The end of the year means you'll have no shortage of movie lists to pick through ... but here's one that's just too bouncy to ignore. My old pals at MrSkin.com have (of course) come up with their list of the finest in cinematical skinematical for the year 2008. Now, before you get all huffy and stressed, it should be noted that MrSkin has always taken a rather jovial approach to movie-time nakedness. (Jovial as opposed to sleazy, is what I'm saying.) Plus, c'mon, we all love a good nude scene. Admit it. Love it enough to give MrSkin a whole lot of longtime fans. (Heck, they even played a prominent role in Knocked Up!)

But if you're scared of seeing copious cleavage or perhaps a stray butt-dimple, here's a text-based sampling of what you'll be missing: The stunning Sophie Monk in the amusing Sex & Death 101; the spunky Amy Smart re-defining "jaw-dropping" in Mirrors; plus just a few sexy peeks at Penelope Cruz, Mena Suvari, Amy Adams, and Angelina Jolie. Wanted, indeed. For a whole lot more (and a lot less clothes), check out the piece(s). And hey, there's another twenty for you TV fans. Since when is there nudity on TV? Check out the 20 film girls, in order of where they appear on the list, in the gallery below.

P.S. This is a list of female nakedness. For the other side of the equation, I challenge the women writers (and readers) of Cinematical to kick-start that roster.

You'd think there wouldn't be a ton of stuff to catch you post-Turkey blokes up with, but it's the exact opposite. So here's some stuff(ing) and things to skim over today:

-- Folks are going bonkers today over news in Production Weekly that the much-anticipated (and kinda secretive) Tron sequel has changed its title to TRZ in order to trick young kids into thinking MTV has adapted their now-retired TRL for the big screen. Okay, that's not the real reason ... but do we really need to know the real reason? TRZ? Here's the snippet of plot synopsis they provided: "After being transported into the surreal landscape of a mainframe computer to destroy an intruder, a programmer finds himself allied with the leader of a rebellion against a corrupt cyber-entity." According to Disney, an official title for the Tron sequel is not set yet.

-- George Miller finally went on the record and told a talk show in Sydney that he's officially off Justice League. He's done. That's it. Over. Dark Horizons says Miller thinks the film will be recast when (and if) it happens because "the studios seem to want bigger stars in their superhero movies now." We wonder why?

-- According to Shock, a source tells them Rob Zombie will indeed return to direct Halloween 2, the follow-up to his successful (at the box office) reboot of the franchise, titled Halloween. Additionally, the site claims Halloween 2 will begin shooting as early as this March.

-- Why do all the Nazi flicks come out during the holidays? And how do you sell them?

-- Jennifer Hudson's estranged brother-in-law has been arrested for the deaths of the actress/singer's mother, brother and nephew, according to CBS News.

After the jump: First looks at Whip It and Youth in Revolt, more on Chef and a very cool short film contest.

It's a thorny dilemma, both legally and morally -- fittingly, the kind of story that, were it turned into a movie, might win a couple Oscars itself. The question is this: Does the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have the legal right to buy back an Oscar winner's statuette if he or she (or his or her heirs) decides to get rid of it? What if the Oscar winner wants to sell it at auction and donate the money to charity? Can the Academy in good conscience demand return of the statuette and deprive the charity of those funds? See? Thorny!

For Academy Award winners since 1950, the legalities are fairly uncomplicated. The minute you win the sucker, you have to sign a contract saying that if you or your heirs ever decide you don't want the trophy anymore, the Academy has the right to buy it back for $10. That's the Academy's way of preventing the devaluation of the statuette. If any old schmo with a few hundred thousand dollars could "win" an Oscar at Jack Nicholson's garage sale, the prize would lose all meaning. As it is, of course, winning an Oscar is the single greatest achievement that a human being can ever hope to accomplish -- and the Academy wants to keep it that way.

The issue that's about to go before a Los Angeles judge and jury is what should happen to the best actress Oscar that Mary Pickford won for 1929's Coquette. (That's Pickford and the troublesome trophy in the picture.) The Academy didn't have the first-dibs rule back then -- but when Pickford won an honorary Oscar in 1976, she signed the agreement, and the Academy says that contract was retroactive to include her earlier trophy, too.

Toss this one right into the "unproven" files, but it's amusing enough to warrant some exploration: According to this tabloid (along with The Guardian and our pals at Spout), it seems that spouses Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes may be gearing up to remake Bernardo Bertolucci's controversially sexy romance drama Last Tango in Paris. The last time we saw Tom Cruise nail a spouse on camera was in 1999's Eyes Wide Shut, and I'm sure he probably groped Mimi Rogers in a movie once or twice. (Say what you like, but the guy does have good taste in women.)

"They need to have sex on screen, to prove their love" is what The Guardian's Xan Brooks had to say, which only serves to make the whole thing sound more like an April Fool's gag. The paragon of journalism that is Now Magazine indicates that the couple simply wants to star together in something sexy. I believe the title Basic Instinct was tossed out as an example. Yikes. In Mr. Brooks' tongue-in-cheek piece, he proposes a remake of Betty Blue. Double yikes. But if this entirely goofball story turns out to be 100% true, and Cruise / Holmes are intent on making a "sek-say" remake together ... Lolita makes a little more sense. Or maybe The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Seriously, that I'd go see.

But the question of the day is now this: Does it creep you out to see married couples "doin' it" in a movie? Hmmm, I think I smell a new Cinematical Seven topic.

Milk is a well-intentioned film, but it's also well-made, and it never confuses nobility of purpose with narrative direction. It's full of inspiration and aspiration, but at the same time, it never kids itself -- or us -- about the tricky, twisty ways of modern American urban politics. It's a sincere plea for equality that doesn't ignore the challenges of prejudice and fear. It celebrates past victories and speaks to current struggles; it mourns devastating losses and is still a hymn to hope. It commemorates a man and spotlights a movement; it avoids cliché feel-good moments but still wrings richness out of moments that feel good. It has a heart, and a brain; it's tender and loving while also being sexy and hot; it features a brilliant performance from Sean Penn but surrounds him with other talented actors doing superb work. Milk is adult and intelligent in ways many films are not, and it's rousing and enthralling in a way few films are. It's a minor miracle of sheer film making joy and determination, and one of the best American films of 2008.

Directed by Gus Van Sant (Elephant, My Own Private Idaho), Milk is radically conventional; it's also subtly, gracefully, innovative and sharp. Best of all, Milk shows us a man who may have been a martyr, but who was most assuredly not a saint -- and makes us respect his accomplishments all the more by showing us the public work and private deals it took to make them happen. Sean Penn stars as Harvey Milk, a New York white collar worker who, at 40, came out of the closet, moved to San Francisco in 1972 with his lover Scott Smith (James Franco) and opened a business and got active -- first as a community organizer, then as a political candidate and ultimately a San Francisco City Supervisor in 1977, the first openly gay elected official in California. Milk was killed in 1978, when his fellow Supervisor, Dan White (Josh Brolin) shot and killed San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Milk in the wake of White's resignation. It's hard to imagine an audience member not knowing this going into Milk, and yet Van Sant wisely puts it up front, to contextualize Milk's work and to let the film -- and the audience -- commemorate a life instead of merely chronicling a death.

Seeing as it's a slow news day, let's check in with Justin Theroux, who's hard at work penning Iron Man 2. The cool people of UGO did a nice interview with him, where he talks all about Tropic Thunder, Iron Man 2, and even a little bit about The Avengers.

Theroux says the script is around "the first draft" and is chugging right along with input and notes from Robert Downey Jr. The writer was quick to dismiss rumors that he was involved in the Terrence Howard/Don Cheadle change-up, that his script will reflect it in any way, or that the role of War Machine will be scaled down. "No, that's all nonsense. Whatever their reason is, I'll leave that up to Marvel. We're writing the thing, virtually the same for Rhodey that we would for any actor. We're really taking what's going to be the most interesting story for the fans, and what are they going to enjoy watching. And who ever's in that part is going to have to play that part and make it work ... I haven't met Don, and I think I'm going to in a little bit and I think once I get a better sense of his voice and also hear what he has to say about what he likes about the character and just pick his brain a little bit, then we'll obviously start to tailor it to him."

Theroux is also unsure what Gwyneth Paltrow's status in the sequel is -- he's "planning like she is there" but has no confirmation as to whether she will return. Will we end up with a new Pepper Potts? Will Tony Stark look around and see strangers replacing those he knew and loved in the first film? Because that would send any man to the bottle!

Poor Jonah Hex. As William Goss reported earlier, Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor have left the scarred cowboy behind due to creative differences. But does he still have Josh Brolin to play him, or not?

The truth is, Brolin can't decide if he is. He had a chat with MTV News that didn't decide the question, but did reveal his enthusiasm for the project: "When I first read it I thought, oh my God it's awful! And then I had a moment a week later and I thought why is it awful? Maybe the thing to do is to do the most awful movie I can find ... [I love] the absurdity of it. It almost allows you to create a new genre. I love going back into the spaghetti western idea and completely turning it around."

Will he ever make up his mind? "Soon. In the last couple months I've been going back and forth about it. I went back to my gut. Is it a sell out? What is it I like about this movie? ... It's so tongue in cheek. It's so ridiculous. But once I started putting people in my mind and saying what if I put Malkovich in this role then what does this movie become? Now let's put this producer and director on it and think about how it plays out. Then it becomes fun. Now I love that movie. If you have a great filmmaker come in then suddenly these gags and characters become interesting."

Ah, yes. This should go over well. Our pals over at Film Threat have compiled their annual Frigid 50, which lists the Hollywood movers and shakers who have ceased to move and shake us thanks to their "overbearing personalities, poor career choices and chronic inability to stop making fools of themselves." It's a great antidote to the smarmy lists like "100 Most Powerful People" or "25 Entertainers of the Year" or whatever.

This year's list includes Katherine Heigl for twice publicly dissing the writers who have made her career; Al Pacino and Robert De Niro for their regular appearances in terrible movies; and the Star Wars franchise for grievances too numerous to mention.

And in the #1 spot: Heath Ledger. I quote:

"Why so deceased? Heath Ledger was an actor on the climb, albeit a rather subtle one, to the upper ranks of his profession.... There's no way Ledger wasn't aware of the buzz around his -- admittedly -- bravura performance as the Joker.... And yet, even with a career reaching its apex and a young daughter, he ended up overdosing on a s***load of painkillers and antidepressants. We'd love to cry for someone cut down in his prime, but clearly Ledger didn't appreciate what he had, or the journey he took to get there.... If this were any other person than the guy who played the Joker and mumbled through Brokeback Mountain, we'd probably be nominating him for a Darwin Award right about now."

OH SNAP! Take that, promising young actor who died tragically!

With the news that the musical score from The Dark Knight has been disqualified from Academy Awards consideration on the grounds that too many people were credited with composing it, outrage against the Academy's stringent, complicated rules has erupted afresh. In the interest of fueling this indignation and making the world an angrier place, let's take a belligerent march down memory lane and look at seven other controversial disqualifications.

The Jazz Singer disqualified for being a talkie. When the very first Academy Awards were held in May 1929, honoring films released between August 1927 and July 1928, everyone was talking about The Jazz Singer -- the first feature-length movie to use recorded sound in some of its talking and singing scenes. So great was the attention that the Academy disqualified the film from the inaugural Best Picture category, reasoning that its use of sound put it on an uneven playing field against the films still stuck in silence. Instead, the Academy gave Warner Bros. a special award "for producing The Jazz Singer, the pioneer outstanding talking picture, which has revolutionized the industry." It's true, too! I don't know if you've noticed, but pretty much all movies nowadays have talking in them.

Young Americans disqualified from Best Documentary category ... after it already won. Whoops. This is a sad case, and a unique one. The documentary, about the peppy Young Americans show choir, won the Oscar at the 1969 ceremony for being the best feature-length documentary of 1968. But a few weeks later, the Academy discovered that the film had screened at a theater in October 1967, making it eligible for that year's awards and not for 1968. The Academy actually took back the Oscar statues from the filmmakers, Alex Grasshoff and Robert Cohn, and gave the award to the film that had been first runner-up. When Grasshoff died earlier this year, his widow told the Los Angeles Times how heartbroken he'd been. Can you imagine?

I'm going to attempt to write this as spoiler free as possible, saddened that as a Cinematical blogger, I inevitably ruin every single movie for myself.

According to The Guardian, Baz Luhrmann was reportedly convinced to change the ending of Australia after "intense discussions" with 20th Century Fox. Early test screenings were quite negative towards the original ending which is, apparently, quite a downer. Now, you'll save on Kleenex, because it's being rewritten for everyone to live happily ever after. (You're probably saying "Just say what the ending is, it's not a spoiler if it's changed!" but I don't want to take the risk. Please don't blab it in the comments, either.)

Over at Rope of Silicon, they say Fox insists Luhrmann has the final cut, and his vision is being respected. If the ending has been changed, it's because he wanted to change it. So there's both sides, and I guess we'll be able to put two and two together after we see the film. To add a little extra credence to this story, the fact that The Australian was reporting as of Halloween that the film still wasn't done suggests the ending could be one of the final difficulties. The Guardian only mentions a rewrite, and not a reshoot, so let's hope they filmed some alternate versions in order to avoid further delay. Now that I've lost The Road, I'm counting on The Drover to brighten up Thanksgiving weekend.

A few new images from the film were also just released, and we've added them to our brand new Australia gallery below. The ending might be changed, but she certainly is a beauty to look at.

I'm not exactly sure where IMP Awards dug up this alternate poster for Kevin Smith's Zack and Miri Make a Porno, but for my money, it's an equally creative and eye-catching way to sell the stars compared to the current stick-figures-and-'Porno'-free campaign ... a campaign which, it should be said, hasn't stopped the flick from grossing $20 million by this past weekend, which is about on par with most of Smith's recent work and (again) not bad for an advertising angle that didn't push either his name or the faces of leads Elizabeth Banks and Seth Rogen.

Besides, I really don't think the bright colors and cute animals would have led anyone to believe that the (admittedly sweet) Zack and Miri falls in line with, say, Happy-Go-Lucky, but we'll honestly never know if swapping colors for controversy would've had the same effect. (Hey, I still think that the Canadian poster would've done just fine.)

Check out this new (cutesy?) poster after the jump ...