When it was announced that Sean Penn, Ryan Gosling, and Josh Brolin were all starring together in the upcoming Gangster Squad, I went as far as to call them a tri-force of awesome. That’s some ridiculous hyperbole, but the limits of my excessive enthusiasm for this project haven’t even begun to spin out of control yet. Wait until I hear that Bryan Cranston is also joining the cast, and then see what happens. Oh wait, I just found out. So now I’m ready to declare Gangster Squad the greatest movie ever made, before it has even been filmed. How’s that for hyperbole? For a quick recap, Gangster Squad is to be directed by Zombieland’s Ruben Fleischer, from a script based off of this L.A. Times article and written by a retired cop named Will Beall. Penn will play famous gangster Mickey Cohen, Gosling and Brolin will be the duo of police trying to bring him in, and now Variety reports that Cranston will be playing, “Max Kennard, a laconic LAPD officer from Texas who enforces the law ambitiously.” I take “laconic” to mean that he’s going to be doing a lot of his Cranston glare. And the phrase “enforces the law ambitiously” to mean that he’s going to be planting evidence, taking bribes, and dropping guns with the serial numbers filed off onto the bodies of young punks that he shoots. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go quit my job so I can properly prepare for this

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly movie news and commentary column that is a little disoriented at the moment. But don’t worry, it will find its way. Oh, there’s a few Michael Bay-related stories to talk about. That’s so much better… With the release of Transformers: Dark of the Moon happening this evening at 9pm or midnight or whatever, there’s been a lot of talk about Michael Bay, the most divisive man in cinema (at the moment). Today brought several must-reads, including GQ’s Oral history of Michael Bay exposé, which chronicles the life and times of the man who demands it all to be awesome. I also enjoyed this defense of Michael Bay piece by Jacob Hall at Movies.com. It’s a delightful look at the internal struggle movie-lovers face when confronted with pure, unfiltered awesome.

Those who follow me on Twitter, Miso, Friendster and Friendface might be aware of the fact that I am unabashedly in love with Vince Gilligan’s gripping, deeply fascinating series Breaking Bad. The show, which earned two Emmy Awards in 2010 for the performances of Bryan Cranston (Lead Actor in a Drama Series) and Aaron Paul (Supporting Actor in a Drama Series), is a tour-de-force of drama, tension and sometimes humor. It’s also about selling meth. But that’s only a small piece of the pie. Many a critic has called Breaking Bad “the best show on television.” I would say such things, as well. In celebration of the upcoming season four premiere in July and the release of season three on DVD and Blu-ray yesterday, we’d like to give one (1) DVD copy away to a very luck reader. Find out how you can win just after the jump.

“No more half measures, Walter.” Anyone who witnessed the season three finale of Breaking Bad, which now feels like it was years ago, knows exactly what this means. For those who don’t, I won’t spoil. Just know that Breaking Bad is one of those rare shows that has put foot to gas pedal since day one, with a constant display of its willingness to up the ante at every turn. But in the waning episodes of season three, it got an injection of turbo unlike any other. Such an injection earned Emmys for Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul. Said injection has left a lasting effect, and now we finally get to see what happens next. On Sunday, July 17, when the show returns for what we expect will be a powerful fourth season. We know this because there’s a trailer. You can check it out after the break for yourselves.

As the films come to a close, patterns tend to emerge. This year, for instance, there has been a definite focus on the cinema of abuse, of nostalgia and on auteur-driven films, but the most engaging and intriguing mini-pattern for me is the cinema of misdirection, i.e. films that suggest they are one thing and ultimately offer something entirely different by their end. Unlike Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, and The Skin I Live In and even to a lesser extent Hara-Kiri, Drive‘s directional swerve is a tonal one, rather than a thematic or material one. What at the outset looks like an indie love story, with background driving sub-plots, swerves wildly onto a more ragged road. Ryan Gosling (Cannes’ new darling after this and last year’s mesmerizing Blue Valentine) stars as a stunt-driver/mechanic by day, who moonlights as a getaway driver who is as solitary as Leon, and as effortlessly cool and detached as Bullitt. This driver’s world is flipped when he meets his neighbor Irene (Carey Mulligan, who looks stunning), and is immediately floored by her (and her son Benicio). Problem is, Irene has an ex-con husband (Standard, played by Oscar Isaac) who they discover has been granted early release, and doesn’t take too kindly to the driver muscling in on his family. When the driver discovers Standard beaten and bloody in the car park, he offers his services to pull off the one last job that will see the ex-criminal able to get out and go straight. Only things

When we think of the sitcom today compared to ten years ago, we realize that the genre is of a completely different landscape. Characters today are not merely shells of what we think human being are. The scripts don’t feel like they’re trying to reach a joke quota every episode and the situations feel much more grounded in reality. Oh, and of course the laugh tracks of been obliterated in the modern sitcom (at least when it comes to the single camera format). As we look over the evolution of the genre in the last decade, it becomes clear that something set all of this into motion. Something looked at what we had and said “been there, done that.” Something realized that it was time to add a new formation to the playbook. And that thing has a name, and it’s Malcolm In The Middle. It was January of 2000, a time when the world had one word on the brain “new.” New year, new decade, new century, new millennium, and for Linwood Boomer, new ideas. And what he ended up writing would become the basis for which shows like Modern Family, Scrubs, Arrested Development, Community and a host of others would find their footing.

The remake that nobody asked for of the Paul Verhoeven action classic Total Recall has a secret. Is it a long hidden alien reactor that can supply Mars with enough oxygen for everyone to breathe? Is it a surprise cameo by the original film’s star Arnold Schwarzenegger? No, it’s neither of those things: at all. As a matter of fact, this new version of the story isn’t going to take place on Mars, it’s set in the future countries Euromerica and New Shanghai. There is a super secret cameo that’s going to take place in the movie though. Are you ready for it?

Okay, check out this voice cast for DC’s upcoming animated version of “Batman: Year One”. We’ve got Bryan Cranston, Ben McKenzie, Eliza Dushku, Katee Sackhof, and Alex Rocco bringing Frank Miller’s classic graphic novel about Bruce Wayne’s first days in the Bat costume to life. For years comic fans (or maybe just myself) wondered why the big two companies never produced animated versions of some of their classic storylines, and then DC finally started hammering away at it a few years ago, often with impressive results. Their last go at a solo Batman story, an adaptation of “Batman: Under the Red Hood” was especially adult and cool, and I can’t wait to see what they’re going to come up with now that they’ve got their hands on some Miller work. Classic Miller, mind you; back when he was gritty but not totally bat-shit crazy.

What is Movie News After Dark? Like your collegiate sex life, it will be in and out quick with nothing very interesting to say. It will, however, deliver unto you all the magical and wondrous movie news of the day. And it promises to call you the next day, because you’re a person, dammit. We open tonight with images of humans running away from fireballs. It must be time for a Michael Bay update. This one is from Transformers: Dark of the Moon, and it includes zero robots. Not quite as interesting as the ones that include robots, but still quite ‘splosiony.

As the classic soul song “Ain’t No Love in the Heart of the City” plays over the opening credits of The Lincoln Lawyer, the perfect tone is set for the movie. At its core, it’s a classical lawyer procedural thriller, but is smoothly played by its star and large cast so much so that you can’t help but be entertained for two hours. It’s a movie where the title explains it all. Mickey Haller (Matthew McConaughey, looking little older, but still with some breezy cool swagger) is a high profiled LA defense lawyer who works out of his Lincoln Town Car. As he wheels and deals throughout the day with his driver Earl (Laurence Mason), we meet the various lawyers, bail bonds men, private investigators, celebrity drug addicts, and gang members that he works with. Some of them love him, but most have some sort of card to play with him.

There’s something perfect about the sass-filled sex pot of Mad Men joining a film directed by a man who said that “art [was] an act of violence.” There’s nothing poppy and light about Christina Hendricks’s show, but it’s downright froth compared to the madness that was Nicolas Winding Refn’s Bronson. It’ll be great to see what they have in store for each other. Refn’s next project is Drive – a film starring Ryan Gosling as a stunt driver who moonlights as a getaway driver (because even stunt driving aint payin’ the bills these days). It also features the brilliant Albert Brooks, Carey Mulligan, Bryan Cranston and, now (according to Variety), Christina Hendricks. It won’t be her first feature film role, but it will be her second major after she’s seen in Life As We Know It – which sounds like a Sundance film but is actually a Katherine Heigl rom-com.

In what sounds a bit like Chalk meets Dangerous Minds meets Half Nelson, newcomer Carl Lund’s script for Detached has an absurd amount of acting talent currently stapled to its cover sheet. “Mad Men” firecracker Christina Hendricks, Lucy Liu and William Peterson (who some remember from “C.S.I.” but no one seems to remember from Young Guns 2) have signed onto a cast that already includes Adrien Brody, James Caan, Blythe Danner, Marcia Gay Harden, Bryan Cranston, and Tim Blake Nelson. Doug E. Doug is also involved – in case you had any doubts left.

Nicolas Winding Refn is gearing up for his first big Hollywood experience. The auteur is currently working on Drive with Ryan Gosling, but now he’s added another actor to the mix: Bryan Cranston. When I talked to Refn recently about his excellent new film Valhalla Rising the conversation led off with him talking about casting sessions, and that’s where Refn said Cranston had joined the cast of his upcoming “love story” (as he described it).

If you watched last night’s season three finale of Breaking Bad, I have no doubt that you are just as excited as I am about the fact that AMC has picked the show up for a fourth season. Announced in a press release yesterday just after the finale, the network said that Vince Gilligan’s dark drama has gained 20% in overall household ratings from season two to three. It has also won a few Emmys and features one of the best actors on television, Bryan Cranston.