Our wise overlord Cole Abaius recently pointed out one of the most burning questions in Hollywood this year: will The Hunger Games be the next big thing? It’s a question I’ve been asking myself ever since the project was announced. The fanbase is there, but doesn’t come close to matching the Twilight nation. And an even bigger question is whether this adaptation will reach non-fans, which will remain up in the air until the film’s released. The trailer was a mess and I can’t see this run-of-the-mill poster (courtesy of Moviefone) catching the eye of anyone who doesn’t obsess over the books. However, even if the marketing continues to rely on this image of Jennifer Lawrence looking like a plastic doll, my main hope will remain intact. It’s been over eight years since Gary Ross’s last film, so it’ll be nice having him back, franchise hit or not.

We’ll try to keep this short and sweet. You know, for the fans. Most of whom are probably already up early on this Monday morning awaiting the debut of the first trailer for The Hunger Games. Get excited, Hunger Gamesers (what do they call themselves, anyway?), as it’s finally here. Lionsgate debuted the trailer this morning on Good Morning America and has since given it to Apple to put it online. We’ve picked up the bow and arrow from there and embedded it just after the break for those interested parties to view. And by interested parties, I of course mean everyone, as this will undoubtedly be one of the most talked about trailers of the week. It’s got some style, some thrill and some flair — also, the trailer delivers a prelude to what we can only hope is a lot of violence. That’s in the books, right?

Watching Like Crazy was a frustrating experience for me. The whole time I was watching the film, I felt as if I should have been enjoying it much more than I actually was. Visually, the film is both intimate and gorgeous, kind of like watching a home movie if your dad was a virtuoso filmmaker. The performances are all strong, from top to bottom. But despite all of the obvious talent on the screen, I just couldn’t find myself connecting to the story or the characters as they were crafted. Maybe I’m not much of a romantic, but I found the relationship woes of the main characters Jacob (Anton Yelchin) and Anna (Felicity Jones) to be less than compelling. In fact, they were pretty frustrating to get through. Who were these kids and why should I care that they treat their personal lives like the most important things in the world? We’re not so much introduced to Jacob and Anna as we watch as they’re introduced to each other. The film opens with their meeting in a college course in which Anna is a student and Jacob a teacher’s aid, followed by Anna’s bold decision to leave a note declaring her infatuation under Jacob’s windshield wiper, and the stilted conversation and stolen glances of their first date. The getting-to-know-you sequence is cute, but it doesn’t last long. Soon we’re informed through montage (we’re informed of a lot of things through montage in this film) that the two kids are now very [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]

I’m not sure if there’s an award anywhere out there for thoroughness in marketing, but if it exists I would have to imagine the team promoting The Hunger Games has it in the bag. Back when the film was in pre-production they were sending out casting announcements seemingly every hour on the hour. It got to the point where they were releasing info on which local pizza delivery guys they were picking up to do extra work and which aspiring young nephew of a producer was coming on as a grip. Over the course of a couple of months “The Hunger Games” went from being just a series of cult novels to stoking the fire of revolution and becoming a genre movie blaze of passion sweeping across the dry planes of the World Wide Web. And now that the film is getting closer to release, their efforts have become even more refined. Case in point, these five district posters that Lionsgate has released on the Hunger Games Facebook page. If you remember, the crux of this story is about a future world, made up of 12 districts, that holds an annual tournament where two children from each district battle to the death on a big crazy game board. In order to hammer that point home, it looks like we’re going to get a poster countdown with a seal from each and every district being released over the course of the next who knows how long. And to support these efforts [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]

The last time there was news about David O. Russell’s upcoming film The Silver Linings Playbook I lamented the fact that we hadn’t been giving it enough coverage. No more! The drama about a former mental patient trying to rebuild his life keeps adding intriguing names to its cast, so I’m going to keep blathering on about it. Russell and company started off strong by getting Bradley Cooper to star as our hero mental case. That’s enough to catch my interest right there. Cooper’s career is on fire right now and he hasn’t even really had the chance to work with great directors yet. Seeing him and Russell do something together sounds like a great time. But the movie didn’t stop there, it followed the Cooper casting up by getting a couple of Oscar Nominees in Jennifer Lawrence and Jackie Weaver to play his new love interest and mother respectively. If there were two actresses that left a huge impression on me by the end of 2010, it was Lawrence and Weaver, so I can’t wait to see what they bring here.

It has come to my attention that we here at FSR have left David O. Russell’s upcoming film The Silver Linings Playbook criminally uncovered. We’ve got one little mention of it being announced in a Movie News After Dark and that’s it. Probably it’s time to remedy that, because Russell is a director who always makes interesting stuff, even when it ends up being kind of a mess. And this time around he’s assembled a pretty intriguing cast to yell at and be mean to during filming.

It’s impossible to predict in advance which hopeful franchise starter will actually find box-office gold and go on to become a successful film series. Twilight has made it look easy, but book sales are no guarantee of film success… just ask the filmmakers behind Percy Jackson & the Olympians, The Spiderwick Chronicles, City of Ember, Eragon, The Golden Compass, and Lemony Snicket. But if any adaptation is going to follow in the YA fiction footsteps of Stephenie Meyer’s behemoth, The Hunger Games may just be it. The film is the first of a planned trilogy based on the bestselling books by Suzanne Collins about a future America that forces its teenage citizens to battle to the death for entertainment purposes. So yeah, it’s an updated and stylized version of Richard Bachman’s The Long Walk. Check out the first teaser below.

Gwen is on a bit of a vacation this week, so I’m taking over writing duties for the one column on the site that forces us to ogle and think deeply at the same time. Hopefully I do it justice. Hopping into a cinematic time machine to set a film in a different decade is always a precarious occupation, but for X-Men: First Class (a movie that doesn’t seem exactly topical despite coming out two months ago), the danger of portraying the men and women of 1962 was even more difficult. Sure, Mad Men had come along and made the sleek chauvinism of the 60s chic again, but Matthew Vaughn and company had to juggle the suspension of disbelief inherent in spotlighting mutants alongside the possible cartoon that forms whenever a guy in a tight cummerbund slaps a woman on the ass and goes back to enjoying being white and male in America. So is X-Men: First Class anti-feminist or a sexy love note to the powerful women of our world? That’s a tough call. And since it’s a tough call, here’s an attempt at giving both arguments equal weight.

Coming as a shock to absolutely no one, Lionsgate has gone ahead and announced a release date for the second film in The Hunger Games series, Catching Fire, which will hit theaters on November 22, 2013. For a bit of reference here, the first film in the series has not even released a trailer yet and will not arrive in theaters until March 23, 2012. So while Lionsgate has apparently seen a bunch of stuff they like, fans of Suzanne Collins’ book trilogy beat themselves bloody to grab Hunger Games pins at Comic-Con. Accessories are the new sizzle reels. There are no other details about Catching Fire as of yet, but the principal cast’s contracts all include options for up to four films (should the films prove successful, the final book in the trilogy would be split into two films). Basically, get ready to see lots of Jennifer Lawrence, Liam Hemsworth, and Josh Hutcherson going nutty and murderous on-screen, because this franchise is not going to rest on its laurels.

Sundance veteran Drake Doremus returned to Park City this year with a very different film than 2010’s Douchebag. For his 2011 entry, Doremus brought along Like Crazy, a sensitive and romantic film that doesn’t rely on anyone taking their shirt off or ludicrous meet-cutes or casts packed with tween pop stars to make it work. I saw the film back in January at Sundance, and it is one of two romantic dramedies with a young, hip cast from the festival that has stuck in my mind these many months. The other one, the Freddie Highmore-starring The Art of Getting By (retitled from its Sundance name, Homework) has remained in my brain mainly due to how much I hated it. It’s frowned upon to spit when speaking about films, but that’s been the best way I’ve found to physically express how terrible that movie was, and how emotionally disingenuous. On the flipside, there was Doremus’s Like Crazy, which stars Anton Yelchin and Felicity Jones (with co-starring appearances by Jennifer Lawrence and Charlie Bewley). Not to get emotional over here (because, you know, gross), but Like Crazy is one of the best films about long distance relationships I’ve ever seen (and I know from long distance relationships).

Now that I’m a Reject, we’re going to have to get to know each other, even if it hurts a little at first (I’ll be gentle, I promise). Case in point – I am a fan of The Hunger Games; there’s just something about dystopic future societies and kids made to kill each other in giant, evil, booby-trapped arenas that gets me going. On this week’s Reject Radio, the charming Eric D. Snider spoke with me and my excellent new bossman Cole Abaius (cough, cough, where’s my raise, cough) about not understanding Internet outcry about first images, tiny teaser trailers, and even costume decisions for anticipated films. I’m going to add to all of that right now, with our first look at Josh Hutcherson and Liam Hemsworth in Gary Ross’s The Hunger Games.

Please don’t actually hold your lighter up to the screen to try this at home. Seriously. Put it down. This new motion poster for The Hunger Games features the main icon of the series – the Mockinjay Pin – which explodes in flames, but there’s no need to describe it here since it’s probably roasting below right now. Plus, if a picture is worth 1,000 words, this is technically worth 34,000,000. And, honestly, would you put that lighter away?

Themes of identity, difference, stigma, and othering are explicitly or implicitly present in much of the X-Men mythology, whether expressed through comics, television shows, or films. While I was never a devotee to the comics, as a fan of the 90s animated television series and (some of) the recent slate of Hollywood films (that have, as of this past weekend, effectively framed the continually dominant superhero blockbuster genre), I’ve always been fascinated by the series’ ability to take part in the language of social identity issues. Fantastic genres like horror and sci-fi have often provided an allegorical means of addressing social crises (vampire films as AIDS metaphor, zombie movie as conformist critique, or Dystopian sci-fi as technocratic critique, for example). The superhero genre has possessed a similar history in this capacity, even though it has thus far been mostly unrealized in the medium of film. As big entertainment, superhero films ranging from the first Spider-Man to the Iron Man films have bestowed narratives of exceptionalism and wish-fulfillment rather than shown any aspiration towards critique or insight. Perhaps The Dark Knight is most involved example of social critique thus far – a film that explores themes surrounding the personal toll on fighting terror and the overreaches of power that can result in the name of pursuing safety. What X-Men: First Class (almost) accomplishes is mining fully the allegorical territory made available by its fantastic premise in a way that few previous comic book films have.

Erik Lensherr/Magneto mustn’t be the easiest of characters to jump into. Can you imagine being on set trying to look serious while throwing your hands around to make it seem as if you’re controlling metal? And, at the same time, while sporting a big cape and a purple helmet? Playing drama seriously – especially when wearing a potentially goofy outfit and doing unworldly things – can’t be easy. But, as Michael Fassbender says below, you just have to jump in and take chances. While many keep citing Fassbender’s take on Magneto in X-Men: First Class as being very Bond-esque, that doesn’t totally fit with how he describes the role. Yes, there’s a coolness factor to him, something that apparently sticks out even more when he’s hunting down Nazis in the film, but it was important for Fassbender to subtlety find a tragic anger to the future villain. Recently, I had the chance to speak briefly with Fassbender (whose résumé would already make some veteran actors jealous) about working on a control freak’s set, trying not to look goofy, and finding humanity in potential bastards.

I have to hand it to the marketing team behind the upcoming Hunger Games adaptation. They don’t seem like they’re going to rest until every man woman and child on the planet knows what their movie is. What to do once all the casting minutiae of every tiny role your film has to offer has already been reported in the trades? How about get your leading lady a cover story in Entertainment Weekly? Sounds like a plan to me. And because of their due diligence, we all now get our first look at Jennifer Lawrence dressed up as Katniss Everdeen. First reaction… yep, looks about right to me. She’s got dark hair pulled back into a braid. She’s got her bow and arrows. The Mockingjay pin is securely fastened to her collar. I’ll be interested to see if the Internet can find anything to complain about when it comes to this picture. Maybe they should have smeared a little dirt on her face or something? The author of the original novels Suzanne Collins, at the very least, seems to think that Lawrence was the perfect choice for the role. When talking to the young actress she said, “I feel like when you said yes the world got lifted off my shoulders.” That’s some pretty dramatic praise. I guess the other girls going after the role weren’t looking so good. But why would there have been any question as to whether Lawrence would take this career-making job? She explains, “I knew [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]

The opening shot of The Beaver is of a pool on a sunny day. A body drifts through the frame, slowly, on a raft. It’s Mel Gibson doing his best impression of a starship and The Beaver doing its best impression of Star Wars. It’s kind of a foreboding image. Walter Black isn’t doing so well. He’s depressed. But, more than that, he’s depressed to the point where he has completely checked out on his job and family. He has somehow reached such a hopeless state that he has sat passively and watched his once great toy company fall into financial straits, and his once loving family become isolated from one another. We are never explicitly told what has led to Walter’s current state, but The Beaver is mostly a film that focuses on the present moment. The past exists here as a ghost, haunting the characters and coloring their actions, but only half remembered and never spoken of. The big gimmick of the film, if you haven’t seen any of the advertising, is that Gibson’s character begins to deal with his inner turmoil by speaking through a plush beaver puppet and using a voice that sounds like Michael Caine in a bar fight. Much of the film details the phases of Walter’s beaver experiment; the initial shock, the turnaround when The Beaver starts helping Walter get his life back together, and then the darker stuff that comes as his mental state degrades again. If you saw only the ads, [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]

For weeks now it’s seemed like the movie geek community has been bombarded with little other than casting news for The Hunger Games. And you know, I get it. The books are really popular, they’re pretty fun reads, and if adapted right they will make interesting movies. But I have to admit, after the main three roles of Katniss, Peeta, and Gale got cast, I kind of tuned out to the barrage of smaller casting news we’ve been getting over the past few weeks. Do I really want to write up an article about a relative unknown named Willow Shields being cast as the little sister? But now a couple of awesome-bombs have been dropped on the Hunger Games news racket, and I find myself excited all over again.

As the first question points out from the Jodie Foster roundtable at SXSW, the trailer for The Beaver is truly a disservice to the film. While a decent piece of marketing material, it really does showcase the film as a fluffy drama, and The Beaver isn’t that. Foster’s film is a dark, sad, witty, and poignant — factors that Neil’s review perfectly captured — story about depression and isolation, and how there’s no such thing as quick fix for that. Summit can’t be having an easy time selling trying to sell this film. Not only for the obvious reason that I’ll refrain from mentioning, but for the simply reason that it’s difficult to accurately pitch a film like this in a two-minute time frame. Tonally, Foster goes for odd and not-so-commercial plays. Here’s what Director and star Jodie Foster had to say about marketing, commercialism, symbolism, and more:

The Beaver is just as much Anton Yelchin‘s film as it is Mel Gibson‘s. Jodie Foster‘s film is an ensemble piece, and all the leads – not just Walter Black (Mel Gibson) – are suffering from some form of depression. The greatest fear of Yelchin’s character, Porter, is becoming just like his father. He doesn’t understand Walter, and Porter doesn’t understand himself as well. The character is so uncomfortable in his own voice that he makes a living off other people’s voices; Porter writes school papers for others. Small character devices similar to that truly add a lot to the film. Being so afraid of becoming his father, Porter even has 5o-something post-its planted on his wall filled with their similarities, so he can avoid doing them. Here’s what Anton Yelchin had to say about the SXSW reaction to the film, the notecards, and his character’s relationship with Norah (Jennifer Lawrence):

Adapting Don Winslow’s novel “Savages” has been on Oliver Stone’s to-do list for quite some time. Well now quite a bit of news about how his efforts are coming together has come to light. I’m not familiar with Mr. Winslow’s work, so the first thing I did when trying to put together this article was figure out what “Savages” was all about. During my search I came across this blurb, apparently from the book’s publisher, that was just too hilarious not to share: “Baditude. Bad attitude. Ben, Chon, and O have a bad case of it, but so would you if you were the twenty-something Laguna-cool producers of the best hydro on the Left Coast and now a powerful and vicious Mexican cartel wants in on your business. Ben’s a genius botanist out to save the world. Chon’s a former SEAL with a “Post-Traumatic Lack Of Stress Disorder.” O is a South Orange County slacker girl who loves them both. When the cartel kidnaps O to keep the boys in line, serious baditude breaks out in this twenty-first-century thriller that blasts through all the old rules and blows the lid off the genre. But that’s baditude for you.”