What is Movie News After Dark? It too slays vampires and zombies. Not in a top hat, mind you, but it slays them nonetheless. It also believes strongly that it will be assassinated (by /Film’s Page 2) while attending a revival of Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theatre in Washington D.C. “There’s something in the American psyche, we want our presidents to be warriors. We’re giving that to Abraham Lincoln, sort of posthumously in this case.” That’s what Seth Grahame-Smith had to say A in an interview with The New York Times. It’s part of NYT giving the world its first look at Benjamin Walker as Abe Lincoln, the ax-wielding, vampire slaying 16th President of the United States. It’s a neat article that gives away a lot of details about the project, but nothing that you wouldn’t get having read the book.

George Clooney is set to produce and possibly direct a new film, and get this, it has a political slant. The story is based off of a Washington Post article called “The $700 Billion Man” about a Treasury Department official named Neel Kashkari, who was put in charge of coming up with a plan, over the course of a weekend, for the $700 billion dollars allocated to bail out the nation’s biggest banks. After a while, dealing with the stress of the job and the criticism of a congress that initially supported his actions became too much. He quit his job, moved out to the woods, and spent six months building a big shed. Clooney and Grant Heslov have optioned the story for the screen and assigned the task of writing a screenplay to Stranger than Fiction scribe Zach Helm. Despite my jab at Clooney and his political leanings, the article reads like it could make an interesting movie. Of the famed $700 billion that went into the bailout, Kashkari says, “Seven hundred billion was a number out of the air. It was a political calculus. I said, ‘We don’t know how much is enough. We need as much as we can get [from Congress]. What about a trillion?’ ‘No way,’ Hank shook his head. I said, ‘Okay, what about 700 billion?’ We didn’t know if it would work. We had to project confidence, hold up the world. We couldn’t admit how scared we were, or how uncertain.” Oh, maybe [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]

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly column about movie news. It will not try to sew your face to someone else’s butt. It will, however, make your hind quarters sore. So give yourself over to it — it will be gentle, at first. Fox’s upcoming Planet of the Apes prequel, previously titled Rise of the Apes, has been retitled to give it that ole’ familiar ring. It will now be called Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which should hold until they can figure out a less concise way to title it. Either way, it’s got James Franco, so I’m seeing it.

Serial killers will always be fascinating fodder for cinematic storytelling, and this is especially true when the tale is based on a real-life killer who was never caught. Bong Joon-ho’s Memories Of Murder and David Fincher’s Zodiac are probably the two finest examples of the mini-genre, but a new contender has just been announced that combines a strong film-maker pedigree alongside some truly heinous unsolved crimes. The Monster Of Florence is based on the 2008 non-fiction bestseller from Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi, and it explores a series of gruesome killings that took place in Florence, Italy between 1968 and 1985. Sixteen people were killed in all, mostly couples, with the victims typically shot and stabbed multiple times. Many of the women also had their breasts and/or pubic areas mutilated. So that’s pretty effed up and gross. A handful of men were arrested and imprisoned over the years, but the killings continued as they sat in jail cells.

Culture has already moved so far beyond Enron that it almost feels like it will be popping up on a VH1 show any day now. It’s a relic despite happening less than a decade ago (and being a devastating example of corporate ignorance and greed). Now, after nailing down the temperature of the joblessness situation in Up in the Air, George Clooney would like to take another stab at the company by adapting the play “ENRON” for the big screen. The play survived for only a month here in the US this summer, but it’s fared decently well in the UK since 2009. What’s interesting is both the distance our society has from the disaster and, with the economic situation, how intimate it still feels. The major players belong in a history book, but the feelings and situations it created are still creating fresh wounds. It’s unclear what roles Clooney will play, but he’ll definitely be producing (alongside Spider-Man (the original) producer Laura Ziskin) and possibly directing. [Cinema Blend]

Considering the history of early September releases, this was an unusually eventful weekend for movies. The champion of the box-office was a slow-paced, meditative art film disguised as a spy thriller, and its major competition was a grindhouse tribute based on a movie trailer and starring a longtime character actor. On the surface, it seems that Anton Corbijn’s The American and Robert Rodriguez’s Machete couldn’t be any different, but upon closer inspection it becomes clear that these are two stylistically disparate explorations of virtually the same theme; that is, both The American and Machete are about crises in national and cultural identity that occur when one enters another country and becomes an “other” within their culture.

Two sub-genres well known in the world of action films are hit men and the concept of “one last job.” But what happens when these tropes are applied to a film that forgoes the action element almost all together? Can they work in a film that’s more of a drama and character study? Jim Jarmusch’s The Limits Of Control would seem to imply the answer was no, but a counter-argument hit theaters this past week that actually proves otherwise. Of course, it helps that Anton Corbijn’s The American also features an interesting plot, an actual narrative, and a silver-haired fox that oozes charisma in the lead role. (Happily, they both feature a beautiful, wise, and frequently nude woman too.)

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr jumps feet first into the world of exploitation pictures. He rips off his shirt to show his prison tats when he sees Machete and then becomes a weapons expert to go head-to-head with George Clooney in The American. Finally, he cringes and rolls his eyes at yet another crappy real-life couple love story with Going the Distance. It’s sad when the highlight of his moviegoing weekend is a Lindsay Lohan nip slip.

Last night, my fiancee and I were walking into a screening of Grown Ups when we were bombarded by what might be the largest advertising lobby cutout we’ve ever seen. It was for The Expendables, and it’s awe-inspiring with slightly-larger-than-life cardboard version of Stallone, Li, Statham, Rourke, Willis, Lundgren, and Austin. Seven big men all towering over and silently inviting us to come see them kick ass.

There’s a new trailer online for one of our most anticipated movies of 2010. Just when you thought George Clooney was out…

Nobody better warn him. I really want to see how this plays out. Someone make some popcorn or something.

The most illustrious of all the individual awards except for all the others, Best Actor is a coveted prize sought after by everyone working in the industry including actors, producers, gaffers, best boys, and that guy in your high school that plans on moving out to L.A.

Kevin Carr sits his chubbiness down and sees if Avatar, Did You Hear About the Morgans? and Up In the Air can make the grade.

Kevin and Neil find themselves in a pickle… both have seen all the movies this week, and they generally agree. This doesn’t stop them from taking a few pot shots at each other as Kevin accuses Neil of being a bigot against eight-foot-tall blue aliens.

This week’s Culture Warrior gives an exhaustive review of the decade that you won’t find anywhere else on the Interwebs.

Paramount Pictures has started up a pretty cool new website in support of the release of Up in the Air, Jason Reitman’s spectacular film about Ryan Bingham (George Clooney), a man who lives his life on the road.

‘Up in the Air’ is Jason Reitman’s first flat-out masterpiece.

Earlier this week, the Gotham Awards kicked off award season, with the nominations for the Indie Spirit awards following shortly after. And today, we have our next round of honors and for the most part, the first major awards to be handed out.

Jason Reitman’s next film Up in the Air, doesn’t hit theaters nationwide until December 25th, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t been talking about it for what feels like two years.

This week, I will warn you that I’m on a Wes Anderson/Werner Herzog kick. It is likely that I will write several articles in the directions of both directors, as they’ve each released films in the past month that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed.