A lot of speculation has gone into figuring out who will play the lead role of the slave turned bounty hunter Django in Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming spaghetti western homage Django Unchained. Many people were pretty certain that Tarantino was dealing with Sony because he was trying to get Sony poster boy Will Smith to sign on to star. Then there was some rumbling that The Wire star Stringer Bell Idris Elba would be stepping into the role due to some comments that he twittered on his twitterer. There has been so much talk about who is playing the lead role in this film that speculation about the other characters has become something of an afterthought. Until now, because one man just heated things up in the race to fill out the rest of Tarantino’s cast, and that man’s name is Leonardo DiCaprio. According to Deadline Carbondale, DiCaprio is being courted to play the villainous role of Calvin Candie, and negotiations with him are reportedly going much better than those with the once supposed near-lock Smith. Candie is the owner of an establishment where female slaves are used as prostitutes and males as gladiators to battle to the death. The story of the film deals mostly with the ex-slave Django hooking up with a German Bounty hunter in order to learn to be a badass and then free his wife from the clutches of the evil Candie. With DiCaprio being looked at as a likely candidate to fill the Candie role, [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]

Stop me if you’ve heard this all before. In the world of big screen animation, there’s Pixar and there’s everybody else. There’s something special about those Toy tale telling animators from Emeryville, something that indicates up front that each of their films has the potential to be a deeply emotional experience for an audience of any age. This review is not about one of those kinds of movies, nor is it about Pixar. It’s about Blue Sky Studios and their new film Rio. But it’s important to note the difference that Pixar films have up front, because the desire to compare and contrast is unavoidable. And it’s that emotional element that could be the only differentiator between this, Blue Sky’s best effort to date, and the industry’s gold standard.

From what I’ve heard, Millennium Pictures has all the right ideas for the Bruce Willis and Jaime Foxx led actioner. It will be stylish and ultra-violent, just like the video game. And now they’ve got a director that could make it all happen.

The first film from Gerard Butler’s Evil Twins production company has already lost its director. Frank Darabont has confirmed that he won’t be directing Law Abiding Citizen, the legal thriller that’s set to star Butler as an assistant district attorney targeted by a vigilante.