Your Valentine’s Day treat: the Nymphomaniac theatrical trailer
Volume I of Lars von Trier’s eight-chapter, two-film chronicle of a self-diagnosed nymphomaniac’s sexual experiences will finally come to VOD on March 6th and theaters on March 21st after an intriguing marketing campaign that has already provided increasingly risqué “appetizers” for chapters 1-4 and 5-8. Early reviews have been good. After a surprise screening at Sundance, filmmaker Craig Johnson’s mom gave the film a thumbs up, and the Berlin Film Festival screening of the longer, uncut version got excellent, good, and not as good as the edited version reactions before being overshadowed by Shia LaBeoufery. Enjoy.
A teaser for Tammy
Written by the husband and wife team of Ben Falcone and Melissa McCarthy, and directed by Falcone, summer comedy Tammy stars McCarthy as a woman who’s having a terrible day: she loses her job and her car, and catches her husband cheating. She needs to get away, but her only option is her grandmother, played by Susan Sarandon, who wants to see Niagara Falls. This short teaser is all McCarthy, but the film, coming to theaters on July 2nd, has a great cast that also includes Allison Janney, Gary Cole, Mark Duplass, Toni Collette, Nat Faxon, Dan Aykroyd, and Kathy Bates.
Scarlett Johansson goes dark
Jonathan Glazer (Sexy Beast, Birth) returns to feature filmmaking for the first time since 2004 with Under the Skin, a loose adaptation of Michel Faber's 2000 science fiction novel about an alien (Scarlett Johansson) tasked with capturing humans for her home planet. The film received both boos and cheers at the Venice Film Festival last year, and its unique visual (some scenes where filmed with up to eight cameras) and aural (the score is by Mica Levi of Micachu & the Shapes) qualities are on display in this first official trailer. Look for it in select theaters beginning April 4th.
Another Transcendence trailer
Christopher Nolan’s cinematographer of choice, Wally Pfister, moves into the director’s chair with this story of Dr. Will Caster (Johnny Depp), an artificial intelligence researcher whose mind is uploaded into a computer after an assassination attempt by a group of anti-technology extremists. The strong supporting cast includes Rebecca Hall, Paul Bettany, Morgan Freeman, Kate Mara, Cillian Murphy, Clifton Collins Jr., and Cole Hauser. The script is the first from Jack Paglen, who has since been hired to write Prometheus 2. Transcendence hits IMAX and conventional theaters on April 17th.
Think Like a Man Too
With Kevin Hart getting a majority of the accolades being thrown at this week's About Last Night, it must be pure coincidence that the first trailer for the sequel to Think Like a Man happens to be premiering today as well. Director Tim Story returns—as do writers Keith Merryman and David A. Newman—with a story that finds the cast (Romany Malco, Regina Hall, Michael Ealy, Taraji P. Henson, Meagan Good, Jerry Ferrara, Gabrielle Union, Gary Owen, La La Anthony, Adam Brody, Janina Gavankar, and Wendy Williams) in Vegas. Think Like a Man Too hits theaters June 20th.
Paul Walker in Brick Mansions
In this remake of the French action film District B13, Paul Walker, in one of his last roles, stars as a Detroit cop who teams up with an ex-con (parkour expert David Belle, reprising his role from the original) to take down a gang headed by RZA. Camille Delamarre (the editor of Taken 2 and Lockout) takes over directing duties from Pierre Morel, but the script comes from the same writers, Luc Besson and Bibi Naceri. Brick Mansions hits theaters on April 25th.
A first look at The Two Faces of January
Drive screenwriter Hossein Amini makes his directorial debut with this adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s 1964 novel about a vacationing American con artist and his wife, played by Viggo Mortensen and Kirsten Dunst, and a Greek-speaking American tour guide (Oscar Isaac) who gets involved with the couple and caught up in a murder. The Two Faces of January premiered at the Berlin Film Festival to good but not great reviews, and it still does not have a U.S. release date.
Nicolas Cage is Joe
Many critics saw last year’s Prince Avalanche as a return to form for director David Gordon Green. This year he gets to prove the critics right with this adaptation of Larry Brown’s novel about an ex-con (Nicholas Cage) who is just trying to stay clean until he meets a kid (Tye Sheridan) he wants to protect. Good reviews greeted the film when it premiered in Toronto last fall. Joe comes to select theaters on April 11th.
The Purge: Anarchy
The Purge made almost $90 million worldwide, which is not a bad return on a production budget reportedly near $3 million. Naturally, that means there's a sequel: The Purge: Anarchy. Writer-director James DeMonaco returns, but this time the action moves to the streets as a young couple (Zach Gilford and Kiele Sanchez) are stranded outside on that fateful night after their car breaks down. Frank Grillo and Michael K. Williams also star. The Purge: Anarchy hits theaters on June 20th, just a year and a few weeks after the original debuted at number one at the box office.
A first look at Drive Hard
Drive Hard is not the sequel to Drive Angry (or Drive for that matter), but it does have a pretty great, ridiculous trailer. John Cusack stars as a thief who takes a driving lesson from an ex F-1 champion played by Thomas Jane, so he can force him to be his getaway driver. The pair bicker and bond as they try to avoid the police and mobsters. It looks like a bit of fun from Brian Trenchard-Smith, the man behind BMX Bandits, Leprechaun 3 & 4, and, of course, Tyrannosaurus Azteca starring Ian Ziering. Look for Drive Hard in theaters and on VOD later this year.
Double the fun with Jesse Eisenberg
Submarine director Richard Ayoade’s second feature, The Double, stars future Lex Luthor Jessie Eisenberg as Simon, a timid, lonely man whose life is thrown out of balance with the arrival of a new co-worker, James (also Eisenberg), who is both Simon's physical double and his opposite— he’s confident, charismatic and able to catch the attention of his dream girl, played by Mia Wasikowska. Ayoade adapted Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novella with Avi Korine (brother of director Harmony Korine) and directs an impressive ensemble that includes Wallace Shawn, Noah Taylor, Sally Hawkins, Chris O’Dowd (Ayoade’s costar in The IT Crowd), Yasmin Page, and James Fox. Look for The Double in select theaters beginning May 9th.
Jodorowsky’s Dune
It is considered one of cinema's great unmade movies. Long before David Lynch adapted Frank Herbert‘s sci-fi novel Dune, Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky had his own vision of what the book could become, but due to various factors, it never came to fruition despite extensive pre-production work. Decades later, Frank Pavich's new documentary looks at what might have been. Early reviews have been very good for Jodorowsky’s Dune, which comes to select theaters beginning March 7th.
Quick notes: Rumors, release dates, casting news and more
- Everything is awesome (and funny) in this fake blooper reel for the Lego Movie.
- Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Seth Rogen will re-team with director Jonathan Levine for an Untitled Xmas Comedy about three friends reuniting for Christmas Eve in New York City. - THR
- James Franco will direct an adaptation of The Disaster Artist by Greg Sestero and Tom Bissell, the story of the making of Tommy Wiseau’s The Room. - Deadline
- Anne Hathaway is in talks to play Robert De Niro’s boss in Nancy Meyers’s The Intern. - THR
- Jai Courtney and Boyd Holbrook are the favorites to play Kyle Reese in Terminator: Genesis. - Deadline
- Ed Skrein (Game of Thrones) will take over for Jason Statham in the planned reboot of the Transporter franchise. - Variety
- Salma Hayek will play Abigail Thomas, and John Travolta will play her husband who suffered brain injuries, in Nick Guthe’s adaptation of Thomas’ memoir A Three Dog Life. - THR
- Ron Howard is attached to direct Mena, the true story of 1980’s drug dealer and gun runner Barry Seal. - Deadline
- Christoph Waltz will star with Dane DeHaan and Alicia Vikander in Justin Chadwick’s 17th century Dutch drama, Tulip Fever. - THR
- Pablo Larraín (No) will direct a film about 1971 Nobel Prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda. - Variety
- Sam Worthington, Idris Elba, and Noomi Rapace will star in Alive Alone, the directorial debut of Khurram Longi. - THR
- Jennifer Aniston will star as woman obsessed with the suicide of a woman in her support group in Cake, with Daniel Barnz directing from a script by Patrick Tobin. - Variety
- Anne Fletcher (The Proposal, The Guilt Trip) is in talks to direct Reese Witherspoon and Sofia Vergara in Don’t Mess with Texas. - Deadline
- Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman (Catfish, Paranormal Activity 3 & 4) will direct an adaptation of Jeanne Ryan’s YA novel Nerve from a script by Jessica Sharzer. - THR
- Jack Black and James Marsden are set to star with Mike White and Nat Faxon in D-Train, an indie comedy about a high school reunion from Jarrad Paul and Andrew Mogel, the writers of Yes Man. - THR
- Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay will star in Weekend director Andrew Haigh’s 45 Years. - Variety
- Robert Schwentke (RED, R.I.P.D.) will direct Insurgent, the sequel to the upcoming Shailene Woodley and Theo James film Divergent. - Heat Vision
- Will Smith will not star in the planned sequels to Independence Day. - Deadline
- John Singleton, who directed Tupac Shakur in Poetic Justice, will helm the long gestating biopic about the rapper/actor. - Variety
- Julianne Moore, Ellen Page, and Zach Galifianakis will star in Freeheld for director Peter Sollett (Raising Victor Vargas) and writer Ron Nyswaner (Philadelphia). The film recounts the true story of police officer Laurel Hester’s struggle to give her pension benefits to her domestic partner. - THR
- David Yates’ live-action 3D version of Tarzan starring Alexander Skarsgård in the title role, Margot Robbie as Jane, plus Samuel L. Jackson and Christoph Waltz, will come to theaters on July 1, 2016.
- After test screenings of several alternate versions, Paramount will release director Darren Aronofsky’s cut of Noah on March 28th. - THR
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