Holy Bat News!

One casting confirmation and one casting slightly-more-than-rumor for the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight Returns: Aaron Eckhart will be playing Harvey Dent, aka Twoface, and Maggie Gyllenhaal will allegedly play Rachel Dawes, Batman's "girlfriend" from the last film.

Liz and Valerie are excited about both of these choices. Although Katie Holmes didn't do a bad job in the last film, Maggie is totally awesome and will hopefully bring some much-needed depth to an otherwise one-dimensional role. Liz and Valerie especially loved her in Stranger Than Fiction, where she played an adorably rebellious baker. Things are looking up for this movie so far.

300 Allegedly Awesome

Liz and Valerie eagerly await their opportunity to enjoy the surreal blood-fest that is Frank Miller's 300. In fact, they have been waiting for a very long time. They totally have faith in Zack Snyder, and of course the amazing source material doesn't hurt any.

A review came out today from Variety, and it's pretty good. Keep in mind that Variety is not the kind of publication to hand out praise, especially not to "a steroid-fueled fever dream about self-realization through extreme violence," so this is exciting stuff.

News du Jour

A new poll claims that 70 percent of Americans believe films that show actors smoking should receive an automatic R rating. This is presumably because impressionable kids who see actors smoke will be moved to try it themselves. Liz and Valerie think that 70 percent of Americans need to learn how to take responsibility for their own actions and talk to their kids instead of surreptitiously censoring the film industry.

In other news, almost a third of British people surveyed think that the following actions, if performed by a woman immediately after sex, can prevent pregnancy: jumping up and down, washing or urinating. Valerie and Liz hope that the British are equally confused about how to actually have sex, otherwise there may be a lot of babies with cute accents running around in the next 9 months or so.

Last, but certainly not least, George Lucas recently presented an award to the publicist of The Empire Strikes Back, and he actually said, "Sid is the reason why The Empire Strikes Back is always written about as the best of the films, when it actually was the worst one." He was allegedly joking, but for some reason Liz and Valerie aren't laughing. Maybe he should have told the one about the baby seal who walked into a club.