When last we reported on director David Dobkins’ dramedy The Judge, it was to announce that Bill Dubuque had come on to do a rewrite and that Robert Downey Jr. was producing the picture as a starring vehicle. Now it looks as if Warner Bros. has extended an unofficial offer to Jack Nicholson to play Downey Jr.’s father in the film. Originally penned by Nick Schenk with an intermediate rewrite from David Seidler, The Judge centers on an attorney who returns home for his mother’s funeral only to discover that his estranged father, a judge who suffers from Alzheimer’s, is suspected of murder. Hit the jump for more, including how Nicholson’s fussy track record of selecting roles may impact The Judge.

With Bill Murray’s film Hyde Park on the Hudson debuting later this year, the comedian has reportedly turned his attention to the 2011 Black List script, St. Vincent De Van Nuys.  The Ted Melfi script, which garnered as many votes as Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained, centers on a 12-year-old boy whose parents are going through a divorce.  He then forms an unlikely friendship with the retiree next door (Murray), a war veteran who goes from leading a life of drinking, gambling and prostitutes to one of an unlikely mentorship.  Jack Nicholson had previously been reported as potentially attached to the project.  Now, Variety reports that Murray is currently in negotiations with Twentieth Century Fox and Chernin Entertainment.

Paramount is good about releasing classics on Blu-ray from time to time, and their latest batch offers one of the greatest films of all time, and an entertaining minor work by a master director. Chinatown is Roman Polanski’s masterpiece. It stars Jack Nicholson as a private dick assigned to find out about an affair that uncovers statewide corruption in California. Alfred Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief offers Cary Grant and Grace Kelly on the Riviera in beautiful Vista-vision. Both are definitely worth checking out on Blu-ray (if not purchased immediately) and our reviews of both follow after the jump.

It’s always a fun treat when a now-famous actor pops up in a small role in an older movie you haven’t re-watched in a while.  We previously posted a “Before They Were Famous” supercut, but now someone has edited together a montage of actors in their very first feature film roles. While you’re most likely aware of the majority of these appearances, I’m willing to bet you’ll find at least a few surprises in this video.  I had no idea Jon Hamm was in Clint Eastwood’s “old guys can be astronauts too” movie Space Cowboys, but I now feel compelled to move the pic to the top of my Netflix queue.

Watch Jack Nicholson, Woody Allen, Emma Thompson, Zach Braff and many more make their feature debut after the jump.

Alexander Payne’s first film in seven years, The Descendants, has been gathering some very high praise from the film festival as it heads towards its November release date, but the writer-director has run into a bit of trouble on his next project. We reported back in January that Payne had chosen to make the drama Nebraska his next film. The pic centers on an aging alcoholic father who decides to take a road trip from Montana to Nebraska to collect what he believes to be a million dollar Publisher’s Clearing House prize. His estranged son decides to accompany his father in order to keep him out of trouble.

Payne was planning on beginning production in April, but Paramount had some issues. Primary among them was Payne’s insistence that the film be shot in black and white. Hit the jump to see where things stand now, including what actors are being considered to play the lead and my choice of who should land the role.

Rochester, New York’s Dryden Theater will be showing a special presentation of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining on October 22nd at 8:00pm.  But what makes this presentation even more special is that it will include the original coda to the movie.  The coda played in a few theaters back when the film was first released in 1980, but Kubrick went back in and edited it out.  Kurbick was meticulously about editing his films and he famously (or perhaps infamously) went back and removed 19 minutes from 2001: A Space Odyssey after its original premiere.

If you want to know what’s contained in the coda, hit the jump.  If you live in the New York area and want to check out this screening (and you should), The Dryden Theatre box office opens 45 minutes before a given screening. [Update: The Dryden Theatre has informed us that the movie will not include the original coda.  The print being shown is the 142-minute extended U.S. version that includes footage Mr. Kubrick subsequently cut from the European release.]

Thank the Maker for YouTube. With the advent of the video-on-demand digital age, no longer is that TV movie role that Actor X did when he was 11-years-old lost forever, and now someone’s put together a compilation of 25 “before they were famous” first roles for our viewing pleasure. Did you know that Daniel Craig was in A Kid in King Arthur’s Court? How about Joseph Gordon-Levitt on Roseanne or Jake Gyllenhaal in City Slickers? No need to hit up Netflix, some choice scenes are now all in one place.

Hit the jump to watch the montage, which includes 25 sometimes painful scenes featuring Jim Carrey, Denzel Washington, Angelina Jolie, Ryan Gosling, Keanu Reeves, Nicole Kidman, Seth Rogen, Jake Gyllenhaal, Harrison Ford and more.

We heard on Monday that Warren Beatty made a deal with Paramount to produce, write, direct, and star in a new project after a decade-long hiatus from filmmaking.  At the time, there were whispers this was the opportunity for Beatty to play legendary movie mogul Howard Hughes, a role the actor has long coveted.  Story details are still scarce, but Deadline hears this is indeed a Hughes-centric project that “involves an affair [Hughes] had with a young woman in the later years of his life.”  Beatty’s script is not a biopic, per se.  That is understandable, since Beatty is older now (74) than Hughes when he died (70).  Deadline’s initial report suggested it may be a comedy.

Beatty is going all out to assemble a supporting cast, meeting with Andrew Garfield, Alec Baldwin, Shia La Beouf, Jack Nicholson, Evan Rachel Wood, Rooney Mara, and wife Annette Bening (duh).  Hughes had a lot of famous friends, and I encourage you to match this list of actors to their Old Hollywood counterparts in the comments.  Given Beatty’s age, though, the film presumably takes place during Hughes’ recluse years — I do not know who kept him company at this stage in life.  More after the jump:

Director Matthew Vaughn seems to be enjoying the world of superheroes.  After directing Kick-Ass and now at work on X-Men: First Class, Vaughn tells Deadline that he’s circling yet another superhero project with The Golden Age.  The film is based on a yet-to-be-published comic by Jonathan Ross, husband of frequent Vaughn co-write Jane Goldman.  The story centers on a group of “retired superheroes who help out their grandchildren when their middle-aged parent screw up the world.”

Vaughn’s dream-casting is to get Clint Eastwood, Jack Nicholson, and Warren Beatty to play the superheroes, but that may be difficult since Eastwood announced Gran Torino would be his last performance and Beatty hasn’t done a film in about a decade.  Vaughn says the success of The Expendables and Red proves there’s a market for older lead actors: “You have these great star names and they’re mainly playing supporting roles now. I want to give them the lead again and let them have some fun.”  Hit the jump for more on the project.

Roger Corman is perhaps the most prolific and influential Hollywood filmmaker mainstream America has never heard of.  Alex Stapleton’s documentary Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel attempts to rectify that injustice by not only examining Corman and his filmography, but also by attempting to explain why the writer-director-producer is more than just a low-budget schlockmeister.  Yes, the majority of Corman’s filmography is populated by cheap exploitation flicks, but through Stapleton’s documentary, we get a clearer picture of Corman’s contribution to American cinema.  Corman’s World is a great primer on Roger Corman’s filmography and an uplifting celebration of an unknown Hollywood legend.

Bob Rafelson started a production company called Raybert (a combination of his name and producer Bert Schneider) when he was working on the Monkees television show. But Rafelson had cinematic aspirations, and so he took the Monkees to the big screen and started a production company with Bert and Steven Blauner called BBS. Between Raybert and BBS they made seven films: The Monkees’ feature film Head; Dennis Hopper’s seminal biker movie Easy Rider, Rafelson’s masterpiece Five Easy Pieces, Jack Nicholson’s directorial debut Drive, He Said, Henry Jaglom’s first film A Safe Place, Peter Bogdanovich’s career starting film about small town sexuality The Last Picture Show, and Rafelson’s The King of Marvin Gardens. Seven film in four years, with regulars Karen Black, Jack Nicholson, Bruce Dern, Ellen Burstyn, and stars like Peter Fonda, Cybil Shepherd, Jeff Bridges, and Orson Welles, made during one of the most tumultuous and artistically rewarding periods of American cinema. This is why the Criterion Collection exists, and America Lost and Found: The BBS Story is one of those great collections in that it documents the progress, and success and failures of this organization. My review of the Blu-ray set of the film follows after the jump.

We have four clips from the upcoming James L. Brooks film How Do You Know.  The plot centers on a love triangle between an athlete who has been cut from her team (Reese Witherspoon), an innocent businessmen who may be headed to jail (Paul Rudd), and a narcissistic baseball player (Owen Wilson).  Hopefully, How Do You Know will showcase the warm, character-centric dramedy that Brooks can deliver when he’s at his best.

Hit the jump to check out the clip.  How Do You Know opens December 17th.

Yesterday, we reported that a “‘major A-list movie star and his ‘Oscar-winning former co-star’” might star in the action comedy El Presidente.  Today, 24 Frames is reporting that the major A-list movie star is Tom Cruise and his Oscar-winning former co-star is Jack Nicholson.  The pair squared off in Rob Reiner’s 1992 film A Few Good Men where Cruise played defense attorney Daniel Kaffee and Nicholson played the corrupt Colonel Nathan Jessop, a man who felt that Kaffee was incapable of dealing with cold, hard facts.  I’ve included their famous scene after the jump for your viewing pleasure.

In El Presidente, Cruise would play “an overly-committed Secret Service agent who is assigned to guard the country’s worst former president (Nicholson), a bumbling sleaze. It’s a mundane and boring job — until there’s a threat made on the ex-president’s life, forcing the duo to go on the run together.”  According to 24 Frames, Cruise is attached and an offer is out to Nicholson.  Warner Bros. picked up the spec script from writer Dan Goor, whose previous credits include Conan O’Brien, The Daily Show, and Parks and Recreation.

A star-studded tribute was announced today to honor 35 years of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.  The Rocky Horror Picture Show Tribute is being produced by Lou Adler and Kevin Duncan while being directed by Kenny Ortega.  Several stars have already signed on to play in this event, including acting legends Danny DeVito, Jack Nicholson, singer Billy Idol, actor Jason Segel and Glee stars Lea Michele and Matthew Morrison.  According to LeaMichele.org, Michele and Morrison will step into the roles of Brad and Janet with Segel taking on the role of Dr. Scott.  All proceeds from the event will benefit The Painted Turtle, one of Paul Newman’s Hole in the Wall Gang Camps.  Read more after the jump.

Columbia Pictures has released the first trailer for James L. Brooks’ How Do You Know, a romantic comedy led by an impressive cast of Paul Rudd, Reese Witherspoon, Owen Wilson, Jack Nicholson, and Kathryn Hahn.  The film centers on a love triangle between a professional baseball player (Wilson), a white collar executive (Rudd), and the object of their affection (Witherspoon).  Check out the trailer after the jump.