The latest addition to a motley club consisting of several angry Romanian villagers, an offended etiquette teacher, two misguided frat boys (and a partridge in a pear tree) is none other than acclaimed director and alleged ruiner of fun, Steven Spielberg. Unlike his company, Spielberg isn’t interested in suing Sacha Baron Cohen, but his actions may lead to the end of Borat all the same. The director has signed a $6 million dollar deal with Cohen, who has reportedly agreed to play the role of Abbie Hoffman in The Trial of the Chicago Seven. Though the film, which follows the events leading up to a violent anti-Vietnam protest, has the potential to make polite society uncomfortable, it’s a far cry from letting chickens loose on a New York subway train and stirring up trouble in a traditional American rodeo. Will we see Borat wreak havoc throughout the U S and A while rocking a mean mustache after reaching legitimate actorhood? Only time will tell.

Horror fans rejoice, for your prodigal son has returned — and he’s brought his kooky brother with him! That’s right, Sam “The Man” Raimi is stepping off his blockbuster pulpit and getting his pressed pants dirty once again with Drag Me to Hell, a supernatural horror flick concerning some poor sap that’s been hit with a nasty case of curses. The script, by the director and his brother Ivan, has been gathering dust since it’s inception after Army of Darkness and was recently resuscitated thanks to the unending writer’s strike.

The bummer news? He’s been quoted as saying that he’s going to try and pull it off without resorting to his patented blood and glorious guts of yesteryear. The better news? He’s currently referring to it as a ’spook-a-blast,’ which hopefully means more Poltergeist spooks than the dopey J-horror ghouls that his production company Ghost House has been mining for five movies too many. Still, any Raimi-helmed horror is better than none. If speculation is correct, then this bottom-of-the-barrel budgeter is just what the doctor ordered for the filmmaker and his longtime fan base. Is it too early to reserve tickets? I’d like 200, please.

When word came earlier this week that a big-screen A-Team movie might be in the works, it got the old brain-juice flowing around the AMG offices. So much so that they overflowed and spilled all over the carpet. It actually made quite a mess, but we were able to put together the following dream casts.

Enjoy, and be sure to share your own choices in the comments.

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You may not know this, but there is an alternate world of cinema out there starring none other than America’s favorite pretty boy talent, Brad Pitt, which appears nowhere on his filmography, nor does he rack up frequent flyer miles for that illustrious Oscar with any of these credits. It is a world that saw the Pittster fly to the Moon, travel time and be adored by millions of hippie harpies as an arena rock god. This is a world that could have been, if only the star had sealed the deal on that last audition – or even worse, lived up to his obligations and seen a production through to fruition.

With the recent announcement of Pitt’s jumping ship on Kevin MacDonald’s ensemble drama State of Play, All Movie takes a gander at the superstar’s bumpy track record of ditched projects and near-missed considerations. Is this a tale of super psyche run wild or a simple case of finicky palette dating back decades? While only his mother may know the real answer, at least we can have fun debating what could have been if Brad and Hollywood had just shaken on it and made movie history.

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Jessica Alba claims she has been asked to star in a Broadway revival of David Mamet’s scathing Hollywood satire Speed the Plow. One assumes she is taking this job in order to salvage her dismal film career get back to her roots in the theater. She will play the part Madonna portrayed in the original production; by that logic, Alba is only a few years away from her own remake of Swept Away directed by Cash Warren.

Really, could it be any worse?…

Ask any true crime enthusiast about the most harrowing and heartbreaking case they’ve ever researched, and chances are the name Sylvia Likens will come up at some point in the conversation.

An Indiana teen who, along with her disabled younger sister Jenny, was left in the care of an overburdened and destitute single mother as their parents were working in a traveling carnival, Sylvia became the target of abuse not only by her deeply-disturbed guardian, but, perhaps most shockingly, the children of the neighborhood as well. The details of the case are enough to shake even the most well-read true crime buff, making it a most unlikely candidate for feature film adaptation. Oddly enough, not one but two films concerning the Sylvia Likens case are now set for distribution: The Girl Next Door and An American Crime. The former an adaptation of author Jack Ketchum’s fictionalized account of the crime and the latter a by-the-books recreation drawn from actual court transcripts, both films dare to present a case that is excruciatingly difficult to read about much less see realized on the big screen. Still, it’s an important story that should remain in the collective conscious of the public. There’s no question that with Catherine Keener, James Franco, and Ellen Page aboard An American Crime has the star-power needed to draw in reluctant viewers, though by contrast the manner in which The Girl Next Door explores the mechanisms that would make such a tragedy possible make it a compelling – yet wholly unpleasant – study in mob mentality and the inherent responsibility of adults to protect children at all costs.

In the end, regardless of which film is considered more successful, the important thing is that the memory of Sylvia Likens lives on to ensure that no other children need ever fear meeting the same tragic end as the vibrant young girl from Indiana whose name has become a somber reminder of mankind’s true capacity for evil. The only question that remains now is whether or not filmgoers are willing to subject themselves to such horrors, or if the harsh realities of such a reprehensible case will simply prove too much for audiences to endure.

Check out the trailers for both films after the jump.

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The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the group that hands out The Golden Globes every year, maintains a tradition of having a Miss (or occasionally Mr.) Golden Globes. This person stands on stage handing the statuettes to the winners. The man or woman selected for that honor is traditionally a budding young performer who is also lucky enough to be the progeny of Hollywood celebrities. This year the honor goes to Rumor Willis - the daughter of Bruce Willis and Demi Moore. Obviously this responsibility offers no clue as to the quality or longevity of Rumor’s career, but it does guarantee the HFPA that two major celebrities who would not have otherwise attended their annual gala will most certainly be there, smiling for the television cameras.

After years and years in development, the reported replacement of some of the cast and the production team (Nick Nolte was set to co-star at one point, under the aegis of Shooting Gallery) and countless rewrites, The Rum Diary - an adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson’s long-unpublished 1959 novel about the author’s drunken travails and wanderings in 1950s Puerto Rico - should finally reach the screen in mid-late 2008. The trades report that Warner Independent did just recently greenlight this production, with Johnny Depp producing and starring, Withnail & I director Bruce Robinson directing from his own adaptation, and Graham King’s GK Films backing the project.

The notion of Depp not only reprising his role as one of Thompson’s onscreen surrogates (following his starring turn in Terry Gilliam’s 1998 head trip Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) but executive producing the film, is an interesting and unusual one indeed. Interesting, because the Gilliam film so sharply divided observers.

On one hand, it received widespread critical excoriation when it premiered in 1998; in my favorite quote, The Washington Post’s Stephen Hunter quipped, “Watching it is like being forced to listen to bad heavy metal music turned up to 11 while fat guys in Bermuda shorts compete in a puking contest in the john.” But on the other hand, Fear has since emerged as a cult classic, and apparently claimed enough of a devoted following to prompt The Criterion Collection to issue a handsomely-packaged 2003 DVD release. Who knew?

One fact is certain - given the less-hallucinatory nature of the source material for Diary (which Thompson authored long before his gonzo and LSD days), it should - relatively speaking - probe more conventional movie territory than the Gilliam film. The fact that ‘Rum Diary’ is getting produced despite the Gilliam movie’s considerable fiscal loss during its initial theatrical run (on a budget of $18 million, it only grossed just over $10 million, according to Box Office Mojo - ancillary notwithstanding) reinforces the long-held suspicion that Hollywood will greenlight almost any project, no matter how risky or off-the-wall, if Depp is involved. That’s no small claim to fame, regardless of how talented the guy is.