This year’s Young Hollywood panel (presented by the Los Angeles Times) brought together rising stars Anton Yelchin, Evan Rachel Wood, Armie Hammer and Kirsten Dunst to discuss how they got started in acting, what it is like working with impressive (and at times intimidating) directors like Clint Eastwood, Woody Allen and David Fincher and how their success is shaping their careers. Hammer and Dunst are each featured in films screening at the festival (J. Edgar and Melancholia, respectively) with Hammer as Edgar’s right-hand man and Dunst as a depressed bride. Yelchin and Wood have been getting attention for their performances as one half of a long distance relationship in Like Crazy and the tempting intern who may undo an entire presidential campaign in The Ides of March. The four came together Friday night (with Hammer fresh off the premiere of J. Edgar the night before) and there was a palpable energy between them as they would get so excited or intrigued by another person’s answer it would sometimes feel like we were simply overhearing a conversation between new friends. It was interesting to see Hammer surrounded by three actors who have been doing this since they were young (as he is just getting started in his career) and how he was just as engaged in their answers as the audience, asking which project they would be referring to in a story or simply being shocked over hearing about directors who preferred to do scenes in a single take.

If there’s any true horror movie this Halloween, it’s eclectic filmmaker George Clooney‘s The Ides of March. The play adaptation follows a hopeful and naive young hotshot, Stephen Myers, as he loses all of his morals to get ahead, which is apparently what the world of politics requires. If someone in the film sticks to their respectable rules, things most likely won’t turn out too well for them. Like a great paranoia thriller, everyone’s constantly on edge about their place on the political food chain. However, The Ides of March isn’t so much a film about politics, but the downward spiral of a once idealistic campaign runner. Clooney’s fourth directorial feature is a dark and cynical character drama underneath the surface of a low-key thriller. Co-writer/producer Grant Heslov (director of the very underrated The Men Who Stare at Goats) and Clooney delved into the idea of trying to stick to one’s rules in a bloodthirsty world with Good Night and Good Luck, but while that story lent itself to a more optimistic feel, the duo took a far more cynical approach with The Ides of March. Here’s what Heslov had to say about getting this dark character drama made, the film’s idealist-turned-ruthless protagonist, and why he doesn’t wake up dreaming about writing in our spoiler-filled conversation:

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr strips down to his boxers and starts a new training regimen to make him look more like Huge Jackman. He’s got a head start, considering his torso looks almost like Jackman’s… if you turn it upside down. After duking it out with some robots in a boxing ring, Kevin tries his hands at politics because it’s the kind of business where you don’t necessarily have to look like Ryan Gosling to get a young hottie like Evan Rachel Wood. But the primary system leaves him depressed and cold, so he takes a trip to the Sudan to play target practice with some warlords. He hears the Sudan is simply lovely this time of year.

Let’s just be honest here and admit that George Clooney is one incredibly attractive guy. I’m referring to more than just his roguish charm, unflappable sense of humor, and boyish grin of course as his most appealing characteristic is his professional ethos. He’s popular, wealthy, and capable of being cast in as many big budget films as he could want, but he consistently returns to to smaller, more personal films that tell stories and explore ideals that he values even when it earns him flack. That and his villa on Italy’s Lake Como make him someone that I would not rush to kick out of my hypothetical, friends only, no-touching-unless-we’re-having-a-pillow-fight bed. As an actor he’s balanced studio pics like the Ocean’s Eleven films with smart, adult thrillers like Michael Clayton and The American. As a director he’s countered the brilliant Good Night, and Good Luck with… Leatherheads. Okay, bad example, but the point is the man has range. Check out the trailer for his latest directorial effort below.

Everyone remembers where they were when they first heard that President Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated. I was in third grade, under the creepy Catholic tutelage of Sister Hermina (she refused to die!), and the lesson on Lincoln’s presidency had come to dramatic and shocking conclusion. Granted, those aren’t the words I would have used to describe it at the time, but I do recall feeling frustrated, confused, and angered at the tall, bearded man’s death. So why open a film review with a reference to a grade school history lesson? Because the film in question, Robert Redford’s The Conspirator, feels like a two-hour lecture on some of the very same material. Viewers learn about the coordinated assault against Lincoln and two members of his cabinet, the capture and conviction of those responsible, and their subsequent hangings for the crimes. While the material here is more detailed than the lesson taught by zombie nun it’s also presented dryly, without any real energy, emotion, or drama, and very much in the spirit of a made-for-television movie. It doesn’t help matters that Redford uses his directorial lectern to include some incredibly unsubtle and politicized comparisons to our own modern day battles between personal freedoms and national security.

Robert Redford has directed a movie starring James McAvoy, Robin Wright Penn, Kevin Kline, Tom Wilkinson, Danny Huston, Stephen Root, Colm Meaney, Toby Kebbell, and Evan Rachel Wood. That should be enough to cause excitement. The Conspirator tells the story of the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln and the ensuing police action and trial of the conspirators – including Mary Surratt, who became despised by an entire country. She was guilty until proven innocent. Check out the intense trailer for yourself:

Collider has the first photos from the set of Robert Redford’s The Conspirator, his film about Mary Surratt’s role in the conspiracy to assassinate Lincoln.

The combination of Woody Allen’s return to New York City and Larry David’s presence as the lead in his new film never pays off as it should.

Earlier this week we reported that Evan Rachel Wood, star of The Wrestler and better half of Marilyn Manson had been replaced in Zack Snyder’s upcoming film Sucker Punch by Jena Malone. And now assuming that our powers of logic are still strong, we know why.

Snyder works to assemble an all-female cast for his upcoming Sucker Punch, an action fantasy set in the 1960s featuring crazy people.

If you are like me, then you are sick and tired of Earth and humanity being the victims in alien invasion movies. Get over it, pesky humans — no one really wants to come down to our dying planet and take over. Now we finally have a movie that tells it like it is…

The U. S. rights to Woody Allen’s latest film Whatever Works have been bought by Sony Pictures Classics. The comedy is set in New York City. It’s a return to Allen’s old haunt after years of making films over seas.

You’ve already heard that Mickey Rourke and The Wrestler are phenomenal. Here are a few more reasons why you should see it for yourself.

New photos from The Wrestler show the resurgence of Mickey Rourke, the legs of Marisa Tomei and Evan Rachel Wood looking very, very pale. Check out the Oscar buzzworthy stills inside.

Apologizing is overrated. And you’re celebrities, after all. Aren’t you supposed to say stupid things?

People who drink lattes and know things about “film” have been all abuzz about Mickey Rourke’s performance in Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler ever since it made its debut last month in Toronto. And we are contractually obligated to agree.

Sounds like we found something to wash that dirty taste out of our mouths from Spider-Man 3.

A few days ago, the only thing I really knew about Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler was that Mickey Rourke was in it and looked like Dog The Bounty Hunter had lit his hair on fire, put it out with baby oil and then shaved his beard off. Today is very, very different.

Larry David and Evan Rachel Wood join the cast of Woody Allen’s latest film, and the universe stops to ponder just exactly where things started to go wrong. Signs point to the Duckbilled Platypus.

Oh my, what could have been. Across the Universe is not as bad as it could have been and it’s also not as great as it should be. The third musical (second rock musical) of the year, Across the Universecan’t quite ascend to the level that Once is on but instead it is more in the realm of Hairspray, which isn’t bad either.