The only thing worse than Jury Duty is being the chihuahua that had to be held by George Lopez at the red carpet premiere for Beverly Hills Chihuahua.

I’m still stuck in the Supreme Court Building. I’ve returned from a hasty KFC lunch which I was granted after being booted off one jury.

Though when they asked me to clarify my job, people seemed to perk up at “I blog.” A very nice Jewish man asked me if I was a political blogger, since the TVs in here are silently watching the government pony up tax dollars to bail out financial institutions. I told him yes, because I doubt that he’s checking the B&U when he gets home.

But, for those of you that are checking up on the world of film, how about another round of news?

Would it be stupid for George Clooney not to return to County General for ER’s final season? The producers seem to be rounding up ex-cast members.

I tried to ignore it, but the masses have spoken: David Hasselhoff will star in Beverly Hills Ninja 2, a sequel to the Chris Farley comedy. It sounds like a stupid idea and a movie we won’t see, but when a certain amount of people ask me about anything, best to say something to everyone.

Fox Searchlight has decided to shift the release of Slumdog Millionaire, Danny Boyle’s latest that follows an illiterate Indian street kid from Mumbai who is a contestant on Kaun Banega Crorepati, the Hindi version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?. The film is told through flashbacks and actually has little to do with Millionaire, but has been getting a surprising amount of award buzz since premiereing at Telluride. The film was supposed to bow into the box office on November 28th against Milk and The Road, but Searchlight has pushed the date forward to November 19th, possibly to spread the studio over more of November so Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler shines for the studio in December.

Someone tell UGO that their site is blocked from official buildings in Kings County and I can’t get proper photos of the new (and cool-looking) posters for Frank Miller’s The Spirit. I had to steal this look from /Film, but you can see them HERE.

Universal Pictures has cast Vince Vaughn, Jon Favreau, Jason Bateman and Faizon Love in Couples Retreat, a Favreau-scripted, Peter Billingsley-directed comedy. Yes, that’s a Vaughn/Favreau reunion. The plot appearently revolves around a three couples who follow a fourth to a resort where couples therapy isn’t optional. Or something like that. You could also know what I know by CLICKING HERE and reading the dry-as-bones Hollywood Reporter.

If How To Lose Friends and Alienate People looks good to you beyond Megan Fox, you might want to check out THIS EXTENED CLIP from the MGM pic where Simon Pegg plays Sidney Young, a smalltime, bumbling, British celebrity journalist who is hired by an upscale magazine in New York City.  You can guess from the title that things don’t work out well for him.

DHD was paying attention when we weren’t concerning Universal’s mysterious choice not to co-finance the Tin-Tin movies, to be directed by Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg. Seems like a sure thing, right?

The decision was quietly made a few weeks ago. So now DreamWorks will look only to owner Paramount for the rest of the moolah in the same way the two shared financing on Dreamgirls and Transformers. Unfortunately, Paramount is presently without an overall financing deal to mitigate risk, but is arranging it on a film-by-film basis. I say Tintin — to be played by Love Actually’s Thomas Sangster — sounds like an expensive but safe bet, considering that the beloved Belgian boy is a worldwide phenomenon, and that the two great filmmakers are directing and producing even though also participating as huge first-dollar-gross players.

I don’t think Universal knows anything we don’t, but I do think that whomever made this call might find themselves without a job in a few years.

Thanks to BWE, I now know the #1 rule of staying in Florence, which really makes me wish I wasn’t in Brooklyn:

Time to go get kicked off another jury! This time, maybe I’ll mumble a lot and roll up my sleeves to show off my tattoos.