The Playlist passes along word from AICN that the upcoming Terrence Malick film The Tree of Life, starring Sean Penn and Brad Pitt, will allegedly be released as two films: “one will be the regular Tree of Life drama which they call, ‘massive’ and then they’ll be an IMAX-only half ‘depicting the birth and death of the universe.’” Apparently AICN know this because they talked to special effects legend Douglas Trumbull, who has been hired to make dinosaurs for the IMAX film.

We’re in an Embassy Suites in St. Louis waiting out a flight delay and have no possible way of verifying this news, but the idea of return of movies to take psychedelic drugs to? We like!

Yesterday, for the second time in two weeks, In Contention’s Kristopher Tapley confessed to being done with 2008 and noted a bunch of anticipated 2009 films. These aren’t necessarily titles he’s looking forward to seeing, though; it’s basically a preliminary jump on next year’s Oscar season. Because apparently this year’s Academy Awards are all but handed out, the winners properly predicted and expected, and now it’s time to think about what will be up for what in 2010. Those titles Tapley lists are Rob Marshall’s Nine, Peter Jackson’s Lovely Bones, Michael Mann’s Public Enemies, Clint Eastwood’s “Mandela“ (formerly The Human Factor), Richard Curtis’ The Boat That Rocked, Scott Cooper’s Crazy Heart and the latest from Terrence Malick (The Tree of Life), Steven Soderbergh (The Informant), Paul Greengrass (Green Zone), Martin Scorsese (Shutter Island) and James Cameron (Avatar).

Oh, and then Jeff Wells had to go and hint that Spielberg’s Lincoln is likely to arrive by year’s end. What and who else is being foreseen as nominated this time next year? Check out the links after the jump.

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For all the media speculation on how the Obama presidency will affect pop culture, it’s surprising that Barack and Michelle’s marriage is not discussed much. This is a couple who embrace often, and not just for camera opportunities. She has even been seen wearing his coat as if it were a high school varsity jacket. Have we ever seen a happier presidential marriage? Seriously, if the Clinton era birthed a film like American Beauty, it’s no wonder that Revolutionary Road can only earn about an eighth of that film’s domestic gross now that the Obamas are in the White House.

But can Barack and Michelle inspire happier onscreen marriages? And can that in turn influence marriage in America? Although the divorce rate was higher thirty years ago than it is now, the marriage rate in this country is at an all-time low. And that’s probably because young people haven’t had an ideal married couple they could look up to. So, in order to help Hollywood produce more loving movie marriages, we’ve selected five onscreen pairings that may serve as models.
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In a story published online last night, Variety’s Sharon Swart named the 15 films across both the Cannes Film Festival and the Cannes market that are expected to attract the most attention from buyers. At least one of the titles, Steve McQueen’s Hunger, has been bought in the hours since the story hit the website. At least one more, described as a “martial arts fantasy actioner, currently shooting in Romania…[starring] Woody Harrelson, Demi Moore and Japanese popstar Gackt,” sounds unspeakably (but not necessarily unsaleably) ridiculous.

Two more of the films on Swart’s list are related in that they were made the focus of unexpected and unwanted attention in January by the death of Heath Ledger.

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Shotgun Stories, the impressively accomplished feature debut of writer/director Jeff Nichols, has a few obvious affinities with the directorial work of its producer, David Gordon Green. Beyond the fact that both filmmakers have a demonstrated interest in the personal tragedies of working class families in the small-town South, much of the commonality lies in the aesthetic sense that Green has been fairly accused of adopting from Terrence Malick. But if Shotgun’s courting of visual pleasure via deliberate pacing and a certain transluscent golden glow fail to reinvent the wheel, at least credit Nichols with picking the seconds that suit the material. A lyrical story of feuding familial factions in Southern Arkansas, Shotgun gets off to a slow, quirk-leavened start, but as a seemingly minor character morphs from grating comic relief to major catalyst for action, the film gains weight and eventually snowballs into an undeniably affecting moral tragedy.

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The 25 titles to be inducted in the National Film Registry for 2007 include some of my favorite films: George Cukor’s The Women; Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven; Nicholas Ray’s pitch-black In a Lonely Place; and, of course, my favorite franchise film of all time, Back to the Future. The full list, as well as thoughts from NFR advisory board member Dave Kehr, can be found here; see an extended clip from the Ray film above.

• The MPAA has rejected a proposed one-sheet poster for Alex Gibney’s documentary Taxi to the Dark Side. The original design incorporated an image from a news photo, of a hooded detainee flanked by two soldiers. The MPAA says since they won’t allow hoods on posters for torture porn, they can’t allow similar imagery to promote a torture doc. Distributor ThinkFilm plans to appeal.
• Brad Pitt is in talks to replace Heath Ledger, who was previously cast opposite Sean Penn, in Terrence Malick’s upcoming drama, Tree of Life. There are still few details to report about the project itself, although I guess we can reasonably deduce that whatever character Ledger was going to play has suddenly become about 14 years older.
• Midwestern exhibition chain Marcus Theaters has declined to book Sweeney Todd on any of its 49 screens, on the grounds that Paramount is asking for too much money for the prints. This seems like a late-game decision, considering the film is scheduled to open semi-wide on Friday, but Paramount says the release will be unaffected.
• Nancy Buirski is stepping down from her role as head of the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, in order to create and manage “a fund to incubate and produce independent docus and fiction films.”

• With the WGA strike looking almost certain to begin by the end of the week, new complications seem to arise every minute.  Now two studios, Universal and New Line, have forbidden contracted scribes from complying with the WGA’s “script validation program.” It’s a rule insisting that, in the event of a strike, writers must submit evidence of all projects-in-progress to the guild. New Line sent a letter to their writers, which flat-out stated that adhering to the WGA rule wil be considered “a breach of your writing agreement.” The AMPTP has already ruled that the WGA rule is illegal; WGA, natch, disagrees. More here.
• Heath Ledger and Sean Penn are in talks to star in Terrence Malick’s next film, Tree of Life. The project has been in development for years, but of course, nobody knows anything about it. Except, at one point, it was going to star Colin Farrell and be shot partially in India, and neither of those things are happening anymore.
• Rebecca Miller (wife of Daniel Day-Lewis, and his director in The Ballad of Jack and Rose) will direct Julianne Moore, Winona Ryder and Robin Wright-Penn in The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, based on Miller’s novel. The plot concerns a dutiful wife” (presumably Wright-Penn?) “whose husband falls for a younger woman” (Ryder?), “freeing her to explore her buried sensuality and leading to a ‘a very quiet nervous breakdown.’”