What is Casting Couch? Today, it’s welcoming TV’s Kyra Sedgwick back to the big screen. In recent years, Kyra Sedgwick has had a cushy gig going as the lead of TNT’s The Closer, but now that the series is coming to an end, it’s time for her to get back out there and score some gigs in the film world; and a report from Variety suggests that this is just what she’s doing. The latest feature that she’s signed up for comes from first-time feature director but long-time Terrence Malick collaborator Batan Silva, and it’s an indie sci-fi flick called Rays of Light. Word has it that Sedgwick will be playing the matriarch of a family who’s trying to survive in their estate house after the dying of the sun. Good lord, that’s got to be a metaphor for something.

In the latest addition of Release Date Round-Up, just about every single film that needed a release date gets dated, or at least this giant installment of everyone’s favorite release date feature (sure) makes it seem that way. We’ve got dates for every kind of film under the sun (vampires! true life trauma! comic book movies! historical dramas!), including a hefty number of totally new dates (and a smidgen of some simple change-ups) for many of the films. What we’re saying is, there is a lot of stuff here, so better pull out your day planners and get cracking on configuring your movie-watching for the rest of the year. After the break, find out when you can see David O. Russell‘s untitled reunion with his Silver Linings Playbook stars, Christopher Nolan‘s next, and seemingly everything else in between. Your wallet is about to take a big hit.

While it’s certainly amusing that one of the projects that Hollywood simply refuses to let die is a film about zombies, the long road to the screen for Pride and Prejudice and Zombieshas been so long and so arduous that it simply doesn’t seem worth it at this point. And yet, this is Hollywood, and the adaptation of Seth Grahame-Smith‘s “novel” does come with a script by David O. Russell and it does fall under the newly-hot “zom-rom-com” genre that moviegoers seem to like these days (thanks, Warm Bodies). So let’s throw some more money at it and hope it all works out. Deadline Hollywood passes along word that Panorama Media has joined the long list of the film’s producers – including Darko Entertainment, Handsomecharlie Films, and producer Allison Shearmur – to give the project (which still doesn’t have a cast or a director) still more money to get made. Money is cool and all, but you know what’s really cool? A director and a cast. The news also assures us that the film is out to potential directors, but considering that Zombies has already cycled through plenty of potential directors – with Craig Gillespie last attached to direct back in August of 2011, and other names like Russell himself and Mike White on board at various points to helm – that doesn’t mean much. At least this is a small piece of good news for a plagued project that, again, still doesn’t have an attached director or any semblance

Let’s just get this out of the way right now. The Best Director category at this year’s Academy Awards, regardless of how it turns out, has been tainted by an incredible snub. No, I’m not referring to Kathryn Bigelow’s helming of the controversial Zero Dark Thirty or even Rupert Sanders’ double tap of Snow White and the Huntsman and Kristen Stewart. I’m talking about Ben Mothereffing Affleck. His third film as director, Argo, is nominated for seven Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Script, Best Editing and more, but the man himself did not make the cut. It’s anybody’s guess why, and while it obviously made Benh Zeitlin’s day, the rest of us are left wondering how exactly it happened. But don’t feel too bad for Affleck… not only will his movie take home the Oscar for Best Picture on February 24th but he and the film have been cleaning up elsewhere left and right. But that’s enough about Ben Affleck. Keep reading for a look at all five nominees for Best Director along with my predicted winner in red…

Director David O. Russell hasn’t even found a new title for his next project, the formerly named American Bullshit, yet, and already he’s hashing out what he’s going to be working on next. According to THR, Russell is all set to make his third film in a row that will feature actress Jennifer Lawrence, as he’s committed to directing a new drama that she’s attached to star in called The Ends of the Earth. This, of course, will follow Lawrence’s Oscar-nominated turn in Russell’s The Silver Linings Playbook, and the small role she recently took in the former American Bullshit. Lawrence was rumored for the role back in August. There aren’t very many exact plot details yet available for The Ends of the Earth, but the trade describes it as being “a fact-based love story about a powerful oil tycoon who has everything stripped from him after he is caught in an affair.” So, presumably, Russell is eventually going to have to find a male lead to play the dastardly adulterer. Might he go all the way and make this the third film in a row where he works with both Lawrence and Bradley Cooper?

What is Casting Couch? It’s the casting column that’s rounding up all the casting news that fell through the cracks. Today we have some doozies, including word that Paul Walker’s remaking a French film. The last time Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper, and director David O. Russell all worked together, the result was Silver Linings Playbook, a movie that currently has them all nominated for Oscars. Rejoice, then, that Jennifer Lawrence has just been added to Russell’s next project—that movie about the sting operation that took down a bunch of congressmen in the 70s that used to be called American Bullshit. According to Deadline, who broke the news of Lawrence’s involvement, she’ll be joining the film in the role of the Christian Bale character’s wife. Oh yeah, maybe that should have been mentioned. Christian Bale is also in this. As well as Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner. Who’s got room on their shelves for more acting Oscars?

This weekend, Steven Soderbergh’s Side Effects opened to better-than-okay reviews and less-than-okay box office. With Soderbergh’s prolific output, this release would be altogether unremarkable, yet another strong if not entirely memorable entry by a director who would likely release another film six months later. However, Side Effects is notable as a quiet swan song, the proposed last theatrical film by a director who has reportedly done all he’d like to do in filmmaking. But Soderbergh is simply the latest (and on the younger side) of a group of directors that have made unofficial pronouncements towards making an exit of sorts from the business in which they made their name. George Lucas is currently in the process of overseeing the path of Star Wars’ cinematic future at Disney before officially going into retirement. This is monumental. A filmmaker known for keeping very tight reigns on his creative property is now fully embracing the potential of other directors’ and corporations’ visions toward his subject matter for film. There’s a dynamic shift here that doesn’t end with Lucas or Soderbergh either.

Broken City seemingly has all of the ingredients to be one of those action/dramas that is so cheesy it delivers – there’s Mark Wahlberg being tough, there’s Russell Crowe with a horrendous spray tan and a Donald Trump-lite combover, there’s Catherine Zeta-Jones with an equally horrendous spray tan, and there’s director Allen Hughes, who has some street cred as one half of The Hughes Brothers directing team. And corrupt politician dramas are usually fairly entertaining, right? Not so much here. Broken City, instead, is largely a misfire. The film’s plot meanders and leaves many open threads, likely the result of re-edits, and none of the characters are particularly likable. There’s just so much a balls out Russell Crowe performance can save a movie, and shockingly enough, Crowe doesn’t even have all that much screen time. The film opens with Wahlberg’s NYC Detective Billy Taggert shooting someone in the head in a NYC housing project, Bolton Village – he has a beard, so clearly, he is coded as being troubled. He is tried (now beardless), since his self-defense plea is questionable at best. There is evidence that surfaces that can put him away, but Republican-seeming Mayor Nicolas Hostetler (Crowe) decides to keep that evidence for his own eventual gain, allowing Taggart to go free, albeit without his job.

What is Casting Couch? It’s the column that’s rounding up all the casting announcements the studios have released now that the buzz surrounding the Golden Globes has died down. They’ve been hoarding. Before his show on FX became such a well-respected thing, people thought of Louis CK mostly as being a stand-up comedian and not really as an actor, despite the fact that he’s shown up in a few small roles here and there. That might be about to change though, because not only does CK  star in Woody Allen’s upcoming movie, Blue Jasmine, but THR is reporting that he’s also in talks to join David O. Russell’s next project: that con-man movie starring Christian Bale, Bradley Cooper, Jeremy Renner, and Amy Adams that used to be called American Bullshit. If CK’s involvement becomes official, it will see him rubbing onscreen elbows with some of the biggest names in Hollywood, which is probably going to feel a little weird at first.

Editor’s Note: Allison’s spot-on review originally ran way back at the beginning of the month, but the film is opening wide today so we’re sharing it once again. Sharing is good. Maybe we are all a bit crazy – whether we are lying to ourselves about the relationships we are in or why we believe holding a handkerchief or having the remote at a certain angle will determine the outcome of a game. But unlike most of us, Pat Solitano (Bradley Cooper), has been deemed mentally unstable by both the court and his doctors at the mental institution we find him in at the start of Silver Linings Playbook. Pat may seem fairly sane, albeit unflinchingly honest, but as we learn why he ended up in such a facility and watch him unravel at the sound of a certain song, it becomes clear that Pat is dealing with issues he may not be able to easily control with simple positive thinking. Pat is released to the care of his big-hearted mother, Dolores (Jacki Weaver), and his hot-headed father, Pat Sr. (Robert De Niro), and while their family dynamic is slightly dysfunctional, it is clear that they all truly care about one another.

UPDATED: The Playlist now reports that the cities getting an early release include NY, LA, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Boston, DC, Miami, San Diego, and Austin. David O. Russell‘s Silver Linings Playbook swiftly (and not entirely unexpectedly) became the film to see after its strong Toronto International Film Festival showing, so it’s no surprise that the film’s distributor, The Weinstein Company, is trying to put this thing in front of audiences on the quick side. Deadline Hollywood report that, though the Bradley Cooper- and Jennifer Lawrence-starring production will still open wide on November 21, the film will premiere in ten markets on November 16. Of course, we still don’t know which ten markets that will be (though, Los Angeles and New York, you’re probably safe on this one), and a quick check of both MovieTickets and Fandango don’t shed too much light on the situation, and even the Weinstein site and the film’s official site contain no new information on this limited early release, but we suspect we’ll find out soon enough. Perhaps staying on top of the film’s Twitter is wise? Until then, let’s all look back at Allison’s solid review of the film from AFI FEST. Ah, loonies in love.

October offered up plenty of films to give this awards season a proper start. Ben Affleck once again showed he’s got one of the best eyes for tension working today; John Hawkes gave another year’s best performance in Fox Searchlight’s The Sessions; Martin McDonagh made another wicked, original dark comedy with real bite; and, who could forget, The Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer made a huge box office smash which received unabashed praise up the wazoo, especially for the seamless makeup work. While I wish Cloud Atlas did fit that description, at least for a few more years the trio’s daring and moving film will go down as a box office bomb which may or may have not been ahead of its time. No matter how Cloud Atlas stands up in a few years, it was the type of ambition which served as another reminder of how important going to the movie theater is and to truly have experiences while you are there, be they good or bad. With November 2012, there are plenty of movies to have a similar experience with, from Ang Lee‘s Life of Pi to a triumphant new Bond movie. Keep reading to find out what other eight movies you must see this month.

In a nice bit of Friday confirmation clean-up, Atlas Entertainment and Annapurna Pictures have just circulated a press release that firms up a spat of casting buzz we’ve long been reporting on. The release confirms that David O. Russell‘s formerly-titled American Bullshit (which is currently looking for a perhaps more marketing-friendly title) will star Bradley Cooper, Jeremy Renner, and Amy Adams, along with a somewhat unexpected Christian Bale. Russell is writing the film’s screenplay with scribe Eric Warren Singer, who first wrote his own original script for the project (a script that appeared on the 2012 Black List with the title American Bullshit). The press release also provides our first official synopsis of the film, which we’ve long known would revolve around the true story of an F.B.I.-launched sting attack aimed at rooting out corruption on Congress, one that was notably conceived of by “the world’s greatest con man.”

In a word – no. Over the weekend, the Toronto International Film Festival wrapped up and, like the end of all good things, the festival closed out with the bestowing of awards to various films. Winners included Artifact, Seven Psychopaths, Laurence Anyways, Keep a Modest Head, Antiviral, Blackbird, Call Girl, In the House, and the big winner – David O. Russell‘s Silver Linings Playbook. The Bradley Cooper- and Jennifer Lawrence-starring film won the BlackBerry People’s Choice Award, which is generally considered to be TIFF’s most important award and an indication of a film’s chances at a Best Picture nomination come Oscar time. As Wikipedia tells it, “Given that the festival lacks a jury and is non-competitive, regular awards handed out at other festivals for categories such as ‘Best Actress’ or ‘Best Film’ do not exist at the Toronto International Film Festival. The major prize, the People’s Choice Award, is given to a feature-length film with the highest ratings as voted by the festival-going populace.” Plenty of stories on the film’s win have noted that this all but guarantees that Silver Linings will end up with Oscar nominations, particularly a Best Picture nod. And why is that? Over the past five years, two People’s Choice winners have gone on to win Best Picture (The King’s Speech and Slumdog Millionaire) and one film picked up a nomination in the same category (Precious). Good odds, right? Well, maybe not so much.

The Toronto International Film Festival has so far issued few surprises – after all, most of us were surely expecting that Cloud Atlas would divide, Argo would be solid, The Place Beyond the Pines would enthrall, and that Thanks for Sharing would play like Shame-lite – but there has been one film whose praise has surprised many, most of all this writer. The pieces of David O. Russell‘s Silver Linings Playbook are all good – the director, the source material, the cast (including Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, and Robert De Niro) – but the film’s first trailer just hinted at a film that was light and amusing. Apparently, though, the film is much more than that, and a number of critics are already throwing “awards-worthy” praise all over it. That said, it seems like the casting of Cooper (swapped out for Russell’s frequent star, Mark Wahlberg) was an unexpectedly solid choice, and neither Russell nor Cooper seem ready to let that magic go.

Ever since Neil Burger became attached to helm Uncharted well over a year ago there hasn’t been much movement on bringing the game to the big screen. With that lack of development, it comes to no surprise that, according to Variety, Burger has left the project. The reason for Burger’s departure is unclear, although it was reported hours before this news the Limitless director may adapt Divergent for Summit. Unfortunately, Burger isn’t the only loss the project has faced today, as screenwriting duo Cormac and Marianne Wibberley have signed on to handle scripting duties. For those of you unfamiliar with the Wibberley’s writings, they worked on The Shaggy Dog, I Spy, The 6th Day, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, and, of course, Disney’s hamster epic, G-Force. There’s not a whole lot of impressive adventure in those films to prove they can handle Uncharted, but the duo was most likely hired because of their work on the National Treasure series. They’re about as safe as a pick can get. What’s most disheartening about this news is the downgrade from David O. Russell, an Oscar nominee, to the writers behind bland, middle-of-the-road action films. Russell’s script was considered “epic” and “ambitious,” something that apparently frightened Sony. With work-for-hires like the Wibberleys, they most likely won’t have to worry about that.

It was announced back in March that David O. Russell had been attached to direct a Black List script from writer Eric Singer called American Bullshit. Well, seeing as casting has now begun, it would seem like the project is officially a go, but it’s no longer going to be called American Bullshit. Already on board this now untitled drama – which tells the true story of a con artist helping the F.B.I. weed out political corruption – are Bradley Cooper and Jeremy Renner; and THR is reporting that a deal has just been signed to add an exciting young actress who’s previously worked with Russell into the mix. The Fighter’s Amy Adams is now on board to play Maxine Gardner, the mistress to Cooper’s character, con man Mel Weinberg. Renner, for his part, will be playing an F.B.I. agent. As is the case with many of the more interesting-sounding projects that are chock full of fan favorite actors and creators these days, Russell’s latest is being brought to us by Megan Ellison’s Annapurna Pictures.

It’s an understandable expectation that when one sees “new David O. Russell trailer,” they automatically ready themselves to see Mark Wahlberg’s face pop up once they hit “play.” But, oops, the Funky One was traded out as the lead of Silver Linings Playbook by Russell himself last summer in favor of someone else apparently willing to work for less pay (and less fuss) – Bradley Cooper. And while that’s the sort of casting might-have-been trivia we could all still be talking about years from now, hopefully the film’s first trailer will silence that, because it’s hard to imagine that Wahlberg could infuse the part of bonkers old Pat Solitano with as much desperation and joy as Cooper appears to do in just two minutes. Wow. Based on Matthew Quick‘s novel of the same name (sans a “the,” apparently), Cooper stars as a former teacher who attempts to reintegrate into normal life after four years in a mental institution. For Pat, “normal life” apparently means staying up till 4AM reading Hemingway, bugging his probably loopy parents (Jacki Weaver and Robert De Niro), running around with a trash bag on his body (sweat it out, Pat!), and just possibly falling in love with the equally-as-off-the-wall-nutty Jennifer Lawrence. Even better? The whole thing absolutely feels like a Russell film.

Vincent Albert “Buddy” Cianci, Jr. has an awesome name and a fascinating history. The two-time mayor of Providence, Rhode Island was convicted of felonies twice while in office – which pushed him out twice – and his absurd career was chronicled in “Politics and Pasta: How I Prosecuted Mobsters, Rebuilt a Dying City, Advised a President, Dined With Sinatra, Spent Five Years in a Federally Funded Gated Community and Lived to Tell the Tale.” They may have to squeeze that title into something more slimming because a movie is in development. David O. Russell (The Fighter) wants to stick with the biopic world and live to tell this tale. According to the LA Times, he’s officially signing up with the project being produced by Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal. A colorful character from the northeast? Sounds like a Russell repeat with political ambitions. It also looks like a soap opera covered in marinara. Does anyone know if Burt Young is available? And if they can get that title under control?

When we’re introduced to Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford‘s white-collar characters in the opening scene of The Cabin in the Woods, it becomes wildly apparent Drew Goddard‘s film is not your typical horror picture. They’re tasked with delivering an exceptional amount of exposition, which Goddard and Joss Whedon let them deliver with a pure sense of glee. Unlike Jenkins’s previous horror film performance, The Father in Let Me In, this is a character who is about as Average Joe as they come, and he just happens to have a not-so-Average-Joe occupation. Here’s what Jenkins had to say about comedic exposition, the brilliance of unexpected filmmaking, and why his character Ted in Burn After Reading deserved getting axed to death: