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Prepare to meet your economic dystopia of a future in this harrowing profile of Michael Ruppert.
For the full review, click here.

• The Box
Richard Kelly's most accessible work yet, a mysterious and compelling Christmas thriller.
For the full review, click here.

• Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire
Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire - Searing race drama -- Oprah- and Filmcritic.com-approved!
For the full review, click here.

• The Fourth Kind  
A smart-ass mockumentary in the Blair Witch vein, with alien abduction as the conceit.
For the full review, click here.

• Turning Green
Another lazy and underdeveloped coming-of-age movie, this one set in 1979.
For the full review, click here.

At the premiere of The Box in New York Wednesday night, as you may have noticed if you follow AMC News on Twitter, we had some laughs. The movie is a thriller from Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly, and it centers around this question: Would you let a stranger die in exchange for a million dollars? That moral dilemma is at the center of this film, and it was a question many on the red carpet were talking about.

The Box is an adaptation of the 1970 short story "Button, Button" by author Richard Matheson (I Am Legend) that first appeared in Playboy magazine. Did stars Cameron Diaz, James Marsden or the other cast members ever think they'd appear in a movie that had its roots in a nudie magazine? Watch my Opening Night Report to find out.

• Sacha Baron Cohen has set up his own production company to produce film projects. First up, a movie where he plays a Latino ambulance chaser. Over-the-top antics and hilarious accents will no doubt ensue.

• Bradley Cooper is replacing Shia LaBeouf in Dark Fields, the upcoming thriller from the director of The Illusionist. Uh oh! Has the LaBeouf's la-luster worn off?

• The creative team behind High Fidelity could reteam for Lay the Favorite, a gambling comedy set in Las Vegas. But will John Cusack and Jack Black be involved?

• Anna Faris, Dan Aykroyd, and Justin Timberlake have signed on for a live action/CGI Yogi Bear movie. Aykroyd would voice Yogi, while Timberlake will take on Boo Boo. Odd, we would have pegged Aykroyd as more of a Park Ranger Smith type.

• The new trailer for Brothers, the war drama starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Tobey Maguire, has been released. This one definitely takes a weird turn. It starts out like Grace is Gone, and ends up like The Stepfather.

• Wal-Mart is slashing the prices of a number of upcoming DVDs to $10, creating a potential price war. This is serious business -- $10 is way too much to pay for G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra.

Continue reading "The Newsdesk 11.06.09 - Timberlake in Yogi Bear; Cooper Replaces LaBeouf in Dark Fields" »

• Slumdog Millionaire director Danny Boyle will tackle the true-life drama 127 Hours, about a  mountain climber who cut off his own arm in order to survive an expedition.

• The first teaser trailer for Salt, the twisty spy drama starring Angelina Jolie, has turned up online. Angelina is blonde? And starring in an action thriller? OK, that second part isn't all that surprising.

• Disney is developing another Three Men and a Baby sequel. If the second outing was Three Men and a Little Lady, what will this one be titled? Three Geriatrics and a Graduate Student?

• Anthony Hopkins could be playing Ernest Hemingway in a biopic. Is Chris O'Donnell really the only actor who's ever played him on the big screen?

• John C. Reilly and Mary-Louise Parker have now joined the cast of Red, the comic book spy thriller starring Morgan Freeman, Bruce Willis, and Helen Mirren. Willis will be the aging black ops spy forced to do battle with much younger, deadlier agents. Taking on young whipper-snappers is something Willis can do in his sleep.   

• A TV version of the upcoming disaster blockbuster 2012 is already in the works. The show will be set in 2013 and deal with the aftermath of the disaster depicted in the movie. Place your bets now on whether it will be on the air long enough to see the actual 2012.

• Jerry Bruckheimer claims to be confident that Johnny Depp with return for a fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Looks like we're going to find out who is the more powerful force: Depp or Bruckheimer?

• In other Johnny Depp news, the actor is in talks to costar with Angelina Jolie in The Tourist. The movie is (you guessed it!) a spy thriller with Jolie playing a female Interpol agent to draws Depp into a world of intrigue.  

Continue reading "The Newsdesk 11.05.09 - Danny Boyle to Direct Mountain Climbing Story; First Peek at Angelina Jolie in Salt" »

You'd expect a host of eccentric and colorful characters in an indie movie about the folks behind a traveling carnival, and the quirky comedy Splinterheads nails them all like darts in a balloon. But it's the film's grounded sense of realism that gives it a heart, thanks in part to a supporting performance from Lea Thompson. The actress tells AMCtv.com this return to big screen is just the beginning.

Q: You're probably the most normal character in Splinterheads...

A: I usually get all these weird characters, and they're all different and fun for me, but you're right, Susan is relatively normal. It wasn't the part that attracted me, just that Splinterheads was such a lovely script. I think the movie turned out to be quite funny, and not in a way that comes naturally to me, that dry humor. My comedy instincts tend to be bigger. It was a lot of fun to shoot. We had a carnival set up right outside our dressing rooms, and since they didn't have a lot of money for extras, they kept the carnival running. I love really crappy carnivals, where you think the ride is going to break. There's something so seedy about them.

Q: You have a lot of independent films that you're about to release -- such as I Was A Seventh Grade Dragon Slayer. Are you orchestrating a comeback?

Continue reading "Q&A - Lea Thompson Admits She Likes the Seedy Side of Splinterheads" »

• Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin have been selected as hosts of the 2010 Academy Awards Ceremony after Ben Stiller and Robert Downey Jr. turned the gig down. Why can't all four host? It's happened several times in the past. In 1976, it was the motley crew of Warren Beatty, Ellen Burstyn, Jane Fonda and Richard Pryor.

• The first poster images for Clash of the Titans have been released. While intriguing, Liam Neeson shouldn't be wearing that silly armor. He's a god, for crying out loud.

• The first trailer for How to Train Your Dragon, the upcoming Dreamworks animated fantasy romp, has been released. A better title would be "How to Make a By-the-Numbers Shrek Cash-In."

Continue reading "The Newsdesk 11.04.09 - Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin to Host Oscars; First Clash of the Titans Posters" »

Last week Australian rapper N'fa, of hip-hop collective No Fixed Abode, released a music video that was directed by actor Heath Ledger. N'fa and Ledger had been friends since childhood and the clip for N'fa's song "Cause An Effect" is believed to be Ledger's final directorial work.

The three-and-a-half minute music video was shot in 2007 at Ledger's beach house in the Australian town of Bronte, a beachside suburb of Sydney. A few days before the production, Ledger woke N'fa at 5AM with a surprise phone call and an idea for the video. According to the rapper, Ledger wanted to do an "artistic" video that had "a kind of a revelatory kind of feel about it."

Continue reading "Aussie Rap Video Directed by the Late Heath Ledger Hits the Net" »

"If we don't make our own stories, then no one will," said Mira Nair before her Amelia Earhart biopic Amelia kicked off the inaugural Doha-Tribeca Film Festival, held from Oct. 29 through Nov.1 in the Persian Gulf nation of Qatar. The Indian-born Nair was talking to a diverse outdoor crowd of more than 5,000 viewers -- a combination of locals, expats, celebs, foreign dignitaries, and a healthy contingent of international industry and press. So Nair's "we," much like the festival itself, encompassed a broad range of identities.

While many of the 30-plus movies screened by the Doha Fest presented the latest work from Middle Eastern filmmakers (including Asghar Farhadi's Berlin Best Director winner About Elly and Bahman Ghobadi's Cannes award-winner No One Knows About Persian Cats), the program also reflected an effort to showcase films about women, often of the headstrong variety: Besides Amelia, the slate included Jane Campion's Bright Star, Anne Fontaine's Coco Before Chanel, and Lone Scherfig's An Education, among others.

Movies exploring the East-West connection were also prevalent, including Ruba Nadda's touching romance Cairo Time, featuring Patricia Clarkson as a married American in Cairo falling for a charming Egyptian (played by Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's Alexander Siddig), and Liz Mermin's Audience Award-winning documentary Team Qatar, about the country's first national high school debate team, coached by a team of Oxford grads.

Continue reading "Robert De Niro, Martin Scorsese, and Mira Nair Help Inaugurate Doha-Tribeca Film Festival" »

• District 9 crossed the $200 million mark, with talk of a sequel brewing. Unfortunately, it won't be for a while. Those alien costumes are tough to make.

• George Clooney is in talks to star in The Descendants, the next movie from writer/director Alexander Payne (Sideways). Has it really been five years since Sideways?

• Owen Wilson has signed on for the title role in Marmaduke, a live action/animated version of the long-running comic strip about a giant dog. Sadly Wilson will just voice the animated dog, not actually dress up in a dog suit.

• The first trailer for Prince of Persia, the adaptation of the hit video game starring Jake Gyllenhaal, has been released. It basically looks like The Mummy, but with more jumping.

• The Berenstain Bears are coming to the big screen courtesy of the director of Night of the Museum. Hopefully it will finally solve the mystery of why bears are allowed to wear human clothes. Seriously, has the mom ever not gone out in public in her nightgown?

Perhaps the funniest part of the utterly insane trailer for Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans is the on-screen text that reads, "From director Werner Herzog." And if the idea of the acclaimed director making a sequel to one of the darkest cop movies of all time isn't enough to get you on board, Nicolas Cage's crazy antics just might do the trick. We know Cage's rogue cop is trouble from the very first scene, when he mocks a drowning criminal with partner Val Kilmer (who goes neck-and-neck with Cage in the awkward hairpiece department). This extended trailer suggests the sequel follows a more straight-forward redemption arc than the original (Harvey Keitel never talked about having a life goal), but it doesn't cop-out on the dark stuff either: Cage has no qualms about teaming up with criminals and getting loaded on the job. Plus, you can't beat any movie that includes a conversation between Cage and Kilmer about iguanas, or the soon-to-be-classic line, "Shoot him again. His soul's still dancing."