Edward who? Robert Pattinson has made some smart post-Twilight choices. After working with David Cronenberg in the memorably weird Cosmopolis, the heartthrob actor has now gone completely off-road for Animal Kingdom director David Michod's gritty, violent follow-up, The Rover, which is shooting in the unforgiving Australian desert. And judging from this first still from the set, the bedroom-eyed actor's sparkly vampire days are well behind him. more »
Director John Hillcoat spent ample time in the the American South, the setting for his latest bootlegging drama Lawless. Starring Shia Labeouf, Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman, Guy Pearce, Jessica Chastain and Mia Wasikowska, the film is inspired by the true-life stories of Matt Bondurant's own family in his novel, The Wettest County in the World and adapted for the screen by rocker Nick Cave. Lawless begins its roll out in the U.S. Friday.
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Also in this afternoon's Biz Break: The breakout director of Animal Kingdom plots his next (possibly with the help of Robert Pattinson), Rupert Everett to direct himself as Oscar Wilde (with the help of a few friends of his own), and more...
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Here's the first trailer for Lawless, née The Wettest County in the World, a.k.a. the long-shelved Prohibition thriller featuring Shia LaBeouf, Tom Hardy, Jessica Chastain, Gary Oldman and Guy Pearce dealing in all kinds of low-down bootlegging shenanigans. Violence? Check. Romance? Check. Clipped, moody dialogue courtesy of Hillcoat's Proposition screenwriter/punk prophet Nick Cave? Hell to the check. Cannes competition, here we come!
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He's played cops, a count, Houdini, a time traveler, a king, and even a drag queen, but in this week's Lockout, Guy Pearce treads new ground as an all-out action hero -- not that he necessarily sees things that way. "People used to say that about L.A. Confidential," he recalled to Movieline recently in Los Angeles. "They’d go, ‘Wow, so you’re an action hero!’ I’d be like, action hero? It’s a ‘50s film noir!" Even still, after 20+ years of acting, most recently in a string of acclaimed supporting turns (see: The King's Speech, The Hurt Locker, Animal Kingdom, Mildred Pierce), it's only now that Pearce is laying claim to the title, guns blazing.
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The sci-fi action flick Lockout, directed by first-timers James Mather and Stephen St. Leger from a script they wrote with Luc Besson, features a scene in which characters somehow skydive out of orbit through the stratosphere to land, neatly and not even a little on fire, on an urban road. It isn't a sequence of events I'd ever have dreamed I needed to see on-screen, but boy, was I glad to.
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This week's Guy Pearce-starring, Luc Besson-produced Lockout might look like a run of the mill action pic -- that vague title doesn't help things -- but, as the film's opening scenes show, it's got a blustery '80s-style hero at its core and a punny sense of humor to move things along. Get a taste for the brawny bravado and hijinks to come in the film's first five minutes, viewable after the jump.
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In Seeking Justice, a man whose wife is assaulted and raped makes a deal with a mysterious vigilante organization that exacts revenge on his behalf but demands from him a favor to be named later. If you're thinking that sounds like something that will turn out to be a bargain he regrets, you are correct!
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Ridley Scott may or may not be spilling details on how Prometheus factors into the Alien franchise, but a new clip from the film sheds a few shards of light on the connection, and cleverly so: Watch Guy Pearce as Peter Weyland (CEO of Weyland Corporation, to become the future Weyland-Yutani Corp.) give a riveting TED Talk, circa 2023, promising a bright new future to the tech set.
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The first American trailer for the sci-fi thriller
Lockout makes eminently clear what the
hard-boiled European original elided a bit: This is as close to an
Escape From New York remake as any of us are likely to get.
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When Luc Besson isn't directing standing ovation-worthy biopics these days, the French filmmaker is busy co-writing action thrillers for his studio EuropaCorp to produce like Taken, Transporter, Colombiana and up next Lockout -- the sci-fi adventure flick that sees Guy Pearce as a wrongly-accused government agent whose only shot at freedom comes at a very risky, space-age price.
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Troy Nixey's upcoming film Don't Be Afraid of the Dark shares elements in common with producer Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth -- the little girl heroine, the gothic old mansion, a world of fantastical creatures with sinister secrets -- but its supernatural antagonists are tinier, scarier, and way more desperate for you to come "play" with them. Find out more about the goblin-like "homunculi" that live in the basement in two new clips from the upcoming horror-fantasy.
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