Some actors worry about keeping strict control over how the world perceives them and making sure that they don’t get typecast, but Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks seems to think that if you look that good dressed up in the garb of the period, why not follow up your head turning, 60s-set breakout performance with another role steeped in the same decade? To that end, she has accepted a role in director Sally Potter’s upcoming anti-nuke movie Bomb, which tells the tale of a couple of teenage girls who become part of the Ban the Bomb movement and also learn a little bit about free love and their own blossoming sexuality along the way.There isn’t yet any word on what role Hendricks will play in the film, but she joins a cast that already includes Elle Fanning and Alice Englert as the main girls, and is also rumored to soon pick up names like Alessandro Nivola and Annette Bening as well.

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly movie news and tidbit (that word makes it giggle) column that is back in full swing this week. A special thanks to Cole Abaius for picking up the reigns last week while usual author Neil Miller was locked away in a 3×3 ft. cell in preparation for Fantastic Fest. No, there was not a reason for it. And yes, he has emerged ready for a bare-knuckle boxing match (or two). But first, the news… We begin tonight with a shot of Christian Bale and Terrence Malick walking through the crowds of the Austin City Limits music festival this past weekend here in Austin, TX. It caused quite a commotion with the crowds, many of whom were there to see acts like Bright Eyes, Stevie Wonder and Kanye West. As a surprise, they got T. Malick in that silly hat.

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr feels the weight of the fall movie season. It’s September, and while the kids are heading back to school, he’s playing hooky with Sarah Jessica Parker chick flicks and yet another not-quite-70s-video-nasty remake. Kevin is consoled by the release of Drive, however, because Albert Brooks as a crime boss makes him chuckle. And his love for 3D and Disney meet head-on in a collision of awesomeness.

Director Nicolas Winding Refn is making quite a name for himself in the film lover community by making stylish, testosterone-filled films for guys. He blew everybody away by casting Tom Hardy in a movie about an alpha male criminal named Bronson that was so mannishly awesome my meathead, physical trainer cousin watched it three times a week for a year. And recently he started taking his newest effort Drive around to festivals. It’s about cars, robberies, stunt driving, and violence, and everyone who sees it completely gushes about how much it rules. Refn has done other things too, like Valhalla Rising and the Pusher trilogy, that all explore manly themes of violence and grimacing. He’s a man’s man of a filmmaker. It’s a little strange then, that Refn keeps saying his dream job is to make a movie about the girliest of all superheroes, Wonder Woman. Or maybe not so much, if you really look at it. Wonder Woman is a warrior born, an overpowering presence that inspires everyone around her, and she was raised in a culture of violence. Despite getting her face plastered all over little girl’s underwear for the last fifty years, she’s actually kind of a badass, much in the same vein as Bronson. And whenever Refn randomly brings the movie up, he always manages to throw in the notion that he thinks Drive actress Christina Hendricks would be his dream choice to play the character. What could be more appealing to male sensibilities than putting [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Driving is boring. It’s so damn boring. Watching characters drive is often one of the most boring and cinematically flat things in movies. It’s rarely exciting. Directors constantly complain about the difficulty of finding energy or something of interest when characters stare off onto a road. Who could actually make such a dull-seeming activity cool, cinematic, and energetic? Nicolas Winding Refn, that’s who. Refn’s a director with a voice of his own, something that’s a bit of rarity nowadays. He’s got a specific personality that’s reflected perfectly on-screen. With Valhalla Rising, Bronson, and the Pusher trilogy, the guy has shown a great love for his violent characters. The auteur revels in exploring men of violence, what makes them tick, and their relationship with their surroundings. The lead in Drive, suitably credited only as Driver, is a lot like Bronson and One-Eye. He’s a man with his own presence, most of his intentions and thought processes are expressed internally, and he isn’t afraid to kick some ass if push comes to shove. Unlike Bronson, though, Driver doesn’t at all represent some form of madness. In this story that’s filled mostly with bastards, Driver is the most moralistic man among them.

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 [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

You know Mike Figgis. He’s that guy who directed Leaving Las Vegas and then, uh… some other stuff. I’m 90% certain Time Code was his next one, but then I must have stopped paying attention to him after that. Probably he did something important that’s slipping my mind and I’m really going to hear it in the comments. Regardless, he’s got a new movie on tap and he’s taking advantage of the Mad Men hiatus to have Christina Hendricks star in it. Whether she’s been running a 60s era ad agency in a parade of period costumes or grifting Captain Mal Reynolds and the crew of Serenity, I’ve absolutely loved everything that I’ve seen Christina Hendricks in, and I’m thrilled to see her get a big role in a feature. Whenever somebody writes a piece on Hendricks, it’s usually got something to do with her boom-booms and what she’s doing for the perception of women or whatever, but blah blah blah, who cares? This girl can act, why don’t we talk about that instead?

What is Movie News After Dark? This is a question that I am almost never asked, but I will answer it for you anyway. Movie News After Dark is FSR’s newest late-night secretion, a column dedicated to all of the news stories that slip past our daytime editorial staff and make it into my curiously chubby RSS ‘flagged’ box. It will (but is not guaranteed to) include relevant movie news, links to insightful commentary and other film-related shenanigans. I may also throw in a link to something TV-related here or there. It will also serve as my place of record for being both charming and sharp-witted, but most likely I will be neither of the two. I write this shit late at night, what do you expect?

The ground is far too fertile when a film from Sarah Jessica Parker is called I Don’t Know How She Does It, but rather than take cheap shots by answering the rhetorical title, it’s more important to celebrate the talent she’ll be surrounding herself with. The film has just signed on Christina Hendricks (despite science still having no explanation for how she physically exists) and SNL head writer Seth Meyers (despite science still having no explanation for how SNL still exists). Both are fairly new to the film but aren’t strangers to show business. Plus, they are the perfect, harmless additions to what seems like a stock comedy about a woman having it all. After all, there has to be a gossipy best friend and someone for Christina Hendricks to play. Oliva Munn will also be playing a small role, busting out of her cameo phase and the twitter fame people seem to care so much about. Over all, Sarah Jessica Parker has somehow completely morphed from the manic pixie dream girl of L.A. Story to the disliked shrew of today, but if she insists on hopping into the romantic comedy business, it might as well be with some talented actors who deserve more time on the big screen. [LA Times]

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr horses around this week with the legendary racehorse from the 1970s, hoping he too can go home with Diane Lane. After racing out to see Secretariat, he wonders if Katherine Heigl and Josh Duhamel would be anything more than a pretty couple. Then he gets down on his knees and prays: “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I beg you skip My Soul to Take.”.

I really love Mad Men. I talk about it a lot. Since The Wire ended in 2008, and I haven’t seen any episodes of Boardwalk Empire yet, then as far as my knowledge takes me it’s the best damn show currently on television. Nothing I’m saying here is necessarily new, but Mad Men effectively does a great many things I’ve never seen television do before in that it 1) delivers is an incredibly entertaining and engaging media object while it uses its protagonists to criticize and reveal the potentially manipulative processes of media itself, 2) interrogates any continuous notion of the ever-interpretationally-oscillating “good old days” by showing how they were neither that good nor that long ago, thereby criticizing our culture’s all-too-convenient rotating manufacture of nostalgia, 3) utilizes the past to criticize white male heteronormative hegemony and reveal a systematic culture of sexism, racism, and homophobia, and all the while 4) creates compelling drama as manifested by ambiguous, layered characters with the combination of beautiful cinematography and impeccable production design. Mad Men, in short, is an engrossing, enjoyable, and thought-provoking series in unprecedented ways. But for a show to engage in such a rare criticism of a cultural moment, a bit of negotiation is required. And it is in this respect that some major problems with the show have arisen recently.

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.

In an effort to do our cinematic part for the science of Boobquake Day, here are a few films you can watch to help aid in what will most likely win the next Nobel Prize.

Betty confronts Don about his past life; Roger runs into an old flame; Don plans a getaway with Suzanne; Joan reaches out to Roger for occupational help.

Don takes Betty out to Rome for a Conrad Hilton-related business trip; Pete gets involved with a nanny in his building.

Joan and her husband are throwing a party for her husband’s co-workers, while most of the Sterling Cooper gang is at Roger and Jane’s for a Kentucky Derby garden party.

Mad Men star and actress who I think should play anything (including Barbarella), Christina Hendricks is getting some work — which is good, because as I mentioned, she’s a damn good actress.

Join us as we look ahead to what season three might have in store for all of your favorite Mad Men (and dames)…

In which we join forces with other websites to start the campaign for Joan Holloway, sexy mercenary in space…