Have you been following the development of this baseball drama Trouble With the Curve? It started out as just a glimmer, a hope. It was maybe the project that would bring Clint Eastwood out of acting retirement. A story about an aging baseball scout who is losing his vision and who is embarking on one last recruitment trip in the company of his adult daughter sounded perfect for an old grizzly bear like Eastwood, and since those first days of maybes the project has developed quite nicely. First it became official, and got a release date of September 28, 2012. Then it started filling out its supporting cast with exciting names. Amy Adams came on to play the role of Eastwood’s daughter, and Justin Timberlake got picked up to play her love interest. This thing was looking like an all-star lineup already. But with news that they’re bringing one of the most underutilized players in Hollywood on board, I think this one might go all the way. According to Variety, John Goodman has just signed on to play a baseball scout and longtime friend of the Eastwood character’s named Pete Klein. That’s right, The Babe himself is returning to the world of onscreen baseball.

Now that Warner Bros. has given an official release date to the Clint Eastwood- and Amy Adams-starring father-daughter-baseball-scouting-oops-think-someone-is-going-blind film, Trouble With The Curve, for September 28, it’s time they get to filling out the rest of the roster. Next up at bat? Justin Timberlake! Deadline Memphis reports that Timberlake will co-star in the film as ” a rival scout who is sweet on the elder scout’s daughter.” Both Eastwood and Timberlake’s characters will presumably be going head to head to land a hot new prospect. Other hot things will likely also go down between Timberlake and Adams, if you get what I’m saying here. Timberlake’s focus has switched to acting in recent years, and he’s been rounding his resume out with stuff that has been, at the very least, interesting. He’s hit just about every genre (comedy, romantic comedy, drama, sci-fi, animation), and he’s worked with some great directors (well, mainly David Fincher). Next up for him? The Coen brothers’ Inside Lleywn Davis, which should be another huge cinematic step for the actor. A sports drama co-starring Eastwood? I can see it.

Once upon a time, Hollywood was king of the Western and the idea of anybody over in Europe making a movie about the American Southwest as successful as something like High Noon was laughable. Italian-produced films about the west, or Spaghetti Westerns, were largely low budget knock-offs where fading Hollywood stars went to die after their careers had peaked. But the work of Sergio Leone changed that viewpoint. His “The Man With No Name” trilogy wasn’t just a worldwide financial success upon release, the films have gone on to be seen as some of the greatest Westerns produced anywhere, throughout the history of film. And the final installment of that series, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, has especially become an important part of the fabric of pop culture. More than any other Western I can think of, it’s stood the test of time and achieved a level of awareness that rivals any other classic film in any other genre. Often it’s referred to as not just the definitive Spaghetti Western and Leone’s masterpiece, but as the definitive Western, period. That’s all fine and good, because I think The Good, The Bad and The Ugly is largely a great film; but I think he actually improved two years later when he made Once Upon a Time in the West, my pick for the greatest Western of all time.

Usually I’m quite cynical about end-of-year lists, as they demand a forced encapsulation of an arbitrary block of time that is not yet over into something simplified. I typically find end-of-year lists fun, but rarely useful. But 2011 is different. As Scott Tobias pointed out, while “quiet,” this was a surprisingly strong year for interesting and risk-taking films. What’s most interesting has been the variety: barely anything has emerged as a leading contender that tops either critics’ lists or dominates awards buzz. Quite honestly, at the end of 2010 I struggled to find compelling topics, trends, and events to define the year in cinema. The final days of 2011 brought a quite opposite struggle, for this year’s surprising glut of interesting and disparate films spoke to one another in a way that makes it difficult to isolate any of the year’s significant works. Arguments in the critical community actually led to insightful points as they addressed essential questions of what it means to be a filmgoer and a cinephile. Mainstream Hollywood machine-work and limited release arthouse fare defied expectations in several directions. New stars arose. Tired Hollywood rituals and ostensibly reliable technologies both met new breaking points. “2011” hangs over this year in cinema, and the interaction between the films – and the events and conversations that surrounded them – makes this year’s offerings particular to their time and subject to their context. This is what I took away from this surprising year:

Recently the big news hit that a hole in Clint Eastwood’s directing schedule was going to lead him into coming out of acting retirement and allow him to star in a new movie called Trouble With the Curve. The story centers on a baseball scout who is losing his sight and getting too old for his job and who embarks on a final road trip/scouting mission with his adult daughter. Apparently, she’s there to help him scout a hot young prospect, but I’m willing to bet some daddy/daughter bonding is going to go on as well. Just call it a hunch. Reports were going around soon after the film was announced that Sandra Bullock was in negotiations to play the daughter, but those negotiations must not have gone too well, because she never signed, and now Variety is reporting that Amy Adams has been offered the role instead. Apparently Bullock’s schedule was too full to fit the movie in, so Warner Bros. is hoping that Adams will be more flexible. I think this is a good move for the studio all around. Adams isn’t as big of a name as Bullock, but that means she will probably come cheaper. And, also, she comes with the added perk of being so much better than Sandra Bullock.

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr goes to war. He strips down to his muscular awesomeness and shimmies into a codpiece. After applying a solid gold breastplate, he’s too exhausted to actually go to war, so he heads to the local movie cinema to catch Immortals, wondering if Isabel Lucas has ever eaten a carbohydrate in her life. Then he slips into a housedress and sneaks into an early screening of J. Edgar. After a quick nap, he tries to escape the horror that is Jack and Jill, but alas, that did not happen. You can send him care packages now, courtesy of his local mental institution.

In Clint Eastwood’s J. Edgar, the director once again returns to his cinematic bread and butter with a large-scale historical epic, this time focusing on an American institution and an American icon. As J. Edgar Hoover, Leonardo DiCaprio attempts to navigate the personal and professional life of America’s first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a man bent on uncovering the secrets and deceits of others, even as he too viciously guarded his own perceived defections. Hoover was a man obsessed with big ideas and even bigger ideals – especially the concepts legacies, notoriety, heroism, and adoration (particularly of the public variety), but J. Edgar is at its best when it sticks to the smaller moments of the man’s big life. Despite predictably fine and focused details like historically accurate (and gorgeous) sets, costumes, and props, J. Edgar skimps on the big framework, unable and unwilling to scale back on its story, leaving most of the film feeling somehow both bloated and empty.

With AFI FEST presented by Audi just one week away, fellow FSR-er and AFI FEST attendee Kate Erbland and I went through the impressive list of films on the schedule and selected the ones we are most looking forward to seeing. To the credit of those putting together this year’s AFI FEST, I found myself practically highlighting the entire schedule grid as I saw film after film that had already been on my “to-see” list. From films I have been anticipating for the past few months (Shame) to ones I had not heard of until now (Butter), this year’s AFI FEST looks to be one of its strongest lineups yet. AFI FEST will run from November 3rd through the 10th in Hollywood, with all screenings taking place at The Chinese, the Chinese 6 Theatres, and the Egyptian Theatre. Tickets for all screenings are free (and available starting today, October 27, right HERE). The complete schedule grid is now online for the festival, which you can check out HERE. After the break, check out my list of my top ten most anticipated films of this year’s AFI FEST. Which films are you planning on seeing at this year’s AFI FEST?

It was just a couple days ago that we were talking about Clint Eastwood’s return to acting after an ill-advised brush with retirement. Because of a hole in his schedule he was looking to sign on to star in a film called Trouble With the Curve, which is about an aged baseball scout going on a road trip with his adult daughter. Now it’s looking like Eastwood taking the role is a done deal, because he and his producing partner Robert Lorenz are shopping around to find actresses for the role of the daughter. According to Twitch, the duo has locked in on Sandra Bullock, who they’re currently in negotiations to join the film. In my original report on this movie I said that I was a little disappointed that it would be about Eastwood taking a trip with a woman rather than taking a trip with an orangutan, and I have to say that the potential of Bullock being cast is making me lean even further toward that direction. I know that people must like her, she’s even won an award for acting, but I’m just not a fan. What say you? Can you see Bullock rising to the occasion and pulling off playing the fruit of Eastwood’s loins, or should they just do the right thing and go after Holly Hunter?

Clint Eastwood is, without argument, one of the biggest legends in Hollywood history. First as an actor and then as a director he has proven time and time again to be an invaluable treasure to the film world. I’m a little hit or miss on him as a director though. While he’s directed universally loved features like Unforgiven, he’s also directed movies that I don’t like, such as Million Dollar Baby. So, I’ve always preferred him as an actor. There is no movie that has ever been made worse by Clint Eastwood showing up to squint and growl in it. Because of that, I was pretty disappointed when Eastwood announced that Gran Torino would be the last film he ever appeared in as an actor. Gray skies are gonna clear up though. Eastwood was set to direct a movie called A Star is Born starring Beyonce Knowles, but since she’s gotten pregnant the project has been put in developmental limbo, leaving a hole in the 81-year-old screen veteran’s schedule. And since he’s a total badass that isn’t just going to stop working and rest for a couple months, Eastwood has decided to flirt with the idea of taking on another acting job. The Hollywood Reporter says that he’s in negotiations to star in a film called Trouble With the Curve about a baseball scout who goes on a road trip with his adult daughter. That doesn’t sound quite as good as movie about a baseball scout who goes on a [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]

Masculinity has always been the major topic of concern in the work of Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn. Just look at the series he made his name with, the Pusher trilogy, which in three installments provide three very different but equally compelling stories of occasionally brazen, often buffoonish masculinity within various facets of the Copenhagen illegal drug trade. So it is no surprise that the directors latest work (his ‘breakthrough’ years, if you will) are continuously concerned with the turbulent lives of men, culminating this weekend with his most ‘mainstream’ entry, Drive (in purely box-office terms, as Drive in its opening weekend made more than 84x what his previous two films made together, yet the film is still ripe with Refn’s eccentric signature). Refn’s thematic and narrative preoccupation with masculinity has produced three fascinating portraits in as many years. The temporal and social contexts of Bronson, Valhalla Rising, and Drive couldn’t be more disparate, but between them he’s produced an unofficial trilogy of sorts connected not only through his deliberate pacing and striking, almost invasive visual style, but more importantly through their shared concerns as portrayals of three aggressive men who wander their respective environments in solitude.

People always jest about Clint Eastwood being a papa’s boy of the Academy, and even after a string of movies ranging from just good to flat-out tedious, that belief hasn’t changed much. When films like Changeling and Gran Torino — one being forgettable and the other being plain laughable — garner nominations, it’s a clear sign that the once-great director doesn’t have to do a whole lot to get a few nods thrown his way. Come this awards season, that may remain the case. A trailer for J. Edgar has finally arrived, and it looks like the type of Oscar bait film that Kirk Lazarus would star in. From DiCaprio’s inconsistent-sounding accent to his questionable old man make-up, all signs point to a tedious bio film; events being told, rather than a story. The production design is clearly topnotch, but it’s impossible not to cringe during this “Give me that Oscar!” trailer.

What is Movie News After Dark? For tonight, it’s simply a movie news column working on a very, very slow news day. So it has opted for fun instead of informative. It’s betting you won’t mind. We begin tonight with the thought of big, badass robots killing the whole of humanity in Robopocalypse, a film that director Steven Spielberg will now direct for July 3, 2013. Fox and Dreamworks were announced as the studios putting up the money today, which means that Daniel H. Wilson’s excellent book will finally get some big screen love. If done right, it could be massive.

The first official image of Leonardo DiCaprio playing the gangbusting icon in Clint Eastwood‘s J. Edgar has been released (as you can see above), and it’s just a taste of what the make-up department has in store for the actor as he journeys through the neck-flap, skin-sagging years of J. Edgar Hoover’s life. The film will see DiCaprio wear a ton of aging make-up, because he’ll be playing the adult version of the nation’s former top cop through his rise to power in the 1920 through the man’s death in 1972. Consider it a reverse Benjamin Button. It looks great, but the bigger concern is that Eastwood seems to think he’s a one-take director at this point in his career, and he’s not. His last few efforts have been sorely lacking. However, maybe a biopic about absolute power is just what the doctor ordered. As such, by way of comparison, check out this picture of J. Edgar Hoover to give you an idea of how close DiCaprio is and where he’ll be headed.

A genre nearly as old as filmmaking itself, the western thrived throughout the years of the studio system but has zigzagged across rough terrain for the past forty or so years. For the last fifteen-ish years, the struggling, commercially unfriendly genre was either manifested in a neoclassical nostalgic form limited in potential mass appeal (Appaloosa, Open Range) or in reimagined approaches that ran the gamut between contrived pap and inspired deconstructions (anything from Wild Wild West to The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford). But last December, True Grit – a bona fide western remake that relied on the opportunities available in the genre’s conventions rather than bells, whistles, or ironic tongues in their respective cheeks – became a smash hit. Did this film reinvigorate a genre that was on life support, as the supposed revitalization of the musical is thought to have done a decade ago, or are westerns surviving by moving along a different route altogether? Three westerns released so far this year – Gore Verbinski’s Rango, Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff, and, as of this weekend, Jon Favreau’s Cowboys & Aliens – suggest mixed directions for the dusty ol’ genre.

Russell Edgington is a prime example of a great villain. Not only was he smart and calculated, but he also had the power and strength to get things done on his own. And when Edgington got down and bloody, he looked cool doing it. The vampire king was one of the few vamps on True Blood that seemed interested in actually having fun. He always looked as if he was going to a party and simply looking for a good time, especially with the help of his slick 70s style wardrobe. Sadly, Edgington isn’t around this season, but don’t fret. As actor Denis O’Hare says below, the plan is for him to return. Things didn’t end well for Edgington last season, but the King of Mississippi had persistence and ambition, so there was no real reason for us to be doubting his return. While Denis O’Hare isn’t on this season, the actor was still kind enough to make the time to discuss his role on the show. Throughout my whole chat with O’Hare he wore his love for Edgington on his sleeve. From discussing the character’s past to his childlike wonder, the actor remained enthusiastic.

There will inevitably be a movie about the mission to kill Osama bin Laden – this much is certain. Recent news has established that Kathryn Bigelow might be the first to try to put into play one of several projects related to last week’s assassination amongst several that are being shopped around. The reasoning is clear, as the material lends itself inherently to cinematic expression. The mission itself, in short, feels like a movie. Whether or not this movie (or movies) will have anything to say beyond what we already know and think and feel is unknown and, in Cole Abaius’s terms, it will be difficult for such projects to escape an inherent potential to come across as a shameless “cash-in.” My personal prediction is that the first movie that arises from bin Laden’s death will, at best, be an exciting procedural that visualizes an incident we are currently so invested in and preoccupied with. But I doubt that anything released so soon will remotely approach a full understanding of bin Laden’s death as catharsis for American citizens, as a harbinger for change in the West’s relationship to the Middle East and the Muslim world, as a precedent for the possible fall of al Qaeda, etc. In short, we won’t be able to express cinematically (or in any other medium, for that matter) what the death of bin Laden means until the benefits of time and hindsight actually provide that meaning. This is why I think any movies about Osama [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]

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr puts on his ghostbusting gear to take on the two big spiritual flicks in the theaters. He suffers through a tsunami in Hereafter and struggles even more to get through Clint Eastwood’s latest Oscar-bait flick. Then he sets up a stationary video camera to capture any strange goings-on while he sleeps. He plans to sell the film to Paramount as Paranormal Activity 3: More Shots of Nothing Happening.

The sort of movie for which the critical cliché “tone poem” was invented, Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter evokes an eerie serenity in the face of death. With three interlocking storylines centered on our awareness, perceptions and ultimate acceptance of the afterlife, on what the notion that you start dying the moment you’re born really means, the picture ought to cast a particular, carefully controlled spell. Yet Eastwood, an adept handler of “meat-and-potatoes” narratives and more naked emotions, fails to transform the precise, melancholic sensibility at the heart of Peter Morgan’s screenplay into an affecting cinematic experience. Long-winded, ponderous and without much in the way of compelling drama, Hereafter sputters across three countries, filled with haunting imagery but never offering the visceral, subtle transcendence of a film by a more adept chronicler of spiritual sensations.

It’s a miracle that any movie gets made at all. Even after the green light is given, schedules and budgets have to work out, mechanical sharks have to stay operational, and weather has to play nice. Plus, there are a million other pieces that have to fall into place just right or the whole thing could be off. The film geek news of the week is that Clint Eastwood was offered the roles of Superman and James Bond, which is incredibly cool, but it would have created a far different career for the man. It may have changed his trajectory completely, but if he’d accepted the Bond role, there are at least 6 films that either wouldn’t have been made or wouldn’t have been the same without him.