Just Shoot Him

When a crap director leaves a movie he's scheduled to direct, you just know said movie has to be dreadful. For a week it's been rumored Robert Luketic was gonna leave the big-screen adaptation of Dallas, which Mayor Laura Miller's so desperate to get shot here. The initial reason offered was that he wanted to do another movie instead: 21, which is based on Ben Mezrich's nonfiction bestseller Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions. Turns out he, like everyone else, realizes the casting choices are awful. And from what I've know of the script, well, so's the script, which apparently has been rewritten more times than the Bible. Now the word is Betty Thomas is going to take over, proving that there is, in fact, no bottom to the barrel from which studios choose directors. --Robert Wilonsky