Oh, don't worry, this isn't some too-soon remake of that Matthew Perry / Salma Hayek film. This is something a wee bit more serious.

Variety reports that Liam Neeson and Orlando Bloom have signed on to star, and Javier Bardem is in talks to co-star, on a currently untitled film based on Bill Carter's book, Fools Rush In. The book focuses on Carter's time as an aid worker in Sarajevo, as he was grieving the death of his girlfriend in a car accident. It certainly will be a challenging piece of cinema, as Carter was there during the 43-month Balkan siege. I'm guessing that the untitled nature of the project is related to the Perry film.

Anyhow, Bloom says: "I read the script, and the very human story and the very core of this film spoke to me very clearly. This is a departure from the very big Hollywood productions." Andrucha Waddington, a Brazilian director, will helm the feature, and the production is scheduled to begin later this year. Now if only I could get over my Orlando apprehension...

Some people may consider the New York Film Festival a simple "Best Of" sort of event, but the fact that it compiles selections from earlier film fests and merely showcases them in a competition-free program is what I love about it. For those of us New Yorkers who can't always make it to the highlands of Utah and Colorado or the exotic seaside locales of Italy and Southern France, it's nice to know that major festival highlights will likely make their way to Lincoln Center in late September, early October.

This year, the lineup for the 46th NYFF is being noted for its inclusion of films that previously screened at Cannes back in May. Even Steven Soderbergh's four-hour Che (aka The Argentine and Guerilla), which played to mixed reactions in France, even while picking up a best actor prize for star Benicio Del Toro, has been given a spot. Also featured are Cannes leftovers Waltz With Bashir, Wendy and Lucy, Grand Prix-winner Gomorrah and Clint Eastwood's Changeling, which stars Angelina Jolie and has the honor of being NYFF's centerpiece film. Opening the festival is the Palm d'Or winner The Class, while the closing film is Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler, which premieres a few weeks prior at the Venice Film Festival.

Other exciting big name films include Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky, Wong Kar-Wai's Ashes of Time: Redux, Lucretia Martel's The Headless Woman and Olivier Assayas' Summer Hours. Surprisingly, Charlie Kaufman's Synechdoche, New York, which screened at Cannes, is New York appropriate and is scheduled to open in October, is missing from the lineup.

The complete list of NYFF selections, courtesy of The Hollywood Reporter, can be found after the jump:

The full cast for Quentin Tarantino's WWII flick Inglorious Bastards is starting to come together. Not long after Variety announced that Brad Pitt was officially onboard to play a "Tennessee hillbilly who assembles a team of eight Jewish-American soldiers to take on the Nazis," word has come out that Simon Pegg, David Krumholtz and Nastassja Kinski are all in talks to join the picture. The Office's B.J. Novak is already in talks as well, and he and Krumholtz sign on, they'll be playing "Pitt's underlings." Pegg, on the other hand, would be playing a British lieutenant. Kinski, who's being looked at to play a German movie queen (and is actually German -- go figure!), would become one of the only females in this male-dominated cast.

Personally, I'm a fan of all these folks, though I'm still holding out for a few Tarantino regulars to pop up at some point. (I'd also like to offer up Cinematical's Scott Weinberg for a role. He's a good Jew, that kid.) Tim Roth should definitely nab a role before casting is all said and done, though I'm not so sure there's something for Michael Madsen. I've got the script sitting on my desktop (haven't read it yet), so if you've managed to take a peak, who else do you think would fit in here?

Men on a mission! Naked women shooting machine guns! Wildly inappropriate hair styles! The recent arrival of Enzo G. Castellari's The Inglorious Bastards on DVD makes clear that the movie is an entertaining, stylish adventure in its own right, justly deserving its reputation as a Eurocult genre gem. Inevitably, it also prompts speculation about what exactly Quentin Tarantino will do with his upcoming version, especially since the DVD features an extended conversation between Tarantino and Castellari about their respective visions.

The 1978 original doesn't have a "bat-wielding Nazi hunter," as one character has been recently described in casting talks for Tarantino's version, though it is set in World War II France. Miscreant Bo Svenson and murderer Fred Williamson are headed to military jail when their convoy is attacked by the Germans. The handful of surviving deserters plan to escape to neutral Switzerland before they end up on a suicide mission for the Allies under the command of Colonel Bruckner (Ian Bannen).

The men take a jaunty trip through a cartoon wonderland constructed out of Hollywood fantasy and Italian wish fulfillment. The film only rarely intersects with real life, instead inhabiting a world of wisecracks and world-weary warriors whose guns never run out of bullets. Castellari is such a brilliant director, though, that The Inglorious Bastards fairly pops off the screen with energetic fervor in nearly every sequence.

As such, it serves as a fabulous blueprint that Tarantino has probably drawn upon, ripped apart, and reassembled.

Now this is the kind of offbeat casting you expect out of Quentin Tarantino -- except that, really, it's not that unusual for him to cast his pals, so it makes a guy like Leonardo DiCaprio an edgier pick. Oh, that crazy Tarantino!

According to Variety, Eli Roth is set to play Sgt. Donnie Donowitz, "a baseball bat swinging Nazi hunter" in Tarantino's already much-discussed Inglorious Bastards. Brad Pitt is still "in talks" for Aldo Raine, but it would be a shocker if it wasn't official. Pitt and Roth, together at last, the pair-up the world never knew it wanted.

DiCaprio has gone from "in talks" to "eliminated." He was being considered for the part of SS Col Hans Landa, but Tarantino has decided that part should be played by a real live German. This is probably a good idea, as the last thing any film needs is a wonky accent. I do find it funny that when it comes to accuracy, this is one movie that is determined to have a real German, as opposed to the dozens of films that ignore portraying race, ethnicity, and culture!

The cast is expected to be formalized shortly, and filming to begin in Europe this fall. Given that Tarantino is looking to his friends to fill the empty slots, I am still betting Tim Roth and Michael Madsen will pop up somewhere. Who else do you expect to pop up in Bastards, readers? And what do you think of Roth's addition?

It's rather eerie when your private wishes suddenly appear in the trades. I'm in the middle of reading Steven Pressfield's Gates of Fire, which made me long for another Greek epic. Now, Columbia is giving me one. According to Variety, the studio has optioned the Greek classic Anabasis, Xenophon's firsthand account of the journey of the Ten Thousand.

The tale of the Ten Thousand is, perhaps, lesser known to popular culture as the 300 Spartans (even if it did inspire The Warriors), but it's no less compelling. They were an army of Greek mercenaries hired by Cyrus the Younger to aid him in seizing the Persian throne from his brother, Artaxerxes II. His expedition proved to be a failure, and the Greeks found themselves stranded deep into enemy territory. Their Spartan general was killed, as were other senior officers, and it was up to Xenophon to try to encourage the ten thousand to make the journey home to Greece. If you're into history at all, read it, and marvel at the toughness of the ancients.

No director has been named, but the script is being penned by Robert Schenkkan, who was responsible for HBO's The Pacific. Production duties will be split by Jimmy Miller (known more for Will Ferrell comedies) and Robbie and Jonathan Stamp, who both know their historical epics. They were consultants on the outstanding Rome, that HBO series I'm constantly going on about. Apparently, just about everyone involved in this project is an ancient history nut, and is hoping this will be the first of many historical epics. Given its pedigree and primary source material, my expectations are high. Don't disappoint me, Columbia!

I was just re-watching Eugene Jarecki's terrific documentary Why We Fight the other day and wondering, "man, how did this not win an Oscar?" Both its ineligibility and the strength of the 2006 feature documentary category aside, it's a really great visual essay on the problems of the U.S. military -- particularly the allowance for the military industrial complex to grow so large -- since the mid-20th century. If you've never seen it, you should. It'll bring you up to speed right up to the Iraq War (and feel free to make it an informative double feature by following it up with Charles Ferguson's No End in Sight).

For his next feature, Jarecki is sticking to the subject of war, though he's going back and focusing on Vietnam, specifically the evacuation of U.S. troops from Saigon in 1975 (maybe it can parallel an exit from Iraq? huh? maybe?). He and screenwriter Jesse Wigutow (It Runs in the Family) are basing the doc, titled Irreparable Harm, on former CIA agent Frank Snepp's book "Irreparable Harm: A Firsthand Account of How One Agent Took on the CIA in an Epic Battle Over Free Speech," which details the author's struggle with the federal government after he published his Saigon evacuation document, "Decent Interval."

Jarecki's film, which is being produced for HBO Films, will be more about Snepp than on the history, and hopefully that won't get him in trouble with the feds too. Also, here's hoping that Irreparable Harm at least makes Jarecki eligible to be nominated for the Oscar he deserves.

The casting rumors for Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Bastards just keep circulating -- I'm dying for something to be confirmed, already! Brad Pitt was rumored to be in talks for the key role of Aldo Raine, and given that Tarantino flew all the way to France to meet with him suggests it's more than idle talk.

Now, according to Variety, Tarantino wants Leonardo DiCaprio to play Hans Landa, and is meeting with the actor on Thursday to discuss the part with him. This would be DiCaprio's first time working with Tarantino, and frankly, it would be a nice break from his Martin Scorcese trend. DiCaprio is another one of those actors with a pre-production list a mile long, so a scheduling conflict could manage to keep him out of the movie.

While I was really behind the idea of Pitt, I'm not sure how I feel about DiCaprio. Don't get me wrong, I really like him, but he's becoming the go-to guy for just about every film that's in production. Plus, Tarantino is pretty famous for his inspired and offbeat casting. Hiring two of Hollywood's golden boys (and I mean that in a nice way) seems a little pedestrian. But Tarantino is anything but predictable, and he can coax surprising performances out of all sorts of actors. What looks rather uninspiring from the outside could be one of his best ensembles yet. What do you think?

Yes, we're heading back to the Cuban Missile Crisis for a new film. However, the spotlight won't be focusing on the Fidel Castro-led island just south of Key West. Variety reports that Fox 2000 has grabbed the screen rights to Michael Dobbs' book called One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Krushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War. Changing things up a bit, so as to not tread on already familiar cinema territory, the film will focus on an incident that occurred at the same time -- up north in Alaska.

While all the main players were tensely trying to avoid a nuclear war, "a U-2 pilot took off from Alaska, lost his bearings, and ventured inside the Soviet Union." Talk about a really dumb mistake. So the guy figures out that he's gone off-course, his plane is about to run out of gas, Soviet planes are waiting to take him down, and he's got to try to get back to safe land. Oh, and just in case that wasn't enough fear for the poor dude, he'd previously spent 600 days as a POW in Korea.

It'll be a while before this hits the screen, but for now, you can go out and read the book for yourself -- this is actually one of those texts that got picked up after its release.