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]

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly movie news round-up that’s a little tired, a little wired and it thinks it deserves a little appreciation around here! Alright, so that’s the insomnia talking. For now, lets just do the news like we always do, shall we? The headline photo of the night is a shot of two morons Russell Brand and Alec Baldwin in Adam Shankman’s Rock of Ages, a film that will combine major Hollywood names with an infamously terrible director and a slew of over-the-top musical numbers. It’s so ridiculous that it just might work. But probably not.

News came over the last couple of days that former visionary director/current enviro-geek James Cameron was going to, instead of directing a new film (wouldn’t want to accidentally make two in a decade), spend millions of dollars and millions of seconds painstakingly bringing 1997s short film Titanic back to the screens, this time in three dimensions. In case you weren’t alive between 1997 and 1999, where Titanic stayed in theaters for a full year, the story has something to do with a boat, a gem, and freezing to death. I’m sure that if you’re reading this site you’ve either seen Titanic or know enough about it to know that you didn’t want to watch it. I have seen it and have no desire to see it again. It’s not a bad film, but it is long as hell and a bit on the melodramatic side. Aside from being responsible for turning Leonardo DiCaprio into a household name and making all my ex-girlfriends put posters of him on their walls, what could be wrong with Titanic coming back to the big screen? Simply put, Titanic 3D is everything wrong with Hollywood in a tight 194 minute package.

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s all business tonight. Movie news, fascinating articles, at least 12-minutes of grown men screaming. All business, baby. Vulture has an interesting piece on how Jeremy Renner landed the Bourne franchise, essentially boiling it down to the Hurt Locker star winning Matt Damon’s sloppy seconds. All-in-all, the guy will probably make an excellent action star. He’s one hell of a last-ditch effort for director Tony Gilroy.

Heat Vision is reporting that Baz Luhrmann’s film version of The Great Gatsby is one step closer to filling out its principle cast. Most of the main roles have already been grabbed up at this point, and by actors that fit the bill pretty nicely; but this latest news gives me pause. Reportedly Isla Fisher is in negotiations to join the cast as Myrtle Wilson. Leonardo DiCaprio is playing the charming and mysterious Gatsby, which makes sense because of DiCaprio’s leading man looks. Tobey Maguire is playing the film’s everyman narrator Nick Carraway, which makes sense because everyone already thinks of him as the ultimate everyman Peter Parker. Carey Mulligan is playing Daisy Buchanan, which makes sense because Mulligan can do anything, and being a rich white girl is probably something she can pull of in her sleep. Ben Affleck was playing Tom Buchanan, which made sense because Buchanan is a jerk that cheats on his wife and slaps ladies around and, love him or hate him, you have to admit Affleck naturally projects a bit of that doucher vibe that would fit the character perfectly. However, Deadline East Egg is reporting that Affleck has been locked to direct and star in Argo, and won’t be available for Gatsby. And now Isla Fischer is playing Myrtle Wilson, the frumpy, plain, wife of a mechanic, which makes sense because, uh… I got nothing. I sure like looking at Isla Fischer though, so good news all around!

We’ve yet to see a follow-up film from Scott Cooper since his much lauded Jeff Bridges as an alcoholic country singer film Crazy Heart made its rounds on the awards circuit, but that appears ready to change. Relativity Media bought a spec script back in 2008 called The Low Dweller. It’s the story of an 80s era Indiana convict who gets out of jail and tries to set about putting together a normal life, but instead gets sucked into a revenge scheme after his brother is murdered. A fairly anonymous Pennsylvania man named Brad Ingelsby wrote the original script, and when it was bought it was Relativity’s intentions that Leonardo DiCaprio would star and Ridley Scott would direct. Those plans have changed considerably, but DiCaprio is still on the project in a producer’s role. Now the film has been re-titled Out of the Furnace, and Cooper has been hired not only to direct the film, but also give the script a rewrite. It was reported back in November that Cooper was also involved in a remake of the Argentinean film Carancho, so it remains to be seen where this film ends up falling on his to-do list. Either way, the news of a movie studio hiring a director to bring to life a spec script that isn’t attached to any sort of pre-existing property or centered on a product or corporate logo should be reason enough to celebrate. Right? Source: Deadline Birdseye

There aren’t many things that we know for sure about Baz Luhrman’s upcoming adaptation of “The Great Gatsby.” The man won’t even admit in a straightforward way that he is making the movie. There have been rumors that it would be in 3D, but who can say? The one thing that has seemed to be locked in pretty securely, however, has been the cast. Leonardo Dicaprio has always been set to play the title character Jay Gatsby. Carey Mulligan seems to be locked into playing the lead female role of Daisy Buchanan. And Tobey Maguire is reportedly on board to play the story’s observer and narrator Nick Carraway. Well now one more actor is in talks to join Luhrmann’s sure to be gaudy retelling of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic tale of big mansions and romantic revenge, Armageddon’s Ben Affleck. Reportedly, Affleck is looking to sign on as Daisy’s husband, and Jay Gatsby’s chief romantic rival, Tom Buchanan. I approve of this casting. While I like Affleck much more as a writer and director than I do as an actor, when I try to imagine the jerk that would be married to and cheating on the girl I love, Affleck’s face fits in the scenario very easily. I’m sure people will have a very easy time rooting for DiCaprio to take him down and win young Ms. Mulligan’s hand. But, how I feel about a director as wildly stylistic as Luhrmann taking on such dry source material is still way up [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]

Remember when Baz Luhrmann gave us the once in a lifetime opportunity to hear John Leguizamo deliver Shakespearian dialogue? Well so does he, but he’s not content to just rest on his laurels and live off of past crazy. Rumors have been floating around for a while that Luhrmann is gearing up to do an adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby”, and now it can be confirmed that the rumors are not only true, they’re just the tip of the iceberg. I’ve just been introduced to a new phrase that is music to my ears: The Great Gatsby 3D. No, I’m not talking about a deleted scene from Mike Judge’s prophetic film Idiocracy, Baz Luhrmann is actually filming another adaptation of classic literature that gets taught to high schoolers, and this time he’s doing it completely unnecessarily in 3D. Now the climactic hit and run scene doesn’t have to just happen in your imagination, it’s going to come to life right before your eyes in stunning 3D! And all of those other scenes where high society people sit around at parties and talk and stuff: eye popping 3D! Fitzgerald must be rolling in his grave… giggling with glee. Who wouldn’t want to see this happen? Leonardo DiCaprio has already been secured to play Gatsby, and it is rumored that current it girl Carey Mulligan will be playing the object of his obsession Daisy Buchanan. Claire Danes must have already been booked. Filming is happening in Australia, and is [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]

Just a couple days after the stunning announcement that Helena Bonham Carter would be in her life partner Tim Burton’s next film, now comes the news that Martin Scorsese is going to do another project with his life partner Leonardo DiCaprio. Both men have projects in the works currently, Scorsese is finishing up Hugo Cabret and DiCaprio is shooting J. Edgar, but when schedules clear up their intention is to begin work on The Wolf of Wall Street. Sopranos veteran Terry Winter is currently adapting the script for the film from the memoirs of Jordan Belfort. It will detail Belfort’s life in the 80s taking drugs, having sex, and engaging in some illegal trading. Belfort eventually got himself landed in jail because of his delinquent ways, but now he is free and sober and had this to say about the project, “After almost four years in development, I can’t begin to tell you how thrilled I am to finally be working with Leo and Marty on this. They’re the ultimate dream team, and it was definitely worth the wait.” I don’t know if I would go as far as to call Scorsese and DiCaprio “the ultimate dream team,” but I’ve enjoyed all of their collaborations to varying degrees so far. Even Shutter Island, which got a lot of mixed reviews last year, was a strong performance from DiCaprio; maybe one of the best of his career. It will be interesting to see how the duo stacks up to people’s memories [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]

Modern romance and the movies are arguably dependant on one another, as movies have a long history of affirming the idea(l) of the perfect relationship. Hollywood movies in particular have developed a mastery at the formula of bringing imperfect individuals together into perfect couplehood and framing marriage as the closure of all previous conflicts and difficulties. Many romance movies, thus, teach us what romance and couplehood are or, perhaps more dauntingly, what it should be. That romantic films are a staple in the box offices of commercial movie theaters to reparatory screenings or are marathon’d on television every Valentine’s Day is evidence of our ritual association of considering real-life romances in fictional terms. It is rare that movies, especially Hollywood, seem to do the opposite: reflect the distinction between ideal romance and the ostensible “reality” of relationships in all their complexity, grittiness, slow development, necessary problems, and (most of all) subtlety. Perhaps the most evident turns cinema makes in this direction is in the break-up movie, that rare narrative that situates itself as a disruption from the normal mode of portraying couplehood through representing its antithesis, the dissolution of a couple. The most recent example is Blue Valentine, the great Cassavetes-style, character-driven psychodrama about a couple who continue making the wrong turns and can’t make it work despite, or because, of themselves. Breakup movies from the light – (500) Days of Summer – to the heavy – Blue Valentine – often self-consciously (either by testament from the filmmaker like in [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]

Do you dream if you pass out from drinking? I’m sure you do, but you’ll be less likely to remember the experience. And that makes you even more vulnerable to attack from people like Dom Cobb and his dream team. Still, that’s not going to stop us from knocking back a few with one of the more mind-bending releases of the year, new on DVD and Blu-ray this week. Enjoy Christopher Nolan’s Inception with your drink of choice and see where your mind goes.

“Brenda, I don’t want to lie to you anymore. All right? I’m not a doctor. I never went to medical school. I’m not a lawyer, or a Harvard graduate, or a Lutheran. Brenda, I ran away from home a year and a half ago when I was 16.” Frank Abagnale Jr. isn’t an ordinary teenager. Distraught when his parent’s marriage ends in divorced he runs away when told he has to choose which parent to live with. With twenty five dollars in the bank Frank finds the world a pretty cold place as a sixteen year old runaway, but by posing as an airline pilot with a fake Pan Am ID and uniform the banks open their vaults to him.

With all the invention, intriguing plot webs, and overall solid cinematic storytelling that Christopher Nolan’s films are credited for, yet another innovative characteristic of his signature narrative approach is often looked over: his own special brand of antihero. A thread that has connected Nolan’s films (scripted often in collaboration with his brother Jonathan) is the presence of a central male character who possesses some combination of destructive egotism, desperate selfishness at the risk of others, aggressive self-righteousness, willful delusion, or even the first signs of a messiah complex (“asshole” is used in the title of this post simply as an umbrella term for all the negative traits connecting these protagonists). I credit this aspect of storytelling and character development to the brothers Nolan, for filmmakers who work so successfully in Hollywood aren’t often able to bring to the screen characters who contain so many obvious flaws, and further credit goes to them for actually immersing us in their characters’ subconscious (figuratively in the case of all their films not titled Inception), making us give a damn about these characters to the point that sometimes these otherwise obvious personality flaws are only visible upon reflection after the film has been experienced. Nolan’s characters are often complex and intelligent, but beneath any confident exterior resides a deeply troubled psychology – some more obvious than others.

Culture Warrior is our weekly walk on the wild side with actual film school graduate (now with even more Doctoral candidacy!) Landon Palmer. In this week’s installment, he takes on the biggest film of the summer, name drops Andre Breton, and tackles the notion of art dealing with the real world. Not that Armond White’s anti-for-anti’s-sake, straw-man-constructed brand of film criticism deserve the merit of serious examination, but there was something in White’s review of Inception that struck me as particularly problematic…

Today I pick up where I left off, sharing press conference goodies from Christopher Nolan and the stars of Inception. Cillian Murphy on working with Christopher Nolan, and his character: Cillian Murphy: I’ve been very fortunate to work with Chris three times now, briefly on The Dark Knight, and — it’s always a real privilege and a real pleasure. This was particularly exciting to work with this great bunch of actors and, um…the character was sort of something new to me. It was really interesting to explore that, because I guess in terms of the film, the structure of the film, he’s sort of like the mark — but he’s got a lot more layers to him. He’s a lot more complex than what you would get from a traditional heist film. It was great to talk to Chris and explore what we can bring to that character, because he does sort of, by accident, get to work stuff out. You know, the relationship with his father and things. It was a brilliant experience. The atmosphere and the environment that you get on a Chris Nolan film — it’s a place where you feel very safe and um, very confident and able to experiment with the characters. It’s a great place to be as an actor.

We all know that alcohol is a depressant, so it’s one of those things that if you drink too much of it, you might just fall asleep. And with Christopher Nolan’s Inception sure to be the sleeper hit of the summer, you might be worried about people trying to steal your thoughts while you sleep. The cure for this would be a sure case of insomnia. Fortunately, Christopher Nolan’s Insomnia has hit Blu-ray this week. So after watching Leonardo DiCaprio and company sleep through Inception, come home and knock a few back while you watch Al Pacino have Insomnia.

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr celebrates the summer tent pole season with Christopher Nolan’s Inception, eager to watch the movie again and fall asleep just to see what happens. He also takes his kids to see The Sorcerer’s Apprentice and shows some love for Disney’s family adventures, even if they are a bit silly.

I will say this now, without reservation and fully confident that many will agree; Inception is easily the best big budget film of the year thus far. I’ll go further and say that it’s one of the most beautiful, well written, and fully realized high dollar films of the last five years. Inception, is close to perfection. Christopher Nolan is the reigning king of the non-linear plot, and master of deeply layered narratives that hook audiences and reel them in slowly. He salvaged the reputation of The Dark Knight on the big screen, and retooled the psychological thriller. Nolan’s body of work is compact, with seven films over twelve years — the most recent being Inception; and what an addition to the collection it is.

If you read my review of Inception not long ago, you know that I sung the praises of Christopher Nolan and his cast. Inception was an incredible film, almost flawless in its execution, and just plain fun in every conceivable way. After the film, I had the opportunity to participate in the Inception Press Junket — almost the entire cast on stage, and hear all about the development of the film — from concept, to production, and music — I’ve got some behind the scenes goodness to share with you today.

Like the trailer, you might want to steer clear of the 40 pictures in this gallery just in case you’re keeping your mind as free and clear as possible before feeling the darkness of the theater wash over you. On the other hand, you might want to continue building your excitement by digging through each and every one of them. Twice.