CAST THIS: Actressexual Ocean's Eleven

Hi, everyone. Coco here, with a fantastic opportunity for all agents and casting directors out there...

 Indiewire reports an Ocean's Eleven sequel is in the works, and that it will feature an all-female caper crew. Clooney is producing, Olivia Milch (Little Women) is writing, and Gary Ross (Seabiscuit, Hunger Games) is directing. The biggest news for Actressexuals: Sandra Bullock has landed the Danny Ocean role. 

Bullock's star-persona is a little goofier than Clooney's ultra-suave schtick, but she seems like a great choice nonetheless. Very few performers ooze of charisma as strongly as Bullock. I mean, I still find myself thinking of her speaking "Chinese" at the Oscars from time to time.

The bigger question, though, is what other wonderful actresses should join her and her team of madcap con artists. Here are some options:

Melissa McCarthy: McCarthy and Bullock had great chemistry in The Heat, so who wouldn't love a reunion? The only problem I can think of is the fact that McCarthy is already committed to the Ghostbusters reboot. Would two all-female franchise revivals be too much? 

Reese Witherspoon: Listen everybody, this is where the Reeseurgence takes flight. Just think of Reese playing the Brad Pitt to Bullock's Clooney. 

Lily Tomlin: Ocean's Eleven had its share of older mentors with Elliott Gould and Carl Reiner. Tomlin's on everybody's mind right now thanks to Grandma, and we all know she'd be really funny in the role. 

Julia Roberts: Well, she's already been in the Ocean's movies. And even if you weren't a fan of her infamous impersonation of herself, you should consider the following possibility: Roberts and Bullock were the queens of nineties comedies, wouldn't it be great to see them share the screen? 

Angela Bassett: Because she should be in every movie, don't you agree? Maybe she could play the villain?  

Mary Tyler Moore: Is she in good health? Because wouldn't it be cool if this television legend played the Carl Reiner role in a wink to The Dick Van Dyke Show? 

But here's the fun part: What would you cast? Go ahead, sound off in the comments! 

Trailers for Short Oscar finalists

AMPAS has selected 10 documentary shorts from their undoubtedly long (unpublished that we know of) eligibility list to compete for the 5 nominations in the category. For those who are unaware the short film race at the Oscars each year can be a hodgepodge of years (no release dates apply obviously) because the shorts qualify for the competition by winning prizes at Oscar-qualifying festivals around the world. (The short film categories are often as international as the Foreign Language Film Award.) And the festival journey can be a long one for tiny low profile films. 

Doc trailers after the jump and a few Animated shorts, too...

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Morning Truth Tell: Tom Hanks...

Tom Hanks is giving way better performances recently (Captain Phillips, Bridge of Spies) than the ones he used to win Oscars for. 

Mad Max & Fashionable Kate lead the 'Australian Oscar' nominations

The AACTA Awards, essentially the Australian Oscars, are in their 5th year. But the "5th" business they're promoting is misleading. It's the fifth year under their new name, AACTA, but they've actually been giving out prizes since 1958 when they were called AFI Awards... not to be confused with the AFI events across the Pacific, America and Australia both starting with "A" and both having Film Institutes. But they're obviously promoting a reboot mentality since they consider the 2011 AACTAs the "inaugural" awards.

Leading the pack this year are Kate Winslet's fashionista revenge comedy The Dressmaker (still awaiting news on a US release) and the critically beloved Max Mad Fury Road with 12 and 11 nominations respectively. George Miller's action masterpiece could even win since AACTA doesn't have the genre bias Oscar does -- Australia's industry is to small to have such silly biases! -- giving Best Film to The Babadook last year. If Mad Max Fury Road could repeat this trick at the American Oscars -- 11 nominations (!) -- 95% of cinephiles would experience the rapture and never be heard from again.

The film nominees are after the jump...

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Tim's Toons review: Last Days of Coney Island

Tim here. One of the most important events in animation in all of 2015 happened this week; it is important to stress that this doesn't mean it's also one of the best things. But the first new piece of animation from living legend Ralph Bakshi in almost 20 years is certainly worth spending a moment with, though now that I've seen the 22-minute Last Days of Coney Island – currently available for rental on Vimeo, where it just had its world premiere – I can't really claim that I want to stretch that moment out too long.

The film finds Bakshi, whose 77th birthday was October 29, returning to the territory of his most characteristic works from the early 1970s, including Heavy Traffic, the infamous race relations fable Coonskin, and his groundbreaking debut, Fritz the Cat. That is, it's a story about the New York City of Bakshi's battle-hardened memories of youth, involving deeply wearied souls scratching their way through an apocalyptic vision of the '60s counterculture.

The new film has clearly defined characters in the form of explosively violent Shorty (Omar Jones) and the hapless-in-love Max (Robert Costanzo), and it even has something that looks pretty clearly like a plot, though you have to work pretty diligently to carve it from the energetic blast of frenzied activity that makes up the film (it's a condensed version of a feature Bakshi has been trying to make since the '90s; it was shortened without losing any content).

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