* Tom Cruise may or may not be many things, but I’ve never really thought of him as a rocker. Yet, that’s exactly what he will be in the promised film version of “Rock of Ages.” I’ve long had mixed feelings about Cruise as an actor — he can be very good in some things and disastrous in others — and I have mixed feelings about this project, too. To be specific, I like good movie musicals but strongly dislike eighties hair bands and what some of us used to call “corporate rock.”

On the other hand, Mike Fleming touts Anne Hathaway, who I have few or no mixed feelings about, as a possible costar. I wonder what she’d look like as a glam rocker…

* A star has been set — or at least gotten to the serious negotiation stage — for the long discussed “Jack the Giant Killer” coming from Bryan Singer and his old screenwriting cohort, Christopher McQuarrie, writes Mike Fleming. He’s that kid who was so great in 2002’s “About a Boy” grown-up into 20-something Nicolas Hoult. Hoult has also appeared on the UK “Skins” and will be turning up in the upcoming “Mad Max” reboot/sequel or whatever.

Mike Fleming, however, is not correct when he describes the tale as a “scary” variation on “Jack and the Beanstalk.” It’s an entirely different, far less commonly told, fairy tale. As Wikipedia tells us:

Jack the Giant Killer is a British fairy tale about a plucky Cornish lad who slays a number of giants during King Arthur’s reign. The tale is characterized by violence, gore, and blood-letting.

No wonder they’re making a movie of it.

* Gerard Butler is going surfing with the supremely cool Curtis Hanson, who’ll be directing him in “Mavericks.” It’s a reality-inspired story that, Kevin Jagernauth reminds us, also calls for a tragic hero in his late teens and/or early twenties. I wonder if Nicolas Hoult might want to continue the growing tradition of really skilled young British actors stealing parts from Americans with their flawless U.S. accents, superior discipline, and all. He actually already did just that with his small but pivotal role as an Angeleno student who turns Colin Firth’s head in last year’s excellent “A Single Man.”

* Somebody at Marvel and Paramount must like what they’re seeing in “Captain America: The First Avenger.” Writers Stephen McFeeley and Christopher Markus have been hired to write a sequel already. On the other hand, sequels are kind of the point of these movies, I’m afraid. According to IMDb, the pair will be sharing screen credit for the first film with Joss Whedon, who was hired to do a polish on the script last year, but we’ll see what reality and the Writer’s Guild have to say about that.

* Ryan Gosling just turned 30 last year, and he looks younger than that. So that makes him the perfect age for a new version of “Logan’s Run,” about a future where radical population control means that no one makes it past 30. Since thoughtful, genre-friendly Alex Garland is writing the screenplay this time, I trust this version will hew a little closer to the original novel by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson than the seriously mediocre 1976 film version. Still, in the book no one made it past 21. If they decide to be really faithful, maybe Nicolas Hoult would be available. He turned 21 last December.

* Megan Ellison, 25-year old daughter of Oracle founder Larry Ellison, is apparently dropping her billionaire playgirl persona to become not a buttkicking superhero, but a buttkicking film financier, says The Vulture. She’s apparently saving Paul Thomas Anderson’s endangered possibly-about-Scientology film, possibly called “The Master,” which is possibly about a lead character who is legally probably not based on L. Ron Hubbard. She also might be helping out with the moolah for what I think would be the first film adaptation of a Thomas Pynchon novel if it ever happens, “Inherent Vice.” Something tells me Tom Cruise won’t be stepping aside from “Rock of Ages” to appear in either film, though he was in Anderson’s “Magnolia,” of course.

* Speaking of actual Scientology, the highly litigious and, many believe, highly dangerous to cross Hollywood-centric religion-cum-self-help movement, got its biggest unwanted public airing out in some time this week. I speak of a terrific investigative piece in the new issue of The New Yorker. The hugely compelling and informative 26-page article by Lawrence Wright focuses on the experience of screenwriter and director Paul Haggis (“Million Dollar Baby,” “Crash“), formerly one of the church’s best known below-the-line members. Highly recommended.

* I’ve had fellow entertainment journos confess to me they’re really tired of writing items about James Franco contemplating a seemingly endless number of possible new projects. The guy’s career is on fire and considering that he’s currently pursuing a PHd while getting ready to host the Oscars and appearing just about everywhere in support of “127 Hours,” and presumably taking innumerable meetings and doing lord-knows-what-else, he’s clearly not the kind of person who worries about overextending himself. Nevertheless, I have to wonder about how serious the rumor is about him playing a role in the upcoming live action film version of the manga classic, “Akira.” He’s still young and everything, but if memory serves I kind of had the impression that all the characters were teenagers. Of course, in manga and anime, everyone under 45 looks like they’re 15. Still, Franco better start taking it easier and get his beauty rest if he doesn’t want to lose the part to someone who looks really young like, say, Nicolas Hoult.

“The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader” is the third installment in the adaptation of C.S. Lewis’s immensely popular fantasy novels. Though it was helmed by veteran filmmaker Michael Apted, it’s not entirely smooth sailing for the family-friendly adventures. Disney dropped the series after the somewhat disappointing showing of “The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian” back in 2008. Since then, as discussed by both Ben Fritz and jolly Carl DiOrio Fox has picked it up and trimmed the budget in partnership with Walden Media to an oh-so-thrifty $155 million (!).

That’s probably a good thing because it doesn’t seem to be generating a huge amount of excitement, at least from critics. On the other hand, Narnia fans are a sure bet to turn out and, as the first 3D installment in the series, “Dawn Treader” could enjoy a bit of a bump from those inflated ticket prices. DiOrio’s guess of $35-45 million seems reasonable.

From everything I’ve seen today, Sony’s “The Tourist” looks like it may be one of those movies that comes with the finest pedigree but just turns out to be a bit of a dog. Not only does this remake of a French thriller little-seen in the U.S. boast the truly enormous star voltage of Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie, it’s the follow-up film to the Oscar winning worldwide success, “The Lives of Others” by German writer-director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. I saw von Donnersmark introduce that film before its domestic opening. He turns out to be an extremely fluent and completely unaccented English speaker who, even before his film opened in the U.S., was not shy about his lust to take on American films.

The maker of the compellingly dour political thriller has taken on an attempt at a sophisticated, lighthearted thriller along the lines of such non-Hitchcock Hitchcock films as “Charade.” And, where that film had a screenplay by the great Peter Stone, this one has one credited to von Donnersmark, Christopher McQuarrie (“The Usual Suspects”) and Julian Fellowes (“Gosford Park”). You can’t blame a guy for trying.

The review by our own David Medsker was entirely unenthusiastic, but it was a rave compared with the highly negative reaction of critics overall. The same scribes who rhapsodized over “The Lives of Others” largely found “The Tourist” an exercise in high-gloss boredom. While audiences will be lured by the appearance of an ideal date movie the first weekend, you’ve got to wonder how the film will do once people see it for themselves. Still, about $20 million seems to be figure for the first weekend. We’ll see about the legs later on.

There’s also a bunch going on in the realm of limited releases. Looking at Box Office Mojo, we have a significant expansions of “Black Swan” after its boffo opening weekend. One brand new entry this weekend in five theaters is a new version of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” which, despite starring the great Helen Mirren in a bit of gender-altering casting is getting pretty dismal reviews for famed/infamous director Julie Taymor.  A Shakespeare adaptation with bad reviews is a movie in trouble. “The Fighter” debuts also on four screens, though you can expect many more later.

A highly entertaining character actor, stand-up comic, and now also a screenwriter and Internet talk show host, Kevin Pollak will nevertheless remain forever in the shadow of three men. One is wise-guy crook Todd Hockney from Christopher McQuarrie and Bryan Singer’s slambam 1995 debut, “The Usual Suspects” (currently at #24 of all-time most popular films on IMDb); the other two are, of course, William Shatner and Christopher Walken. So powerful are the Pollak impressions of these two men, I’d venture that when most of us attempt to impersonate either actor, we’re really not doing Shatner or Walken, we’re doing Pollak doing Shatner or Walken. (Though, personally, my extremely bad Christoper Walken is really a very bad impression of Kevin Spacey‘s Walken but, for all I know, Spacey got his from Pollak while shooting “Suspects.”). Indeed, I can remember a time when it seemed like nobody did Shatner and I’m pretty sure it was Pollak who kind of opened to door for all the other impressionists into the voice and mannerisms of the man Pollak calls “the Shat.”

Among the nearly 90 or more productions he’s been involved with as an actor, Kevin Pollak’s latest release is “Middle Men,” a black comedy-laced drama owing more than a little bit to Martin Scorsese. The film stars Luke Wilson as straight-arrow businessman Jack Harris who falls in with a pair of highly inventive cokeheads (Gabriel Macht and Giovanni Ribisi) and would be Internet porn kings during the late 1990s. The pair have developed the first really viable method for collecting money over the ‘net in a reasonable amount of time. Of course, things get massively complicated from there and Pollak turns up later in the film as an FBI agent who comes to Harris and his porn star girlfriend (Laura Ramsay) with a startling new reality. The film, co-written and directed by George Gallo, best known as the screenwriter of “Midnight Run,” is actually just part of an ongoing collaboration between the director and the actor-comic and now screenwriter.

As is often the case, I was one of a number of scribblers who were participating in a roundtable with Pollak during the “Middle Men” press day at L.A.’s Four Season’s hotel. Pollak arrived in a friendly but highly subdued mood. He was a late addition to the press day and obviously has been keeping very busy. Among many other projects, he had a new stand-up special ready premiering, and an increasingly popular podcast, Kevin Pollak’s Chat Show, with recent guests including Neal Patrick Harris and John Slattery of “Mad Men.”  Pollak frankly seemed a little tired at first, though going out of his way to be funny — because that’s what you expect from Pollak. Things perked up as it went.

How did Pollak get involved with the film?

“George Gallo called me and said ‘I’ve got this script, I’m gonna direct and I’d like you to read it and be in it.’ And I said, ‘Who’s this?’ And then, here we are…I’ve known [George] a long time.”

Had he heard anything about the factually-inspired story before?

“No, I hadn’t heard the story before. Had you? I don’t think anyone did. I don’t think they went terribly public with it, these two idiots [played by Gabriel Macht and Giovanni Ribisi] in question. ‘Nutty geniuses’ may be more flattering. Maybe the story did come out briefly. Seems to me if you help create a way to change commerce forever, you would want your story told, but I’m not the one to ask as to why this is the first time we’re hearing this.”

Did Pollak research his role as an FBI agent in any way?

“No, I’ve never done any research for any movie I’ve ever done. I started out in stand-up comedy, had no formal training as an actor. I found pretty early on that all I had to offer was to be believable and authentic in whatever role I was portraying. I had a sort of natural ability to be loose in front of a camera… For me, honestly, the research is always the script. Read the script 25 times — but, literally, read the script 25 times and hopefully the writer’s done all the research that’s necessary. Because, if I’m an FBI guy it’s never about how to be an FBI guy, it’s about a guy who is with the FBI. Unless I star in the movie ‘I Was an FBI Guy’ and I don’t see that happening, to be honest with you.”

Sure, that could happen, one of us said. Agent Curt Allmans could be spun off into his own film.

“You’re my favorite!” Pollak responded in a sort of Liberace-esque voice.

Then I noted that Pollak has a co-writing credit on an upcoming film to be directed by George Gallo and produced by Christopher Mallick, the producer of “Middle Men” and the source of its historically driven story.

“I wrote it with George Gallo and it’s called ‘Columbus Circle.’ I acted in it as well and it came out fairly terrific. It tested wonderfully, surprisingly well, and is now shopping for distribution.”

Could he explain what the movie is about?

“No. It seems wildly premature, other than to say it’s a twisting, turning Hitchcockian tale. Terrific cast, Giovanni Ribisi, Selma Blair, Amy Smart, Jason Lee, myself, Beau Bridges, Jason Antoon who plays the slimy director in ‘Middle Men.’ George did a great job, again, directing. We wrote it on the plane ride from Cannes with this movie and then landed and 20 days later started shooting. So that’s probably the best part of the story… It was born of necessity.”

“Chris Mallick, our producer here who flew us all to Cannes out of the bigness of his heart and wallet, had built these two sets on a sound stage at [CBS’s Burbank studios] to do this other movie. Then, he lost the rights — this other movie was a remake… had these sets built and spent a couple million dollars building them. [He] told me the situation when we were in Cannes, the day before we went on the jet to go home. The next morning I got on the jet and said, ‘Here’s a story that takes place 90% in these two loft apartments that you built on the sound stage.'”

“Then, I, Giovanni Ribisi, Brian Tyler (the composer of ‘Middle Men’), Jason Shuman (one of the producers), and Chris Mallick beat out all the bullet points and beats of the script. Then, George Gallo and I hit the ground running when we landed. We wrote the script and started sending it out eight days later and started shooting 20 days later.”

The next question was honestly under-informed, but Pollak didn’t mind one bit. Was he still doing stand-up and, if not, did he miss it?

“I don’t miss it because I still do it. In fact, a brand new, one-hour stand-up special just debuted on Showtime. It’ll be viewable all throughout August and then on DVD September 7th — glad you asked! It’s called ‘The Littlest Suspect.’

Pollak followed that with a bit of visual laughing-at-his-own-joke business. “‘Where does he come up with it? Right off the top, I suppose.’ That’s why I wear a hat.”

And that somehow led to the old, old, old, old question about where he finds his material.

“You know, I always did impersonations, it was what I was known for. But, over the years, I ended up working with a lot of these people that I’d been impersonating. I found that I had first-hand anecdotes of being around them, [like] meeting Christopher Walken the first time after impersonating him on TV.”

“Mostly the act is storytelling of these life experiences that actually happened with these people that I’ve been impersonating. So you have the real story, you have my perspective, and then you have, alright say it, my flawless impersonation of the person within the story. So, that’s the bulk of the act.”

Have any of the people Pollak impersonated not been in love with his rendition of their voice?

“Knock wood, not yet. But I did fear doing Jason Statham in this special. I did not want to get — and still don’t want to get that — if he should be reading or listening, however this comes out, Jason, I don’t want to get that phone call at four in the morning…”

Naturally, Pollak launched into a, yes, reasonably flawless and very funny impression of the imposing Englishman.

“‘Do you know who I am? Do you fucking know who I am? What did I tell you, mate? [I’m going to] rip your fucking heart out. Do you know what I mean? Do you fucking know what I mean?’ I don’t want that call.”

Christopher Walken, however, is a fan of his impression.

“He loves it. Me and Quentin Tarantino were the two speakers when Christopher Walken got his hands and feet and signature in cement in the [Chinese] Theater on Hollywood Blvd. Why I was chosen, having never met him prior, was because of the impersonation. So that couldn’t have been more [exciting] than that moment, and that’s one of the stories in the Showtime special,” Pollak added, working in another plug.

Then I asked about the age-old high-class problem that comedians find in more serious roles that audiences, myself definitely included, tend to laugh or at least smile when he comes on the screen, regardless of the content of the movie. Is this a problem in straight films?

“‘Straight films’ — instead of all the gay work I’ve been doing.”

I meant ‘non-comedy’ roles.

“‘Drama.’ ‘Drama’ is the word you were looking for. Let me you help. The ‘drama’ word.'”

Correct enough, I soldiered on, but what about that time it takes for an audience to figure out, depending on the nature of the role, that Pollak may not be making them laugh a huge amount in a given role. Does he feel somewhat pigeonholed by that expectation?

“I don’t, I tell ya. First of all, being a character actor I’ve had the freedom — the luxury and privilege — of doing a range of different characters, but however people discover you is how they know you. So, if you saw me first as a stand-up that’s what you think of. ‘A Few Good Men‘ was a giant leap for me. It was a welcome to the big leagues basically. Also, the character was written as sort of the conscience of the piece and I was the only actor, in a cast of giants, who the audience was [saying] ‘Who’s this guy?’ That’s how so many people discovered me. If you discovered me in that movie, then you’d think of me more in that way.”

Then it was someone else’s turn again. How much has show business changed for Pollak since he started out in the 80s?

“In every way possible.”

Is it harder or easier?

“It’s harder to make a living. It’s not harder, necessarily, to work with great people or…I mean opportunity comes and goes. There’s an ebb and flow of one’s career, if you have a career. So, as a character actor you come and go depending on the needs and desires of filmmakers as opposed to the studio. They don’t turn to me to sell tickets, so it’s kind of a luxury in that regard. But, in terms of making a living, that financial part of the business has changed, as it has in every other business.”

“So, fortunate for me, I have always been able to diversify so I’ve managed to make a comfortable living. Acting in movies is not the comfortable living it once was for a character actor. Other aspects of it, in terms of the fun to be had, in terms of the opportunities, in terms of the amazing filmmakers that I’ve been able to work with, that hasn’t changed.”

Then the topic turned to acting with Giovanni Ribisi. Though offhand I can’t remember any scenes in “Middle Men” with both the Ribisi and Pollak characters together, apparently they do work together in “Columbus Circle.” Were there any conflicts between Pollak’s intuitive style and Ribisi’s more intense approach that might have him tagged as a “method” actor. (If you read to the end of my Bullz-Eye interview with Ribisi, you’ll see a particularly vivid example of that.)

“I’ve worked with method actors before. I don’t know if he would be considered a strict method actor in the full sense of the word, the people who study the so-called [Stanislavsky] method. In the past, working with method actors, I’ve found that there’s very little fun to be had, which confused me. I didn’t understand why anyone would want to do this if they weren’t having fun. I was quite relieved with Giovanni… While his work ethic was one that made it very important to him to do good work, and he’s his own biggest critic, there is a tremendous amount of fun to be had and silliness between takes as opposed to a ‘don’t look me in the eye’ type of thing.”

The topic then turned to Pollak’s various audiences from various gigs and his best known role.

“The weird thing about ‘The Usual Suspects’ is that it regenerates a new audience because it’s one of these weird rights of passage in college. By the time you’re a sophomore, if you can’t speak ‘Suspects’ you’re a loser, like to this day. I thought [that] would fade and it’s now 15 years later and that’s still the case. So, that sort of helps to regenerate a new audience.”

“Even when I tour as a stand-up, the audience tends to be my similar to my age, who know me as a stand-up first. Then, a whole bunch of 20-somethings who know me from these other movies, or who have seen me do Christopher Walken who’s a hero of theirs and who just want more of that.”

“Now, I’ve just started doing this online talk show, ‘Kevin Pollak’s Chat Show,’ and now, almost a year and a half into it, I’m running into people who are just coming up and saying, ‘I love your podcast.’ It streams live video every Sunday afternoon. I check the audio download numbers — 1.2 million audio downloads in the last three months…because of that it’s starting to reach that critical mass and people are coming up and saying ‘I really dig the podcast, dude…'”

“I found early on, if you’re not creating, you’re waiting, and I don’t enjoy waiting. I never know when someone comes up and I see in their eyes that they’re about to recognize me, what they’re actually going to say. It can be a little annoying when they say, ‘What’s that thing I saw you in?’ Then we’re screwed because as much as I want to explain, I wasn’t with you when you saw it.”

* You’ve probably heard it elsewhere by now, but Bryan Singer has been signed to do a “Battlestar Galactica” movie, though of course it’s still very preliminary. I hope it stays that way.

The show will apparently not be related to the recently wrapped, broadly acclaimed TV series, but will be a complete redo of some sort or another and original producer Glen Larson is involved.  That Universal would want to do another reboot on such a recently and brilliantly rebooted property makes absolutely no sense to me at all and shows a real failure of imagination. Moreover, if the idea is to return to something more like the original, I have only one question: Why? One of the things that makes the new series so remarkable is how worthless its original was.

A few years back, I took a fresh look at the first few episodes after dismissing it in my younger geek years and, sorry, the show was three times as bad as I remembered. It was nothing more than a listless knock-off of “Star Wars” with an addition of some surprisingly blatant rightwing agitprop and all the poor characterization and infantile plotting that made seventies television that vast wasteland that it really was back then, with a few exceptions. There is nothing to be nostalgic for here and most modern viewers only know the new show in any case. Bryan Singer’s a smart guy and I just don’t get this.

* Speaking of Singer, his sometime writing partner Christopher McQuarrie (“The Usual Suspects”) has been signed to do the next Wolverine flick.

* In other superhero related news, we are back at the start of it all with some new litigation which returns some of the control of Superman to the estates of his creators, Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster. It may dramatically speed up, or slow down, production of upcoming Superman projects since the ruling goes into effect in 2013 and Warners might want to keep more money for itself by starting sooner rather than later. Regardless, as someone who remembers the “creators’ rights” movement in the comic book world of the late eighties and nineties, I have to think the good guys won here.

* As all signs point to a profitable weekend for “District 9,” the talk of the cinephile and film geek blogosphere has been an apparent fanboy pile-up at Rotten Tomatoes on critic Armond White of the New York Press because he was one of the very, very few to put up a negative review of director Neill Blomkamp’s feature debut. Roger Ebert’s “District 9” review was mildly positive, but he lept to the defense of Armond White, making the case that this was another example of fans trying to cudgel a critic into submission for the crime of daring to dislike a film they liked and which had garnered mostly great reviews. So, Roger strikes a blow for healthy debate and free-thinking about movies, right?

Not exactly. You see, this is Armond White we’re talking about. I could on and on about this, but Ebert, whose been keeping up an impressive regimen since recovering from an illness that would have put most of us out to pasture, was apparently unaware of a lot of recent history involving White, who has become something of a running joke/object of wonder among serious film lovers online. Perhaps because of his illness, Ebert apparently missed a great 2007 takedown of White’s mindlessly pugilistic approach to criticism by his Chicago Sun-Times colleague Jim Emerson, and some more recent truly unnecessary and needlessly nasty remarks about Ebert that White had made in the middle of a verbal blitzkreig directed pretty much at all film bloggers of all sorts and all film critics who are not Armond White.

In any case, after reading the comments and educating himself, Ebert — who realy is one of my heroes — did what a gentleman does when he realizes he’s missing the point, and mostly took his defense back, although I have to add that the problem goes far beyond White liking certain films and not liking others. (I’d actually never attack a critic on that basis. We’re dealing with one of the most subjective areas of human endeavor here.)

In any case, if you have any interest in this kind of thing at all, I do think you should take a look at the piece I linked to above and read as many of the comments as you have time for. Ebert’s got a great audience and there’s some very thoughtful discussion of what makes one critic a thoughtful provocateur while another might be not much more than a troll.