In her story about a theoretical economic revival that could happen if Hollywood invests big-time in 3D features, London Times reporter Dalya Alberge writes that “the latest 3-D technology boasts an unsurpassed clarity, making audiences feel that they are in the picture.” That’s blather. 3D is more developed these days than it was in the ’50s, but I’ve never seen 3D footage that wasn’t marred by some glitch aspect…blurring around the edges, ghosting, headaches. Alberge doesn’t say what she specifically means by “latest 3-D technology” but if she’s referring to the the process of creating 3D images out of flat images (the process behind the 3D IMAX prints of Superman Returns), the images are obviously grabby but they aren’t fully “there” yet. Titanic director and 3D proponent James Cameron, who spoke to Alberge for the piece, emphasized this when he said “I’m not a big fan of the dimensionalising process. If you√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢re making a film now, just shoot it in 3-D — not as an afterthought.”

TMZ.com reported exclusively yesterday that Angeline Jolie‘s brother James Haven was the unwitting source of those Brangelina-Shiloh baby shower pics that were stolen. Reading about this made me feel better about my own absent-mindedness because at least I can say, “I’ve never done anything as dumb as what Lurch did.”

Haven took pictures of his sister, Brad Pitt and Shiloh Jolie-Pitt at the baby shower in Namibia. But his camera broke soon after and when he returned to Los Angeles he took it to a Best Buy outlet (where be bought it) and asked them to fix it under the warranty. Best Buy sent the camera to Precision Camera and Video Repair in Enfield, Connecticut, and two Precision employees — Bill Keyes and Adam Beckwith — ID’ed the photos, downloaded them, tried to sell them and were busted by the FBI and Massachucetts authorities. For whatever reason it didn’t occur to Haven to — hello? — remove the digital card containing the photos before handing it over to Best Buy.

Superman Returns did about $11 million on Thursday (6.29).

Whether or not this rumor about Johnny Depp joining I Am Legend turns out to be true, I’ve never been able to muster a shard of interest in this upcoming Warner Bros. sci-fier, which will shot in September with Will Smith toplining. The basic rundown — the last non-toxic guy in L.A. following a biological war has to fight off hordes of nocturnal mutants — indicates another bleak-ass, the-world-has-gone-to-shit zombie movie with this or that variation. The fact that Legend is being directed by Constantine‘s Francis Lawrence ony makes it sound grimmer. I started to read Mark Protosevich‘s script three or four years ago (was it farther back?) and gave up. And I never cared very much for Omega Man, a 1971 adaptation of Richard Matheson‘s original novel with Charlton Heston.

So Keith Richards has definitely agreed to do a walk-on in the third Pirates movie…break out the Dom Perignon. This completes the circle in that Johnny Depp has always said Richards was his inspiration in portraying Cpt. Jack Sparrow. Richards will almost certainly play Captain Jack’s dad or eccentric uncle…a mentor of some kind.

The trailer for David Leaf and John Scheinfeld ‘s The U.S. vs. John Lennon (Lionsgate, 9.06).

Speaking of which, I wonder when Jarett Schaeffer‘s Chapter 27, a drama about the activities of Lennon murderer Mark David Chapman just before the 12.8.80 shooting. No distributor attached — the IMDB says it’s in post. Leto looks correctly creepy with his bulked-up weight and dyed Chapman hair.

A moment of mourning for Fabiane Bielinsky, the 47 year-old Argentine director of Nine Queens and The Aura, who died today in Sao Paolo, reportedly while working on a TV commercial. We were friendly acquaintances. We first met in Toronto in September 2000 during a Nine Queens interview, and we kept in touch from time to time, exchanging information on this and that. When I travelled to Buenos Aires in early ’05 Bielinsky recommended a good steak restaurant in Old Town, and it turned out to be superb. I called screewnriter Guillermo Ariagga (Babel, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada) about this, and he wrote back the following: “I can tell you that Fabiane was a very gentle, talented and generous man. I had very few chances to be with him, but I always said that he was a man I liked a lot: humble, modest and very friendly. And a great director and writer.” God rest his soul.

Early tracking numbers on Miami Vice and Snakes on a Plane won’t be surfacing for a while, but some of the mid-July attractions are going to make exhibitors “moan and moan loud,” I was told earlier today. Things could always bump up once the TV ads for the following films kick in (current figures are basically about the impact of theatrical trailers), but right now July isn’t looking that great aside from Pirates 2 business. Columbia’s Little Man (7.14) has a sluggish 68% general awareness, a 25% definite interest, a 20% definitely not interested and 4% first choice. Universal’s You, Me and Dupree (7.14) is looking “very soft” so far: 59 % general, 27% definite interest, 5% definitely not interested and 3% first choice. Clerks 2 (Weinstein Co., 7.21) has a reported 29% general, 31% (one third of the 29%) definite interest, 10% no interest and 3% first choice. The numbers on M. Night Shyamalan’s Lady in the Water (Warner Bros.) are not encouraging for a movie by a auteur-level director whose name is recognized by audiences like Steven Spielberg‘s: 53% general, 29% definite, 16% definitely not interested (higher than it should be…scary) and 3% first choice. Columbia’s Monster House (7.21) is at 60% general, 25% definite interest, 5% not interested and 2% first choice. Ivan Reitman’s My Super Ex-Girlfriend (20th Century Fox, 7.21) is at 56% general, 20% definite interest, 8% no interest and zero first choice.

Most descriptions of gallery art sound like pretentious bullshit, but this is funny besides: “The screenplay is never an end in itself; rather it is a vehicle for further creative exploration. By making the screenplay, the object and the end product of the artwork, screenwriter Tom Benedek (Cocoon) has corrected the internal contradiction inherent to the process.

“Tom’s artwork stars the screenplay, and that within it lives a movie, is just one aspect of the whole. By ‘shooting the script’ what he is really doing is liberating the word. Tom’s selection process only addressed “those of his scripts that were commissioned but [which] he no longer controlled, so that this incomplete document is elevated to a status it otherwise would never attain” Benedek’s artworks, which are being presented under the title “Shot by the Writer”, are being celebrated at a reception on Thursday, 6.29, at the Shavelson-Webb Library, 7000 West 3rd Street, Los Angeles, CA from 6:30 to 8:30.

Slate‘s Kim Masters is also saying that the Los Angeles Times “left out the punch line” in its story about M. Night Shyamalan‘s book that tears into Disney production chief Nina Jacobson for failing to applaud and support his Lady in the Water screenplay, which he later took over to Warner Bros. “The buzz on the movie — about an apartment-building superintendent who finds a sea nymph in a swimming pool — is not good,” Masters writes. If things turn out badly for the film, “Disney will have the last laugh [and] Warners will not be laughing at all,” she adds. “Shyamalan has a passionate group of fans who will probably help the movie open respectably but its success is far from assured. ‘He’s going to make Disney look brilliant,’ predicted one high-level producer.”

It’s hard to understand what it was about about Dawn C. Chmielewski‘s Snakes on a Plane article that that Calendar editors at the L.A. Times thought was fresh in any way, shape or form. Her article is a total regurgitation of facts and observations that other journalists have been writing about the grass-roots marketing of Snakes since last March. It’s like someone said, “Guys, we need to run a Snakes marketing piece that’s aimed at the 60-and-older crowd that hasn’t been keeping up.”

What…another story about Leonardo DiCaprio‘s Appian Way hitting the gas on a Timothy Leary biopic? (Playwright Craig Lucas and Leary archivist Michael Horowitz have been hired to write a script.) As I’ve been noting all along, Leo’s been half-heartedly stirring the Leary pot for the last few years and nothing’s happened.

A trustworthy source told me a few months ago that “there’s not a lot of focus” at Appian Way. “Leo is all over the map…he wants to work with Marty on this and that…[Appian Way] doesn’t exactly have a center-of-gravity thing going on.” The film will reportedly focus on Leary’s life between his enrollment at West Point in the early 1940s and his escape from prison in 1970. I’ve mentioned this about 18 times, but now that Lucas is on the case he should definitely read a superb book about ’60s psychaedelia called “Storming Heaven,” written by Jay Stevens.