casLike a leprous pervert advancing on the chained victims in his dungeon, production on X3 moves ever closer. The film, which has transcended the "troubled" monicker and become a full blown Brett Ratner movie, has added some of the final pieces of the casting puzzle – last week some dude was hired to be Angel, and this week some chick was hired to be Kitty Pryde.

Kitty made cameos in the past films, but in this movie she’ll be a much more fully featured character, playing Chris Rock to Daniel Cudmore’s Colussus. The actress who was hired to play geekdom’s favorite phasey Jewish girl is Ellen Page, who I guess is a Canuck. The actress, who at 15 is ripening past Dave Davis’ interest, appeared on the Canadian TV show Trailer Park Boys and in the film Hard Candy.

The movie starts filming next week in Vancouver (Fox, send me there! I love that town! And I will be totally nice to Brett Ratner and let him get the best hookers!), but some footage has been shot – San Francisco and Alcatraz Island will be seen in scenes shot just for the trailer.

X3 is hurtling toward a May 26th release date like an out of control simile.