• The members of AFTRA have ratified a proposed deal with the APMTP over a new contract. This wrecks SAG’s hopes that they’ll be able to use the dissatisfaction of the hundred-thousand-plus actors who belong to both unions as leverage against their own stalled negotiations. Another factor to SAG’s woes: after the WGA strike, nobody wants to be out of work again.
• Variety confirms Nikki Finke’s report that the Weinsteins are looking for a financing partner to help them get Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Bastards made in time for premiere at Cannes 2009; the studio has already found a moneybag for Rob Marshall’s Nine in Relativity Media.
• Palisades Media has picked up the just-shuttered Tartan UK’s 400-film video library, which includes films like Super Size Me, In the Mood For Love, and the works of Bergman and Pasolini.

• AFTRA will announce the results of their guild’s ratification vote on a prospective contract with the AMPTP today. It’s said to be “widely anticipated the terms will be accepted,” despite SAG’s pressure on their overlapping union to vote no in order to get a new/more favorable deal.
• Robert Schwartz looks at three of New York’s outdoor summer film festivals, including Rooftop Films.
• William “Cruising” Friedkin will direct the Milan premiere of the opera based on An Inconvenient Truth.
• Kinky Boots, one of those newfangled British comedies where somebody saves something through the power of something that somebody else thinks is naughty, is going to become a Broadway musical.

• Hancock is expected to make around $100 million this weekend, simply because Will Smith + July 4th = boatloads of money, regardless of negative buzz.
• SAG still doesn’t have a contract, but nobody seems to be particularly concerned. According to Variety, “There’s a ubiquitous sense among studio and network execs, talent reps and multihyphenates that SAG does not have the bedrock of support among its members to call for a work stoppage.” Meanwhile, Tom Hanks is supporting a ratification of the AFTRA deal, which would almost certainly nix any possibility of a SAG strike, whilst Jack Nicholson wants his compatriots to hold out for a better deal.
• Sacha Baron Cohen will play Sherlock Holmes opposite Will Ferrell’s Watson in an as-yet untitled comedy based on the detective stories. But they’ll have stiff competition from a competing Sherlock film being developed by the week’s most famous male maybe-divorcee, Guy Ritchie…right? [crickets]

Have you been following The Hollywood Temp Diaries? It’s an anonymous Blogger blog with the tagline, “I am one of those barnacles on the hull of the good ship ‘Hollywood.’ These are my stories.” Good stuff, especially if you subscribe to that dirty secret that most Hollywood jobs are just as glamorous and exciting as, like, working anywhere else. The blog’s author, known only as Temp X, has been drawing a direct line between the impending SAG strike and total global apocalypse for awhile. A couple of days ago, s/he posted a “videotorial” to hammer home her/his case, and for people like me who haven’t been able to get it up to care much about an actor’s strike, it’s the perfect vehicle for impressing the seriousness of the situation. More here.

• Ellen Burstyn and James Cromwell have been hired to play Barbara Bush Sr and George H.W. Bush in Oliver Stone’s George W. Bush drama, which is currently being called W. All along, the trades have been saying that the goal is to get this sucker distributed around the time of the November elections; today’s Variety story implies that since it’s almost April and they’re still casting the thing, a pre-Inauguration Day release might be more realistic.
• Peter Chernin of News Corp/Fox and Robert Iger of Disney/ABC, who helped negotiate deals with the DGA and WGA, are now expected to mediate talks between SAG/AFTRA and the studios, in an effort to head off an actors strike.
• My beloved Silent Light won five Mexican Academy Awards on Tuesday night, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Cinematography.