Jodie  Foster leaves prison, moves into House of Cards

Jodie  Foster’s next feature as a director, Money Monster, is in that weird  no-person’s-land known as pre-production, so in the meantime, the double  Academy Award-winning actor has been dropping in for guest spots directing cool  episodic television. She helmed the fittingly-titled "Lesbian Request Denied"  episode of the hit Netflix series Orange Is The New Black, and will now step  into David Fincher’s shoes to work on an upcoming episode of House of Cards,  the critically acclaimed and Emmy-nominated political drama, also from Netflix,  starring Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright about a manipulative – and  murderous – congressman with his eyes on the White House prize.  Producer/director Fincher is stepping back for the show’s second season, so  Foster (in addition to Spacey and Wright) reportedly will direct at least one  episode. If she keeps on working with Netflix, will Foster get her own special  section of streaming product there? It would make it a lot easier to watch  Freaky Friday and Bugsy Malone whenever we want. And we really do want.

Sir Ian McKellen and Bill Condon reunite for a Trick

Dreamgirls/Twilight director Bill Condon’s latest drama, the WikiLeaks-themed, Benedict  Cumberbatch-starring The Fifth Estate, recently premiered at the Toronto  International Film Festival, so the man has his autumn promotional tour already  planned. But after that he’ll go back to his roots, working with Sir Ian  McKellen on a project currently titled A Slight Trick of The Mind. The  filmmaker and actor first collaborated in the ’90s on the acclaimed indie Gods  and Monsters, a movie that earned McKellen a Best Actor Oscar nomination and  won Condon an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. Trick, though,  promises McKellen in a role currently co-owned by both hyperactive Robert  Downey Jr. and the hypnotic Benedict Cumberbatch, that of Sherlock Holmes.  The new film Holmes, based on the novel by Mitch Cullin, will focus on the  retired sleuth, haunted by a 50-year-old unsolved case. Brilliant ideas: Cast  all three men as various incarnations, or just go Clumps-style and make it a  vehicle for McKellen in multiple roles, including all female characters, the  villain and Gandalf, who shows up to help Holmes solve the case in 1.5 seconds.  Too irreverent? Probably. But look, there are no bad ideas in brainstorming.

Dane DeHaan  does James Dean

For a man  who starred in a grand total of three films, James Dean still fascinates  millions of fans, generations after his death. In fact, more films have been  made about him than by him; he’s been portrayed by more than a few young,  brooding actors, including James Franco, and now it’s time for the Millennial  take on the icon. Up-and-comer Dane DeHaan (Chronicle, Lincoln) will star  as Dean in Life, the latest film from director Anton Corbijn. His co-star?  Just some guy named Robert Pattinson (building on the cool cred and decent  reviews for David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis in his post-Twilight bid for a  career beyond heartthrob status). Pattinson will play photographer Dennis Stock  and the story will follow the friendship the pair forged when Stock was assigned  to photograph the emerging star. Life is scheduled to go before the cameras  in February of 2014, plenty of time for you to watch Rebel Without A Cause,  East of Eden, Giant and every other biopic on the man. You know, just in  case you’ve been slacking off and not doing your homework.

De-gaying Tchaikovsky in  Russia. Of course.

Re-writing history is a  good way to control it. And that’s what’s happening right now as a new Russian  biopic on the life of classical composer Pyotr IlyichTchaikovsky plans to strip  the man of his homosexuality. The film, partially underwritten by the Russian  Ministry of Culture, will censor itself before anyone else gets a chance to  – if you’ve been living under a rock you might have missed the avalanche  of recent news reports about a terrifying, government-instigated wave of  anti-gay laws and cultural sentiment – removing the gayness from the  famous musician. The film’s screenwriter, respected scribe Yuri Arabov, has, in  a bizarre twist, been quoted as saying that Tchaikovsky was not a man who loved  men, even though earlier drafts of the script suggested otherwise. And in spite  of all the historical evidence to the contrary, it looks like misinformation is  going to rule the day here and the sanded down version of the man’s unhappy  life is the one the world will get. Next for Russia? A remake of Behind The  Candelabra where Liberace finally finds love with a good woman.