This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr goes rogue and infiltrates his local IMAX theater. First, he scales the wall of the plus-sized building and slides in undetected through the air vents. He slowly lowers himself into a theater seat to enjoy an early screening of Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. Unfortunately, he finds himself in the middle of a wild crowd of six-year-old kids for the early screening of the latest Alvin and the Chipmunks movie. To deal with the psychological damage, Kevin then stumbles into the Sherlock Holmes sequel and later finds an extra seat in Young Adult, where he can imagine that his chubby caboose could land a hottie like Charlize Theron.

Being a parent is no easy task – when your child acts out or does something wrong, it’s hard not to take it as a personal reflection on yourself. In Carnage, after a playground altercation turns violent, the parents of the two boys involved decide to come together to try and come to a reasonable agreement on how to rectify the situation. What starts out as a civil conversation between the two parties quickly devolves into an honest and bitterly funny examination of not only each others’ parenting skills, but their marriages and even themselves as people. Based on Yasmina Reza‘s play, God of Carnage, director Roman Polanski takes the story to the big screen with four powerhouse performers who make being trapped in an apartment an engaging look at human nature you want to run away from, but at the same time are unable to tear your eyes from. After Nancy (Kate Winslet) and Alan Cowan’s (Christoph Waltz) son hits Penelope (Jodie Foster) and Michael Longstreet’s (John C. Reilly) son in the face with a stick, the parents decide to try and settle things like adults, but how they each think that should happen differs from person to person and those differences are eventually revealed when the Cowan’s (despite repeated efforts) find themselves unable to simply leave the Longstreet’s apartment.

The casting news for Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming foray into the Western genre, Django Unchained, just keeps getting better and better. Like a sports nerd amassing the perfect fantasy baseball team, Tarantino has been looking over the stats and picking out the most rock solid actors to fill key roles on his squad. Like a seasoned Dungeon Master, he has been amassing the Hollywood personalities with the most awesome points to accompany him on his quest. And Variety is reporting that the man is nearing yet another blockbuster acquisition. Now he’s in talks with Joseph Gordon-Levitt to join an already-excellent ensemble. Apparently Gordon-Levitt has every intention of working with Tarantino and joining this increasingly awesome-sounding movie, but there are some scheduling hiccups to work out. You see, JGL is a busy, busy man, and he’ll probably have to shift some stuff around in order to get his skinny little hinder on set when Tarantino needs him. If the two parties are able to work things out, it will see Gordon-Levitt joining a cast that already boasts names like Leonardo DiCaprio, Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Samuel L. Jackson, Don Johnson, and Kurt Russell. That’s almost enough to make what Stallone is doing on The Expendables 2 look girly in comparison.

When I first heard that a new version of The Three Musketeers was being made by Paul W.S. Anderson I initially thought that he was a bad choice for the material, that he would just end up making something ridiculous. Now that I’ve actually seen the movie, I’m certain that he was a bad choice for the material, because he did in fact make something ridiculous. You know this story by now, it’s been around for like 175 years or something, so too much plot summary probably isn’t necessary. There are three famous Musketeers, the king’s personal soldiers, Athos (Matthew MacFayden), Porthos (Ray Stevenson), and Aramis (Luke Evans). They used to be big time, but now they’re out of a job because a corrupt Cardinal (Christoph Waltz) is taking control of France and instituting his personal guard as the new power in the nation. Also there’s a young chap name D’Artagnan (Logan Lerman) who has traveled to Paris to become a Musketeer, but he finds the place in disarray. Backstabbings and power plays commence. But let’s get back to how bad most everything in this movie is. The most egregious of all the offenses this new Three Musketeers commits is the punishment it doles out to its characters in the form of horrible dialogue. Never have you come across a script with more hackneyed, generic movie clichés than this. Everything that comes out of the characters’ mouths is clunky and unnatural. It feels like the movie went through absolutely zero [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]

Translating a limited-setting play to the screen can be tricky business – it’s not often that stage plays that take place in just one or two locations are suited for a cinematic interpretation. To put it simply – how can people sitting around in a room be compelling to a movie-going audience? Well, when the people sitting around that room are Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz, and John C. Reilly, and they’re directed by Roman Polanski, it’s pretty compelling. Based on Yasmina Reza’s play “God of Carnage,” Polanski’s latest focuses on two couples, the Longstreets (as played by Foster and Reilly) and the Bowens (Winslet and Waltz), tossed together after the Bowens’ son gives a good face-wacking to the Longstreets’ boy. Attempting a cordial meeting to hash out the results of the brawl, the Bowens and the Longstreets end up making their kids look tame, as they all end up going positively bonkers. Check out just how bonkers in the second trailer for Carnage, after the break.

Yasmina Reza’s Tony-winning play “God of Carnage” doesn’t inherently lend itself to cinema. With four characters interacting in a single setting, and a narrative centered on a thin symbolic conceit, it’s the sort of dialogue-heavy project that could easily be captured with a tedious cut-and-dry, shot-reverse-shot filmic approach. It’s fortunate, then, that Roman Polanski has taken it on in Carnage, and filled the roles with some of the most interesting actors around. Say what you will about Polanski the man, but Polanski the filmmaker has demonstrated an almost limitless aptitude for creative technique. Similarly, Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly, Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz (four Oscar wins among them) have a preternatural gift for imbuing even the quietest moments with extraordinary, unconventional feeling. After young Zachary Cowan hits Ethan Longstreet with a stick during a playground brawl, knocking out two of Ethan’s teeth, the latter’s parents invite the former’s to their Brooklyn apartment to discuss the incident. Over the course of a tumultuous morning, Penelope and Michael Longstreet (Foster and Reilly) and Nancy and Alan Cowan (Winslet and Waltz) will spar, commiserate and touch on the essence of parenthood, manhood and the art of confronting modernity with a social conscience.

Farce is not easy to do, which is why it’s a good thing that Roman Polanski got four formidable actors to take on the challenge of Carnage. Based on the play “God of Carnage” from Yasmina Reza, the film version features Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly, Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz as two couples (respectively) whose children have been in a schoolyard scrape. They meet for a conversation and all end up losing their minds over the situation. The wine probably helps, but watching everyone succumb to the outrage is hysterical – especially Reilly who pulls off layered, impotent rage like no man on this planet. What’s so great about this first look is that it isn’t funny in the way that, say, The Office is. There’s no passive aggressive awkwardness fueling the cringing feeling for the audience; the comedy comes straight from the breakdown. Bask in the glory of this fantastic trailer for yourself:

Roman Polanski. Christoph Waltz. Jodie Foster. John C. Reilly. Kate Winslet. That list is solid enough to pique any interest, but the premise for Carnage is just as enticing, especially with its insinuation of heavy drama in a tight space. The catalyst is a playground fight between two children, and the story focuses on the parents of one combatant inviting the parents of the other over to have a discussion. Hopefully (and promisingly) it will go as poorly as possible. The acting talent here is unbelievable, which is good, because Polanski has never exactly been an actor’s director. Here, he’s got the talent teed up, and all he needs to do is give them a small house, plenty to fight about, and enough temperature to keep things going for the full run time. Courtesy of Twitch Film, a few shots have been released prior to the film’s showing at Venice, and the images look stark and severe. Great portraits of some of the best actors working today:

There’s already been a lot of high profile casting news for Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming Western Django Unchained. Jamie Foxx is going to be playing the lead role, an ex-slave who is going after his ex-owner to liberate his wife. Leonardo DiCaprio is going to play said slave-owning creep. Samuel L. Jackson will be his manipulative servant. And Christoph Waltz is set to play a German bounty hunter that shows Django the ropes. That’s a fine enough sounding cast right there, but strap yourself in, there’s more. Deadline Las Cruces is reporting that Tarantino is in negotiations to get Robin Hood to join the cast. That’s right, the one true Robin Hood, the Bryan Adams Robin Hood: Kevin Costner. You might also know him as that guy who drank his own pee in Waterworld. However you remember the guy, you probably can recollect that once upon a time he was a pretty big deal. And history shows that Tarantino loves to take actors who used to be a big deal and give them a chance to shine once again. If Costner signs on the dotted line, he will get a chance to do just that, as the role he is up for is that of Ace Woody, the brutal taskmaster who trains slaves to fight one another in gladiatorial battles. It’s a showy, villainous role that could very well get Costner a lot of attention, much like Waltz’s Jew hunter character did in Inglorious Basterds. As he showed in Mr. Brooks, [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]

Ambitious. Bold. Serious. Groundbreaking. None of these words can be sanely used to describe the vibe emanating from the trailer for Paul W.S. Anderson’s “adaptation” of The Three Musketeers. This a W.S. Anderson picture through and through. This trailer does a fantastic job at selling a future camp classic in the making, and I don’t even mean that in an ironic way, either.

Due to the long-standing love affair between Quentin Tarantino and the Weinsteins, there was never really any question as to whether or not The Weinstein Company would be doing the domestic distributing for the filmmaker’s upcoming spaghetti western homage Django Unchained. Which studio would handle the international distribution was very much in question however, and the subject of a pretty intense bidding war. Popular opinion was that Universal would end up with the duties, as they just teamed up with Tarantino for Inglorious Basterds, and that was his most financially successful film in quite some time. Unfortunately for Universal, those works ended up getting gummed up because of The Fresh Prince.

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly round-up of all that is interesting. Being based in Austin, TX, it’s also obligated to include something that will give off the vibe that it’s “keepin’ it weird.” The folks at LucasFilm ominously dropped the above image in my email inbox this evening. No press release, no notes. Not even a response to my “WTF is this? Also, tell George I said what’s up!” follow-up. On May 4, all will be revealed. My best guess is that we’ll be given a look (via StarWars.com) at what will be included on the upcoming Blu-ray release. If it’s the original theatrical cuts, expect internet mayhem rivaling the Osama Bin Laden is dead news. This is important stuff, people.

Quentin Tarantino’s “next” film is an amorphous and constantly shifting entity that seems to only find its final form once the cameras start rolling, but that’s never stopped the internet from bandying about titles, plots, and cast lists as if they were confirmed plans. At various times the divisive director has been reportedly about to start work on The Vega Brothers with John Travolta and Michael Madsen, a follow-up to Inglourious Basterds that would place Brad Pitt and his merry men in the racist South of the 1950′s, a re-imagining of The Shadow, a third Kill Bill film, and even a remake of Russ Meyers’ Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! None of these have come to fruition (yet), but recent days have seen speculation that Tarantino’s upcoming film would be a Western set in the American South. Adding nothing concrete at all to the rumor was the apparent leak of the cover page to his just completed script for a film titled Django Unchained. Yes please.

Let’s say you’re a greasy-haired young man of the 1930s, on the cusp of completing your Ivy League studies in veterinary medicine (which is apparently animal doctoring and not war fighter doctoring), when tragedy strikes. Your whole life is stolen away. Your first instinct is to hop on the first train out of town, right? Of course it is. That’s exactly what happens to young Jacob (Robert Pattinson) in Water For Elephants. He loses his parents (the only family he has) and jumps aboard a train in the dark of night only to find out he’s accidentally joined the circus. He proves his worth enough to stay by impressing the iron-fisted ring master August (Christoph Waltz), but he ends up impressing August’s wife, Marlena (Reese Witherspoon), a bit too much, and the elephant pile gets higher just in time for the company to buy an elephant meant to save all of them.

Ready for another round of debate as to whether or not Roman Polanski should be allowed back into the United States in order to attend awards shows? Well then good news, because Polanski’s latest movie God of Carnage is all set up to get a distribution deal, and it looks like a film that will be getting a lot of attention come awards season. Deadline Topanga Canyon reports that Michael Barker and Tom Bernard of Sony Pictures Classics are close to signing a deal to release the film, that was packaged by ICM, here in the US. God of Carnage is an adaptation of a Tony Award winning play by Yasmina Reza. It tells the story of the aftermath of a schoolyard brawl between two 11 year-old boys. The boys’ parents turn out to be just as irrational as their children, and when they meet to talk over the scuffle a series of arguments and chaotic disagreements over various hot-button issues becomes the norm for the night. The stage play’s original cast consisted of James Gandolfini, Marcia Gay Harden, Jeff Daniels, and Hope Davis, but none of those actors reprise their roles for Polanski’s film version. That would probably be seen as a huge disappointment, except for the fact that Polanski got Christoph Waltz, Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly, and Kate Winslet to replace them. Wow, way to be a one-upper Roman.

Italian actor Franco Nero talked to reporters at the Los Angeles Italia Festival recently and caused a bit of a stir when he mentioned Quentin Tarantino’s name while discussing his next project. Nero described it thus, “The film will be called The Angel, The Bad, and The Wise and is a tribute to Sergio Leone. It’s a movie that contains humor, lots of action, but also a great plot. We have already been signed by a dozen people who will be part of project. Among the filmmakers involved include Quentin Tarantino , Keith Carradine, Treat Williams, fifteen people in all Americans who want to do this movie and so we are trying to produce it outside of Italy.” According to an update from Aint It Cool, the title may be totally wrong, but Tarantino is definitely planning to do a spaghetti Western, and Christoph Waltz will be co-starring in some capacity. Treat it with the grain of rumor salt for now, but it sounds plausible. The earlier quote, taken in context, could mean that Tarantino might have any number of itty-bitty little insignificant roles in the production; but people are already going ahead and speculating that this is going to be the next film he directs anyways.

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr dresses up in a trench coat and hat, wears a mask and runs around the streets of his fair city with his strong and agile Asian manservant. The plan: When arrested, tell the police he is trying to emulate the crime-fighting career of the Green Hornet. If he can get away with that, he plans on tracking down two doughy but funny guys who are having sexual relations with super-hot Hollywood type ladies and try to steal their girlfriends away. Or, he just might sit on the couch and watch movies after telling you what he thinks of The Green Hornet and The Dilemma.

The thing about broccoli is that it’s disgusting at first. When you’re a child, your young taste buds only want sugar and chocolate and that meatloaf that only your mom can make. Often you want all of these things at the same time. But as you get older, your taste matures and you suddenly find yourself with dozens of recipes that make broccoli a completely worthwhile vegetable that’s welcome on any plate. Hell, sometimes it even surprises you – blowing your taste buds away in a flavor explosion. The Green Hornet is cinematic broccoli.

There’s a splash of Big Fish somewhere in there as well, but the trailer for Water For Elephants, based on the incredibly popular novel of the same name, displays a tone straight out of a watered down (for elephants) Moulin Rouge and a just-as-schmaltzy version of The Notebook. There’s even the Old Man Remembering His Antique Past element. This movie could turn out to be an incredible spectacle, and the presence of two Oscar winners is nothing to scoff at, but there’s something inherently soporific about Robert Pattinson that it will have to overcome. The trailer isn’t as exciting as it should have been, and hopefully the film will triumph despite its disjointed advertising. Water For Elephants hits theaters April 15, 2011, and you can see the trailer in even higher def at Apple.

He was the Jew Hunter in Inglourious Basterds; he is hunting the Green Hornet next as a diabolical gangster; and now Christoph Waltz is being rumored as the next Spider-Man villain. Is this man the ultimate villain? With only Avatar‘s Stephen Lang in close company, we’d say yes. And the thought of him squaring off with a Spider-Man played by Andrew Garfield in a movie directed by Marc Webb sounds like something with a lot of potential — the most potential since Sam Raimi, Tobey Maguire and Willem Dafoe joined forces back in the day.