When you're Will Smith ...

Actually, first off, just in case you're having any doubts, go see "Thor" if you're a fan of big, cheesy and thoroughly fun summer flicks. It's all three, and I loved it.

OK, moving on to the main attraction today, when you're Will Smith, I suppose getting to work with Quentin Tarantino is simply the logical next step, but if he indeed signs on for what QT is cooking up now, as the Hollywood Reporter reports he's likely to do, it should be nothing but cool.

For anyone who needs a catch-up, Tarantino's next flick will be a Western (though, as he himself has said more than once, it's indeed more of a "Southern") titled "Django Unchained." In it, if he takes the part, Smith would play the titular freed slave who teams up with a German bounty hunter (Christoph Waltz, natch) to reunite with his wife, and the two eventually set their sights on Django's former owner. Samuel L. Jackson is apparently on board to play the house slave of an "evil" plantation owner.

Sounds more than a bit crazy, right? Certainly, but look at the plot for "Inglourious Basterds" on paper, and that seemed ludicrous too, but it turned out to be by a pretty wide margin my favorite movie of 2009, with several scenes that are still permanently burned on my brain. Definitely stay tuned for more on this whenever I find it ...

In one more bit of movie news before what has to be best trailer I've seen all week, Bill Murray will be joined by one of my favorite actresses when he plays Franklin D. Roosevelt in an upcoming movie. Mull over for a second or two just how good Murray as FDR could be ...

The movie is called "Hyde Park on the Hudson," and it focuses on FDR's love affair with his cousin and is set during a June weekend in 1939 when the British King and Queen visited his upstate New York cottage in the first-ever visit to America by a member of the British monarchy. Juicy stuff that, and now comes word that definite Reel Fanatic fave Laura Linney has signed on to play the cousin, with Roger Michell (who back in the day directed still my favorite Jane Austen adaptation, that "Persuasion" starring Amanda Root and Ciaran Hinds) directing.

Sounds like slightly more serious stuff for Murray, but he'd be funny at a funeral, so I'm sure he will be here too.

And finally today, to wrap up a short Saturday morning report, I had never heard of this flick from "Man on a Wire" director James Marsh until I found this trailer this morning, but it looks fantastic. "Project Nim" follows the real-life project in the '70s that set out to teach a chimpanzee sign language and embed him in a family of humans.

As you can imagine from that scenario, it got more than bit crazy (as one of his keepers points out in the trailer, Nim liked "alcohol and driving fast.") It was also an important experiment, however, and it looks like a fascinating flick. Enjoy the trailer, keep an eye out for this in at least some markets July 8, and have a perfectly pleasant weekend. Peace out.