Off in fantasy land, Hollywood brings financial villains to justice

The economy's cratering—75,000 jobs lost this week alone—and everyone's looking for someone to blame. Hollywood to the rescue!
  Studios aren't claiming to have the answer to the mortgage meltdown or the deepening financial woes, but they will gladly finger-point, in their movies, in the general direction of international banks and Bernie Madoff-like characters. At least on screen, the baddies will get their comeuppance.
  The International (trailer above), coming Feb. 13 from Columbia Pictures, co-stars Clive Owen and Naomi Watts as the heroes taking on a global bank that has murder, arms trading and government overthrow on its to-do list. Twentieth Century Fox, after many stops and starts, has hired a screenwriter for the remake of Wall Street that will see "Greed is good" believer Gordon Gekko in over his scheming head. Baz Luhrmann will take on The Great Gatsby to show the errors of excess. And Mean Girls director Mark Waters is working on a film called Minimum Wage, where a cheating exec is forced to do penance by living on next to nothing.
  Still to be determined: if these flicks will be too painful, hit too close to home, or provide just the catharsis that struggling moviegoers need.

—Posted by T.L. Stanley