Today's Film News: Boogie on the Internet

By Katey Rich

Oxymoron Entertainment, a production company that started up just last year, sure is aiming to make a name for itself, and quick. Variety reports that the studio's first production will be Middle Men, a comedy documenting the beginning of the Internet porn business. George Gallo (My Mom's New Boyfriend) will direct and write the movie with Andy Weiss. Can it do for Internet porn what Boogie Nights did for regular porn, even without Heather Graham on roller skates?

Former tween superstar Hillary Duff-- the original Miley Cyrus, if you must know-- is continuing her attempts to bolster her indie cred. She's taken on a role in Stay Cool, not a sequel to Be Cool but a comedy from Mark and Michael Polish about a successful author who returns to his hometown to deliver a high school commencement address. Mark Polish will play the author, The Reporter writes, with Winona Ryder as an unrequited crush and Duff as a sultry high school student named... Shasta. Perhaps the casting isn't a coup after all, but punishment for her participation in War, Inc.?

It was inevitable that the success of "American Idol" would eventually find its way into the movies, but who would have guessed it would be the original British version to hit screens first? According to The Reporter, "Idol" judge Simon Cowell will produce One Chance, a biopic of "Britain's Got Talent" winner Paul Potts, an opera singer who had nearly given up on a singing career when he auditioned for the show in 2007. Justin Zackham, who wrote The Bucket List, has signed on as screenwriter. Yes, the schmaltz will be unimaginable.

And finally, an old joke seems to be on its way to becoming a mystery novel first, and then a mystery movie. Just read this line from the Variety piece about author Larry Beinhart's Salvation Boulevard: "The detective is a born-again Christian, the dead man an atheist, the accused killer an Islamic foreign student and the D.A. is Jewish." Mandalay will produce the film, but no word on whether or not the characters will all walk into a bar at some point.