* Mike Fleming has the news that ol’ Tom Cruise will be back for one more round of “Mission: Impossible” derring-do as earnest super-agent Ethan Hunt. On board is co-producer, J.J. Abrams, whose “MI:3” was to my mind by far the best film in the series (actually, the only good one, despite the involvement in past outings of such greats as Robert Towne and John Woo).  The franchise had been somewhat in doubt prior because of certain comments during the ruckus and bad blood raised by Mr. Cruise’s Oprah couch-hopping incident and Scientology-inspired public statements:

Gee, remember the bad old days when Cruise and Paramount parent company Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone were on the outs? Guess that old Hollywood saying is as true as ever: “I’ll never work with him again — until I need him.”

* Darren Aronofsky remains involved with the proposed “Robocop” remake/reboot.

* Fresh off the success of “The Book of Eli,” the Hughes Brothers will be directing the long-discussed live-action film version of the manga that probably made more converts for Japanese comic books than any other work during the eighties comic book boom, “Akira.” So says Vulture (via /Film). Meanwhile, Simon Dang over at The Playlist provides us with his thoughtful take on the career of the brothers Hughes (and a funny video which I may steal later).

* Even as A-listers are wrapping up George Clooney‘s Haiti telethon, the Sundance Film Festival is now underway in earnest and under new management, although boss Bob abides, naturally. Anne Thompson has a report from the front. Yesterday, she reported on the notable acquisition of the super-fest, director David Guggenheim’s “Waiting for Superman” — which is not about to whole “when will the next Superman movie come out?” thing or even superheroes at all. Sorry.

More Sundance news to come next week, no doubt. Watch this space.

* Movie City News has compiled the results of 225 Top 10 lists and come out with a top 30 of its own. At the top, “The Hurt Locker” far ahead of nearest competitors, “Up in the Air” and “Inglourious Basterds.” At the bottom of the “best of” lists, Lars von Trier’s horror drama “Antichrist,” the most controversial film in a career filled with controversy.

* Speaking of films at the bottom, the Wrap brings us Forbes’ annoyingly hard-to-read list of the biggest fiscal flops of the last five years in more easily digestible form. Topping the list is the recent adaptation of Robert Penn Warren’s “All the King’s Men” which went from Oscar hopeful to complete dud in nothing flat when it came out. There are two films I personally like on this list, “Grindhouse” and “Walk Hard.” Anybody else out there have a favorite on the flop list? In any case, I wonder about the accuracy of the list as it doesn’t include DVD figures.

* The relatively new mini-major, Overture Films, is “hitting the pause button.”

* The L.A. Times brings the five directors likely to be battling it out for the Oscar this year together. Some sniping occurs.

* With the addition of Mike Fleming to the Deadline|Hollywood team (he’ll eventually be hosting Deadline|New York), things have been on fire over at Nikki Finke’s place. First, Fleiming has a bit on Ron Howard’ s shrewd longtime cohort, Brian Grazer, getting involved in something called “Transmedia storytelling.” (I’d call it a fancy expression for licensing across media, but that sounds kind of jargony, too.)

He also reported yesterday on the casting of actor Jason Mamoa as the new Conan — that’s the barbarian, not the departing Tonight Show host. People can complain about lack of originality all that way, but making an actually good Conan movie for a change would be originality enough for me. I’ve never watched “Stargate Atlantis,” but here’s hoping Mamoa finds a better mid-life career choice than screwing up one of the world’s largest economies.

* If Roman Polanski wants to find out how long his prison sentence is going to be, he’ll have to come back to L.A. to find out.

* Martin Scorsese did come to L.A.’s County Museum of Art to discuss, what else, film preservation and the art of movies. Go Marty.

* Adrian Curry of the Auteurs brings us some cool new movies posters commissioned by the Alamo Drafthouse from artist Tyler Stout for such cult greats as “Robocop” and “The Big Lebowski.” Cool stuff. Anyone know if he’s any relation to William Stout?

* My Spider sense tells me this story is far, far from rock solid at this point, but my inner evil person forces me to mention that Will Harris’s very most favoretest young actress is rumored — and it’s barely even that — to be in the running for the part of Mary Jane in the upcoming “Spiderman” reboot. For more on l’ affaire Hayden Panettiere, check out the end of this piece.