Personally, we’re delighted Valerie Bertinelli has been having such a good year. The 48-year-old actress, whom we all were half in love with during the One Day at a Time era (did anyone have better high-waist jeans or feathered hair?), has signed on to star--and get a producing credit--in a TBS pilot playing a single mom with two small children trying to make her business work.

In February, Ms. Bertinelli, currently a Jenny Craig pitchwoman, published her memoir, Losin’ It: And Gaining My Life Back One Pound at a Time. It made for some seriously compelling reading: there was her rock-n-roll roller coaster marriage to Eddie Van Halen amidst ‘80s debaucheries, her conflicted feelings about teen stardom and how her career could progress after the teen years were over, and her epic struggles with her weight (which really were epic).  read more »

Cinematical tells us that Film Forum will be screening newly restored 35mm prints of The Godfather and The Godfather Part II for three weeks beginning Sept. 12. There's no added footage or CGI effects (this ain't no big-time Star Wars re-release) but, rather, tastefully restored productions under the direction of director Coppola, original cinematographer Gordon Willis and film historian Robert A. Harris. You'll see Brando in a whole new light!  read more »

Forget the afternoon coffee fix. How about some film noir for a pick-me-up? Hulu has posted a full version of Charles Laughton's 1955, genre-defining movie The Night of the Hunter. Nothing like Robert Mitchum as aself-appointed preacher/widow killer with LOVE and HATE tattooed on his knuckles to get your blood moving. The daymares will keep you from experiencing that delayed crash before work lets out. Hang in there.

We told you about the revival of David Mamet's American Buffalo co-starring John Leguizamo and Cedric the Entertainer, and now we can report about its new home: the Belasco Theatre. American Buffalo takes over the stage from another Mamet play, Speed-the-Plow. That Jeremy Piven-starring production will move to the Barrymore Theater where Godspell was supposed to be performed. The Godspell production was postponed because of a financial fallout from an investor.

Directed by Robert Falls, previews of American Buffalo will begin Oct. 31 at the Belasco with an official opening scheduled for Nov. 17. Tickets will go on sale Sept. 4 through Telecharge by calling (212) 239-6200 or by visiting www.telecharge.com.

Manny Farber, the idiosyncratic painter and film critic for The New Republic, The Nation, ArtForum and other publications, has died. He was 91.

According to The Times' William Grimes, Mr. Farber was "a quirky prose stylist with a barbed lance, responded to film viscerally. He despised what he called the 'art-infected' films of cinematic greats like Welles and Alfred Hitchcock — 'the water-buffaloes of film art,' he once called them — preferring the work of genre directors like Anthony Mann, Raoul Walsh and William A. Wellman, who transformed pulp material and genre conventions into 'private runways to the truth.'"

The Village Voice's J. Hoberman wrote:  read more »

The Roundabout Theatre Company has just announced the casting for a new production of Pal Joey. Christian Hoff (Jersey Boys) will play Joey Evans, a lowlife nightclub entertainer who wants to own his own business. Stockard Channing (she's still got it) will play an older, married woman who he tries to seduce so she'll give him money to start his nightclub. Martha Plimpton (a two-time Tony nominee but we'll always remember her from the Goonies) will play Gladys Bumps, a chorus girl who dislikes Joey. Pal Joey was originally written as a series of awkwardly written letters published in The New Yorker in the late 1930s. The story takes place in Chicago.  read more »

There's been lots of chatter lately over Penelope Cruz's steamy kiss with Scarlet Johansson in the new Woody Allen film, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which opened in New York last Friday—enough chatter that we almost missed the following tidbit yesterday in The Hollywood Reporter: Ms. Cruz, who's also enjoying critical praise for her role in Elegy, Isabel Coixet's adaptation of an acclaimed Philip Roth novel, will receive a Gotham Award Tribute at the 18th Annual Gotham Awards at Cipriani Wall Street on Dec. 2.

"Penelope's body of work embodies what is exciting and vibrant about filmmaking today, in particular independent filmmaking," said Michelle Byrd, executive director of IFP, the national independent filmmakers organization that presents the awards, in a statement.  read more »

This from Beijing: The Village Voice's Runnin' Scared blog is reporting via Boing Boing that Chinese authorities have detained a Brooklyn artist, James Powderly, along with five other Americans. The report says that Mr. Powderly was part of a group that used LED lights to spell out "Free Tibet" near the Olympics site. According to Mr. Powderly's bio on the Web site for Robot Clothes, an art and commercial research and development partnership of which he is a member, he is "a maverick hobbyist dabbling at the fringes of robotics, chemistry, writing, pyrotechnics, graffiti and art," and apparently some of his work can be found on the surface of Mars.

UPDATE: Reuters has a full report. More from Runnin' Scared after the jump.

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Anyone who has seen Dark Knight (and that's every last one of us by now, right?) has seen the amazing, creepy, Smashing Pumpkins-soundtracked trailer for The Watchmen, a movie based on the late-80s graphic novel that redefined comics and superhero archetypes. Warner Bros. has finished shooting and is set to release the movie in theaters on March 6, 2009. But now Fox wants a piece of what looks to be a very big comic book movie pie and is battling about the Watchmen rights in court. Yesterday, a judge denied Warner Bros. the right to dismiss 20th Century Fox's lawsuit over the rights to the original graphic novel.  read more »

Michael Stuhlbarg is about to become A Serious Man for Joel and Ethan Coen. The brothers have penned a new movie and he's going to be their star. Mr. Stuhlbarg has been a fixture on New York theater stages, receiving a Tony nomination for his role in The Pillowman and recently starring as Hamlet for the Public's Shakespeare in the Park production this year. He's had some bit parts on Law & Order (like every New York actor), but now he'll get the chance to work on the big screen with the Coen brothers on their new dark comedy.

Fittingly, he'll play the title role as Larry Gopnik, a professor in the Midwest whose wife leaves him and his socially awkward brother (played by another prime casting choice, Richard Kind) won't move out of his house.  read more »