What would Woody Allen have to say to Jennifer Aniston? The eccentric filmmaker reportedly had dinner with the former Friends star (and famous Brad Pitt ex) in West Hollywood - which is news in itself, since New Yorker Allen usually shies away from he glittering lights of LA. Perhaps Allen, who has been making films in Europe recently, is looking for some Hollywood money for a project starring Aniston.

When I was a newspaper film reviewer, many, many years ago, I went to see an Australian horror film that was so bad I can't remember its name. To rev up interested in the flick, the cinemas were offering a refund to people who left before a certain time because it was too scary to watch. I'm not sure if you got the money if you left because it was too awful to endure. Meanwhile, in India, a man has rented out an entire cinema to disprove a claim that the film Phoonk is too scary to watch alone. Pavin Ponanna, 30, says: "I never felt scared, not even for a moment."

I could say a lot of things about Russell Crowe, but I wouldn't call him fat. Yet that's what the Daily Mail is saying with some unconvincing photographic evidence to push the point. And I bet South Sydney rugby league club fans won't take to kindly to the UK tabloid's reference to his "ghastly tracksuit".

Old masters meet modern movies in a Photoshop mash-up contest at website worth1000.com. There's a story here and the pictures are here.

Can't afford the real Brad Pitt to star in your next film? Well, maybe soon, you can have his computer double for a fraction of the fee. Apparently the expertise to create exact screen replicas of humans is almost with us, meaning the people you see on screen may not be real at all. But can these avatars act? I guess that depends on who's weilding the mouse on the computer. Maybe the digital Pitt will be better than the real thing.

"I like playing ugly people who are failures but ironically I’m very attractive and very successful."

That's British comic actor Steve Coogan talking to Entertainment Weekly in an article that asks why he's not a bigger star in the United States. Maybe his latest film, Hamlet 2, will remedy that - but there's really no knowing these things. Many brilliant British stars have failed to make it in the US. Sometimes it's a matter of "type" - which explains why cuddly Dudley Moore had a Hollywood career and his arguably more talented but less immediately likeable comic partner Peter Cook didn't. Even John Cleese, one of the few genuine comic geniuses, has failed to make a huge impact in America.
PS: Full marks to Coogan for suggesting Americans check out classic comedies Porridge, Steptoe and Son and Hancock's Half Hour.

A former colleague and I used to joke that each year the Brisbane International Film Festival would put out a media release saying that ticket sales were "up 17 per cent". Not this year. They're apparently up 18 per cent. By my reckoning, after years of this kind of growth, everybody in Australia will be going to a BIFF screening this year.

Ho do you create buzz about a new film? Give it a fun, intriguing name. Hey, it worked for Snakes on a Plane (at least until people saw the picture), so it might work for Hot Tub Time Machine. Although there is currently no information at imdb.com, various reports have writer Josh Heald as saying it "follows a group of guys, adults who used to be cads back in their heyday, who, after a night of vodka and Red Bulls in a hot tub, travel back in time and set out to rediscover their mojo." We'll have to wait until 2010 to know for sure.

Gay and proud Lindsay Lohan was not sideswiped by a motorcycle while leaving a nightclub in New York with constant companion Samantha Ronson. Details on that breaking story here (where eonline write Jovie Baclayon points out how silly the whole business is.)