Casting Roundup

There's been a small collection of in and outs this week, and that's just the trailer for Where the truth lies (ba-doop-boom-tish!) Ok, that's that out of our system, onward to casting news. First of all, to Mission: Impossible III, and the latest addition is Billy Crudup. The busy actor has already been working on The Good Shepherd and Robert Towne's Without Limits, but seems to have made time in his heavy thesping schedule for some primo action... action. There's no word on who he's set to play yet , but our money, based purely on an unscientific hunch, is on him being a bad guy. Onto a Shepard of a different kind (see what we did there?), it's Sam Shepard, who been brought onto Andrew Chopper Dominik's Brad Pitt starring contender for the film with the longest title of 2006, The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford. Sam will be playing Jesse's older brother Frank. Meanwhile, while we've just reported that Jessica Alba is set to star in Awake, she's put the kibosh on her frontrunner status for the main gig in the forthcoming big screen version of I Dream Of Jeannie. Please send your nominations for attractive young starlets to fill the role of Jeannie (we like Ashwari Rai, Jenna Elfman, Sarah Michelle Gellar, or for a real offbeat choice, Amanda Bynes) to the back of a postcard. Ahh, where would we be without slow news days?