• Jeffrey Wells offers his own mid-year assessment of 2009’s best and worst so far. [Hollywood Elsewhere]
• How New Line mutated from house of horror to chick-flick central. [The Hollywood Reporter]
• Memo to “Baywatch: The Movie” producers: it’s about the jugs, not the jokes. [The Guardian]
• Too lowbrow for you? Here’s David Lynch on his unlikely collaboration with musos Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse. [Sight & Sound]
• Apparently, Meryl Streep gained 15 pounds making “Julie & Julia.” Wow, she really does want that third Oscar. [Thompson on Hollywood]
• Francis Ford Coppola talks movies, wine and why he wanted Scorsese to direct “The Godfather Part II.” Really. [Esquire]
• An “Up” doubter (commercially speaking, anyway) eats his words. [The New York Times]
• Not movie-related (yet), but a “Catcher in the Rye” sequel without J.D. Salinger’s involvement? Stop the madness. [The Wall Street Journal]