TVSquad

The folks at our sister site Cinematical are working hard to give you news and reviews of the best -- and worst -- the silver screen has to offer. Here are some of their musings on the latest blockbusters, indies, and everything in between:

• It sounds like the movie Whiteout is a prime example of pretty good source material getting made into a pretty crappy movie.
• Fat Matt Damon! Check out the review for The Informant.
• A Photoshop contest with Disney/Marvel hybrids? Brilliant.
• "The queen of talking trailer trash and posing like a porn star." Give yourself a cookie if you guessed that the person being talked about is Megan Fox. Apparently the Transformers crew are not huge fans.
• Apparently The Sorcerer's Apprentice has something to do with 9/11? I don't know, ask Nicolas Cage.

You never know when the most innocuous-sounding panel is going to bring out the A-listers here at the TCAs. But when a big name is behind a project and he or she is passionate about it, that person will brave the room of critics to promote it.

To say Matt Damon is "dedicated" to the new History documentary The People Speak would be an understatement. The family of the Oscar winner lived next door to Professor Howard Zinn, on whose book, A People's History of the United States, is based. He and his Project Greenlight partner Chris Moore have been trying to bring the book to TV for a decade. "I have one of first copies (of Zinn's book) in hardback. It had a huge impact on my life so that's why I stayed with it. The moment we had iany influecne in this town we tried to get thids project off the ground."

What are the odds that a big screen adaptation of ABC's 1980's hit MacGyver will be a success? Judging by the success-to-failure ratio of TV-to-movies, I'd say it's 50-50 at best. For every The Fugitive, there's The Wild, Wild West. A Mission: Impossible reboot works well enough as a Tom Cruise vehicle, but a live action Speed Racer is an unmitigated disaster. Still, the optimist in me will hope that New Line's MacGyver to the big screen will work. They first mentioned this about a year ago, but it's picked up some traction now.

There's no star attached as yet, but a lot of De Laurentiises -- Dino is exec producer, Raffaellla and Martha are producing for Raffaella Productions. (Giada is sticking to the Food Network.) Fortunately, the series creator, Lee Zlotoff is attached, too.

The folks at our sister site Cinematical are working hard to give you news and reviews of the best -- and worst -- the silver screen has to offer. Here are some of their latest musings on the latest blockbusters, indies, and everything in between:

• Watch the first ten minutes of Sex Drive: I had initially written this movie off as another low-budget, 10-years-too-late American Pie ripoff, but people have had good things to say about it. Watch the beginning and decide if it's worth shelling out the big bucks for this weekend.
• Cinematical asks the burning question: Can you believe Angelina Jolie in a role, or is she just too damn pretty?
• What about her paramour, Brad Pitt? Will you spend the entire time you watch Inglorious Basterds just staring into his eyes? Check out Cinematical's first look at the awkwardly-spelled Inglourious Basterds.
• Didn't Matt Damon say that the the third Bourne movie would be his last? Because it looks like the guy who wrote The Bourne Ultimatum is writing Bourne 4 as well.
• Watch the Dear Zachary trailer and have a good cry. No, really. I literally cried.

Sarah Silverman, the star of The Sarah Silverman Program, is fu*king Jimmy Kimmel, the host of ABC's late night talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live. At least we assume so, considering they've been dating for years and kidding about their love story in public -- remember her video, "I'm fu*king Matt Damon," which he countered with "I'm fu*king Ben Affleck"? These two are a fun couple and seem to really have it together. However, don't look for Ms. Silverman to ever become Mrs. Kimmel.

Simply stated, Sarah Silverman told People.com that she's vowed to never marry Jimmy Kimmel. Nothing personal, Jimmy, she just likes things exactly as they are and doesn't want to muck it up with rice, flowers, lace, cake, invitations and all the other wedding malarkey.

Clearly, little Sarah never fantasized about her parents walking her down the aisle, standing under the chuppa with her groom, and seeing the man of her dreams shatter a wine glass beneath his foot, all elements of a typical nice Jewish wedding for a nice Jewish girl like Sarah.

So, Disney CEO Robert Iger was having one of those yummy breakfast confabs talking about the future of the network and new media, alternate platforms and all those other fun buzz words about how we're going to be watching shows in the next few years. Then, kind of as an aside, he was asked about Jay Leno. With the end of Leno's era as the host of The Tonight Show looming -- and Conan O'Brien chomping at the bit to take over -- Mr. Iger said that he wouldn't rule out ABC going after Jay.

Ken Auletta of the New Yorker pressed Iger about Leno, to which the ABC head man squirmed and said, "It's not something we typically comment on."

File this under the category of do-it-yourself politics. In this YouTube.com era, it was only a matter of time before it happened. MoveOn.org has joined forces with Oscar-winners Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and Oliver Stone, multiple Grammy-winner John Legend and author Naomi Wolf to a TV ad contest for Barack Obama. The contest is called "Obama in 30 Seconds," in which Barack supporters are being asked -- challenged -- to come up with half-minute videos that focus on what it is about the Senator from Illinois that inspires them. The winning entry will be shown on national television.

"You Don't Know Dick": A very quick fun fact about Dick Cheney to help you decide what to get him for Christmas... He wants a silver deathbox. And I can't believe I'm half-defending Cheney, but, in all fairness, he didn't actually say, "Damn, I need one of those"... He said he thought it. That's a fairly significant difference.

"Indecision v. 2.008: Food Edition": Presidential candidates have been using teh interwebz to share their stories from the campaign trail. I'm not gonna lie, this segment made me really, really hungry. Although, that bit about John Edwards and his wife celebrating their 30th anniversary at a Wendy's left me more confused than peckish. Yeah, you're a normal all-American guy, Edwards, we get it. A normal all-American millionaire Senator guy.

Jimmy Kimmel has taken his Matt Damon joke to the next level, by actually placing a full-page advertisement in Variety congratulating Damon on his star on Hollywood Boulevard. Kimmel has an on-going joke on his show where he pretends that he ran out of time and had to bump Matt Damon from the schedule-- he frequently apologizes to Damon at the end of his show. Damon even played along when he appeared on Kimmel last year, pretending to be annoyed at always getting bumped.

The ad says: "Congratulations on the star and sorry we ran out of time. We'll try to squeeze you in soon." And, at the bottom, it says, "This ad cost me $8,512". That's an expensive joke. Do you think he can write it off as a business expense?

Would you cast Gary Sinise as Dr. Leonard McCoy in the next Star Trek film? Or, how about Mike Myers as Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott? Well, Chris Beaumont would. In fact, he'd recast a number of famous faces to play the legendary U.S.S. Enterprise crew in the next Trek movie.

In his Casting Stones column on Blogcritics.org, Chris admits he got this idea to recast the Trek movie when it was rumored that director J.J. Abrams wanted to cast actor Matt Damon in the role of Captain James T. Kirk for the new Star Trek film he was putting together. From there, Beaumont put together a list of stars to take the places of the other members of the crew. Most of his suggestions are right on they money. For instance, CSI:NY's Gary Sinise could be a dead ringer for Bones McCoy with a change in hair color. His choice of Billy Zane as Commander Spock would work as well, as Zane does have a similar look to Spock in some of the earlier episodes.

However, some of his choices are a bit off. For the role of Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott, Baumont picks Mike Myers. Now, Myers could handle the accent well, but it would probably remind the viewers of his role of Fat Bastard in the Austin Powers movie series.  I could hear him saying 'Captain, I canna give you any more power because I've got a crap on deck that could choke a donkey!.'  Another questionable choice is Malcolm in the Middle's Frankie Muniz as Ensign Pavel Chekov. I'm not too sure about this one. Actually, with plenty of copious makeup, I think Myers would make a better Chekov.