Desperate Housewives star Eva Longoria Parker has been pining for the WGA writers’ strike to be over so that she can get back to work on the show. In the meantime, her new movie, Over Her Dead Body, opens this Friday, Feb 1st.

In Over Her Dead Body, she plays a woman who dies on her wedding day. That is, she plays a ghost for most of the movie. Paul Rudd plays her husband, who develops a relationship with a psychic. Can anyone say Ghost, with Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore? Kinda, sorta.

Also appearing are Lake Bell, Jason Biggs, Lindsay Sloane, Stephen Root.

Rambo 4 just opened last weekend and already Sylvester Stallone - who’ll be 62 in July - is talking about doing a fifth Rambo movie. But given that it debuted at #2 in box office receipts last weekend, I’m not surprised. There’s obviously still a market for his brand of justice. (Apparently Rambo 4 has a new record for most screen deaths: 236. He also wrote, directed and produced this one.)

The man is still fit and studio execs want to do this project before Stallone is too old to cope. He’s also currently attached (acting, directing, producing) to Notorious, a TV movie scheduled to air March 9th. (Though I suppose it might depend on the current strike.) For 2009, he’s writing, directing and producing Poe, about the influential and troubled legendary American writer Edgar Allen Poe.

I’ve always had the utmost musical respect for legendary Led Zeppelin frontman/ rock god Robert Plant, whose songs have been used in several movies. Until now. Zep is one of my all time fave bands, but Plant was apparently at some bar in the UK and didn’t like the music. Plant apparently said that Radiohead were “rhyming crap” and Red Hot Chili Peppers were “nursery rhymes”. He asked for Captain Beefheart, best-known for the experimental rock album Trout Mask Replica, produced by another rock legend, Frank Zappa. The video clip below is of a Captain Beefheart song, Electricity.
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Some inside sources have told TMZ that Heath Ledger’s death this past Tuesday could have been from natural causes - possibly even a heart attack. [TMZ]

Fans of Knight Rider and David Hasselhoff can look forward to a TV movie on Feb 17th. Hasselhoff is still in negotiations. [IMDB]

Jessica Simpson is understandable upset about an OK! mag article that claimed Tony Romo dumped her. So she’s siccing her lawyers on them. [US]

Danny Glover was convicted Thursday of trespassing in relation to a 2006 protest in Niagara Falls, Canada. [SF Gate]

Imagine having 20 minutes to come up with and shoot a 2.5 minute movie idea around three objects, and then having an hour to edit. That’s what several teams of aspiring filmmakers had to do in France recently, as part of a competition. [Reuters]

If Johnny Depp does fill in for Heath Ledger in his last film, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, there’s apparently a way to make it work. The story has a magic mirror through which ledger’s character falls, and he could change into another character, portrayed by Johnny Depp. It’s being directed by Monty Python alumni Terry Gilliam, and his brand of moviemaking suggests that such a plot device could work.

Ledger had already finished work as The Joker for Batman: The Dark Knight. However, Warner Bros. is unsure of the marketing campaign at this point. This movie is currently scheduled for release on July 18.

It sounds like the most un-Bond like story name I can recall, but it does sound fascinating. Say it with me: Quantum of Solace. That’s the name given to the 22nd Bond film, and it’s actually the name of a short story in Ian Fleming’s anthology “For Your Eyes Only”, from 1960.

The current James Bond, Daniel Craig, says “the title was meant to confuse a little… make you… wonder.” Craig first appeared as Bond in Casino Royale (2006), which is the highest grossing Bond flick ever ($300M). I stopped watching when Timothy Dalton became Bond, but I think it’s time to check out Daniel Craig, who currently appears in The Golden Compass. If Casino Royale did that well, Quantum of Solace has a good chance of being a top movie in 2008.

Quantum of Solace also stars Olga Kurylenko (Hitman) as the new Bond girl, Camille, and Gemma Arterton as Agent Fields, but whom some people are saying is a second Bond girl. Could be true: #22 = 2 Bond girls? Dame Judi Dench plays M.

The movie opens Nov 7 of this year.

[sources: AFP/Google, IMDB]

Pick of the week: Untraceable with Diane Lane. At least, based on it’s “thrill” potential. But at least one film reviewer on TV this morning gave it 2.5 stars out of 5, and gave the new Rambo movie - which Stallone wrote and directed as well - 3 stars. That doesn’t bode well, but I’d still rather pay $9-12 to see Diane Lane than Rambo. (I’m a Sly Stallone fan, but if I’m forced to choose one movie…)

Or there’s the goofy, spoofy fun of Meet the Spartans, with Carmen Electra, Sean Maguire, Kevin Sorbo, Diedrich Bader, and Method Man. NOTE: IMDB says this opens Feb 1st but several sites (and I the TV ads, I believe) say it’s opening today. The movie spoofs 300, Ghost Rider, Donald Trump/ Apprentice, and more. Hopefully the trailers aren’t the best part of the movie.

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Based solely on the trailers, Untraceable is the first movie releasing this month that I’m really looking forward to. It opens this Friday and stars the talented Diane Lane (Hollywoodland, Must Love Dogs, Under the Tuscan Sun, Unfaithful) as FBI agent Jennifer Marsh. A clever serial killer is using the Internet to kill his victims. He has a device hooked up that increases the amount of a lethal injection proportionate to the number of people visiting the site to view the live video. (Yeah, I know. It sounds like a story line potentially rife with all kinds of technical inaccuracies. But it’s Diane Lane for crying out loud. And I’ve had a long-standing interest in FBI-related movies and TV shows.)

Also appearing in Untraceable are Billy Burke, Colin Hanks, Joseph Cross, Mary Beth Hurt and Peter Lewis.

Lane will be in two other movies this year: Jumper, and Nights in Rodanthe. Her 43rd birthday was yesterday.

Production has been halted in Vancouver, Canada, for The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. This was the next movie that Heath Ledger would have been working on. The inimitable musician/ actor Tom Waits was co-star. Ledger’s work as the Joker in Batman: The Dark Knight was supposedly already complete.

Ledger died yesterday, possibly of an accidental overdose of anti-depressants mixed with sleeping pills. Not unexpectedly, his family and many close celebrity friends - including  Lindsay Lohan, Helena Christensen, and ex-fiancee Michelle Williams - are said to be very distraught about Ledger’s passing, which some anonymous friend, possibly Jack Nicholson, claims to have seen coming.

Ledger apparently had many sleepless nights, thanks to insomnia partially caused by his work on The Dark Knight. This might account for the sleeping pills found near his body. Autopsy results are 10 days away.

Largehearted Boy has a big list of DVD releases for this week, including many for TV series. [Largehearted Boy]

Microsoft is getting deeper into the entertainment business. They’ve award a new HDi grant to Jason Kohn, director of a prize-winning Sundance documentary. The grant is awarded in joint with the Sundance Institute and is worth about $100,000. [C|net]

Denise Richards and Charlie Sheen will be fighting out yet more custody-related battles in court. [Celebrity Cowboy]

Sacha Baron Cohen has won a lawsuit relating to his Borat movie. The lawsuit - one of several - claims that an etiquette teacher, Kathie Martin, was tricked into appearing in the movie. [UK Press Association]

Chris Noth, aka Mr. Big from Sex and the City, and his girlfriend Tara Wilson now have a baby boy, Orion Christopher Noth. [US, People]