• Was George Clooney’s decision to go “fi-core” over the WGA’s decision to deny him a writing credit on Leatherheads akin to using “a chainsaw to operate on a papercut”? David Poland thinks so. “The guy who took out an ad in the trades telling SAG to move faster seems like just the kind of guy who belongs leading the way inside the WGA, trying to improve the arbitration process, rather than walking away in a huff.”
• “It’s as if the PR people said, “so, Mr. Don R. Lewis didn’t like our comedic gem? Let’s see how he likes THIS!” Cut cut…snip snip.” Don Lewis tells us what it feels like to be blurbed on the DVD cover for a film he negatively reviewed.
• “The New Beverly has scored probably its greatest coup yet in terms of presenting filmmakers and the movies they love to eager audiences,” writes Dennis Cozzalio. He’s talking about Dante’s Inferno, a two-week program of films made and selected by Joe Dante. Dennis has a special fondness for the one Dante film that will be shown in a non-midnight slot, Hollywood Boulevard.
• I wish I was at Full Frame, the doc fest that’s taking place this weekend in Durham, NC, but alas, The Cinetrix’s dispatches for GreenCine Daily will have to suffice. So far she’s been “blown away” by Forbidden Lie$, which was the best film I saw last month at True/False.

• With his retro football rom-com Leatherheads is expected to top the weekend box office, George Clooney is finally speaking out about the fact that the WGA’s decision to exclude him from screenplay credit on the film pushed the actor/director to go financial core, or give up his rights as a voting member in order to pay fewer dues. The complexities of the story, outlined here, offer a pretty interesting glimpse into the intricacies of WGA policy.
• Are you ready for designer, non-disposable 3D glasses? Are we sure this didn’t already happen in the 80s, or am I once again conflating the events of Back to the Future 2 with the events of recent cultural history?
• Speaking of the relics of two-decade-old futurism, Bob Weinstein has bought the remake rights to Short Circuit.

Leave it to George Clooney to make a football movie that actually looks good to people like me. And by people like me, I mean people with no interest in American football whatsoever (I attend Super Bowl parties exclusively for the 7-layer dip). Yahoo! is hosting the trailer for Leatherheads, Clooney’s much-anticipated directorial follow-up to Good Night, and Good Luck, and the romantic sports comedy looks like the most appealing football flick — particularly for women and also guys like me — ever produced.

Part of the appeal for me, though, is those old uniforms, which bring me back (cinematicaly — I’m not that old) to the football fields of Horse Feathers, Harold Lloyd’s The Freshman and that famous still of Ronald Reagan from Knute Rockne All American. Then, of course, there’s the appeal of Clooney in old-timey clothes, ala O Brother Where Art Thou? Considering how much Clooney resembles Cary Grant in both appearance and acting style, it’s no wonder that I prefer him in stories that take him back to periods in which Grant was a big star. Okay, so Leatherheads is actually set in the 1920s, before Grant and his silly accent made it to the big screen, but I’m willing to ignore that little historical inaccuracy (just as the Coen Bros. ignored a lot of historical fact with O Brother). Had sound films come about earlier than they had, Cary Grant could have been wooed by Hollywood much sooner than he was.

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• Paramount Vantage has delayed the worldwide release of The Kite Runner until mid-December, so that they can transport the film’s young, Afghani stars, who believe they may be in danger if they stay in their home country while the film is being released, to the US. 12-year-old actor Ahmad Khan says he was not aware that he was to play the victim of a rape in the film until the day the scene was shot, and though the finished scene is not graphic, Khan and his family are concerned about cultural repercussions.
• In more release date shuffling, Leatherheads, George Clooney’s latest directorial effort, has been pushed back from December to April. The official line is that Clooney, can’t juggle finishing the film with his duties shooting the next Coen Brothers film and promoting Michael Clayton, all the while recovering from a broken rib. Elsewhere, there are whispers of re-casting and reshoots.
• Buzz on the Ben Stiller/Farrelly Brothers remake of The Heartbreak Kid is somewhat less toxic than I would have guessed, but The Hollywood Reporter is still pegging it an unremarkable $20 million opening weekend.