Liam Neeson and Orlando Bloom will star in an untitled pic based on Bill Carter's book "Fools Rush In."

Javier Bardem is in talks for a supporting role.

Brazilian helmer Andrucha Waddington ("Me You Them") will direct.

Carter wrote the book about the period of time when he lived and worked as an aid worker in Sarajevo during the bitter Balkans war siege that lasted 43 months.

Look at the poster and the still released today for Rian Johnson's The Brothers Bloom and tell me what is a little weird about them.

I don't find Dane Cook funny. Not a big shock I know, ragging on Dane Cook is about as original as saying the Star Wars prequels aren't as good as the original trilogy (hey, I still like them and watched part of Episode 1 last night). With that said, I did enjoy Cook in Dan in Real Life and I did find this post from his myspace blog fairly amusing. Not so much what he says but the simple fact that he is taking the studio to task for making a horribly photoshopped and bland movie poster.

Here are a few things that truly blow about my upcoming movie poster to promote the release of the film opening on September 19th:

1. Graphics:
Whoever photoshopped our poster must have done so at taser point with
3 minutes to fulfill their hostage takers deranged obligations. They should have called Donnie Hoyle and had him give a tutorial using “You Suck at Photoshop” templates. This is so glossy it makes Entertainment Weekly look wooden.

2. My head:
The left side of my face seems to be melting off of my skull. I guess I am looking directly into the Ark of the Covenant? Are they going for the bells palsy thing here? My left side looks like Brittany Spears’ vagina.

3. The Stare.
My character apparently has fallen in love with a strand of Kate Hudsons hair. Kate’s mannequin is desperately in love with the inside of my right ear while Jason is half stunned, half corsage.

4. Lips:
It looks like I’m wearing Maybelline Water Shine Diamonds Liquid Lipstick. My characters name is now Winter Solstice and I’m a hooker with a heart of gold. Jason is my floral carrying pimp, while Kate is my first trick!

5. Fashion:
My character is sporting a very high collar I mean damn they should be snow capped at that altitude. It’s going for the vampire lurking in the castle basement vibe. An Olympic pole vaulter would have a tough go clearing that collar. I’m also able to turn my head comfortably 180 degrees, because I was raised in an abandoned barn by a family of owls.

6. Flesh:
It’s no secret that I’m more rugged facially due to a drunken visit by the teen acne fairy, but according to this poster I’ve got perfect porcelain flesh. I look like the fuckin’ bathroom floor at Caesars Palace. One of Marie Osmond’s dolls would look at me and say “shit … that guys got flawless skin!”

7. Hair:
It’s actually a close up shot of Tom Sellecks Magnum P.I. mustache they photo-slapped on my noggin’.

8. The set:
Pick one. This entire film takes place:

A. on Gattaca
B. at the Fortress of Solitude
C. inside a crystal wind chime

9. The cast:
Alec Baldwin is so fucking funny in this movie! Is he on the poster? I think so. He plays the wise talking plant Jason is clutching.

10. Final thoughts:
I set out to make a movie like the contemporary men and women, that you and I respect, are making. My generation of comedians, actors, directors and producers that I wish to collaborate with as I build a solid body of work.

Granted, one poster stinking up the joint isn’t the end of the world. Yet it sends the wrong message about our movie and I just wanted you to know, that I feel the pain. I really love the film and I know from past missteps marketing wise that the wrong poster sends the wrong audience into the theater.

Thanks again for all of your support. If you have not seen the red band trailer (which is excellent and represents the flick accordingly) watch it below! Just click of the mute button and your rolling!

PS - “Its funny what love can make you do.” I just threw up all over this awful poster.
Wow, wait … it looks better.

Hey … I love my new movie. Jeez … it IS funny what love can make you do.

Willem Dafoe will star with Charlotte Gainsbourg in Antichrist, which will be directed by Lars von Trier (who is either great or annoys the hell out of me).

Anders Thomas Jensen wrote the script with von Trier. In the psychological thriller that evolves into a horror film, Dafoe and Gainsbourg will play a couple who retreat to an isolated cabin in the woods following the death of their child.

George Clooney has bought the rights to Jonathan Mahler's legal thriller "The Challenge," about the long campaign waged by U.S. Navy lawyer Charles Swift and Georgetown law professor Neal Katyal to ensure a fair trial for Salim Hamdan, the bodyguard and driver of Osama bin Laden.

The project will be developed through Clooney and Grant Heslov's Smoke House shingle. As with any Smoke House project, "The Challenge" remains a potential directing, writing and starring vehicle for Clooney.

A spokesman for Clooney confirmed that no decision had been made yet on what exact role Clooney would take on the project, although I would assume that the role of idealistic lawyer Swift may prove a good fit for the actor.

Taylor Hackford (who made the pretty damn good Ray) will direct Tenn, a drama about the formative years of playwright Tennessee Williams, whose dysfunctional family life fueled some of his most acclaimed stage works.

The film focuses on how Williams' tumultuous upbringing -- complete with a scornful father, depression, conflicts about sexuality and watching his beloved sister institutionalized and lobotomized -- fueled the conflict in such plays as "The Glass Menagerie" and the Pulitzer Prize-winning "A Streetcar Named Desire."

Wes Anderson and Jason Schwartzman Shop for CDs and DVDs. Well, Schwartzman grabs every CD on the racks and Wes Anderson sort of wanders around aimlessly in the background.

This is from The Washington Post but I read it yesterday over at True Hoop.

The Olympics are just four days old, but the best quote of the Games has already been uttered, and there is a 0.000000 chance that it will be topped. This from colleague Michael Abramowitz's Style Section story about the Bush Fam this morning.

Meeting Team USA with Bush 43 before the game, Bush 41 gave a warm hug to Lakers star Kobe Bryant and received an affectionate greeting from Cavaliers hero LeBron James: "What's up, pops?" the massive James asked.

One way for a 23-year old pro basketball player to greet a former President might be "Hello, Mr. President." Another might be "What's up, pops." I'm done making fun of LeBron for the crying and the scowling and the wide-eyed disbelief. Anyone who breaks out the "What's up pops?" line is ok by me.

Here is something that sounds interesting. HBO Documentary Films has picked up An Omar Broadway Film, a first-person look at prison life shot by Broadway, an inmate at a high-security gang unit in Newark.

Broadway smuggled a video camera into his cell and for weeks secretly filmed riots and prisoner abuse through his small window.

HBO will give the film, which is co-directed by Douglas Tirola, a theatrical run in New York and L.A. for Oscar consideration.

Once expected to star Tom Cruise, the espionage thriller Edwin A. Salt will be redrafted by screenwriter Kurt Wimmer as a star vehicle for Angelina Jolie. Philip Noyce remains attached as director.

Jolie will play the title character, a CIA officer who's accused by a defector of being a Russian sleeper spy and must elude capture long enough to establish her innocence.

I am assuming the title will also be changed.

Two things about this video clip: 1. The jeans he is wearing are amazing.

2. Half the stuff he says aren't jokes, its just his delivery, and its great.

Bernie Mac is dead. While it comes as a shock, he apparently suffered from sarcoidosis, an inflammatory lung disease that produces tiny lumps of cells in the body’s organs.

I remember being a big fan of his sitcom during its first season, especially the first episode. After that I don't know if I lost interest or if the show changed but I barely ever watched it when it was on. Every now and then I would catch a rerun and always seemed to enjoy myself when watching.

As for his film career, he was making a nice little career as a character actor and I always thought he had something. I wanted to post something from Bad Santa below (probably his best performance, in my opinion) but I couldn't find the right scene. So my next thought was to show his scene with Matt Damon in Ocean's 11, when Mac says that they "ought to call it white jack," and then does this little motion with his hand, waving off Matt Damon. I have always loved that motion. I couldn't find that either. This will suffice though, a nice little departure for the man.



And one more. This is the first I can remember seeing Bernie Mac. Though I didn't know who he was and only realized it was him when catching this a few years ago on cable. Here he is in all his glory.

The New York Times Magazine sat down with the two stars of David Gordon Green’s Pineapple Express recently for a couple of interviews.

Brad Pitt has officially signed on to star in Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Bastards.

Additionally, Nastassja Kinski is in early talks to play one of the sole female roles in the film.

Simon Pegg, David Krumholtz and B.J. Novak (which I mentioned yesterday) are also in talks to join the project. Pegg would play a British lieutenant, while Krumholtz and Novak would play Pitt's underlings.

Saw Pineapple Express for the second time last night (read all about the first time here) and I have to say it might be my favorite movie I have seen all year. With due respect to The Dark Knight, I'm not sure I've had a better time watching a movie in these past 8 months than I did last night. Not only hilarious (it was actually funnier the second time I saw it and I even caught a Seinfeld reference early in the first act) but an honest to goodness action film that I didn't really want to end, even though that final scene is perfect. I think Ben said it best last night that the movie never stops being funny, even when the bodies start to hit the floor, something most action/comedies never get right. And if there was any justice in the Academy Awards we would all be talking about James Franco's eventual nomination as best supporting actor, right alongside Heath Ledger. He really is that good.

USA today has an article and photo gallery of what is my most anticipated movie of 2008, The Road. Directed by John Hillcoat, who made the amazing The Proposition, it stars Viggo Mortensen, Charlize Theron, Robert Duvall, and Kodi Smit-McPhee. The film is based on Cormac McCarthy's novel of the same name, which is one of my favorite books of all time. Hence the anticipation.

In what may be even stranger casting than the reported Eli Roth yesterday, B.J. Novak could soon be going from pushing paper to fighting Nazis is in talks to play one of the soldiers in Inglorious Bastards, Quentin Tarantino's film about a band of Jewish resisters in France.

The trailer for Role Models, which used to be called Little Big Men. It stars Paul Rudd, Sean William Scoot, Christopher Mintz-Plasse and is directed by one of the former members of The State.

Easily the best thing Paris Hilton has ever done, besides this of course.

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

MSN has the trailer up for what has now become one of my most anticipated movies, Appaloosa. Directed and starring Ed Harris, it also features Viggo Mortensen, Renee Zellweger, and Jeremy Irons.

Frat boy director Eli Roth (Hostel) is set to play a baseball bat-swinging Nazi hunter in Inglorious Bastards, the Quentin Tarantino-directed drama that begins production this fall in Europe.

Brad Pitt is in talks to play Aldo Raine, leader of a rogue band of Jewish-American soldiers who wreak havoc on the bad guys in Nazi-occupied France.

Roth is in talks to play Sgt. Donnie Donowitz. His only other acting experience is a small role in Tarantino's Death Proof.

Emile Hirsch, Imelda Staunton and Liev Schreiber have joined the cast of Ang Lee's next film, Taking Woodstock. Apparently there were a bunch of other names that have already joined the cast that I didn't know about but I will get to them below.

The picture is an adaptation of the memoir of Elliot Tiber, who played a role in helping the historic 1969 music fest unfold on his neighbor's farm.

Demetri Martin ("The Daily Show With Jon Stewart") has already been cast to play Tiber, an aspiring interior designer in Greenwich Village obliged to run the family business, a Catskills motel. In summer 1969, he found himself at the center of a generation-defining experience when he volunteered the motel to be the home base for Woodstock concert organizers after his neighbor, Max Yasgur, made his farm available for the event.

Staunton and Henry Goodman will play Tiber's parents, and Jonathan Groff will play Woodstock organizer Michael Lang; Hirsch will play a recently returned Vietnam vet, Eugene Levy (my God, Eugene Levy in an Ange Lee film!) will play Yasgur, and Schreiber is in talks to play a transvestite named Vilma.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan is set as a closeted married man having an affair with Tiber, while Paul Dano and Zoe Kazan play a hippie couple attending the concert. Dan Fogler will play a local theater troupe head, and Mamie Gummer will play Lang's assistant.

Roger Ebert like Pineapple Express. He sort of really liked it, giving the film 3 1/2 stars out of 4. Here is his opening paragraph, you can read the whole review here.

David Gordon Green, that poet of the cinema, is the last person you'd expect to find directing a Judd Apatow male-buddy comedy about two potheads who start a drug war. But he does such a good job, there's a danger he'll become in demand by mainstream Hollywood and tempted away from the greatness he showed in "George Washington" and "Undertow." (I can imagine his agent hiding this review from him.)

Also, the closing talks a little about how Green's style translated into the Apatow universe and Ebert shows how much he respects DGG's work.

Two teams have met to make this picture: the Apatow production line, and Green and his cameraman Tim Orr, soundman Chris Gebert, actor Danny McBride and others he met at the North Carolina School of the Arts. As always, even in their zero-budget first effort, Green and Orr use wide-screen compositions with graceful visual instincts, although you may be excused for not noticing them, considering what happens. The movie even transcends the usual chase, this time between two squad cars. To my amazement, I found it exciting and very funny, especially the business about Saul's leg.

"Pineapple Express" is the answer to the question, "What would happen if a movie like this was made by a great director?" This question descends directly from those old rumors that Stanley Kubrick was going to make a porn film. Give it a moment's thought. And I suspect Green of foiling Apatow's vow to include at least one penis in every one of his comedies. This time, it's not a penis, but a finger, and a good thing, too.

I earlier posted the trailer for Rachel Getting Married and now The Playlist points out that the groom in the title's wedding is none other than Tunde Adebimpe, lead singer for TV on the Radio. Image from The Playlist.

One of my favorite current actors, Mark Ruffalo will make his feature directing debut on Sympathy for Delicious.

Ruffalo will star with James Franco and Chris Thornton.

Thornton, who wrote the script, plays "Delicious" Dean O'Dwyer, a paralyzed DJ struggling to survive in his wheelchair on the streets of L.A. He turns to faith-healing and mysteriously acquires the ability to cure the sick -- although not himself. Ruffalo plays a Jesuit priest who tries to help him come to terms with the limits of his gift, and Franco a rock singer in a band that exploits the suddenly famous healer.

David Gordon Green, Will Ferrell, Adam McKay, and Jody Hill will all direct episodes of the Danny McBride starring comedy for HBO. It's about an epic downwards spiral of a major league pitcher. (via Coming Soon)

The trailer for Jonathan Demme's (Silence of the Lambs) Rachel Getting Married. It looks, well, it looks like any number of movies with a topic like this (troubled child coming back home for some event) but does feature the return of Debra Winger.

This is a strange source to remind me but over in the comments section of Hollywood Elsewhere someone mentions that the reason Christian Bale's Batman voice is so digitally manipulated and course is that he is using a voice cloaking device. I had forgot but they actually show him putting this into the mask in Batman Begins, which explains why he even uses the voice around people who know who he is.

Via AICN.

I also read somewhere that Philip Glass will be doing the music for this. I would provide a link to the original source but its Sunday and I am too lazy to go searching for it.

I think they are using the same hand written font that the advertising for Juno used.

Nicolas Cage and director John Carpenter are going to team up for a prison thriller titled Scared Straight.

The film follows a troubled youth who's sent to prison off the Scared Straight crime-prevention program, which imprisons delinquent teens for a short period in the hopes of deterring them from a life of crime. While the teen is there, a riot breaks out and the prisoners take him hostage. A lifer, played by Cage, is forced to help the young man out. I really hope Cage adopts a southern accent for this one, like he did for no reason in Con Air. That's one of the funnies movies released in the last fifteen years.

The trailer for this makes it look better than it probably is. Barry Levinson has made some really great movies (Rain Man, Wag the Dog) and some really bad ones (too many to name) so there is no way to really know where the quality lies with this one. Shouldn't it be about time for Robert De Niro to have another good movie too? What was his last one? I can't even think straight right now.

Hung, which is my most anticipated new television show due to the Alexander Payne involvement, has cast Thomas Jane (The Mist, Punisher, a really great turn in Boogie Nights) as the lead. Jane will play a basketball coach with an enormous penis.

Payne will direct the pilot for HBO.