What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a thing that happens every night, bub. And it will deliver unto you the best of the entertainment-related things that happened today. Also, there will be mustaches. We begin tonight’s late late edition of News After Dark with an epic mustache. No, not this column’s author’s epic mustache. It’s an image of what Burt Reynolds looks like in his cameo on Archer, one of the better shows about animated spies to hit cable television since… okay, I ran that into the ground. It’s really good. Burt Reynolds makes it even better.

In Time squanders a promising metaphor on an abundance of sleek action scenes that seem to have wandered into the movie from a car commercial. Writer-director Andrew Niccol will always have a beloved, if underrated, place in the realm of modern day sci-fi crafters for his terrific eugenics drama Gattaca and his Truman Show script. But his career has floundered since then, and his latest flick fails to find the structural, atmospheric or plot-driven ingenuity to match its provocative premise.

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr puts on some 3D glasses to look at some puss… in boots, that is. He proceeds to rewrite fairy tale fiction to include more bodily function humor, an egg-shaped Zach Galifianakis and a hairy but still sexy Salma Hayek. Then, he heads to the reference department of his local library to discover who really wrote the complete works of William Shakespeare. When all signs point to Neil Miller as the real author, Kevin gives up, realizing he’s out of time. So he brings sexy back and heads out to kidnap Amanda Seyfried so he can occupy Hollywood and start a revolution together… or get arrested.

Andrew Niccol is one of the few futurist filmmakers working today. The man knows how to be ten steps ahead of everyone else. His concepts are imaginatively absurd, but in that absurdity, Niccol generally finds a sense of humanity. Not only that, also signs towards where we could be heading. Like In Time, the concept of The Truman Show seemed outrageous at the time, and yet that film has become a sad reality. Despite his forward-thinking, Niccol doesn’t have the easiest time getting films made. It has been six years since Lord of War, and a few projects between that time fell through for the filmmaker. Why? Because Niccol, as he himself says, is always creating expensive concepts. Now, he’s finally got one of those not-so-cheap concepts made. With In Time being his biggest film yet, he pointed out how like on every film, there are “trucks of compromises.” Even with those compromises, Niccol still managed to get his sci-fi film off the ground, and for more than two dollars. Here’s what Andrew Niccol — who I also spoke to at Comic-Con, so if you want to know more about In Time, read that interview — had to say about the difficulty of getting his ideas made, the desire of leaving for France, and why it’s easier to sleep when you have no conscience.

The casting process for Louis Leterrier’s upcoming heist film Now You See Me has played like a magician’s stage show up to this point. One after another, Leterrier has pulled actors I love out of his hat to fill the roles of the bank robber magicians and the government agents who will be tracking them down. But recently that process has hit something of a snag. The genie has been taken out of the bottle, because Variety is reporting that Amanda Seyfried has passed on playing the role of Henley, the master technician of the magician crew. For her sake, I hope that she isn’t passing up on this interesting sounding film to do yet another terrible movie like Red Riding Hood, but I guess we both need to just move on. Breaking up is hard. Moving on might be kind of easy though, as that same Variety article is also reporting that now that Seyfried is done sniffing around the role, the next step to finding a gadget gal for Jesse Eisenberg and his crew of bank robbing illusionists is to negotiate with Isla Fisher for the role. Fisher is charming, funny, and nice to look at, plus she doesn’t do nearly enough live action stuff, so I approve of this decision. That loss of Seyfried is going to hurt, I’m not gonna lie, but sticking a bubbly redhead in her place is a damn good way to make up for it. And more good news is that Mark

I’m starting to feel a pretty strange connection to Louis Leterrier‘s upcoming heist movie Now You See Me. First he seemed to be practically reading my mind by casting all of my favorite actors in prominent roles. And now, just days after I randomly and nonsensically mentioned Morgan Freeman in an article reporting on Mark Ruffalo and Amanda Seyfried joining the cast, comes word that Leterrier is negotiating with Freeman to join the film as well. Hello? Louis? Are you in there? Can you hear my thoughts? Let’s run down the cast once more, and see where Freeman fits in. Jesse Eisenberg is set to play the leader of a group of magicians (now being referred to as “the Four Horsemen” in the Variety article) who use their powers of illusion to rob banks and then shower the audience at their magic shows with money. Mark Ruffalo will play the head F.B.I. dude intent on shutting their little crime ring down. Amanda Seyfried will be playing the technician that builds all of the magicians’ equipment. And Melanie Laurent is set to play a lead character who sits on the right side of the law.

Louis Leterrier seems to be intent on pulling off the greatest magic trick of all time: getting all of my favorite young actors to appear in the same film. A movie about illusionists turned bank robbers playing a game of cat and mouse with the F.B.I. is interesting enough just as a pitch, but every new name he adds to the Now You See Me cast ends up making me more and more excited to see the end product. First he snagged Jesse Eisenberg to play the lead role. Eisenberg is an actor that started turning heads with The Squid and the Whale and then just kept turning in constantly solid work until finally achieving mainstream acclaim with his turn as Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network. Any notion of him being the other Michael Cera has been long disproven. After getting a leading man, Leterrier needed an equally charming leading lady so he went after French actress Melanie Laurent. She, of course, is the feisty little philly who blew everyone (including important Nazi officials) away as Shoshanna in Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds. That’s quite a pair already.

One of the few films from Comic-Con that I wasn’t looking forward to, but left feeling excited about, is Andrew Niccol‘s In Time. After viewing the sizzle reel in Hall H and interviewing Niccol, expectations got raised. Niccol isn’t a filmmaker that works all that often and considering this is his return to the sci-fi world, it’s somewhat of a mini-event. This is also his first action movie, and it is shot through the eyes of Roger Deakins. The action is apparently all running, too – something expressed pretty clearly in this trailer. Seeing Justin Timberlake run around for two hours isn’t exactly ideal entertainment, but there looks to be more than a generic chase film here. The world building comes off topnotch, Roger Deakins’s first step into the digital realm seems to be a success, and Cillian Murphy as the man hunting Timberlake down is an idea I can get behind.

Andrew Niccol loves thought-provoking ideas. Gattaca, his script for The Truman Show, and Lord of War are works of varying genres that all posed interesting questions. His latest film, In Time, looks to be his most commercial endeavor yet. Although there apparently will be a few action beats, Niccol set out to craft a human story with social commentary. This appears to be, more than anything else, a love story set within a chase thriller. And that chase happens to look fantastic, courtesy of cinematographer Roger Deakins. This is the first film which Deakins shot digitally, and after the experience, the legendary cinematographer expressed the possibility that he may leave film behind for good. As Niccol describes below, it makes sense why he would. Here’s what Andrew Niccol had to say about the world of In Time, the Gattaca connection, Deakins going digital, and what to expect in the action department:

In Time was one of the films I was the most excited about covering at Comic-Con, and yet I had no bloody clue what it was about. I heard it involved some sci-fi aspect, a lot of running, and Amanda Seyfried sporting a short red ‘do. That’s all I knew. See how well-researched I am? Once I actually learned something about the film, there ended up being more to get excited about than just the fact it’s an Andrew Niccol film and one of the few original stories we’d be getting a glimpse at during Con. The high concept, which sounds a bit heavy-handed, is unique and looks well-handled in the three-minute sizzle reel Fox showed. And to be fair, the comparison to Gattaca carries that sound of potential non-subtlety, so I have faith Niccol will deliver a thought-provoking comment on “our desire to stay young forever” and “economic enslavement.”

Justin Zackham, the director writer of The Bucket List, has a new indie comedy in the works that already boasts a pretty impressive cast. Gently Down the Stream will star Robert De Niro and Diane Keaton as a divorced couple who pretend that they are still married during their adopted sons wedding, in order to avoid offending his birth mother. Apparently she hates divorced people or something, even though giving a kid up for adoption is A-OK. I don’t know; I’m sure the movie will explain it better than I do. In addition to De Niro and Keaton, the film will also star two young, blonde actresses in Katherine Heigl and Amanda Seyfried. I find the inclusion of these two particular interesting because they are both good actresses who have done a string of really bad movies, and yet Heigl gets a really bad rap for her choices, but Seyfried’s haven’t seemed to have caught up with her yet. Perhaps the difference is that people really loved Seyfried in things like Mean Girls and Mama Mia! and nobody has really liked Heigl in anything since, uh, My Father the Hero? No, wait, she was the niece in Under Siege 2. That movie totally owned. Regardless, I have a weird thing where I will see pretty much everything that Seyfried is in, no matter how bad it looks, but whenever I hear Heigl’s name I always groan. It will be interesting to hear how people respond to the news of this

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr finds himself behind enemy lines in Los Angeles. At first, he thought he was the victim of an alien invasion, but then he realized he was just in South Central wearing the wrong colors. Fortunately, Aaron Eckhart came to his rescue. This gave him a chance to put on a red cloak and skip through the woods, searching for Amanda Seyfried. He then capped off the week sneaking on a NASA flight to Mars wearing only boxer shorts, a T-shirt and a space helmet. He plans to return soon because that kind of makeshift space suit worked for the folks in Mars Needs Moms. Don’t wait up, though.

Red Riding Hood is the single most confusing movie-going experience of the last decade. The movie itself is not confusing. No, no. Far from it. The movie itself is about as straightforward as it gets. The characters all say either exactly what’s happening or exactly what’s on their minds pretty much at all times. It’s the few moments of pure storytelling inspiration, cliche-busting plot turns, and great performances amidst a sea of terrible that’s completely baffling. How can things that great be involved in something so awful?

Winick, who was 49, passed away Sunday after a battle with brain cancer. He first became known in Hollywood for producing independent films through his production company InDigEnt, including his own 2002 picture Tadpole. He later became more widely famous for directing mainstream romantic comedies such as 13 Going on 30 and his last film Letters to Juliet, the stars of which talked to The Hollywood Reporter about their memories of the man. 13 Going on 30 star Jennifer Garner said of Winick, “I think everybody who was a friend of Gary’s considered him one of their best friends. He had a hundred best friends. He just was unafraid of being intimate. And that spilled over into his directing. His whole company, InDigEnt, was based on trying to find a way to fold everyone in, being 100 percent invested in the movie, because they were going to profit from it if the movie was successful.” Creating jobs in Hollywood and giving young filmmakers a means of expressing themselves is certainly a fine way to be remembered, but Garner had even more to say about the man and his career.

Gone, which will be the first English language film for Brazilian director Heitor Dhalia, is the story of a survivor of a serial killer abduction who returns home from a late night job to find that her sister has gone missing. She believes the cause of the disappearance is the same psycho who had taken her years before coming back to pull some similar sick shit, but unfortunately the police don’t really believe that this is the case. So the young girl finds herself having to take matters into her own hands, track down the guy who put her through a traumatic ordeal, and get her sister back before it is too late. Producer Tom Rosenberg says that Amanda Seyfried is the “perfect actress to play the smart and fearless heroine in Gone.” Man, can that guy sell or what? I’m in! Truthfully, all of this sounds pretty uninteresting. The news only appealed to me because I happen to be a huge fan of Seyfried. The few things she’s done that are good have really given her a platform to shine, and even the loads of crap she has made always looks way better for having her involved. What pure filth like Dear John and Jennifer’s Body and mixed bags like Chloe have in common is that Amanda Seyfried is the best thing going in all of them. Plus she is just really beautiful. Like astoundingly beautiful. And now we can post a great big picture of her for everyone

For those who remember Mark Webber as Stephen Stills from Scott Pilgrim, this next move might seem strange. For those who remember him in indie fare like Just Like the Son and Dear Wendy, it might seem fantastic. For those who mistake him for Michael Weston (the guy on House for a few episodes), none of this will make any sense at all. Webber, according to The Hollywood Reporter, has cast Michael Cera and Amanda Seyfried to play slightly altered versions of themselves for an upcoming, as yet untitled, movie about a father raising his son after the mother’s death. He’s also cast Shannyn Sossamon and Jason Ritter in smaller, but similarly styled, roles. He’s friends with all the actors in real life. He also shares a connection with the co-star: his two-year-old son. In trying to achieve the strictest version of a real father-son relationship, Webber (who will direct as well) will act alongside his own child. The concept sounds far too character-based to judge, but the actors he’s gotten to work with him is a talented group, and Webber has been around the acting block for well over a decade, so this definitely has some potential to be a solid mix of drama, comedy, and reality.

Upon hearing it for the first time when I was 7, I didn’t notice anything about Little Red Riding Hood sticking out as overtly sexy. Of course, after seeing the Looney Tunes version with the howling wolf and finding out what an “Old Woodsman” is, my vision of the story changed slightly. Now, director Catherine Hardwicke is challenging that view even further by stuffing as much sexual tension as possible into the trailer for Red Riding Hood. You had no idea that the little girl on her way to grandma’s house just needed a European-style synth track behind her, did you? I’ll never see “Into the Woods” the same way again. [Apple]

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr isn’t a very merry man, taking a look at Robin Hood, Letters to Juliet and Just Wright.

‘Letters to Juliet’ is a predictable, bland romance without much appeal, but then it wasn’t made for me and probably, FSR reader, wasn’t made for you either.

Kevin and Neil decide to be outlaws and scamper around the Magical Studio in the Sky like a bunch of merry men. This gives them an opportunity to impale Ridley Scott’s new version of Robin Hood while Kevin declares Letters to Juliet a better film.