"It's the beard pattern."

At the Guardian's Film Blog, filmmaker Kenneth Anger (a former youthful screen presence himself) launches into a semi-coherent rant on beard patterns, the dubious teenageriness of the round-faced Tobey Maguire and time after seeing "Spider-Man 3" ("the biggest, most effeminate pile of crap I have ever seen in my life"):

You want to know another great truth? The reason Hollywood keeps flim-flamming the public about age is because they don't know the secret. Shakespeare and Kenneth Anger know the secret. You want to know the secret? OK, here's the secret.

We're not sure we quite understand the secret, but feel better for having read it anyway. Other bits and pieces:

Quentin Tarantino thinks contemporary Italian cinema is all, you know, too serious and stuff, and anyway, where did all the witches and cowboys go? He told Italian papers that "Recent films I've seen are all the same. They talk about boys growing up, or girls growing up, or couples having a crisis, or vacations of the mentally impaired." Italy responds in the form of a sharp-tongued Sophia Loren: "How dare he talk about Italian cinema when he doesn't know anything about American cinema?" [Via Eric J. Lyman at the Hollywood Reporter]

Mike Tyson says he's ready for Bollywood. No response from Bollywood yet. [AP]

David Poland hates "Hostel 2." Hates it so much it has bled into how he feels about director Eli Roth: "I never did respect Roth's work.  Now, if he and I crossed paths, I would refuse to shake his hand.  I would extinguish the fire if he was burning, using something quicker than urine, but I'm not sure that I wouldn't consider it karmic payback for him." [The Hot Button]

Meanwhile, at the LA Times, Patrick Goldstein reveals the secret of those "slab o' meat" ads for the film: boar meat. Tim Palen of Lionsgate says that: "We had to prove to the MPAA that it wasn't human, so I sent them the receipt from the butcher shop." [LA Times]

And there are no less than four Sammy Davis Jr. projects in the works, according to Pat H. Broeske at the New York Times. Denzel Washington's looking to direct one based on this book, and is working with Brian Grazer and Universal; New Line Cinema is working on one based on this book by Davis' widow while there's also a doc in pre-production; Earle Sebastian is hoping to direct André 3000 in "Sammy and Kim," which will tell the story of Davis' relationship with Kim Novak. [NY Times]

+ Kenneth Anger's big secret (Guardian)
+ Italian film industry rebukes Tarantino (Hollywood Reporter)
+ Mike Tyson wants to do Bollywood movies (AP)
+ Shades Of Ugliness: An Issue Of Humanity (The Hot Button)
+ 'Hostel' ads test the squirm factor (LA Times)
+ A High Life After Death? The Candy Man Can (NY Times)