By: Henry J. Fromage -

Scorcese/DiCaprio, Nolan/Bale, Cronenberg/Pattinson? That’s pretty low on my list of likely director/actor love affairs, but apparently they quite liked making Cosmopolis together, as David Cronenberg is again casting Robert Pattinson in his next film, Maps to the Stars.  Cronenberg’s been trying to make this darkly satirical tale about two former child actors who’ve been chewed up and spit out by Hollywood.  Another Cronenberg favorite, Viggo Mortensen, is also apparently interested in the other role, which would be an interesting pairing as well.  Sounds like something I’d be down for, especially as it’s been described as “very extreme.”  I have only one question, though… whither Jeremy Irons?

Poor, jilted Jeremy Irons…

In news that’s likely to be almost the polar opposite of the last, Adam Shankman is rounding up another megacast for his follow-up to likely megahit Rock of Ages.  This time, the director of Hairspray will venture from the world of musicals.  This is Where I Leave You follows a dysfunctional family sitting shiva to fulfill a last request from its passed away husband and father.  Goldie Hawn will play the widow, with Jason Bateman, Zac Efron, and Leslie Mann all playing her children.  Malin Ackerman will play Bateman’s wife, with Jason Sudeikis playing his boss, who she’s having an affair with.

Nicole Kidman might show up on set if she has any time to piss away…

If you haven’t heard of Safety Not Guaranteed, you’re likely to soon as it just hit theaters, and advance word for the little indie is very good.  It’s based on a cryptic advertisement for a time-traveling partner that somebody stuck in a newspaper classifieds section, and which has never been fully explained.  Well, the star of that film, Mark Duplass (The League), is going right back to the quasi-scifi indie comedy well with Convention.  In it, he’ll play an amateur inventor who invents a five-sided box.  Since this flies right in the face of all that is holy and decent, of course every time somebody makes another one, they rip a hole in the space-time continuum.  It’s up to him and his sister (Jennifer Aniston if the timing works out) to set things right.  Ben Kingsley is also on board, almost certainly not playing a gruff or evil antagonist of any kind.  Nope, like Harrison Ford, he knows his fans couldn’t reconcile it with the image he established in Gandhi

In Ford’s defense, this is a potent argument for that strategy