Woody Allen sues American Apparel.

From CHUD, a little more info on Jason Segel and Nick Stoller's muppet movie.

Apparently their Muppet film is going to be incredibly old fashioned, with the familiar Muppet characters putting on a show to save an old theater (the theater from The Muppet Show?). The danger? An evil character wants to tear the place down to get at the oil underneath. It's sort of current!

I have no idea what is going on in this poster.

UPDATE: Looks like the video is no longer available. You can see the Smart People trailer here instead.

UPDATE 2: Maybe the video is available after all. Either way, go here to view the director of this films reel. He has been responsible for some of the best commercials in recent years.

Mos Def has been cast as Chuck Berry in writer-director Darnell Martin's Cadillac Records. Gabrielle Union (Ugly Betty) has also been added to the cast as Geneva Wade, the girlfriend/wife of Muddy Waters, who is being played by Jeffrey Wright. The 1950s period film is about the seminal Chicago record label Chess Records and its founder, Leonard Chess, who started out selling albums out of his Cadillac. Berry, Etta James, Muddy Waters, and Howlin' Wolf are among the legends who recorded on the label. Adrien Brody has already been cast as Chess, and Cedric the Entertainer (Willie Dixon), Columbus Short (Little Walter), and Beyonce Knowles (who is portraying James) are also on board.

A new, pocket sized trailer for David Mamet's Redbelt. This one plays down the fighting competition that the last clip featured, instead focusing on the usual David Mamet trademarks such as his snappy dialogue and a plot filled with too many twists and turns to even count.

Jason Bateman is directing Fox's multicamera comedy pilot The Inn, starring Niecy Nash (Deputy Raineesha Williams on Reno 911) and written by fellow Arrested Development alum Abraham Higginbotham. The project is described as an Upstairs/Downstairs comedy set at a hip New York hotel.

Will Arnett has joined Josh Duhamel, Jon Heder, and Kristen Bell in the romantic comedy When in Rome, which Mark Steven Johnson (Ghost Rider, Simon Birch) is directing from a screenplay he co-wrote. The movie, which also features Anjeica Huston and Dax Shepard, is about a successful, single New York real estate agent (Bell) who flies to Rome for her sister's wedding and, after picking up magical coins from the Trevi Fountain, is barraged by male suitors when she gets back home. Arnett will play an Italian artist suitor who follows Bell's character home from Rome. Heder plays a street magician who courts Bell, while Shepard plays a self-absorbed suitor also chasing after her.

Paranoid Park

Remember checking out books from the school library, sometime before high school when going to libraries still meant something, and finding what you consider the perfect book to spend the next week with? These were never important works of literature or even anything that delved deeply into the human soul but it was something you were interested in and sometimes these stories hid deeper truths about something you were experiencing. This is exactly how Paranoid Park is. It helps that it is based on a Young Adult novel but writer/direct Gus Van Sant has taken something that is on the surface a fairly basic story and turned into something a bit deeper and with a little more resonance.

I guess you could call this an expansion of Van Sants "Death Trilogy" (Gerry, Elephant, Last Days) since this is still a story line based around a passing. The film also features long, laborious takes in slow motion but Van Sant has sort of melded his more European aesthetic (I call it European because I can't think of another description to the almost plot less, minimal films he has been making) with his early film about street punks and hustlers. He seems to take all of his cinematic tricks he has learned throughout his career and throw them into this picture, even using not one, but two Elliot Smith songs on the soundtrack. And like the trilogy before it, there is a dreamlike presence, almost as if the central character is asleep as he walks through his life, dealing with the terrible accident he has been a part of.

Van Sant tends to cast young non-professionals who seem natural and a bit stiff, relaxed and guarded at the same time. He captures the inexperience of real adolescents, who are many times way over their heads, even if they aren't aware of it. There is not on recognizable name or face in the cast and the film better for it. The teenagers sound like teenagers and the parents come across just as confused as the kids.

The main problem with this film is that like his other three films of the trilogy, Paranoid Park is good but you don't really want to see it again. While this is the most accessible of the group (and the shortest at just under 80 minutes) it can still border on becoming tiresome to someone who is not a fan of this kind of film, I just happen to be one.

Ice Cube is starring in and producing the urban comedy Janky Promoters, which will be developed from a script he wrote. This is the first script Ice Cube has writte since he penned the final installment of the Friday movies. The story is about two music promoters who get the chance to book a top-tier hip hop artist at a California venue , but their ineptitude causes everything to go wrong. Cube will star with another actor as the promoters, and they would like to get a big name hip-hop artist to star as himself. Although Cube has found success of late with family comedies (Are We Done Yet?, Are We There Yet?), this apparently will be an R-rated affair.

Director Oliver Stone has now cast James Cromwell to play George Herbert Walker Bush and Ellen Burstyn to play former first lady Barbara Bush in W, the drama about the formative years of their son, President George W. Bush.

Josh Brolin is playing the title character, and Elizabeth Banks will play first lady Laura Bush.

Cromwell will now have played a prince (Philip alongside Helen Mirren in The Queen) and a president. As well as a farmer who teaches a pig to be a sheepdog.

Tron
by freres-hueon

I came across this over at Ricky Gervais' blog for This Side of the Truth.

From last nights Mavs game against the woeful Los Angeles Clippers. Stick around at least until you hear Dirk issue the unknown (to me anyway) basketball term, shortbus.

Elizabeth Banks (The 40-Year-Old Virgin) is in final negotiations to play First Lady Laura Bush in director Oliver Stone's George W. Bush biopic, W. Josh Brolin is already on board to play Bush. Stone, who wrote the screenplay with his Wall Street co-writer Stanley Weiser, has said the biopic will present a fair and accurate portrait, focused on things like his relationship with his father, President George H.W. Bush, his wild younger days, and his conversion to Christianity.

Probably the best Tom Cruise impression I've ever seen. It goes on a little too long though. I guess it is a clip from that Superhero Movie.

Watch the trailer for Eddie Murphy's next film, Meet Dave, and tell me it doesn't look like the worst movie of the year. I dare you.

Yahoo has the domestic trailer for Harmony Korine's Mister Lonely. It features the first view of Werner Herzog (though still no info on his part in the film) as well as the first look at skydiving nuns.

Sigourney Weaver, Jeanne Tripplehorn, and J.K. Simmons (who was great in Juno) have joined the cast of actor Tim Allen's directorial debut, the comedy Crazy on the Outside. Allen stars as an ex-con who tries to get his single-mom parole officer (Tripplehorn) to date him. Weaver plays his loving but manipulative older sister, and Simmons is her sarcastic, taunting husband. Ray Liotta, Kelsey Grammer, and Julie Bowen also star.

Learn and see more here.

JoBlo is introducing a new series called The Money Shot, highlighting the best scenes in movie history. First up for them is this scene from Boogie Nights:

Paramount Vantage has optioned the Sudhir Venkatesh book Gang Leader for a Day and set Craig Brewer to direct and Sopranos scribe Michael Caleo to write the script.

Venkatesh is a Columbia U. professor, and Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets recounted years he spent chronicling a crack-dealing gang in Chicago for a research project. He befriended the Black Kings and their leader and was invited to observe close up. Venkatesh found a close-knit group whose corporate culture was much like that of a successful legitimate business. Venkatesh was given the job of calling the shots of the criminal enterprise for a day.

James Gandolfini will play the mayor of New York City in the remake The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three, directed by Tony Scott and starring Denzel Washington and John Travolta.

Gandolfini will play a politican under incredible pressure to end a crisis when a packed subway car is ransomed by a criminal (Travolta) and his gang.

James Marsden, Catherine Keener and Tracy Morgan (that is a strange trio of names to be mentioned together) are in final negotiations to star opposite Jake Gyllenhaal and Jessica Biel in David O. Russell's romantic comedy Nailed, written by Russell and Kristen Gore.

The Hollywood Reporter says Marsden will play small-town the boyfriend of Biel's character Alice, a naive waitress who gets a nail shot into her head, causing erratic and outrageous behavior. She heads to Washington to fight for better health care and ends up falling for a clueless new congressman (Gyllenhaal) who must summon the political courage to save her.

Keener will play a self-serving Congresswoman. The filmmakers are finalizing details on Morgan's character, who will likely be an injured compatriot of Alice's who has given up on love.

From Ricky Gervais' blog again, Jason Bateman has been cast in This Side of the Truth. Joining Gervais, Tina Fey, Christopher Guest, Rob Lowe, Louis CK, Jonah Hill, Jennifer Garner, Jeffrey Tambor, and pretty much anyone else that has ever been funny at any point in their lives.

A nice UK poster for Lars and the Real Girl that makes Ryan Gosling's feet look gigantic.

Henry Cavill ("The Tudors") has joined the cast of Woody Allen's untitled romantic comedy, which has started production in Queens.

Cavill plays a man who is set up with Evan Rachel Wood's character by her mother. Larry David also stars as Wood's love interest (Ha!).

The script, written by Allen, is being kept under wraps. Allen also is co-starring and directing.

Leonardo DiCaprio is reteaming with producer-director Ridley Scott for the dark thriller The Low Dweller. The duo will produce the movie, with DiCaprio also attached to star and Scott eyeing it as a directing vehicle. Relativity Media acquired the project from a spec script by first-time writer Brad Ingelsby that launched a heated bidding war. The story, set in mid-1980s Indiana, is about a man (DiCaprio) who tries to assimilate into society after being released from prison but has to contend with someone from his past chasing after him to settle an old score.

From Hollywood Elsewhere:

The most reasonable-sounding plot rumor so far concerning Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino (certainly more palatable than yesterday's near-ridiculous return-of-Dirty-Harry idea, which was floated by an AICN guy who claimed a certain inside knowledge due to a car deal that went south) has been posted by Film Jerk's Edward Havens.

He's heard it will be "a simple, quiet and compelling drama about Walt (Eastwood), a rural bigot who finds his outlook on life changed after a family of Hmong immigrants move in to the home next to his own, striking up a friendship with Tao, the family's teenaged son, over the older man's classic car."

Right off the top this sounds like a near-perfect Eastwood film -- quiet, soulful, moralistic, dealing with redemption -- and exactly the sort of thing that will do well in the '08 awards derby. I love the fact that the fast-moving Eastwood hasn't even shot this thing yet, and yet plans to have it out by December a la Million Dollar Baby.

The terms Hmong and Mong refer to an Asian ethnic group from the mountainous regions of southern China. Hmong currently live in several countries in Southeast Asia, including northern Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, and Myanmar.

I also liked this, posted in the comments section on the very same story.

Eastwood is doing a live-action version of "King of the Hill?"

I am posting this photo from Zac Efron's next film 17 Again for one reason, which you will see below.




It's like I'm looking in a mirror.

Adam Brody and J.K. Simmons have joined the cast of Jennifer's Body, Diablo Cody's follow up to Juno.

Karyn Kusama is directing the dark comedy/horror film starring Amanda Seyfried and Megan Fox.

Cody's script centers on Jennifer (Fox), a cheerleader possessed by a demon who starts feeding off the boys in a Minnesota farming town. Her bookish best friend (Seyfried) must take drastic measures to protect the town.

William Monahan (The Departed) will write a fact-based thriller based on an article that will appear in Playboy later this year.

It's the story of a drug dealer who traded a prison sentence to go undercover at a maximum security hospital for the criminally insane, where he tried to get a serial killer to divulge the whereabouts of his victims.

The son of a police chief, Jim Keene fell from grace after he was caught dealing drugs. As an alternative to a 10 years-to-life sentence, he was allowed to cozy up to a man authorities believed murdered 25 young women. Only the prison psychiatrist knew Keene was undercover, plus a visiting "girlfriend" who was actually an FBI agent.

Paul Giamatti has been set by director Tony Gilroy to join Julia Roberts, Clive Owen and Tom Wilkinson in the Gilroy-scripted film Duplicity

Giamatti will play an industrialist engaged in a fierce game of corporate one-upmanship against a rival titan, played by Wilkinson. Roberts and Owen play two spies-turned-corporate operatives who work on opposite sides but are having a clandestine love affair. Billy Bob Thornton had been in talks for the businessman role. I'm a little upset about Thornton no longer being a part of this project, its been a while since he has had a really great role but if he is going to be replaced, at least it is with one of my other favorite actors.

The rumors circulating around the web right now are that the new Clint Eastwood movie, Gran Torino, will be a continuation of the Harry Calahan films (aka Dirty Harry). These are just speculations, I'll post more definite details once anything is released.

Jason Segel has talked with MTV Films about writing the next Muppet Movie. My favorite quote is below.

“I just want to go take it back to the early 80’s, when it was about the Muppets trying to put on a show. That’s what I’m trying to bring back.”

From Ricky Gevais' blog, the latest cast members to join This Side of the Truth.

Latest cast additions just confirmed - John Hodgman, Tina Fey, Christopher Guest, Jeffrey Tambor join Louis CK, Rob Lowe, Jonah Hill, Jennifer Garner.

Oh and me, Ricky Gervais, obviously. Not a bad cast for a comedy.

EW has the first look of Benicio Del Toro as The Wolfman in the film with the same name. They also have an interview with makeup artist Rick Baker, who designed the look of the creature.

Clint Eastwood will next direct and star in Gran Torino, which is already scheduled for a December release.

Torino marks the first time Eastwood has appeared on screen since Million Dollar Baby, released in late 2004.

Details of Torino are being kept secret.

This means Eastwood will be theaters twice in a short period with films he has directed. On Nov. 7, Eastwood's Angelina Jolie starrer Changeling, a child abduction drama, will be released.

Eastwood is also set to direct a Nelson Mandela picture, The Human Factor.

Arthur C. Clarke has passed onto the next plane. Hopefully it was everything he imagined it would be.

Who would have thought that after Arrested Development that Michael Cera would become the most successful actor from the cast. He is now in final negotiations for the starring role in the adventure romance Scott Pilgrim's Little Life. Edgar Wright (Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead) is directing the movie, which is about a young slacker (Cera) who meets the woman of his dreams but has to defeat her seven evil ex-boyfriends in order to win her heart. The story is based on the Oni Press graphic novel Scott Pilgrim Volume 1: Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life, written by Bryan Lee O'Malley. Wright adapted the screenplay with writer-actor Michael Bacall.

Want to see a trailer for a musical featuring no singing? I know, probably not but the link above takes you to the preview for the adaptation of Mamma Mia. This is how they tricked some people into seeing Sweeney Todd, people walking in not knowing the film even featured songs. Its sort of the same thing they do with foreign films, showing trailers that feature no dialogue. I do like how Pierce Brosnan continues to reinvent himself since starring in all the James Bond movies. Sort of coming across as this free spirited character in most of his recent films, much looser than anything he has played in the past.

The New Yorker has a clip from Errol Morris' next documentary, Standard Operating Procedure.

Be Kind Rewind

Since this is so later after coming out there is no real reason to review it, so I am going to borrow the opening paragraph from Roger Ebert's review of the film.

Michel Gondry's "Be Kind Rewind" is whimsy with a capital W. No, it's WHIMSY in all caps. Make that all-caps italic boldface. Oh, never mind. I'm getting too whimsical. Maybe Gondry does, too. You'll have to decide for yourself. This is a movie that takes place in no possible world, which may be a shame, if not for the movie, then for possible worlds.

Just to add my own thoughts, Michel Gondry's film is a nice, sweet little story with a few moments that actually tug on the heart strings. I wish this had come out sometime in the late 80's or early 90's. Not because of the antiquated technology involved but because it actually seems like a movie you would discover at a video store and watch some random Saturday afternoon.

I am currently reading an old article by ESPN's Bill Simmons about the Holy Trinity of The Karate Kid Trilogy. It's an older article and he is basically laying that he believes the original Karate Kid is one of the 15 best sports movies of all time (I agree with him) but is followed by two inferior sequels. Anway, this passage about part III made me laugh, most notable the mention of the villains performance, which is horribly over the top.

Since it wouldn't be a Karate Kid movie unless someone was trying to ruin Daniel-San's life, they created a plot centering around the millionaire friend of Creese, who fell on hard times after Zabka lost the All-Valley Karate Championship. Blaming Daniel-San, The Rich Guy (played in career-ending fashion by Thomas Ian Griffith) develops an elaborate plan to deceive Daniel and Mr. Miyagi, hoping to eventually destroy both of them. Honestly, I wish he had.

Gerard Butler, America Ferrera, Jonah Hill, Jay Baruchel and Christopher Mintz-Plasse will voice How to Train Your Dragon for DreamWorks Animation.

The comic adventure is set in a mythical world and centers on a scrawny teenage Viking who must capture and subdue a wild dragon.

According to Variety, Anthony Minghella's death was the result of a brain hemorrhage during a routine neck operation.

Steve Zahn (who delivered a career best performance in last year's Rescue Dawn) will co-star with Timothy Olyphant in writer-director David Twohy's (Pitch Black, The Chronicles of Riddick) action thriller A Perfect Getaway. The story is about two newlyweds on their honeymoon in Hawaii who run into two hikers who turn out to be vicious killers. Zahn plans a honeymooner while Olyphant plays one of the killers.

Wow, this is out of the blue. Oscar winning director Anthony Minghella has died. I will post more on this when more details are released (so far, nothing has been). I was never the biggest fan of his films but they always had an aura of quality about them. He executive produced last years Michael Clayton and has a film coming out later this year, The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, which has already been picked up to become a series on HBO. Like I said, more on this as details start to emerge.

Probably his most famous film was The English Patient which tells of a burn victim’s tortured recollections of his misdeeds in time of war and was later used as joke on a pretty bad Seinfeld episode.

It won nine Oscars in all, including best picture, best supporting actress for Juliette Binoche, and a raft of technical Oscars including best film editing, best costume design and cinematography.

Here is the full trailer for Ben Stiller's Tropic Thunder. I really hope they pull this off because this clip is actually funnier than I expected. Robert Downey Jr. is perfect here and hopefully Stiller is doing more than that one character he plays. You know the one, he has been him in basically every movie except Permanent Midnight.

More hard hitting questions from MTV's Josh Horowitz, who is probably the most annoying internet personality that covers movies. Charlize Theron's answer, however, does not annoy me.

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Jamal Woolard as Biggie Smalls in Notorious, the upcoming biopic of one Christopher Wallace.

I have been complaining about how difficult it is to view the "Red Band" trailer on the internet, wishing there was an alternative to entering your information which the site doesn't always recognize. It seems as though at least one theater chain also agrees with me. Regal Entertainment Group, has now decided to permit restricted, "Red Band" trailers in its multiplexes.

As an industry leader that operates 6,388 screens in 39 states and the District of Columbia, Regal's policy change likely will lead to similar decisions at a number of the nation's other major chains, adds the trade.

The MPAA's Advertising Administration, which oversees the advertising materials used by its member studios, approves two types of trailers for use in the theaters. So-called green band trailers open with a green advisory card that reads "the following preview has been approved for all audiences." Red band trailers, which only can appear before R-rated, NC-17-rated or unrated movies, warn that "the following preview has been approved for restricted audiences only."

Studios once used red band trailers routinely, but theaters dropped them after a 2000 Federal Trade Commission report criticizing the entertainment industry for marketing violent entertainment to children.

Further proof that somebody should case Jonah Hill in a Rodney Dangerfield biopic.

Ricky Gervais has a blog for his new film, This Side of Truth. There are only two posts at the moment but I have spent the last 30 minutes watching the various video clips and listening to the audio file. If the movie is anywhere near as funny as these entries then, well, the movie will be really funny.

Paramount Pictures will make an animated film inspired by the '70s sci-fi fantasy magazine Heavy Metal, with director David Fincher spearheading the project, reports Variety.

Heavy Metal will be stamped by the erotic and violent storylines and images that remain the trademark of a magazine that debuted in the U.S. in 1977. The magazine introduced the works of American artists and writers such as Robert Silverberg, Harlan Ellison and H.R. Giger.

The film will consist of eight or nine individual animated segments, each of which will be directed by a different director.

Fincher will direct one of the segments; Kevin Eastman, the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" co-creator who is now owner and publisher of Heavy Metal, will direct another. So will Tim Miller, whose Blur Studios will handle the animation for what is being conceived as an R-rated, adult-themed feature.

I have seen the original Heavy Metal animated film and it is mostly crap with a few amusing segments thrown in there. I don't know about the other two people mentioned above but I am excited about anything Fincher is working on.

AOL has a new, slightly different trailer for Pineapple Express. It is basically the same as the red band one that debuted a few weeks ago but with all references to weed and curse words taken out.

Disney has enlisted actor/screenwriter Jason Segel and helmer Nick Stoller to create the next Muppet movie for the studio, reports Variety. Segel and Stoller will write the script and Stoller will direct.

Segel, who graduated from Apatow-produced series "Freaks and Geeks" and "Undeclared" got his first sole writing credit on the Apatow-produced Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Universal wil release the film, which Stoller directed, on April 18.

In "Sarah Marshall" Segel's character writes a "Dracula" musical performed by puppets. Those cloth creatures were custom-made by the Henson puppeteers, and the experience emboldened Segel to pitch his concept for a Muppets movie when he was invited in for a general meeting with executive Kristin Burr. Segel got a deal in the room and enlisted Stoller to co-write and direct the project.

I love David Mamet, I don't love this poster.

In an earlier post I said that the original Hulk movie was the craziest big budget movie I have ever seen. I might have been wrong, the trailer for Speed Racer.

After months of rumors, Warner Bros. and the producers of the massively successful movies will announce Thursday that they plan to split Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling's seventh and final "Potter" novel, into two films -- one to be released in November 2010 and the second in May 2011.

The films will be titled, simply, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II. Director David Yates, who returned for his second time with Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and will direct both Deathly Hallows films, which will be filmed concurrently. Screenwriter Steve Kloves also returns and, by completion of the franchise, will have written seven of the eight films.

Rope of Silicon has a few stills from the upcoming Woody Allen film, Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

The trailer to the reboot/sequel The Incredible Hulk. I'll see this because I generally like Edward Norton in movies but am I the only person who liked the original Hulk? Not because its a good movie but because it is about the most fucked up, crazy big budget movie I have ever seen. Right when it seems like the normal place for the final action scene we are treated to basically a two man play with Nick Nolte and Eric Bana beautifully chewing the scenery. I looked for a clip for this scene on YouTube but alas, was unsuccessful.

Brendan Gleeson (In Bruges, Beowulf, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix) has been signed on for the final lead role in the untitled "Green Zone" thriller that Paul Greengrass is directing for Universal and Working Title.

Gleeson, who plays an American soldier, joins Matt Damon, Greg Kinnear, Amy Ryan and Jason Isaacs.

The film is a fictionalized drama inspired by the Rajiv Chandrasekaran book "Imperial Life in the Emerald City," and the drama focuses on the dichotomy between the Green Zone, where troops are housed, and the streets of Baghdad after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

A new, amazing, trailer for Wall-E has shown up over at the Disney site. Apple will host it too but at the time of this posting it had not shown up there yet.

I can not stress enough how good this movie looks. An almost dialogue free sci-fi animated film, it isn't very often you get to see something like that. And the animation feels almost real, looking like some sort of cross between films from the seventies and a movie from the future. I have a feeling Wall-E might become Pixar's most beloved character.

The upcoming I Am Legend DVD will feature the original theatrical ending and the much better alternate one. While alternate endings are nothing new to be featured on DVD's, Legend will allow you to watch the entire film with either one attached. This will probably actually convince me to pick up the disc, while the alternate ending is still not as good as the one in the original story, it is good enough to not ruin the film (something the theatrical version pretty much does). I loved the first two acts of this film and Will Smith's performance and I am curious to know how it all plays and fits together with this news finale. Now if they could just go back and have real people in make up playing the "dark seekers" instead of the horrible CGI creations they currently have.

A decent collection of Paul Thomas Anderson movies. The start of this doesn't really fit thematically but then it settles into a nice groove. The mash up also shows the leaps and bounds that PT Anderson made from making Punch Drunk Love to There Will Be Blood. Comparing all these clips almost makes it seem like it was made by a completely different director, yet somehow fits into the canon of all of his work.

There Will Be Blood is scheduled to be released on DVD April 8, with a choice of two editions: bare bones and a 2-Disc collector’s edition. The two disc set will include a couple of deleted scenes, a teaser and trailer, and something called Dailies Gone Wild. Disc Two will also include a vintage 1923 silent movie called the The Story of Petroleum, which will feature parts of Johnny Greenwood's score over the footage

Gone Baby Gone producers Ben Affleck and Sean Bailey are re-teaming for Miramax's movie adaptation of Marcus Sakey's debut novel, The Blade Itself, which Esquire magazine named one of the five best of 2007. The story is about two friends who grew up in Chicago committing petty crimes together. As they grew older, their paths diverged, but when they are reunited later in life, one has to decide how far he's willing to go to protect their secrets from the past. Affleck, who both produced and directed Gone Baby Gone, is currently acting in State of Play for Universal.

The article over at the Hollywood Reporter doesn't say one way or another but I am assuming Affleck is setting this up to be his next directorial effort.

I have had this on my camera for about nine months now. It's not much but it is one of the weirdest things I have ever seen on a television. I never knew what to do with the clip so I thought I would post it here.

A preview for a preview.

I had virtually no interest in seeing this until Werner Herzog showed up in the trailer. Probably still not enough to get me to a theater but it's a start.

David Gordon Green On Casting And His "Judd Apatow Moment"

Justin Long has signed on to star opposite Alison Lohman in Sam Raimi's supernatural thriller Drag Me to Hell.

Raimi and his brother Ivan penned the screenplay, a morality tale about the unwitting recipient of a supernatural curse. Long will play the boyfriend of Lohman's character.

See my post below to know why I could be excited about this. Justin Long was the best thing about the last Die Hard movie and to see him try something different will, at the very least, be interesting. Plus, it will be exciting to see what Sam Raimi does in his first project post Spider-man.

I don't really know how to explain this but I am a huge Adam Sandler fan, even though I don't like most of his movies. I guess I am just a fan of any comedy actor who steps outside his comfort zone and tries to explore other areas of his persona. Probably why I wanted Dreamgirls to be better than it ultimately was, just to see Eddie Murphy in a great, dramatic role. As for Sandler, by far his best performance comes in Paul Thomas Anderson's Punch Drunk Love (a movie I seriously love) but he is also really great in Spanglish and last years Reign Over Me (a film I need to revisit). This is why I am so excited about Sandler's next starring role, in Judd Apatow's next directorial effort. Now, of course, this doesn't figure to be some sort of heavy dramatic role but Apatow is great at creating comic characters, whom are real and not one note performances. That is the thing lacking from most of Sandler's films. Apatow has also set up Seth Rogen and Leslie Mann to star.

Apatow, the sole writer on the project, is keeping the plot under wraps.

Vincent Gallo is joining Javier Bardem in writer-director Francis Ford Coppola's family drama Tetro.

Gallo will play the title character, a brother in a family torn apart by rivalries and betrayal. Alden Ehrenreich plays the younger brother who searches for him in Buenos Aires. Bardem plays an Argentinean literary critic, and Maribel Verdu plays Tetro's longtime love interest.

Originally Matt Dillon was set up to play the lead in this movie but I am not sure what happened. All I can find out is that he is no longer attached but no mention of why.

Here is the restricted trailer for Ben Stiller's Tropic Thunder. I like that all of these R rated comedies are allowing for their true nature to be shown on the internet, I just wish their was some other way to check someones age. I am never allowed into these sites, always saying my information is wrong. The only way to see these clips is if I pretend to be someone else and enter their info in instead of mine.

Not sure how long this will stay up but here is the Sigur Ros film, Heima, in its entirety.

Either this poster isn't anatomically correct or Jason Segel has very long arms.

For a studio designed big budget comic book movie poster, this one isn't bad.

The Playlist (which is slowly becoming my favorite movie related website) has an article up about David Gordon Green taking on Suspiria as his next project. While this was already mentioned below, what is interesting about the article is they go into the history or all the projects Green has been attached to in the past, including quite a few I had never heard of.

Doing some Snow Angels press, David Gordon Green talked to MTV and Shock Til You Drop about doing a remake of Suspiria, which he says he's already written and is ready to direct. The project is still only tentative, but here's what he's got to say so far:

(to MTV) “It’s an opportunity to take all artistic excellence and be inspired by what was a low budget Italian 70’s gore movie. Where the art world meets the violent and supernatural. I would love to get every geek that loves torture porn and every old lady in line to see ‘Phantom of the Opera’ to come and have this insane experience.”
(to STYD) "These Italian producers came to me about it, wanting to do a pretty amazing, ambitious, artistic (version). It could be pretty wild."

He also mentioned to STYD about a dream to start a direct to DVD genre label.

"Give me a couple million bucks to go explore some schlock. I'd like to be the next Roger Corman. He would have his hand in freakin' 'Piranha' but also in Fellini. I like that idea. I would love to do some genre stuff but also some crazy intimate, no-budget movies. That's my problem. I only have one me, and I have a limited number of years before I die, and the biggest problem is that I like to do a lot of stuff that has nothing to do with movies and movies are very time-consuming, so you have to make choices, and that's really frustrating."

Watchmen director Zack Snyder has posted the first full look at five of the superheroes in costume on the film's official site. You get Jeffrey Dean Morgan as The Comedian, Patrick Wilson as Nite Owl, Matthew Goode as Ozymandias, Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach and Malin Akerman as Silk Spectre.

And a blog.

Rapper Jamal Woolard (a.k.a. Gravy) has landed the lead in the biopic Notorious, based on the life of rapper Notorious B.I.G., killed in 1997. Woolard won the role after a nationwide search that began online in August, and stars Angela Bassett, who plays Biggie's mom, Voletta Wallace; Anthony Mackie (We Are Marshall), who's been cast as Wallace's rival Tupac Shakur; and Derek Luke (Antwone Fisher) as Sean Combs. George Tillman Jr. (Men of Honor) will direct the Fox Searchlight film, which begins shooting March 24 in New York City. In 2006 Woolard was shot in the butt on his way to an interview at NYC radio station Hot 97 but finished the appearance before being taken to the hospital. I guess that means he has street cred.

According to Variety Jason Reitman is attached to direct and Jim Carrey is aboard to star in the comedy Pierre Pierre.

Written by Edwin Cannistraci and Frederick Seton, the politically incorrect story centers on a self-indulgent French nihilist who transports a stolen painting from Paris to London.

For a while there it was looking like Jim Carrey's career was close to being over. Now he has this, Yes Man (directed by the somewhat interesting Peyton Reed), Robert Zemeckis' A Christmas Carol, and the dark comedy I Love You Phillip Morris all coming out within the next few years.

It will also be interesting to see how Reitman follows up his Oscar nomination for Juno. Will he push Carrey to actually create a character, or let him be his usual, over the top self?

Seth Rogen has signed on to star in the comedy Observe and Report which will be directed by Jody Hill. Hill co-wrote, directed, produced and appears The Foot Fist Way, which will be released May 30 in New York and Los Angeles before expanding June 6.

Observe and Report centers on Ronnie Barnhardt, a deluded, self-important head of mall security who squares off in a turf war against the local cops. Hill also wrote the screenplay.

Rogen and Judd Apatow saw Hill's The Foot Fist Way, at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, and invited him to the set of Knocked Up. Rogen and Hill struck up a friendship and Hill played a small role in Superbad.

Slashfilm has an alternative ending to I Am Legend up. This has been showing up and then disappearing all over the internet today so there is a chance it won't be available later. I really loved the first two thirds of this film until it really went down hill in the final act. While this ending doesn't live up to the finale in the original book it is better than the original ending. You still have the crappy looking CGI vampires but the message here actually caters much more to that concept than the one we saw in theaters. The irony is, this alternate one is much more conventional than the downbeat ending in the theater.

UPDATE: I have embedded the clip below, not sure how long it will last though. Beware though, this is full of spoilers, considering this is a version of the ending.

Probably worth watching more for the clips than for its message.

EW has the first look at Ben Stiller's next directorial effort, Tropic Thunder. Starring Stiller, Jack Black, and that actor in the middle, which is Robert Downey Jr., who "plays Kirk Lazarus, a very serious Oscar-winning actor cast in the most expensive Vietnam war epic ever filmed. Problem is, Lazarus's character, Sgt. Osiris, was originally written as black. So Lazarus decides to dye his skin and play Osiris, um, authentically."

You can head over their website and read more about the film.

Japanese trailer for Harmony Korine's Mister Lonely.

Below is the red band trailer for The Foot Fist Way, which is the funniest two and a half minutes since, well, since I can remember. It also feature the strangest text and reason to see a movie that I have ever seen. Is it a good selling point? I don't care. Is it funny? Hell yes.

The YouTube clip may disappear at some point, you can also see the trailer over at the official site but I can't get past the age verification screen, so I have to settle for this.

One of the absolute best movies of last year comes to DVD tomorrow.