Considering the lengths to which the Tropic Thunder gang went to sell all of their Hollywood fakery, it comes as little surprise that the mock making-of Rain of Madness does exist beyond a mere trailer (embedded above, and probably not kid-friendly) and website. However, while I'm sure it'll be included on the eventual DVD, who's really going to wait that long when it's currently available as a free iTunes exclusive?

That's right: for thirty minutes and zero dollars (yep), one can follow filmmaker Jan Jürgen (co-writer Justin Theroux, acting as if making Werner Herzog's Werner Herzog were making Hearts of Darkness) as he chronicles the expensive chaos that went behind making the movie within the movie. Star/director/co-writer/probable caterer Ben Stiller explained in a recent press release: "We wanted to do a fake documentary about the making of the movie within the movie which is called "Tropic Thunder" -- not the actual movie "Tropic Thunder". The fake documentary focuses on the real movie's fake director, and what happens to the fake cast before they go into the real jungle. It's pretty straightforward."

Well, I know who I am. I'm the dude playing the dude currently downloading this S.O.B. Any of you who follow suit, share your thoughts below.

For those concerned commenters, I'm well aware that Werner Herzog did not, in fact, direct Hearts of Darkness. However, Mr. Theroux is behaving as if he were Mr. Herzog and, as such, proceeded to make a film not unlike the doc actually made by Fax Bahr and George Hickenlooper.

What I didn't know was how to directly link to any items made available through the iTunes store. I still don't, but I do appreciate the considerate ones below who were both helpful and tactful in passing the direct iTunes link on - namely, Niraj and not the exceedingly impatient Marcos.

Spike Lee and Disney might sound like a pretty odd combination, but I don't really see it that way. (Lest we forget that the excellent 25th Hour was a Disney production.) Love the guy or not, Spike Lee has turned into quite the eclectic filmmaker over the last few decades -- and so when I heard that the guy was helming a $50 million WWII drama for Disney, I was intrigued but not surprised. Based on the book by James McBride -- and adapted for the screen by same -- Miracle at St. Anna tells the tale of four black soldiers who find themselves stuck behind enemy lines in Italy.

Opening September 26, St. Anna stars Derek Luke, Michael Ealy, Laz Alonso, and Omar Benson Miller. Also on board are John Turturro, D.B. Sweeney, Kerry Washington, John Leguizamo, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Riding high after his last feature film (the solid and profitable Inside Man), Mr. Lee looks to be moving into "Oscar-friendly" territory again with St. Anna -- and I know I'm not the only movie fan who's curious to Lee's first big war movie.

Sometimes cinemaniacs get rewarded for stepping outside the theater. Scott Weinberg, his tongue possibly in cheek, thinks a viral 4-minute internet video is the best movie of the year. I am convinced that the year's best fiction-on-film (so far -- though I have trouble imagining anything topping it) is currently airing on HBO. That would be Generation Kill, the seven-part, eight-hour Iraq War miniseries from David Simon and Ed Burns (The Wire). I know, I know: this is Cinematical, not TV Squad. But Generation Kill is something no movie lover should ignore.

Fans of The Wire already know of Simon and Burns's uncanny, unparalleled ability to weave together hyper-realism, trenchant commentary and riveting drama, but even they may be stunned, as I was, by what this smaller-scale project has to offer. It is, quite simply, the deepest and most sympathetic portrayal of the military -- any military -- I have ever seen. It may also be the first "Hollywood" take on the Iraq War that is genuinely thoughtful and de-politicized. Rather than offering a polemic, the series (adapted from a book by Evan Wright, a reporter who rode with the 1st Recon Marine Unit) just observes -- and, by all accounts, gets close to the truth.

Oh, don't worry, this isn't some too-soon remake of that Matthew Perry / Salma Hayek film. This is something a wee bit more serious.

Variety reports that Liam Neeson and Orlando Bloom have signed on to star, and Javier Bardem is in talks to co-star, on a currently untitled film based on Bill Carter's book, Fools Rush In. The book focuses on Carter's time as an aid worker in Sarajevo, as he was grieving the death of his girlfriend in a car accident. It certainly will be a challenging piece of cinema, as Carter was there during the 43-month Balkan siege. I'm guessing that the untitled nature of the project is related to the Perry film.

Anyhow, Bloom says: "I read the script, and the very human story and the very core of this film spoke to me very clearly. This is a departure from the very big Hollywood productions." Andrucha Waddington, a Brazilian director, will helm the feature, and the production is scheduled to begin later this year. Now if only I could get over my Orlando apprehension...

Some people may consider the New York Film Festival a simple "Best Of" sort of event, but the fact that it compiles selections from earlier film fests and merely showcases them in a competition-free program is what I love about it. For those of us New Yorkers who can't always make it to the highlands of Utah and Colorado or the exotic seaside locales of Italy and Southern France, it's nice to know that major festival highlights will likely make their way to Lincoln Center in late September, early October.

This year, the lineup for the 46th NYFF is being noted for its inclusion of films that previously screened at Cannes back in May. Even Steven Soderbergh's four-hour Che (aka The Argentine and Guerilla), which played to mixed reactions in France, even while picking up a best actor prize for star Benicio Del Toro, has been given a spot. Also featured are Cannes leftovers Waltz With Bashir, Wendy and Lucy, Grand Prix-winner Gomorrah and Clint Eastwood's Changeling, which stars Angelina Jolie and has the honor of being NYFF's centerpiece film. Opening the festival is the Palm d'Or winner The Class, while the closing film is Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler, which premieres a few weeks prior at the Venice Film Festival.

Other exciting big name films include Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky, Wong Kar-Wai's Ashes of Time: Redux, Lucretia Martel's The Headless Woman and Olivier Assayas' Summer Hours. Surprisingly, Charlie Kaufman's Synechdoche, New York, which screened at Cannes, is New York appropriate and is scheduled to open in October, is missing from the lineup.

The complete list of NYFF selections, courtesy of The Hollywood Reporter, can be found after the jump:

The full cast for Quentin Tarantino's WWII flick Inglorious Bastards is starting to come together. Not long after Variety announced that Brad Pitt was officially onboard to play a "Tennessee hillbilly who assembles a team of eight Jewish-American soldiers to take on the Nazis," word has come out that Simon Pegg, David Krumholtz and Nastassja Kinski are all in talks to join the picture. The Office's B.J. Novak is already in talks as well, and he and Krumholtz sign on, they'll be playing "Pitt's underlings." Pegg, on the other hand, would be playing a British lieutenant. Kinski, who's being looked at to play a German movie queen (and is actually German -- go figure!), would become one of the only females in this male-dominated cast.

Personally, I'm a fan of all these folks, though I'm still holding out for a few Tarantino regulars to pop up at some point. (I'd also like to offer up Cinematical's Scott Weinberg for a role. He's a good Jew, that kid.) Tim Roth should definitely nab a role before casting is all said and done, though I'm not so sure there's something for Michael Madsen. I've got the script sitting on my desktop (haven't read it yet), so if you've managed to take a peak, who else do you think would fit in here?

Men on a mission! Naked women shooting machine guns! Wildly inappropriate hair styles! The recent arrival of Enzo G. Castellari's The Inglorious Bastards on DVD makes clear that the movie is an entertaining, stylish adventure in its own right, justly deserving its reputation as a Eurocult genre gem. Inevitably, it also prompts speculation about what exactly Quentin Tarantino will do with his upcoming version, especially since the DVD features an extended conversation between Tarantino and Castellari about their respective visions.

The 1978 original doesn't have a "bat-wielding Nazi hunter," as one character has been recently described in casting talks for Tarantino's version, though it is set in World War II France. Miscreant Bo Svenson and murderer Fred Williamson are headed to military jail when their convoy is attacked by the Germans. The handful of surviving deserters plan to escape to neutral Switzerland before they end up on a suicide mission for the Allies under the command of Colonel Bruckner (Ian Bannen).

The men take a jaunty trip through a cartoon wonderland constructed out of Hollywood fantasy and Italian wish fulfillment. The film only rarely intersects with real life, instead inhabiting a world of wisecracks and world-weary warriors whose guns never run out of bullets. Castellari is such a brilliant director, though, that The Inglorious Bastards fairly pops off the screen with energetic fervor in nearly every sequence.

As such, it serves as a fabulous blueprint that Tarantino has probably drawn upon, ripped apart, and reassembled.