Here’s a good sign-of-the-times story by the L.A. Times Josh Friedman about online sports-betting sites taking in some fairly decent coin each weekend from taking bets on Hollywood box-office . “By putting their money where their entertainment hunches are, [betting-minded moviegoers] are turning the weekend box-office derby — once followed mainly by studio executives and accountants — into a participatory sport,” Friedman writes. “Online entertainment betting, originally a novelty aimed at hyping the sports books during Oscar season, is on the rise. World Sports Exchange, which runs a gambling site at wsex.com, reports that its movie wagering volume jumped 26% last year. These days, the site takes $25,000 to $50,000 worth of bets on each weekend’s box-office results.”

“I’m been suffering the tortures of the damned, sir…tortures of the damned.” — Alex (Malcolm McDowell) to prison minister in Stanley Kubrick‘s A Clockwork Orange.

I’m sorry, but this is mildly amusing. Not the Tropicana tie-in as much as someone on the food chain not saying to someone else, “I’m not saying this is a huge deal because it’s not…it’s nothing…but the other side of the coin is that it’s mainly going to give journalists who’ve already responded to the Advocate cover (like the L.A. Times John Horn) something to snicker at. So why do it?” (The source of the image is Manhattan Offender, by way of Defamer.)

Less amusing is a note from an exhibitor friend telling me that Superman Returns has a “confirmed duration of 158 minutes.”

“At 7:56 am on Wednesday, 6.8.06, Jeffrey Wells of Hollywood Elsewhere put himself and his site (www.hollywood-elsewhere.com) in full compliance with U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act by submitting to a demand from Time Inc. Deputy General Counsel Nicholas J. Jollymore, received this morning at 7:45 am, to remove a photo of Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and Shiloh Nouvel that People magazine paid $4.1 million to publish “exclusively,” so to speak.”

I’ve been sent a convincing-looking copy of Margery Simkin ‘s casting breakdown for James Cameron‘s Project 880, which will apparently begin shooting in Los Angeles sometime in November. Simkin’s sheet offers the following plotline: “In the future, Jake, a paraplegic war veteran, is brought to another planet, Pandora, which is inhabited by the Na’vi, a humanoid race with their own language and culture. Those from Earth find themselves not only at odds with the Na’vi but also with each other.” The characters besides Jake are Neytiri (young female lead, “exotic” in some way or another), Grace (a “mentor” figure, already cast), Norm (mid 20s, second-lead type, a scientist), Akwey (a Na’vi), Tsu’Tey (another Na’vi), Quaritchy (seasoned, middle-aged American Colonel), Selfridge (40ish station supervisor..charismatic), and Trudy Chacon (tough, serious ex-Marine who has has an unlikely relationship with Norm).

I saw the link on Hollywood Wiretap, but the story about Seth Mnookin‘s story in a soon-to-sell issue of Vanity Fair that delves into allegations of plagiarism by Dan Brown in the writing of best-selling “The DaVinci Code” is on the website Editor & Publisher. The charge is that Brown appropriated portions of his novel from Lewis Perdue‘s “Daughter of God”….oops. Kind of a movie-plot spoiler just mentioning that title.

A well-written Jack Black profile by Time‘s John Tyrangiel focusing, naturally, on Nacho Libre. Some press screenings are starting to happen (perhaps as soon as later this week) with the all-media happening on 6.13.

Sitting exclusively on Hollywood Interrupted, the always-lively website of Mark Ebner, one of the most intriguingly contrarian, conservative-leaning dudes I know in this town (check out his amusing video report about being video-harassed by a dark-suited Scientology goon in Hollywood a few days ago) is a trailer for Young Americans, a pro-troops doc being shot by former Hollywood manager Pat Dollard.

Everyone else has been posting the Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt and Shiloh Nouvel family photo, and I felt like joining in because the folks at People magazine, for whom I worked with modest satisfaction in the L.A. bureau office for 20 months (August ’96 to April ’98), paid $4.1 million for the photo rights, and it felt good to help show it around to help diminish the allure of the print version showing up later this week. Call it a sincere gesture from the heart. But then came an e-mailed threat on Wednesday morning from Time Inc. Deputy General Counsel Nicholas J. Jollymore, warning me to remove the damn photo or else. “Under the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act, your organization has a legal duty to ensure that this photograph is removed from any website you host…your failure to remove this photograph from Hollywood-elsewhere.com would be a clear violation of the Act.” Okay, fine…it’s gone.

I won’t be seeing Warner Home Video’s long-awaited The Searchers DVD until tomorrow, but I’ve got a slight concern with the aspect ratio, as indicated by the stills on this review page on DVD Journal‘s site. John Ford‘s 1956 film was shot in VistaVision, the aspect ratio of which (when the film came out of the lab, that is) was 1.66 to 1, although it was commonly projected at 1.85 to 1. These stills look to me like an aspect ratio of about 2 to 1 — not quite the widescreen aspect ratio of 70mm movies like Apocalypse Now, but close enough. The WHV team that works on older movies is known for being very scrupulous about every last technical detail, so what I’m seeing is probably a distortion issue of DVD Journal‘s. Not a biggie, but if anyone has bought/rented a copy yet and looked at it, I’d love to know if they’re convinced that the aspect ratio is 1.85 or 1.75 or 1.96 or whatever.

It’s 2:18 pm…I guess I’m going to run down to a nearby theatre and see how opening day for The Omen is coming along . I somehow can’t see people taking long lunch hours to see a noontime or 1 pm show, or skipping the second half of the work day, etc.