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If you've been waiting for a fresh spin on the so-called war on terror, Essential Killing should tick several boxes: specifically the box marked 'Vincent Gallo' and the box marked 'going postal'.
Gallo gives an almost wordless (and sockless) performance as bearded detainee Mohammed in the film. He's captured and interrogated in an unspecified country and transported to the wintrier surrounds of Eastern Europe. In this clip he's given the chance to escape when his convoy comes to grief and if you're Dr Richard Kimble, it might bring back a memory or two.
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It’s clearly Gangster Day at Warner Bros. And by that we don’t mean the staff are running around waving imaginary Tommy Guns or that the marketing team is sending members of the cafeteria staff to the morgue (that’s the Chicago way, after all). No, the studio is flashing the green light for LA-set thriller Gangster Squad and looking to make a film about the early years of crime legend Al Capone.
After a long search for the right director, Warners set Zombieland director Ruben Fleischer to make the movie about LA mobster Mickey Cohen and the crack team of cops that was formed to take him down.
According to Deadline, the studio is now after Sean Penn to play Cohen, an ex-boxer who palled around in the 1940s with the likes of Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel and who liked to be seen as a man about town with a girl on his arm. But he was also a capricious sort with a violent temper.
No wonder the LAPD wanted to take him down – and if the company has its way, Ryan Gosling will be playing one of the law enforcement types looking to stop his reign of pleasure/terror. Ex-cop Will Beall adapted the script from a series of LA Times articles by Paul Lieberman.
And Cohen is not the only mobster who may get the movie treatment, though Al Capone has been in the spotlight before. Warners is now looking at Walon Green’s Cicero, which chronicles his formative years, which Harry Potter veteran David Yates may direct once he’s finished work on the final Hogwarts adventure. No firm offers are out to either actor on Gangster Squad or Yates for Cicero, so these are lingering strictly under the flashing neon rumour sign for now…
Source: EmpireOnline
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While we’ve been treated to a teaser, a trailer and the Superbowl spot, actual clips of scenes from Thor have been few and far between. But with the film scheduled to arrive next month, all that is changing and now we’ve been treated to a glimpse of hero Chris Hemsworth’s less-than-comfortable arrival on planet Earth.
Still, while he has a rough and disorientating ride, he does at least have Natalie Portman on hand to check if he’s injured. Plus, there’s Kat Dennings, who brings the jokes and… well, you’ll see.
It’s not a lot to go on, but it’s something more than the quick-cut promos we’ve mostly seen to date.
Directed by Kenneth Branagh, Thor finds Hemsworth’s impetuous, arrogant Thunder God cast out by his father, Odin (Anthony Hopkins) from Asgard. Stranded on Earth, he’ll not only have to figure out how to live among us mortals, but also deal with a threat from half-brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston), who decides to use Asgard’s darker forces to invade our little planet.
Check out the clip below and let us know what you think.
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Thor is out on April 27. Here's what Tom Hiddleston had to say about the film on Sunday.
Source: EmpireOnline
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There have been some ups and downs with the project, but it looks like a film about Gambino crime head John Gotti Sr, son John Gotti Jr and their family is finally getting set to shoot with John Travolta signed on play John Gotti Jr.
Nick Cassavetes is also locked in, directing what is now called Gotti: Three Generations, which focuses on the younger Gotti, whose mother tried to keep him and his three siblings away from their father’s criminal career. While he initially seemed to be keeping to the straight and narrow with jobs in trucking and construction, he’d really been working his way up the ranks of the crime family and ended up a made man in 1988.
Both of the Gotti men spent time in the slammer, with Jr serving nine years for charges including racketeering and gambling. These days, he insists he’s turned his life around and is working on the film as a producer. Travolta has been rumoured as the top choice to play him for a while now.
Fiore Films has set up the financing for the film, which has been written by Leo Rossi with Cassavetes shooting in New York next month.
Source: EmpireOnline
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Before you start thinking that Martin Campbell and the team behind this summer’s Green Lantern have suddenly decided to throw in a whole batch of extra scenes at the last minute, rest easy: Geoffrey Rush is indeed part of the Lantern cast, but only vocally, as he’s voicing key corps member Tomar-Re.
For those unfamiliar with the comics lore, Re was a scientist recruited to the Green Lantern corps from the planet Xudar. An alien mash-up of both fish-head and bird’s beak, he’s quick to befriend new recruit Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds) and helps train him to use his freshly acquired ring and its powers properly.
It’ll be Rush’s second big film this summer: he’ll also, of course, be seen back in buccaneer garb for Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides as he reprises Captain Barbossa.
The LA Times has broken word of Rush’s casting, while Latino Review has heard – but not yet confirmed – that Michael Clarke Duncan will voice hulking fellow Lantern Kilowog.
Green Lantern finds Reynolds’ test pilot chosen to join the intergalactic space force, and must quickly learn to use his powers to save the Earth from threats both within and without. The film also stars Blake Lively, Peter Sarsgaard, Mark Strong and Tim Robbins.
The film is out on June 17.
Source: EmpireOnline
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Len Wiseman has Colin Farrell as his Quaid in the Total Recall remake, and has been busy seeking a couple of female leads. Now it would seem he’s also tracked down a villain for the piece, with Bryan Cranston negotiating to play Vilos Cohaagen.
Ronny Cox memorably brought the character to the screen in Paul Verhoeven’s 1990 action pic, as the brutal man in charge of a Mars colony threatening to slaughter the residents in his quest for power.
But the Heat Vision blog’s report mentions that Wiseman’s take will instead see Farrell’s Douglas Quaid as a factory worker in a nation state called Euromerica who begins to think he’s a spy – either for his homeland or for rivals New Shanghai. This time around, Cohaagen is the leader of Euromerica involved in a dastardly plot to invade the other country.
Cranston’s a great choice for the role and has been doing amazing work on US TV series Breaking Bad. If we had any criticism of recent Matthew McConaughey legal thriller The Lincoln Lawyer, it’s that Cranston was criminally underused in it.
Wiseman will kick off shooting In Canada this May, and the film will be out on August 22 next year.
Source: EmpireOnline
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There are some people whose lives are just destined to hit the big screen. While many of us spend our days reporting to one job or curling up at night in front of the telly, others are out living lives of adventure and diplomacy. One such individual was Gertrude Bell, who may yet see her life brought to the screen by Ridley Scott.
If you’ve never heard the name, Bell was an influential figure in the years between the two World Wars, born to a wealthy family and educated at Oxford. Not one to waste her talents, she first got her drive to be involved in Middle East politics when she visited her uncle in Persia.
She ended up becoming a blend of photographer, diplomat, archaeologist and spy, and helped set the borders of Iraq following the fall of Turkey’s empire.
However, she clashed with the British government by standing up for Arab self-rule at a time when the UK wanted access to the region’s oil-rich fields. Things don’t seem to change much, do they?
While the era has been soundly chronicled in the likes of Lawrence of Arabia, this is a chance for Bell’s story to be told. Scott has hired The Constant Gardener’s Jeffrey Caine to start writing a script.
One person who might not be so pleased at the idea is Werner Herzog, who has been slowly putting together his own take on Bell’s life and has reportedly been courting Naomi Watts to take the lead.
Perhaps he can take heart from the fact that Sir Ridders has approximately 17 gazillion projects in his development hopper and surely can’t get to all of them right away. Especially since he’s a little busy with Prometheus…
Source: EmpireOnline
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Never one to avoid poking fun at his own reputation (though we sort of wish it hadn’t resulted in Last Action Hero), Arnold Schwarzenegger is getting into the spirit of one of his big recent nicknames, announcing that he’ll star in a cartoon series featuring him as a superhero called The Governator.
Yes, his first big casting announcement since leaving the California governor’s office last January is not that he’ll be teaming back up with Sylvester Stallone or James Cameron, but that he’ll work with Stan Lee to produce a ‘toon.
“When I ran for governor back in 2003 and I started hearing people talking about ‘the Governator,’ I thought the word was so cool,” the Austrian Oak tells Entertainment Weekly. “The word Governator combined two worlds: the world of politics and the movie world. And this cartoon brings everything together. It combines the governor, the Terminator, the bodybuilding world, the True Lies…”
Lee, a man who also knows a thing or two about promotion, seems delighted to be getting full access to Arnie’s life for the show. “The Governator is going to be a great superhero, but he’ll also be Arnold Schwarzenegger. We’re using all the personal elements of Arnold’s life. We’re using his wife. We’re using his kids. We’re using the fact that he used to be governor. Only after he leaves the governor’s office, Arnold decides to become a crime fighter and builds a secret high-tech crime-fighting centre under his house in Brentwood.”
He’ll apparently have the full, Batman-style set of toys, including vehicles and power-suits. Oh, and if you were thinking it couldn’t sound more like a ‘70s series, he also has a set of “colourful sidekicks,” including a teenage hacker. All he really needs now is a wacky animal. Wonder what Snarf’s up to these days, besides the new Thundercats animated show…
Source: EmpireOnline
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Lionsgate has just announced a new initiative for getting "micro-budget" films into production. One of the first filmmakers to benefit will be Wolf Creek director Greg McLean, who's heading to 6 Miranda Drive.
The film, budgeted like its eventual stablemates at under $2m, is described as a supernatural thriller in the Poltergeist vein, and involves a family unwittingly bringing a spooky horror back with them from their holidays. That's actually more or less the same set-up as the Japanese sequel to Paranormal Activity, but this one is "based on a true story". Are we bored of "based on a true story" yet?
Spin aside, Wolf Creek was terrifying, so we've high hopes that McLean can extract some memorable chills from his meagre finances. He's done it before after all. Sadly though, it looks as if 6 Miranda Drive, for the time being, is in the way of Wolf Creek 2. We're not sure we were quite recovered enough from last time to go there anyway...
Source: EmpireOnline
