In a rare move for an actor, Matthew Goode has slammed his new movie Leap Year, calling it “turgid” and saying he expects it to be labelled “the worst film of 2010.”

Goode stars opposite Julie and Julia star Amy Adams in the romantic comedy about an American woman, Anna, travelling to Dublin, Ireland to propose to her boyfriend on 29 February. The British Actor plays a surly innkeeper, Declan, who makes Anna rethink her relationship.

“It’s turgid,” Goode told the UK Telegraph. “I just know that there are a lot of people who will say it is the worst film of 2010.”

The actor says he took the job because it was close to home. “That was the main reason I took it – so that I could come home at the weekends. It wasn’t because of the script, trust me. I was told it was going to be like The Quiet Man with a Vaughan Williams soundtrack, but in the end it turned out to have pop music all over it. A bit like Chasing Liberty (in which he starred opposite Mandy Moore in 2004) again. Do I feel I let myself down? No. Was it a bad job? Yes, it was. But, you know, I had a nice time and I got paid.”

He explains to the Telegraph that he feels it’s important to be able to speak one’s mind, saying, “Because of the way my repartee comes out, people tend to think that I don’t care. Actually, it’s often just a result of my being in a situation where I’m embarrassed about having to talk about a film which I don’t think is that brilliant – but obviously I can’t say that… I do think that it’s important that one should be able to speak out without worrying about causing offence, or whatever. And it saddens me that the romanticism has been ripped out of being an actor.”

Goode can also dish it out against himself. When talking about A Single Man, in which he plays Colin Firth’s lover, he says, “When you see a finished film, it’s very rare that it exceeds your expectations. Generally, you’re thinking. ‘Oh no, I don’t think this is going to work out the way I hoped.’ This was one of the few occasions when I thought, ‘Wow, it’s really brilliant.’ And I’m hardly in it, so there may well be a correlation there.’

Warner Bros. is developing a project based on the work of manners maven Emily Post, according to Variety.

The as-yet-untitled romantic comedy that will be based on Post’s bestselling book Etiquette and the empire it spawned, including books, seminars and etiquette coaching.

Variety says the movie is being described as a My Fair Lady with reversed gender roles, about a “prissy” Emily Post manners coach who turns a rough-around-the-edges guy into a proper gentleman.

Emily Post was born in 1872 and she became the definitive expert on all things manners related, establishing The Emily Post Institute in 1946. Etiquette has been published in 17 editions and the institute is run today by third generation family members, continuing Emily’s work and serving as a self-described “civility barometer” for American society.

Nick Osborne of Underground Films received input from the Institute for the film’s treatment.

The project follows in what appears to be an emerging trend in developing movies based on non-fiction/self help books. These include last summer’s He’s Just Not That Into You and the in-development What to Expect When You’re Expecting.

Helena Bonham Carter has a love/hate relationship with Hermione Granger. She enjoys toturing Harry Potter’s good friend, but also wants to be her. Or maybe that’s Carter’s character, Bellatrix Lestrange. Either way…

The actress recently spoke to MTV and shared some tidbits about the upcoming Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows movies, which will see the final book in the Potter series split into two, and be released in 3D.

The evil Deatheater Bellatrix has already murdered Harry’s godfather Sirius Black (played by Gary Oldman), but her dreadful deeds don’t end there. And Carter enjoys the evil!

“I get to torture Hermione,” Carter reportedly told MTV when asked about her favourite scene, before going on to elaborate on her Hermione fixation. “The best bit about being Bellatrix in this one is also because I got to pretend to be Hermione,” she said, speaking of a scene in which Hermione assume Bellatrix’s identity in order to gain access to Gringotts Wizarding Bank. “Because Hermione takes polyjuice potion and gets to look like Bellatrix.”

It seems the studio decided it was easier to dress Helena as Hermione than to turn Emma Watson into Bellatrix. “Rather than put Emma Watson in a helluva load of make-up they just said, ‘Now you go act like Hermione,’” Bonham Carter explained. “That was fun, because I always wanted to be Hermione.”

But you won’t see it until the second movie comes out, says Carter – “all of my stuff is in the second one. So you won’t see me until 2011.”

Part 1 of Deathly Hallows hits theatres in November, 2010 and part 2 in July, 2011.

Speedy Gonzales is getting his own movie.

Hollywood Reporter’s Heat Vision blog is reporting that New Line will bring the fast little Mexican mouse to the big screen with Garfield and Toy Story writers Alec Sokolow and Joel Cohen. The film will be a mixture of live-action/CG and George Lopez is attached to voice Speedy. Lopez, Anne Lopez and Ocean’s Eleven producer Jerry Weintraub are among the co-producers.

The Looney Tunes character, known as the “fastest mouse in all Mexico,” debuted in 1953 and was developed into the character we know today in 1955. Friz Freleng and Hawley Pratt’s 1955 Warner Bros. short, Speedy Gonzales, won the Academy Award for best short subject, cartoons that year. Speedy, who wears a yellow sombrero and whose catchphrase in “Andale! Andale! Arriba! Arriba!” was a regular nemesis of Sylvester the Cat. But he has caused some controversy in recent years, and some networks, including Cartoon, don’t air Speedy toons because of negative and severely outdated ethnic stereotypes.

Deadline says the character will be updated to fit modern sensibilities. “We wanted to make sure that it was not the Speedy of the 1950s — the racist Speedy,” Anne Lopez said with a chuckle. “Speedy’s going to be a misunderstood boy who comes from a family that works in a very meticulous setting, and he’s a little too fast for what they do. He makes a mess of that. So he has to go out in the world to find what he’s good at.”

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Matt Damon is attached to a film about the life of Senator Robert F. Kennedy.

Deadline Hollywood is reporting that Damon will look at a script by Dirty Pretty Things and Eastern Promises writer, Steven Knight, before making up his mind. Gary Ross, director of Pleasantville and Seabiscuit, will helm.

Deadline says the film will be based on the Evan Thomas biography His Life and will trace RFK’s transformation from the younger brother in the shadow of President John F Kennedy to a national leader in his own right, before he too was gunned down in 1968.

The assassination at the Ambassador Hotel was the backdrop for Bobby, written and directed by Emilio Estevez. The 2006 movie is a fictionalized account of the hours leading up to the shooting. And Deadline mentions that a film is being developed about RFK’s presidential run, titled The Last Campaign – presumably based on the Thurston Clark book of the same name.

Matt Damon recently played South African rugby star Francois Pienaar in Invictus and will soon be seen in The Green Zone. He has several other projects in development and is, with Ben Affleck, reportedly in negotiations for a first look producing deal at Warners

Knight has been hired by Columbia Pictures to adapt the Dan Brown novel The Lost Symbol.

Ian McShane is in talks to board Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, according to Variety.

The trade magazine says the actor would play Blackbeard in Disney’s fourth instalment in the franchise. Blackbeard, whose real name was Edward Teach or Edward Thatch, was a real-life pirate of the Caribbean in the early 1700s. His ship was the Queen Anne’s Revenge. Variety says Blackbeard will be the villain and Johnny Depp’s character, Captain Jack Sparrow, will have to face off against him as he seeks out the Fountain of Youth.

Neither Keira Knightley nor Orlando Bloom will be returning to the series. Penelope Cruz is in negotiations for the female lead. Rob Marshall (Chicago, Nine) is at the helm.

McShane has been making films since 1962 but is perhaps best known for his starring role in HBO’s multiple-award-winning Western Deadwood. He also appeared as King Silas on NBC’s shortlived Kings, and has lent his voice to several movies, including Shrek the Third, Caroline and Kung Fu Panda.

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Johnny Depp says his lengthy Hollywood career has been a surreal experience, sort of like stepping through the looking glass into Wonderland – which is fitting because he was promoting Alice In Wonderland when he said it.

“The whole ride – my whole ride and experience on the ride – since day one has been pretty surreal in this business,” Depp, told reporters, according to People magazine.

Depp plays the Mad Hatter in Alice, his seventh collaboration with director Tim Burton, who has reimagined the story with Alice as a teen returning to Wonderland.

“It defies logic, why I’m still here,” said Depp, whose first film role was in A Nightmare on Elm Street in 1984. “I’m still completely shocked that I still get jobs and still am around. But I guess more than anything it has been a kind of Wonderland. I’ve been very lucky.”

“I had no idea where anything was going, but you can’t,” he continued. “It’s almost impossible to predict anything like that. I had no idea. I had hoped … I felt like after I’d done Cry-Baby with John Waters and Edward Scissorhands with Tim that they were going to cut me off right then.”

“I felt at that point that I was on solid ground and I knew where I was going – or where I wanted to go – and I was sure that they would nix me out of the gate. But I’m luckily still here.”

And, People reports, out of all the characters Depp has played, Scissorhands is the one his children Lily-Rose, 10, and Jack, 7, like best.

“It’s Edward Scissorhands. That’s by far my kids’ favourite,” he said. “And it’s funny because they’ve seen it but they have a difficult time watching it because it’s their dad and they make that connection. They just connect with the character and also they see their dad feeling that isolation, feeling that loneliness. He’s a tragic character and so I think it’s hard for them. They bawl when they see that movie.”

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There will soon be a Die Hard 5. That’s what Bruce Willis told MTV while promoting Kevin Smith’s Cop Out (in which he stars with Tracy Morgan).

Willis said, “I think we’re going to do a Die Hard 5 next year.”

Demi Moore’s ex-husband plays detective John McClane in the Die Hard movies, the first of which came out in 1988. It was followed by Die Hard 2 in 1990, Die Hard with a Vengeance in 1995, and Live Free or Die Hard in 2007. And the tough-but-vulnerable hero has a “mythology” that, “continues to grow,” said Willis, adding, “I take a certain amount of pride in being part of that [mythology]], and the fact that I still get to do it.”

But he also keeps things in perspective, telling MTV, “I like so much more making fun of it, taking the p*ss out of it and not making it a big deal. Not making the fact that I’ve acted in a lot of movies a big deal. It’s all illusion and it’s all bulls–t and it’s a great job for me to have, but everything else you can set on fire. Making people laugh is the real deal.”

Willis stated that he would like to see the director of the fourth movie, Len Wiseman, return to the series.

Meanwhile, Moviehole.net says Justin Long and Mary Elizabeth Winstead — who played McClane’s sidekick and daughter Lucy, respectively, in the last film — have both expressed interest in returning.

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Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson will star as a football player in Things Fall Apart.

Variety says Jackson, 34, will play a running back who faces a personal tragedy, as well as his own mortality, during his senior year in college. Jackson will also produce with Randall Emmett through their Cheetah Vision Films banner. Mario Van Peebles (New Jack City) is directing. Shooting starts in Michigan in May. Van Peebles, Lynn Whitfield, comedian Mike P and Steve Eastin will also star.

It has taken a while for the rapper turned actor to earn cred on the big screen. His first film venture, Get Rich or Die Tryin’, was not particularly well received and both Righteous Kill and Home of the Brave fared critically worse or the same. But Joel Schumacher’s Twelve, in which Jackson  plays a drug dealer and which also features Chace Crawford and Ellen Barkin, was a 2010 Sundance favourite, according to MTV.

Jackson, who will lose 65 pounds for the Things Fall Apart role, reportedly told Variety he enjoys filmmaking because of the storytelling opportunities. He said, “You have 90 minutes and 120 pages, compared with three minutes for a song,” he noted. “I’ve become very passionate about making films.”

Meanwhile, he is embarking on a two-month international tour in support of his latest album, Before I Self Destruct.

Cheetah Vision recently wrapped production of The Gun, starring Val Kilmer, AnnaLynne McCord and Jackson, also filmed in Michigan.

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Shia Labeouf made some money while preparing for his role in Oliver Stone’s Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. Starpulse says he made almost $500,000 after learning how to invest.

The forthcoming sequel to the 1987 Academy Award Winner, Wall Street, is set 23 years later, after the 2008 stock market crash and stars LaBeouf stars as a whiz kid trader opposite Michael Douglas’ Gordon Gekko — released from prison and now more of an anti-hero than a villain.

Starpulse says LaBeouf, 23, prepped for his part by training at one of the world’s largest discount brokers, Charles Schwab. And the extra research proved a good investment.

LaBeouf reportedly said, “Before I did anything, before I even met Oliver Stone, I went into the Schwab office…I get out to New York, I meet all these amazing people, and I said, alright, I’m gonna put some money into it. If (I’m) ever going to invest, and I’ve always wanted to, this was the time to do it. So I put $20,000 in. And that $20,000 turned into $489,000. I looked at it yesterday… I’m pretty good at it.”

He added what one hopes is a joke: “Really, it’s who gets the information first… four of the nine guys I was training with got arrested and are in jail now for insider trading.”

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