* Nikki Finke is breaking the story that “Spiderman 4” is on hold due to script problems. In other words, Sam Raimi supposedly “hates” the screenplay a large of number of screenwriting cooks have been preparing.  The latest to get his hands on the script is screenwriting standby Alvin Sargent, who worked at the past two Spidey movies and is, at 82, probably by far the most senior fellow writing comic book movies these days. And, oh yeah, it might be in 3-D.

* In another scoop for the Finkster, she reports that underage It-boy Taylor Lautner is Hollywood best compensated teen and now being paid “per ab,” though he apparently has half an ab. I wonder if I get figure out a way to get paid per nose hair.

* Anne Thompson reports that Sam Mendes is “in talks” to direct the next James Bond movie. This would be a major change of pace for the director best known for the Oscar-winning, cinephile-derided, “American Beauty” and “Road to Perdition,” whose attempt at an indie dramedy, “Away We Go,” failed to set the world on fire last year.

* T-Bone Burnett, a superb musician and record producer who has found his greatest fame working on “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?” and pretty much every major film with a country music/Americana aspect to it, tells Kim Masters a moving story about how the late musician Stephen Brutan influenced the filming of “Crazy Heart” with Jeff Bridges.

* And how can we get through a day without mentioning “Avatar“? If you’ve been wondering how the Na’vi nasty is done, you’ll get some “soft R” clues, I’m guessing, on the special edition DVD. That’s the word from Huffington Post. I guess we’ll have to wait longer to have 3-D big screen alien-sex.

* On a vastly more serious “Avatar” related note, the Washington Post reports that James Cameron is openly considering making a hard-hitting film about nuclear weapons and traveled to Japan — the only country to ever be attacked with nuclear weapons — to start researching it last month. This is the kind of film you can make with a major studio after you have the kind of monster hit Cameron appears to have on his hands.

As for the research, not all of us are able to talk to survivors of the blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki — I actually have, in another life, and consider myself lucky for having done so. If you’ve never read John Hersey’s Hiroshima, however, you should. The world might not be under constant threat of annihilation as it was up from the fifities to the late eighties, but nuclear weapons remain a serious threat. ‘Still, I’m sure Fox would be just as happy if Cameron decided to make “True Lies II.”

* It’s a big day for octogenarians breaking stereotypes just a bit. Christopher Lee is continuing his exploration of “orchestral metal.” I hope you enjoy his new direction.

* The Premium Hollywood/Bullz-Eye gang is quickly dividing into Blu-Ray “haves” and “have nots.” For the benefit of the “haves,” (a group that does not include me) Glenn Kenny recounts his favorite BR discs of 2009.

* Taylor Lautner, who is apparently playing second fiddle these days to his own abdominal muscles, is nevertheless being thought of as the next big action star and he’ll start out in a video-game adaptation. I’m so excited, my mind is already wandering.

* The popular comic heavy-metal documentary, “Anvil!,” has picked up an award.

* Believe it or not, I once tried to write a screenplay set in Las Vegas using Dante’s Divine Comedy. Now, a film with a cast of outstanding indie stalwarts led by Steve Buscemi and Sarah Silverman, is just taking Dante’s Inferno (the first third of the long work) to Vegas. Better to keep things simple, though I’m totally up-in-the-air about what I think of JoBlo’s trailer.

* I’m not a particular fan of Roger Friedman‘s reporting, and I think it’s a bit less than intelligent to try to make a scandal of a “Precious” being left out of the National Board of Review’s top 10 without some kind of actual evidence or even an indication. As our own Jason Zingale shows, not everyone loves or even likes the movie. Mileage will always vary. On the other hand, any look into the somewhat shadowy organization’s membership is always of interest. The only member I ever met or even heard about before recently, was this man.

* Roman Polanski is still seriously incarcerated, but in a house now. I’m starting to not care at all. I just want to finally see “Cul-de-Sac.”

* What suggestion among Hollywood movement conservatives is so dumb that not even the mega-moron-friendly Big Hollywood is carrying a defense of it, more than two days after it first came up? As reported by a resident climate skeptic at the L.A. Times, Roger L. Simon of Pajamas Media wants to take the Oscar away from “An Inconvenient Truth” and his buddy, the actually not-a-complete-douche conservative writer-director Lionel Chetwynd, wants a truth (but not a reconciliation) commission. This is, of course, because of the vastly overblown so-called “climategate” controversy. Of course, not a single film has ever been de-Oscared and both Simon and Chetwynd know that, but it’s something to talk about for ten minutes.

The main reason I actually kind of like Chetwynd is he made a really good, though perhaps not indisputable, documentary about the making of “High Noon” and the blacklisting of its writer, Carl Foreman. He is one conservative who is sometimes willing to depart from right orthodoxy, just apparently not on the issue of climate change, where we’re supposed to believe that a few scientific outliers and a bunch of people whose only qualification is being rightwing over the vast length and breadth of the scientific community. Most laughable of all is the assertion that money is a motivation for those sounding the alarm on climate change. Yes, we all know having a successful documentary and maybe selling some books is far more lucrative than, say, running the oil and gas industry. Yes, if you want the really big dollars, join Greenpeace, young person!

Anyhow, as the sensible person in this BH-pimped video points out, who are you going to believe, a bunch of movement conservatives, or literal rocket scientists?

* Speaking of wacky politics, yesterday was the great but often maddening filmic genius Jean-Luc Godard’s 78th birthday. I do love this quote which certainly seems to have been a watchword for a certain inglourious younger filmmaker:

A story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end… but not necessarily in that order.