Wow.  Between the work crews showing up at my house every morning at 8:00 right now to work on rebuilding the master bathroom and this rotten chest cold and the codeine-based cough syrup I took to keep from cracking a rib last night, I'm getting a very late start on things today, and I'm sorry about that.  And I've got to get out of here for my first screening of 2009, David Goyer's "The Unborn."

Even so, there's always time for The Morning Read.  Let's see what's going on out there today.

I always knew Harry was a cartoon character.

Quint, still working on his AMAD column, followed the Neil Simon/Richard Dreyfuss connection over to "Lost In Yonkers."  Only three more after today.  Such a shame.

Over at Variety, there's some actual content today.  I know it might not be a huge deal to non-Latin audiences, but a Cantinflas biopic actually sounds pretty good to me.  This guy was one of the biggest movie stars in the world, but because of his accent, he remains unknown to a huge percentage of the movie-going public.

I'm not shocked to learn that Pegg and Frost are co-starring in "TinTin."  I'm just shocked it took this long to be officially confirmed.

Cinematical has the first still from Apatow's "Funny People" now.

Devin at CHUD published a good piece about how the failure of "Speed Racer" and the success of "The Dark Knight" may have combined to kill "Shazam" as it moved through the development process at Warner Bros.  It's all basically one long link to John August's blog, but that li'l extra bit of Devin makes his article worth a look.

Probably the coolest thing I've stumbled onto all day was at /Film, where a reader submitted a link to a LiveJournal entry that is basically a walk through all of the empty standing sets from "The Wire," left in place even after the show wrapped.  It's beautiful stuff, one of those happy accidents, and I highly recommend it for any fan of the show.

Over at Trailers From Hell, Jesus Travino takes on "The Magnificent Seven," and it's a good one.

Are you familiar with Kevin B. Lee?  He's been working ona  major critical project for a while now that is like Quint's AMAD column, but on a larger scale, and with a very particular focus.  He's been working his way through all 1000 films on this list, an admirable goal, to be certain.  He's reviewing them all as he goes, too, and he's within spitting distance of the end of the project now.  #946?  "Before The Revolution" by Bertolluci.

And lastly, if you really want to be depressed about just how far an icon can fall, check out Bloody-Disgusting, where they ran a promo trailer for Romero's latest "Dead" movie.

Wow.  Ouch.