Mission: Impossible 3 @ MindSay

     Batman Begins took in over $15 million in its debut June 15. The movie is freaking awesome. Read my review here. Tom Cruise announced at a Paris news conference that he and Batman Begins co-star Katie Holmes are engaged after he proposed to her atop the Eiffel Tower early June 17. Eye rolls, we'll see if it lasts through the summer. Ultimate Bottom Line on TomKat: MCC will NOT report on the every move of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, who are dating, if you've been living under a rock, unless they for real get married or - dun dun dun - split up.

     Writer-director J.J. Abrams has cast Keri Russell opposite Tom Cruise in the upcoming Mission: Impossible 3, which was originally intended for Scarlett Johansson, who dropped out a month ago. I guess it pays to have friends: Russell starred in the Abrams TV drama Felicity. Could be scary.

     NBC Universal will premiere the trailer for King Kong June 27 from 8:59:30-9:02 PM ET on NBC, Sci-Fi, USA, Bravo, MSNBC, CNBC, Telemundo, Mun2 and Universal HD. Kong hits theaters December 14. I can't wait!

     According to a poll released by the Associated Press and America Online, 73 percent of Americans would rather stay home and watch a movie on DVD than go to theaters. Also, nearly half said that the flicks that do get released are getting worse. I'm in the minority with the first group, but I do agree with the second point. The proof: Gigli, From Justin to Kelly, Glitter, Catwoman: all in the past five or six years.

     Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson and Angelina Jolie are in talks to star in the comedy The Mirror. The premise of the movie is that Stiller awakens one day to find his mirror image massing himself off as the real star. Stiller's character can't handle the notion that everyone, even his own parents, prefer the mirror image. Wilson plays Stiller's friend, Jolie plays an "irresistible sex goddess" (no, really?) and Stiller's real-life wife, Christine Taylor, plays his wife. Owen's brother and frequent co-star Luke Wilson is in talks to star in director Ivan Reitman's comedy Super Ex, about a man whose ex-girlfriend uses her superpowers to get back at him. Jolie's Mr. & Mrs. Smith co-star and ex-husband, Brad Pitt and Billy Bob Thornton, respectively, are teaming up for Peace Like a River, which is about a family that gets into a deadly confrontation with some neighborhood thugs. Thornton will star and Pitt will produce.

     Beyonce Knowles, Jamie Foxx and Eddie Murphy are teaming up for DreamWorks' adaptation of the Tony Award-winning musical Dreamgirls from director Bill Condon, who wrote the screenplay for Best Picture Oscar-winner Chicago. Dreamgirls follows the rise of the Dreamettes, a female singing trio who does back-up for James "Thunder" Early (Murphy), before they take over the spotlight and become The Dreams.

     Hugh Grant, Dennis Quaid, Willem Dafoe and Mandy Moore have signed on for Universal Pictures and Depth of Field's social satire American Dreamz, which will be directed by In Good Company's Paul Weitz. Good cast and good director, so most likely a good movie.

     Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe has joined the cast of the coming-of-age drama December Boys. Radcliffe will play the oldest of four orphans competing for the affection of a childless couple keen to adopt a son. The film takes place in the late '60s on an isolated beach resort and is based on Michael Noonan's novel of the same name.

     Spider-Man Tobey Maguire will star in and produce New Line Cinema's romantic comedy Quiet Type. The story centers on a mute man from a small town who moves to New York to pursue his dreams of conducting an orchestra. Sounds interesting, but hey, I'll see any Maguire flick.

     Oscar-winning actor Tim Robbins is in final negotiations to star in director Philip Noyce's based-on-a-true-story drama Hot Stuff, about an ordinary man who resorts to terror during the apartheid in South Africa.

     Clive Owen will star in Shoot 'Em Up, an action flick that follows a man entrusted to protect a baby recently delivered in a shootout from an army of gunmen. You passed up Bond for this?! Or has he???

     Men in Black II's Johnny Knoxville has signed on for the Warner Bros. baseball movie Stolen Season. Season is reportedly about former Baltimore Orioles catcher Rick Dempsey. In the summer of 1963, his coach, John Jennings, robbed a string of 20 banks up and down the California coast, using the baseball team's travel as a cover.

     The Fast and the Furious' Vin Diesel will star as Agent 47 in 20th Century Fox's adaptation of Hitman, the best-selling video game franchise from Eidos and IO Interactive, Variety reports. Talk about being typecast.

     Streep For President: Falling in Love co-stars Robert DeNiro and Meryl Streep are in talks to star in the Disney comedy First Man, about a business mogul who puts his career on hold to help his wife become the first female president of the United States.

     Anthony Hopkins, Robin Wright Penn, Ray Winstone and Brendan Gleeson are in talks to star in director Robert Zemeckis' adaptation of the literary classic Beowulf. Beowulf is an Old English epic poem about a knight who slays a monster and becomes king. It was boring in high school English class , I really hope it isn't as a movie.

     Virginia Madsen, Tim Roth, Joan Plowright, Clifton Powell, Manuel San Martin, John Kani and Patrick David have signed on for director Arthur Allan Seidelman's In the Shadow of Wings. The film centers on the true story of an American plastic surgeon (Madsen) whose family is killed in an airplane crash while on vacation in Kenya.

     Michael Keaton and Brendan Fraser will star in writer-director Michael Caleo's The Last Time. The movie follows a contented salesman who is teamed with the top moneymaker in a New York conglomerate, a grumpy loner who triens to show him and his fiancee the awful realities of the world. Sounds like The Devil's Advocate with a so-so cast.

     The Wayans brothers are reportedly eying a vacant Oakland Army Base as a location to develop a project that would feature a movie studio, entertainment-themed attractions, retail shops and a hotel. So it's the Wayans Bros. instead of Warner Bros. now?

     Lorna Thayer, who played the waitress who antagonized Jack Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces, has died at age 85. Film composer Jaime Mendoza-Nava has also passed away at age 79.

-Catherine Krummey, MovieCat Cinema

Read all the latest movie news from MCC @ www.geocities.com/moviecatcinema/movienews.html

     Film critic Roger Ebert received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame June 23. Congrats and yay! Someone truly more deserving than Seacrest. Annette Bening, Steve Martin, Ray Romano and Charlize Theron are among the stars who will receive stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2006.

     German film critics are protesting Paramount for implementing a worldwide embargo preventing reviewers from publishing their critiques of Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds until the film's global release date June 29. The critics called the embargo a "violation of basic constitutional rights." Is the movie that bad?! Tom Cruise hosted a special screening of the  War of the Worlds for hundreds of fans in Los Angeles June 20. Laurence Fishburne and Philip Seymour Hoffman are joining Cruise and Keri Russell for writer-director J.J. Abrams' upcoming Mission: Impossible 3. Two good additions.

     Frankly, my dear, I do give a damn: The line "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" from Gone With the Wind was named the American Film Institute's (AFI) number one quote on its "100 Years... 100 Quotes" list and special, which aired June 21 on CBS. Casablanca had the most entries at six, with "Here's looking at you, kid" at number five, the highest-ranked one from that particular movie.

     Paramount Pictures and Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston's Plan B production company have entered a first-look agreement that gives Paramount an exclusive first bid at producing projects developed by Plan B over the next three years. Paramount Pictures Chairman and CEO Brad Grey is the third founding member of Plan B. Warner Bros' Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Plan B's first endeavor, hits theaters July 15.

     The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) invited 112 members of the film industry to become members. Members of AMPAS vote on who should be nominated for and win Oscars. Gael Garcia Bernal, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Sophie Okonedo, Clive Owen, Charlotte Rampling, Jean Reno, Stellan Skarsgard, Imelda Staunton and Ziyi Zhang are the foreign actors that got in. American actors Thomas Haden Church, Jennifer Coolidge, Will Ferrell, Jamie Foxx, Paul Giamatti and Mykelti Williamson were extended invitations as well. Five directors got in: Alejandro Amenabar, Marc Forster, Oliver Hirschbiegel, Andy Tennant and Joel Zwick. Paramount CEO Brad Grey, Spider-Man producer Avi Arad, Robert Rodriguez's producer-wife Elizabeth Avellan, Crash creator Paul Haggis, The Motorcycle Diaries writer Jose Rivera and School of Rock writer and co-star Mike White were also invited to join AMPAS. On June 22, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voted against granting a consortium of stunt performers their request for an Oscar in their field. Oscar-winning Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar received a Bunuel's Razor Award for the Best Spanish Film of 2004 for his latest hit, Bad Education. Again, congrats and yay!

     The Los Angeles trial for the case of a photographer accused of trying to extort money from Cameron Diaz via racy photos of her taken before she was famous started June 23. Diaz's Charlie's Angels co-star Lucy Liu will star opposite Cedric the Entertainer in Les Mayfield's action comedy The Cleaner. Liu plays an FBI agent posing as a waitress to Cedric's amnesiac janitor who thinks he's an undercover agent. Liu will also executive produce and star in the independent thriller Devil to Pay. Diaz's pop star boyfriend Justin Timberlake is in talks to join Christina Ricci and Samuel L. Jackson in the film Black Snake Moan. Ricci and Jackson are good, but I don't know about Timberlake - or the title for that matter.

     Fox and Marvel Enterprises are suing Sony and Revolution Studios over Sony's new comic book satire Zoom, starring Tim Allen, which will hit theaters around the same time as Fox's X3. Fox and Marvel claim that Zoom rips off elements of the X-Men.