Tom Hardy cast in unspecified role in Chris Nolan's third "Batman"

British character actor Tom Hardy (pictured above with rapist tattoo), who proved what a formidable talent he was with 2009's Bronson and got a major push into the mainstream with his scene-stealing in Christopher Nolan's Inception this year, has now joined the cast of Nolan's sequel to The Dark Knight, according to Deadline. No one knows what role he'll be playing, but it's not unreasonable to think it'll be the villain, the identity of whom is still anyone's guess (although given Hardy's skill at playing wiseasses, I'd guess the Riddler if it came down to it). Filming is set to begin next spring for a summer '12 release.

Trailer for Peter Weir's "The Way Back"

Earlier in the year, six-time Oscar nominee Peter Weir's The Way Back, a true story of several escapees from the Soviet gulag who managed to walk from Siberia to India, was being looked at very closely as an Oscar contender, both in terms of its direction and its phenomenal cast, including, among others, Jim Sturgess, Ed Harris, Saiorse Ronan and Colin Farrell. Then it was announced that despite its prestige, the film would not be released until January, which is pretty much a bullet in the head for reasonable Oscar hopes. Then, earlier this week, it was announced that the film would have a one-week qualifying run at the end of December, and today a trailer has been released, which doesn't showcase too much of the acting but is heavy on the gorgeous-looking direction and cinematography. Given his longtime "always a bridesmaid" status at the Oscars, I've heard rumblings about this being Ed Harris' big break if the movie can make enough of a splash, so we'll see.

New poster and trailer for Danny Boyle's "127 Hours"

After Danny Boyle's resounding Oscar triumph two years ago with Slumdog Millionaire, he's almost assuredly got another darling on his hands with his latest, the James Franco-starring 127 Hours. The film, which received raves on the festival circuit for Boyle's direction and Franco's performance (and also reportedly caused at least one panic attack), is the story of rock-climber Aron Ralston, who found himself trapped beneath a boulder in the mountains of Utah and was forced to hack off his own hand to escape. ANYWAY, now we've got not only a striking, minimalist new poster for the film, but an extended trailer, which showcases what looks to be a phenomenal performance from Franco (although c'mon, "of all time"? Give it some time to give it context, Kanye West-sounding film critic whose name I didn't catch), as well as what looks like a neat narrative conceit to deal with the fact that it's essentially a one-man show. 127 Hours opens on November 5th; here's the trailer.

Utterly unnecessary "The Secret in Their Eyes" Americanization in the works

Billy Ray, writer of State of Play and its fellow quality journalism drama Shattered Glass, has been tapped to write and direct an Americanized remake of 2009's Argentine Best Foreign Language Film winner The Secret in Their Eyes (El secreto de sus ojos), an edgy crime thriller I am ashamed to admit I've never seen. I have to say this seems completely needless, and part of the latest Hollywood alternative to original ideas, remaking good movies for people who think subtitles are, like, totally gay. (Yes, Let Me In was surprisingly good, but I'm still not entirely convinced there was any reason it needed to be made) In contrast to the original's late '90s setting, Ray's remake will be set in the present, as well as in America, due to the relative lack of A-list Argentine-American actors.

Emma Stone cast as Gwen Stacy for some reason

This weekend, I reported that funnier, less insane Lindsay Lohan robot Emma Stone had been offered the role of the similarly-tressed Mary Jane in Marc Webb's reboot of the Spider-Man franchise. Now according to The Playlist, Stone, who, scandalously, is a natural blond, has been instead offered the role of earlier Spider-Man fling Gwen Stacy, who, aside from being played by a mostly wasted Bryce Dallas Howard in Spider-Man 3, is probably most famous for SPOILERS!!!!!! getting dumped off a bridge to her death by the Green Goblin*. Stone's a good enough actress that I'm not too bothered by this; given the movie's apparent back-to-basics approach, it's possible, if not entirely probable, that it will eschew Mary Jane entirely, since she wasn't actually introduced until several years into the comic.



*And also that time several decades later when it was "revealed" that Norman Osborn, the Green Goblin's civilian identity, had seduced her and impregnated her with twins. This was every bit as awful as it sounds.

Badass new full "True Grit" trailer

After last week's shorter teaser trailer, today we get a full trailer from Yahoo! Movies
for the Coen Brothers' hotly anticipated adaptation of Charles Portis' True Grit, this time giving us a better look at Jeff Bridges' Rooster Cogburn, Matt Damon's Texas ranger LaBoeuf, and Josh Brolin's villainous fugitive murderer Tom Chaney, as opposed to the greater emphasis on newcomer Hailee Steinfeld's Mattie Ross in the teaser. It looks exciting as hell, and the use of Johnny Cash's "God's Gonna Cut You Down" is brilliant, as is that last stinger after the title, a smaller bit of one of the original novel's most intense scenes. Needless to say, this has me excited to the point of incoherence.

You just hit the jackpot: Emma Stone offered Mary Jane to Andrew Garfield's Spider-Man

I've been iffy on the whole "Tobey Maguire and Sam Raimi walked so we're rebooting the franchise less than five years after the fact" thing, but I got a lot more excited when Andrew Garfield was cast as Peter Parker in Marc "500 Days of Summer" Webb's upcoming reboot. Now, more exciting news that I'm a little late to the punch on, Emma Stone, who just recently somehow scored a profitable opening for an intelligent comedy with a sharp female protagonist, is now being offered the role of Mary Jane Watson. Given the type of characters Stone has played thus far in her career, I'm hoping this means her interpretation of the character will differ from substantially from Kirsten Dunst's, which varied between "reactive" and "cipher". No word yet as to whether Stone has accepted, or what other supporting characters/villain the film will feature, but yeah, this has me excited. Now just get us Dianna Agron as Gwen Stacey and we're golden.

New posters for "True Grit" and "For Colored Girls"

I missed these while I was getting my review of The Social Network up, but today saw the release of both a neat, retro poster or the Coen brothers' awesome-looking True Grit and an impressive, artsy poster for Tyler Perry's play adaptation For Colored Girls (the title was shortened from the play's title "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide (When the Rainbow is Enuf)" because we all know Perry can't abide movies with long, awkward titles.) Check 'em out! (Click for full-size)

Review: The Social Network (A)

I don't know if I'm always successful, but I can at least tell you that I always try not to be pretentious on this blog, so it probably looks bad that I'm starting this review off with a Biblical quote, but while I watched David Fincher's The Social Network, my mind kept going back to Matthew 16:26, "For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" Specifically, in one of the movie's most brilliant scenes, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg), his eventual billion-dollar idea rapidly growing, approaches Erica Albright (Rooney Mara) in a bar. Erica, in the opening scene, broke up with Mark due to his bluntness and lack of social graces, which a drunk Mark had responded to with a furious, hateful blog post disparaging, among other things, the size of her breasts. Now, Mark is taking Harvard's campus by storm, strangers are stopping him to praise him for it, and he just had an Asian sorority girl go down on him, but none of this means anything to Erica, who still just remembers him as the asshole who humiliated her.

In that same night of drunk-blogging, Mark, with the help of his best friend Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield, doing Best Supporting Actor work), hacks into several Harvard dorms' databases of resident photos and creates a website in which students are asked to vote on which girl in random pairs is hotter. The firestorm of controversy (and Mark's returning sobriety) compel him to shut down the site, but the astounding amount of hits it got has clearly got his wheels spinning. Soon after, he's approached by WASPy rowing champions Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (Armie Hammer, digitally doubled) to help them create a Friendster-esque networking site that can only be accessed by someone with a harvard.edu email address (a none-too-subtle implication that the old-money twins don't want anything that's available to just anybody). Mark gives them the run-around while going to Eduardo with an idea of his own, which would, of course, eventually be Facebook. Eduardo, a business whiz who made a small fortune betting oil futures against the weather, puts up the money and the site becomes the next big thing almost immediately. Furious, the Winklevosses (or "Winklevi", asMark calls them) try to get academic, and then legal action taken against him (scenes of the deposition are intercut with the movie's main narrative). Eduardo, meanwhile, grows uneasy with what he perceives as both the growing rift between him and Mark and Mark's increasing closeness to between-jobs Napster founder Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake, giving a performance so charismatic and charming that we never really hate this thoroughly hateable character). As you might gather, by this point, Facebook is really an incidental element in the movie, a modern Greek tragedy about friendships, betrayals and ambition. Fincher proves his versatility by showing flashes of the spastic, claustrophobic direction of Fight Club and Seven, the relaxed, personal direction of Zodiac and the sprawling, landscape driven-angles of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. The acting is all-around brilliant, although the vast majority of the work is done by Eisenberg (who finally sheds the Diet Michael Cera shtick that has colored most of his other performances), Garfield (who has the tricky task of being a British actor playing a Brazilian-American Jew, and gives a furious rant at the very end that proves he's one of the next generation of great actors) and Timberlake, who is just way better than any pop star in a major supporting role has any right to be. And special mention must be made of Trent Reznor's score, perhaps the best use of original music as a separate character since Johnny Greenwood's score for There Will Be Blood. Well-traveled screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, meanwhile, may well be measuring the shelves for his Oscar already. And I know I started this review by saying I'd try not to be pretentious, so it probably hurts my case to close by comparing this movie to The Godfather Part II, but try to watch the movie's brilliant final scene without thinking of Michael Corleone alone in his chair. And now some cheesiness to offset the pretension: Zack Budryk really, really likes this.