only in tune with Internet, science, and pop culture, but having a nightmarish sensibility. "You're literally walking around the set at night and there are people hanging with hooks coming out of their skin and that's your day filming. There's blood dripping. I had blood on me. These people did it for fun." Come on! Who doesn't want to see that right now?

Well, if wishes were horses, and all that. Lucchesi said we should get a teaser by Christmas, and a solid date will be set very soon. But that doesn't satisfy me -- and so I'm just going to abandon my posting duties to build a time machine, and travel to the Summer of 2009. I'll wait around for The Road and Australia, of course, but I fully intend to skip ahead a year to see Harry Potter, Wolverine, and Game. I'd come back bearing Star Trek news, but frankly, I would rather not return to a bleak Colorado winter. Especially when the movie selection is getting thinner and thinner.

One of the privileges of being an adult is seeing R rated movies. Well, not me -- I was watching them before I was even in kindergarten, and I suspect most of the Cinematical staff was too. But in general, adulthood brings unrestricted viewing access to copious amounts of sex and violence. Of course, that was back before Hollywood decided that R ratings didn't make enough money, and everything vaguely dark should be slashed to allow a 12 year old a ticket.

The latest flick to be marched to the chopping block is the troubled Punisher: War Zone. Latino Review was told by an insider that the latest fight is over cutting it down to a PG-13 rating. I imagine that this is the battle that saw Lexi Alexander canned, and not a disagreement over the film's soundtrack. (It's much easier to sell her as petty and difficult with that story than one over a rating -- but who knows what's true or not at this point.)

Apparently, Lionsgate isn't even listening to their own buzz, since what had everyone talking was the impressive level of violence in the red band trailer. (I've embedded it below since we never got a chance to post it.) They're likely looking at The Dark Knight and how much money its PG-13 rating made and thinking they can copy its success, despite that their protagonist is known for his semi-automatics and bloody tactics, not his "I'll never kill or use guns" ethics.

Do you really want another PG-13 Punisher? I can't imagine you do. I know most of you are pretty lukewarm on the upcoming non-sequel, but if there was one thing that would get you to see it, wouldn't it have been the table leg through the eye? I've been honest about what was drawing me to the film, but if they neuter it, I'm not even sure Ray Stevenson can lure me. It's being released at Christmas, for heaven's sake. How am I supposed to relax from battling Christmas shopping crowds without gratuitous bloodshed? Come on, Lionsgate. Keep the R.

As far as hustling movie producer archetypes go, I tend to prefer Joel Silver over Harvey Weinstein. Sure, Weinstein played a role in some of the great American independent films from the last decade of the twentieth century, but Silver's production credits have more spice to them -- The Matrix, Predator, 48 Hrs. -- hinting at the zany force behind their existence. The movies he has produced don't always please everyone (consider those last two Matrix movies), and sometimes his productions run into unforeseeable setbacks (Joss Whedon's troublesome Wonder Woman script). But now, Silver's trying a radical maneuver that reaffirms his maverick abilities: He's shopping around Guy Ritchie's RocknRolla, which tells the story of a drama surrounding a stolen painting and stars Gerard Butler, to other studios despite the plan to release it through Warner Bros. in October.

According to Patrick Goldstein in The Los Angeles Times, Silver said he showed the movie to Lionsgate and Sony Pictures to get some advice on how to market the film. However, when Goldstein asked Warner Bros.' top executive Alan Horn about the situation, Horn called the movie "very English," not "broadly commercial," and said the studio "might not be willing to spend the marketing money he wants us to." So it follows that Silver probably wants to sell the movie to somebody else.

This kind of thing has happened before. Jonathan Levine's teen horror flick All the Boys Love Mandy Lane was set for a release through The Weinstein Company, but when it was determined that the distributor might not provide the best home for the film, it went to the more agreeable Senator Films (although Senator has yet to release it). What troubles me is Horn's assertion that RocknRolla is "very English." Yeah ... so?

Lionsgate is very eager to get their remake of Conan the Barbarian up and shooting. How can they not be? At this point, Conan spin-offs Thulsa Doom and Red Sonja are neatly beating it in the pre-production department (Red Sonja already has a star, a director, and merchandise already!), and both were green-lit after Conan. A sad state of affairs for the Cimmerian, indeed.

But it looks like things are moving again. According to The Hollywood Reporter, they've has hired Dirk Blackman and Howard McCain to rework the script. They seem a pretty good fit for the pulpy source, being fresh off Outlander (which McCain also directed) and Underworld 3: Rise of the Lycans. They're still looking for a director, but would anyone be surprised if they decided on McCain?

They're replacing Thomas Dean Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer, who wrote several drafts, apparently none of which was to the studio's liking. The CEO of Paradox Entertainment, Fredrik Malmberg, is aiming to stick close to the source material. He'd also like to become a franchise. (Is that a surprise to anyone? Thought not.) "There's no reason there couldn't be a Conan movie every two years. He's almost like Batman: He's a dark hero. He's a hard hero. He has to be badass, but we also have to like him."

Lionsgate is also looking to restart another long-delayed swords-and-loincloths project -- McCain and Blackman's Amazon, to which Scarlett Johansson has long been attached, has landed in the studio's loving hands. They're looking for a director for that, too. It wasn't that long ago that I wished for a resurgence of swords and sorcery -- and I'm getting it. It's going to be glorious! Chainmail bikinis and dudes with eight-packs, all worthy of being painted on the side of your van. Welcome back, 1980!

Yesterday, Jeff Wells over at Hollywood Elsewhere put up the poster for the new comedy My Best Friend's Girl, starring Kate Hudson, Dane Cook, Jason Biggs and Alec Baldwin. The poster (which premiered online earlier this summer) is boring in the extreme, making the film look like your typical snoozerific rom-com, and the digital altering on the photo makes everyone involved look rather ... freakish.

My first reaction on seeing the poster was, "Boy, somebody's screwing up the marketing on this film," quickly followed by "Hey, I don't remember Dane Cook's complexion looking quite so dewy-fresh ... "

I've seen the red-band trailer, which is actually pretty funny, if you can overlook the more misogynistic elements (or at least, in my own case, overcome the feminist tendency to be immediately annoyed by blow-job jokes) , and the film being marketed in that trailer and the film being promoted on this poster are not the same film. Not that it looks like something I'd choose to see over a good indie flick, but if I wanted a lightweight comedy film, and I'd already seen Tropic Thunder and Pineapple Express, and couldn't find anything else to do here in Seattle on a nice day, I'd maybe see this.

When he's not covering film for us, Christopher Campbell is out living a bold double life, instead covering film for Spout Blog, and by way of his derring-do, he's come across a relatively watchable bootleg of some of the ill-received Comic-Con footage from The Spirit, and to borrow his incredibly apt reaction: "The scene you heard about is actually worse than you imagined."

Their Kevin Kelly tried to warn us, as did our own Elisabeth Rappe, and the latest trailer brought forth its own wave of doubt, but witnessing it for myself is something else. I can't speak for Will Eisner's original comic-book creation, though a couple of my pals have assured me that Frank Miller's take on the material is pretty far from it, and while I'm down for a Sin City 2, I'd really rather it be a more intentional affair than this likely farce.

Are any of you fans still willing to give this project the benefit of the doubt, or are toilet-smashing gags the new par for the course?

As someone initially unimpressed with the teaser trailer for next weekend's horror offering, Mirrors, I found myself pleasantly surprised by the unpleasantries on display in the film's restricted trailer, among them the sight of Amy Smart ripping her own jaw off (what can I say, I'm a man of simple taste).

However, I then wondered if that particular moment wasn't the best that the film had to offer. Sure, you don't want to spoil too much before a film opens, but it's a scene that has become the focus of most TV spots and -- in hindsight -- the poster, and as a plot development, I'm almost certain that it'll happen before the film hits its hour mark (a matter that no one will be able to confirm until late Thursday evening, which is its own little omen). But it fell on me to watch that part and find my interest piqued.

After making a fair impression in 2004 with Mean Girls and The Notebook, and then pulling a hat trick the following year with Wedding Crashers, Red Eye, and The Family Stone, it seemed to me that Canadian cutie Rachel McAdams was primed to take off in the years to come... and yet, here we are in 2008, with her one release since having been in the not-bad period drama Married Life (which grossed a not-great $1.5 million this past spring).

However, it looks her profile is about to rise yet again, between the star-studded drama State of Play next year and two other releases this fall: the long-awaited adaptation of The Time Traveler's Wife and, before that, the Iraq War drama The Lucky Ones, in which she, Tim Robbins, and Michael Peña all play returning vets who bond on an impromptu road trip to Vegas.

Judging from the trailer, it really seems to be a change of pace for director/co-writer Neil Burger, as he follows up the modest success of The Illusionist. Do I honestly believe that some bar skank would pull such open mockery if she wasn't scripted to? Not at all, but do I believe that McAdams' character would react as she does? Absolutely.

Regardless, it's just nice to see a genuine talent working her way back into the limelight. Who knows, maybe audiences can convince her to stay there.