What is Casting Couch? It’s full of casting news, just full of it. Today you can find out what’s next for foreign heartthrobs Michael Roskam and Marion Cotillard. Quvenzhané Wallis has been in the news a lot lately. Not only did the adorable nine-year-old stir up some controversy at Sunday’s Oscar ceremony by skinning a puppy and wearing it as a purse, she’s also been the subject of rumors regarding the Will Smith-produced remake of Annie. After Smith’s daughter Willow dropped out of the film’s starring role because she’s probably in her twenties now or something, it was rumored that Wallis would be stepping in to take her place. Deadline now confirms that this is indeed the case, and Wallis is all set to become the new face of everyone’s favorite orphan. Easy A’s Will Gluck will direct her.

When I first heard about Sebastián Silva’s next movie, Magic, Magic, I had yet to see any of the director’s work, but I was excited at the cast he had assembled, because it was made up mostly of hot young actresses. Since then, some of that has changed. If you’re not yet familiar with Silva, go check out his 2009 film The Maid. It’s a movie that managed to be tense and dramatic just by telling the story of an aging maid worried about losing her position in a prominent Chilean household because of the presence of a new, young au pair. In my opinion, it proved the man to have a sure hand behind the camera, and it put him firmly on the list of directors to watch. Go ahead, I’ll wait… Okay, now that we’re all on the same page, let’s start getting excited for his new (and apparently newly untitled) thriller that stars some more familiar Hollywood names like Michael Cera, Juno Temple, Emily Browning, and Maria Full of Grace’s Catalina Sandino Moreno.

Film is a powerful medium, and the best ones can make you feel strongly one way or the other about fictional characters and their make-believe lives. These people exist only on the screen, and yet we can feel joy, fear, love, hatred and so much more for them as if they were living and breathing beside us. Most movies never accomplish this feat. And Sleeping Beauty is no different. Instead Julia Leigh‘s debut film manages something decidedly unique. The lead character is passive, bland and as emotionally inspiring as a wash cloth, but the actress who plays her? You just may find yourself feeling bad, embarrassed and fearful for her. Lucy (Emily Browning) is a college student like many others. She attends class during the day and at night works in a restaurant or office and occasionally volunteers for paid medical experiments. Sure, some nights she heads to swanky bars to do lines of coke with Asian women in the bathroom, but mostly she works hard. It never seems to be enough though as she’s always behind in her rent and at risk of being booted out by her roommates. Until she responds to an ad for a silver service waitress to work private parties. The interview is brief but invasive, and it comes with two warnings. Don’t make a career of this. And indiscretion will not be tolerated.

Remember the time in college when you were strapped for cash and ended up working as a subconscious prostitute where anyone with a few bucks could have their way with you in your sleep? Yeah, we had that wiped from our memory too. Thankfully, Julia Leigh‘s new film Sleeping Beauty won’t let us forget. Here’s the trailer if you want to refresh yourself and get some context for the big spooning image of Emily Browning and your grandpa to the right. It hit Cannes with a mixed vengeance, and it should be in theaters (limited style), but it’s also available right this second on SundanceNOW. That is, if you like paying for things. Since we don’t, we’re giving away a free online ticket to see the movie through that wonderful website. How do you enter? How do you win? Glad you asked.

As the temperatures turn just the slightest bit colder and the fall colors settle in the landscape (if you’re lucky enough to live near trees), we should start directing our film focus to the fall movie season. We love summer for its mind-numbing fun, but the last season of the year tends to offer some of the most vulnerable, honest, and captivating films (you know, just in time for that other “big O”). Fall supplies films meant to scandalize our minds and even our naughty bits, and there is nothing wrong with that. But with so many films and film festivals to choose from between now and December, it becomes overwhelming to sort through all the goodness being dispensed our way. Lucky for you, my love of highlighting full-frontal male nudity and questionable sexual conduct happens to pay off for a change. Below you’ll find a helpful collection of five sultry features sure to stimulate your brain and your nethers.

Like many of my fellow Rejects, I am currently recovering from the insanity that was Fantastic Fest 2011. Over the course of four days I viewed a relatively tame amount of films (10 – I’m not a champ this time around), each one, even the crap ones, expanding my movie watching mind. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that I selected the most sexually involved films I could, pausing briefly for a palate cleanser of adorable in A Boy and His Samurai, and I look forward to sharing some of my insights on the loneliness of loving a sex doll in the coming weeks. But for now, let’s jump right into the eccentricities of loving something we shouldn’t. As a sex writer, I’m constantly asked to voice my opinion on any frisky business ranging from the sweet nibbles of a new lover all the way to the “am I weird for liking this and that?” Typically, I provide a sort of get-out-of-jail-free card by giving a basic of sex-positive response along the lines of “you like what you like” or “your kink isn’t my kink, but your kink is okay” (unless the kink involved is so taboo I have to flip a table and walk away). But last week the same topic kept coming up: The sex appeal of the bad girl. Yes, there’s nothing new in feeling attracted to a girl who can beat you up, take your money, and then kiss you on the cheek before she leaves

Just because the hot girls in Zach Snyder’s visually assaulting film Sucker Punch aren’t old enough to drink, nothing is stopping you from watching the movie and playing this drinking game… unless you’re as old as the main characters of the film. While Sucker Punch has its ups and downs, it’s a visually interesting flick with plenty of fishnets, stockings, push-up bras and a bad Russian accent courtesy of Carla Gugino. What’s stopping you from watching it on DVD or Blu-ray and knocking back a couple sips of your favorite spirit? You know you want to.

When I hear that there’s a movie in the works called Magic, Magic I instantly think that it’s probably a movie about young witches, something going after all of that mystical-teenagers in love money. Well, despite the fact that it has just cast three hot, young actresses in key roles, Magic, Magic doesn’t appear to be that at all. According to Variety, “The pic revolves around a girl vacationing with her friends in a remote area of Chile who slowly starts losing her mental faculties.” Joining the already announced Michael Cera is Suckerpunch’s Emily Browning, Jack and Diane’s Juno Temple, and Maria Full of Grace’s Catalina Sandino Moreno. That’s one lucky Michael Cera. Magic, Magic is being directed by Sebastien Silva, a Chilean director who has seen success with small films La vida me mata, The Maid, and Old Cats. I haven’t seen any of Silva’s work myself, so I can’t vouch for its quality, but casting three gorgeous actresses for his new one is a pretty good strategy at getting my attention from here on. Production is scheduled to start late in the summer, so presumably we’ll be hearing more about this one soon. Until then I’m going to make it a point to stop thinking that I’m going to be seeing a movie about teenage witches every time I read the title.

The second film of the day, following Midnight in Paris this morning, Sleeping Beauty is the only Australian film included this year, starring Emily Browning (who hopefully won’t be a high-profile casualty of Snyder’s sickly Sucker Punch) as a University student drawn into a mysterious hidden world of beauty and desire. Or at least that’s what the marketing material says. Regardless of what they position this erotic, chiller had already been picking up a lot of buzz, possibly because the official synopsis that I read as part of the bulging press pack (stuffed lovingly into my press PO box this morning) suggested a film about a girl who willingly becomes a Sleeping Beauty – or someone who takes a sleeping pill and allows herself to have “erotic experiences” with “old men” that she has no control over. Funny that, because Browning’s whole role in Sucker Punch can be labelled as overly eroticized and submissive too. Zing!

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a movie news column that is content with entertaining you on a nightly basis with the best links and tidbits the web has to offer. But in reality, it wishes that it could be out there fighting for the side of humanity in the great world war against the zombie invasion. It has big dreams, this nightly feature. As you know, there are three things I can’t avoid writing about in this here column: Michael Bay movies, Doctor Who and World War Z. The third is perhaps one of the greatest texts ever written about the zombie apocalypse. What I did not know is that it was almost turned into an awesome video game, as this Kotaku investigative report suggests. As you can see from tonight’s headline image, it would have been very cool.

The last film Emily Browning was in featured her exploited, stripped down to lingerie and kicking a dragon’s ass. For Sleeping Beauty, it looks like she’ll be exploited and stripped down without a dragon in sight. The film from writer/director Julia Leigh was selected for Cannes in competition, and tells the story of a young student (played by Browning) who takes a job where men fulfill their sexual fantasies with her while she’s asleep. Of course, the trailer is sufficiently haunting, and it spells out a potentially bleak film that explores a person as object. Check it out for yourself:

Sucker Punch feels like Zack Snyder‘s response to all those awkward and sexist nerds he and his cast deal with in Hall-H nearly every year. You know, the ones that can’t help but to shout out how “hot” the actresses are during the panel, and without actually asking any real questions or treating them respectfully. Those nerds are the sideline oppressors of Sucker Punch: the revolting-looking Chef and Mayor, the ones that love seeing their women in degrading and sexualized outfits, but don’t care about how or why they’re in said outfits. As long as they get their joy out of sexy women doing sexy things, and nothing outside the basic titillation, they’ll be happy. This is the subtext that many seem to not talking about from Sucker Punch. Snyder’s work has always been divisive, but never has one of his films been this polarizing, and he knows that. Snyder is well-aware of the response the film has been getting, and he’s the type of self-aware filmmaker who probably expected this type of reaction from day one of shooting. The fact that Sucker Punch isn’t a film for everyone surely must have caused problems along the way, and as Snyder states, the test-screening process was no help in that regard.

This piece contains spoilers for Sucker Punch. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, go watch it before diving in. Once the first images hit, or when the first synopsis hit, or maybe even when Zack Snyder dreamed up the concept for Sucker Punch ten years ago – a time bomb was set to explode twice, and it finally did this weekend. The first explosion was the basis for the existence of the movie, and it continued exploding many, many times during the runtime. The second was the question of feminism. Now that the movie is out, it has also exploded. The reactions from before the film was released varied, and they still do. Some see it as feminism merged with geek culture (which assumes geek culture isn’t sexless to begin with). Some see it as an affront to the advancement of women parading in thigh high boots. One who gives a strong argument for the latter is Angie Han of /film, who writes the hell out of an editorial called “On Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch: Why Ass-Kicking and Empowerment Aren’t Always the Same Thing.” You should absolutely go read it before reading this, although I’ll do my best to condense her arguments (in a fair way) in order to respectfully counter them.

Right around ten years ago Zack Snyder had an idea. An idea that would come to take up about thirty seconds of Sucker Punch, but lend to the film its main character, its title, and its sex appeal. That original idea revolved around a girl named Baby Doll who escaped into the recesses of her mind while dancing for some very bad men. He then partnered with his school buddy Steve Shibuya to start working that into a script. Things were probably going pretty okay on that, but they were about to get a lot better when Snyder found himself helming Dawn of the Dead, my personal choice for best zombie movie ever. You heard that right, Romero. Sitting next to Snyder at the press junket, the man did no less than doodle an X-Wing on a pad of paper while talking, as if he needed anything more than Watchmen to solidify his nerd-cred. Before talking about the visually complex Sucker Punch, Snyder, sitting alongside wife and producing partner Debbie, the director took a moment to give us a glimpse into his filmmaking past, revealing as one might expect he was an early overachiever. One of his student films in the basic introductory film classes was a World War I epic, complete with trenches dug by a rented backhoe. Before you get antsy, I’ll tell you what he said about his upcoming Superman movie: nothing. As in, he’s not allowed to speak of it. Duh. What he did express was

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr felt so trapped by the weight of the world that he escaped into an amazing world inside his mind. Ironically, this world bore a striking resemblance to Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch, what with all the scantily clad, kick-ass hotties running around. Once free of oppression, Kevin took his kids to check out the new Diary of a Wimpy Kid movie in a desperate hope for Rachel Harris’s approval.

Zack Snyder’s return to (mostly) live action hits screens today, bringing to life the fetishistic dreams of many a teenage boy as a mostly female cast in anime-inspired garb storm through mind of the troubled Babydoll, battling dragons, orcs, and samurai. On paper it sounds pretty amazing: sexy young actresses, plenty of firearms, the directing of Zack Snyder, wild nightmare action sequences, and a minimum amount of leather inspired clothing. In small doses, say in trailers and commercial spots, the film looks amazing. Fast paced action, again the sexy ladies, and amazing, lush digital sets, brimming with fireballs and bullet hits. Then some slow motion, and some fast motion and some slow motion again. By now you’re probably starting to predict where I’m going. I said it’s amazing in small doses and in paper, but how is it stretched out to two hours?

It’s unclear what sort of dance class these young women are attending, but the standard dress code seems to be whatever they can find at Frederick’s of Hollywood. Maybe it’s a stripper fitness thing. What has been clear, especially from the trailers, is that Zack Snyder wanted to send his Sucker Punch actors out into the robot and dragon-infested wastelands wearing very, very little, and these pictures want to prove that there’s even less they can wear and no fetish they can’t tackle. It’s enough to make Brad over at Rope of Silicon question the sheer amount of dirty old men that will be in the back of the theater opening night.

First there was a teaser, and then there was the report from Comic Con. Now, there’s the first full length trailer for Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch – a movie about several young women who escape the oppressive world of their juvenile home through the power of fantasy. Imagine Girl, Interrupted if there were dragons and robot ninja armies to battle. The rich visuals continue to impress, as does the action, and it looks like the story may deliver the kind of mental journey that fans appreciated from Inception earlier in the year. Plus, there’s Carla Gugino with a Balkan accent. Polish your glasses or contacts or your eyeballs directly, and enjoy:

The word from Comic-Con was that Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch, while difficult to explain, was one of the more stunning highlights of a quality overall showing. The posters we showed you mere days ago were hot, wet and on fire. Cole Abaius’ report from the Hall H panel talked about a some of the strongest female characters we’ve seen on screen in a while. It all sounds like a wild Kill Bill-esque ride through the visually supercharged mind of director Zack Snyder. Nothing about that seems underwhelming. At least not to me. Today brings us the first bit of bonafide proof that Sucker Punch is going to be off-the-rails, both visually and conceptually. It’s a trailer that features badass ladies, burlesque musical numbers, dragons, samurais and suits of armor. As Cole said in his report, it’s breath-taking. And it awaits you after the jump.

Strong female characters are not the norm in Hollywood, but if you thought of one name that would use his directorial clout to bring a few more of them to the world, would it be Zack Snyder? The same man who was lambasted for being sexist after 300 is now being praised by his actresses for loving women and creating the best possible roles for them with his new movie. “Women are always looking for layers because women are complex creatures. For this movie, you don’t have to be just one thing. For men in action, you can be all things, but for women people see that maybe she’s dressed sexy so maybe it’s not empowering. It’s a tough line, but the truth is that women can be all of those things,” said star Carla Gugino. She got to be all of those things on Sucker Punch specifically because of Zack Snyder’s vision and appreciation for creating rounded female characters. Oh, and the footage they showed today has samurai warriors and a giant dragon. Feminism and fire-breathing. Something for everyone!