The alliteration and the memory was just too much to pass up this week!

Friday will bring the release of Max Payne, starring none other than Mark Wahlberg (with a little help from Mila Kunis, Beau Bridges, Ludacris...). Now it would be easy and sort of obvious to just revel in some "Good Vibrations" or Wahlberg's tight-whitey clad arse, both of which were extremely prevalent at the start of Marky Mark's career. Instead, here's his first film role from 1994 -- Wahlberg playing Pvt. Tommy Lee Haywood in Renaissance Man.

In the clips above, Haywood gets into a fight with Pvt. Jamaal Montgomery -- otherwise known as Kadeem Hardison, or Dwayne Wayne. Then they get to delight in the Shakespearean world of Hamlet under the tutelage of Danny DeVito, and then, oh yes, Mr. Wahlberg sings a little bit of "Achey Breaky Heart."

It never ceases to amaze me how far that man has come. It didn't take him long either -- after this film came Basketball Diaries, then there was only Fear and Traveller before he became Dirk Diggler.

So who watched the season premiere of South Park last night? I tell you, just when you think those boys are starting to get a bit weak in their old age, you're shown a scene featuring Steven Spielberg and George Lucas physically raping Indiana Jones as the poor man cries out for help. Oh yeah ... and did we mention Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull comes out on DVD this Tuesday? Yup ... and it's, er, loaded with extras!

Obviously this was their way of saying the latest Indiana Jones film sorta raped their childhood, but count me among those who kinda enjoyed watching the flick. (And I'm not alone -- here's Jeffrey's passionate post in defense of the sequel.) Sure, I could do without a few scenes here and there, but overall it wasn't terrible. What do you think? Did South Park cross a line last night?

Note: The following scene might be a little sensitive for some, so be warned -- TV-MA and all that ...

Oliver Stone's W. has screened for the more important among us, and I am pleasantly surprised to report that people are not openly laughing at it. Some seem downright impressed. Here, for example is David Poland on The Hot Blog:

"[Josh] Brolin should be nominated for the Oscar. We'll see whether the crowd around Best Actor is too big for him to crack, but it is a letter perfect performance that looks much, much easier than most critics and audiences, I think, will understand . . . . The only downside is that the movie doesn't offer the massive supporting cast a lot of big awards-style moments. They are just really, really good. And that really should be enough."

Variety's Todd McCarthy is a bit more mixed than Poland, but concedes that W. "offers a clear and plausible take on the current chief executive's psychological makeup and, considering Stone's reputation and Bush's vast unpopularity, a relatively even-handed, restrained treatment of recent politics." And Kirk Honeycutt over at The Hollywood Reporter says that though the film is more bold than it is good, "Stone goes out of his way to give Bush a fair hearing."

Over the summer, I guffawed at the notion that Stone was going to be fair and sympathetic to Bush in W., but it looks like I may be eating those words before too long. Apparently the problem people are having with the film isn't its politics but its lack of formal audacity, which is the opposite what I expected to hear. But it's certainly good to learn that Stone at least attempts a serious treatment of the subject -- those script pages that Slate "leaked" a while back could have fooled me.

Have you ever wondered where Tom Thumb came from? If so, you'll be happy with a recent post from The Hollywood Reporter. It seems the tiny character is heading for the big screen with Warner Bros. and director Kevin Lima (Enchanted), and the project will be go the live action route, although Thumb might be CG. Robert Rodat, of Saving Private Ryan fame, wrote the script, which is said to "look at the heroism that a knight must summon after he is reduced to a pint size." Okay ... CG is cool and all, but I hope they stick to miniaturizing a real person. CG doesn't have to be used for everything, and Tom Thumb wasn't made into a cartoon character when he shrunk, after all.

Next up, THR also reports that David Cronenberg is circling the Robert Ludlum project The Matarese Circle, which we previously told you about when Denzel Washington signed on earlier this year. Before it was simply the latest political thriller to hit the screen, one that focuses on two rival agents, US and Soviet, who work together to find Matarese criminals lurking in the American government. But with Cronenberg? The man behind The Fly, Crash, Spider, and A History of Violence? This sounds so bloody good.

Finally, there's good ol' David Duchovny. In August, he went away to rehab for sex addiction. Now, according to Ace Showbiz, he's out and heading back to work. A statement issued by his lawyer says: "He is out of rehab and will be starting a movie soon." This will, most likely, be The Joneses. I'm just glad it's about a fake family and not about sex. After all this, I just can't watch Californication without getting weirded out.

As we all know by now, the Poltergeist series brought eeriness both on and off the screen with the Poltergeist Curse. Real human skeletons were used, exorcisms were performed, props malfunctioned, fire blazed, and of course, people died -- the most infamous being the passing of the cute, tow-headed Heather O'Rourke.

And now she's being used to sell DirecTV units. Classy. Craig T. Nelson is back to give the spiel, but the above commercial also uses her famous "They're here!" line and a little girl to pose as O'Rourke to walk to the foot of the bed (O'Rourke's voice is apparently dubbed in).

In a world where even impassioned musical critiques can be turned into patriotic anthems, it's not completely surprising that this is happening. But still -- using a little girl who died way too young to make money -- it's not the best decision, and it certainly isn't a twist that inspires me to want to buy this. But what do you think?

Is this perfectly acceptable, or did DirecTV cross some sort of marketing line?

Man is M. Night Shyamalan ever a strange dude -- and this is coming from probably one of the biggest fans he has left.

In this interview with Sci-Fi Wire, the filmmaker announces that he is still contemplating making a sequel to Unbreakable, his 2000 comic book genre-bender. He doesn't quite have the story, but says that "I know me: As soon as I give up on it is when the idea will come to me." Fantastic! Seeing as Unbreakable is one of my favorite movies of the decade, I'm obviously excited about any prospect of Shyamalan returning to that universe. And maybe it's just the ticket to restore his suddenly-struggling career.

But then I read the rest of the article, and... uh... he needs to hire a (better) publicist. Discussing how he felt after Unbreakable's mixed reception, he says that he was heartbroken, lamenting: "God, I took so many incredible risks." And then, as he describes his (quite correct) realization that the film actually has a good number of admirers, he relates this anecdote: "I'll be on the street, and some kid will run across traffic with it in his backpack--he just is carrying it in his backpack--and he'll be running [saying], 'I can't believe it's you!' Will you sign my Unbreakable DVD?' And quoting the thing and all that stuff."

Celebrity interviews can be pretty nerve-wracking. The ante is upped even more when the interviewee doesn't give many interviews. You hope for the best, but sometimes that's not what you get. Xan Brooks got a chance to interview Faye Dunaway for The Guardian, and things didn't go so well. It started with a list of ixnayed topics, but one was left off the list -- Roman Polanski and rumors about Chinatown. He asked if it was true that she once threw a cup of urine at the famed director and well, she didn't take too kindly to that line of questioning. Follow the link to see what happened and then comment below: Was it okay for Brooks to ask her about that? Did she overreact?

And then there's a little bit of tennis. Variety reports that Frank Deford's adaptation of his novel Big Bill: The Triumphs and the Tragedy, which focuses on tennis legend Bill Tilden, has been optioned by Baldwin Entertainment. This is a pretty old-school story -- Tilden won six straight U.S. Open singles titles in the 1920s, and was the first American to win Wimbledon. The plus about this feature: there's a lot more to the man than just rackets and balls. "He was also a contract bridge champ, musicologist, novelist, playwright and actor. On the other side of the ledger, Tilden was famously self-destructive, going to jail twice for sexual misbehavior with teenage boys and dying penniless." That should prove interesting.

Finally, Michael Pena told MTV that he'd definitely be in if a feature version of The Shield, if one was schemed up. In fact, he thinks there could be a prequel and that it would be "awesome." Me, I caught some old-school Felicity eps recently, and now I can't see him as anything other than the wanna-be ladies man who lived in the dorm. He's come a long way in 8 years.

Somehow I missed this on Thursday, but apparently so did everyone else, since I didn't see it linked anywhere. Roger Ebert was hanging out at a post-production studio in Chicago, watching the restored new print of The Godfather, when he was unexpectedly joined by Larry and Andy Wachowski, the famously inaccessible duo behind The Matrix, Speed Racer, and (people forget) Bound. Afterward, he got a chance to chat with them -- not in a conventional interview setting, complete with a hovering publicist (the brothers don't do that, remember?), but over a beer.

Ebert was impressed with the "zillionaires": "Nice people. Friendly. No Hollywood attitude." He writes that "[t]he blogosphere paints them as mysterious recluses, which may add to the legend but doesn't match the reality." But their being nice and friendly doesn't make them any less mysterious and reclusive: I'd wager that Ebert only ran the piece because of their reputation for not giving interviews or talking to anyone in the press.

Anyway, it's really interesting to "hear" them speak, though they mostly talk about the difficulties of keeping a moving 35 mm shot in focus and the brilliance of Coppola's Godfather shot selection. It's funny how keeping silent for a while will make such brief, mundane snippets into objects of arcane fascination. (Though since I think the Wachowskis are pretty formidable visual artists themselves, I find their perspective on that sort of thing interesting in its own right.)

No photo, of course; all you get is that old shot of the two admiring a Matrix comic book.

Okay, for this story I need you to try to remember something that happened, like, two years ago. Can you do that for me? Can you take your brain back that far, or do we need to call in McFly and the Doc? Anyway, remember all the hoopla surrounding James Frey's very popular book A Million Little Pieces? How Oprah used the so-called "memoir" to re-launch her book club, and how it turned into this huge success -- so much so that Warner Bros. desperately wanted to make a film out of it -- and how it later came out that Frey made up a good portion of the book ... and then Oprah smacked him around on TV ... and then the film went bye bye. Remember?

Well, that's what happened -- and now, two years after the fact, comes a film called A Million Little Pieces, based on the book by James Frey and directed by Nigel Tomm. And no, it's not being developed -- it's actually done ... in the can ... and available on DVD. Who's in it, you ask? Well, unlike the previous in-development adaptation, you're not going to see stars like Jake Gyllenhaal, Orlando Bloom, Josh Hartnett or Ryan Gosling (all of whom were interested in starring in the other flick). Nope, this one, according to its tagline, is -- wait for it -- "70 minutes and 41 seconds of pure turquoise screen. Nothing more, nothing less." On a budget of $345. Ahem. Confused?

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