Odds: Friday - Biopics, blurry genitals and fair use.

Doofy trailers for weekend watching: Here is one for Jake Kasdan's "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story." The trailer's just fine; the idea of a biopic spoof though, tickles us pink.

And here is a teaser for "Harold & Kumar 2."

At the Japan Times, Quentin Tarantino confesses a particular obscurist fondness to Giovanni Fazio:

"I even like — in fact, I'm quite enamored with — the whole Nikkatsu (studio) roman poruno thing ('70s, big-budget adult movies). I almost can't believe that that existed in cinema! The way they did it in the '70s, where they're real movies with real actors. The woman who played the proprietor in "Kill Bill" (Yuki Kazamatsuri), she was a roman poruno actress. I saw a couple of her films and I thought they were fantastic! Even the fact that the genitals were blurred out actually made it work even more!"

Neil Gaiman confirms for Roger Ebert that he probably does not hold the record for having sold the most screenplays to Hollywood that were never produced (as claimed by the Hollywood Reporter); this prize probably goes to Harlan Ellison:

Harlan Ellison writes me: "I've no idea what my pal Neil Gaiman claims for a total of unproduced screenplays but (including films intended for TV, as well as theatrical, but not series) I had the list printed out, and at the moment, it stands at a terrifying 27 screenplays written and unproduced. (All were paid for at exorbitant rates, thank goodness.)"

Joe Garofoli at the San Francisco Chronicle looks at how a doc is pushing the fair use doctrine ever further: "Roughly 90 percent of 'War Made Easy' consists of archival news footage from major television networks that would cost a ton of money to license - if the filmmakers had paid for all of it; they bought only about 60 percent from distributors."

At the Guardian, actor Paddy Considine writes about directors and directing his first film, a short called "Dog Altogether."

Shane Meadows (A Room for Romeo Brass, Dead Man's Shoes) is different, because I grew up with him. We bonded over the films we saw as kids: Made in England, Scum, The Firm, Kes. I saw them far too young probably. They made a massive impression. They were not talking about my life exactly, but about things that were going on where I lived. So I think Shane got a lot from them too, and that's what bonded us: an understanding of those films as well as a personal understanding of each other.

And Mark Feeney at the Boston Globe writes that Charlton Heston wasn't always all "my cold dead hands!" "He wasn't the first star to make the journey from left to right. The most obvious example is Ronald Reagan. Others include James Cagney and Frank Sinatra. But Heston's ideological journey is all the more striking for the fact that several of his movies can be read in overtly liberal terms."

+ Trailer: Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (Yahoo)
+ Teaser: Harold and Kumar 2 (Myspace)
+ Quentin Tarantino: a B-movie badass (Japan Times)
+ 'Stardust' memories (RogerEbert.com)
+ Media critic Solomon pushes limits of fair-use in new documentary (SF Chronicle)
+ Humanistic dog flicks (Guardian)
+ Charlton Heston: going from left to right (Boston Globe)