Hot off the movie news mill is the news that Neale Purvis and Robert Wade (writers of the last few Bond films and interviewed by yours truly, see here) are penning the latest remake from the machine, Barbarella.

The bad news is that by all reports – including by its director Peter Webber and the always trashy producer Dino de Laurentiis – it'll dispense with the trippy free love mythology of the original and transform it into a Matrix-a-like arse kicking festival (yawn).

And after Grindhouse's loud thunk at the bottom of the box office, the previously-unassailable Weinsteins are considering releasing it as two movies. One of the bizarre theories for the film's failure is that cinemagoers failed to realise it was two movies, walking out after Rodriguez' Planet Terror.

Like Snakes on a Plane, Grindhouse is proof that fan buzz among a small, computer- or film-literate group of movie fans and critics isn't enough to return an investment of tens of millions of dollars no matter how deafening that buzz becomes within that group...