Steven Soderbergh has for years been a director who continues to work entirely in spite of himself; he presses on, releasing a film a year (if not more) while constantly expressing frustration with the industry and claiming that his next will be his last. With his latest effort – a production from the increasingly prestigious HBO Films banner – it appears that the director might finally be sticking to his word, and if so, he goes out with quite the belter to his name. Doing huge justice to the oft-sneered at TV film delegation, Behind the Candelabra is a studious project shot through with the high production quality, dedicated craftsmanship and superior acting of a great theatrical feature, and went down a storm at this morning’s world premiere. Soderbergh trains his focus on the final decade of Liberace’s (Michael Douglas) life, from meeting his most prolific lover, Scott Thorson (Matt Damon) to his eventual death from AIDS. After a chance encounter backstage, the two embark on a whirlwind romance that sees each confide more in each other than they ever have another person. Of course, complications inevitably arise, but their bond is one that endures at different levels right to the singer’s final deathbed conversation with Scott.

You haven’t lived until you’ve seen drunk Morgan Freeman. The actor has been having a lot of fun lately with his roles, but none of them compare to whatever is going on in Last Vegas. In fact, as Old Dogs Meets The Hangover as it sounds, the trailer for this movie starring Michael Douglas, Kevin Kline, Robert De Niro and Freeman actually makes it look like a bit of harmless fun. Probably not a lot of fun, but fun. Of course, it also looks like a vacation for wealthy actors and director Jon Turtletaub. This is what retirement looks like for living legends. Broad humor, twenty-something eye candy and fruity drinks. Oh, and they probably made a movie somewhere in there. Check out the trailer for yourself:

It’s here! Finally, with the release of its first trailer, we get to catch our first glimpse of Michael Douglas donning sequins and feathers to play famed, flamboyant musician Liberace in Steven Soderbergh’s upcoming biopic for HBO films, Behind the Candelabra, and—oh boy—it’s not a let down. Douglas looks like he had a great time with this one, and it should be a ton of fun watching him chew scenery for one of today’s greatest (non) working directors.

When you think about 90s pop culture, you have to think about Paul Verhoeven’s 1992 erotic thriller, Basic Instinct. That movie dropped like a bomb, dominating the entertainment news cycle for months and inspiring years worth of parodies. Its success didn’t come because Michael Douglas’ cop character investigating a murder made for all that interesting a story, or because Verhoeven orchestrated the thing all that well either. It came almost solely because people were so shocked by the content. There were threesomes, ice pick murders, and, of course, there was that interrogation scene where you could catch the briefest glimpse of Sharon Stone’s vagina if you turned your head sideways and squinted. The 90s were more innocent times—before the near daily release of celebrity sex tapes—so this was intense stuff, and Basic Instinct made a mint off the scandal. Two years later, a sporadically working director named Richard Rush tried to cash in on the trashy erotic thriller craze by making Color of Night, a murder story that starred Bruce Willis as a troubled psychologist dealing with the killing of his best friend, and a cast of colorful psychiatric patients that served as the suspects. Like Basic Instinct, the film focused on kinks and perversions of all sorts, and seeing as Willis’ character eventually begins to enjoy the company of a free-spirited minx played by Jane March, it had plenty of saucy nudity too. But the trashy erotic thriller craze proved to be short lived, because, despite the fact that

What better way to celebrate Oscar night than to post about a movie that should have received a bunch of Academy Award nominations and didn’t get a single one. Yes, 1993 was a great year for film, but Joel Schumacher‘s Falling Down had one of the finest performances each from Michael Douglas and Robert Duvall and an exceptional, memorable script from actor Ebbe Roe Smith. It’s a shame this Los Angeles odyssey, which turns 20 years old this Tuesday, wasn’t honored enough then and certainly isn’t talked about enough today. It’s a cinematic rant that would never be released by a major Hollywood studio now (though an indie like Magnolia might, a la God Bless America), and it features an antihero lead with an image that few stars would pull off ever (Douglas’s crew cut was ridiculed enough in the press then — I can only imagine the field day the blogosphere would have with something like that).

What is Casting Couch? It’s where Hollywood moms come every day to find out if their actor kids have gotten a job. Remember that movie about the day JFK got shot that Tom Hanks was putting together because these days he’s such a history loving, lame dad? It’s called Parkland, and it just put together an awesome cast. According to Collider, director Vincent Bugliosi has signed the terrific trio of Paul Giamatti, Jackie Weaver, and Billy Boy Thornton to headline the cast. There’s no word on what characters they’ll be playing, but my guess is Giamatti will be JFK, Thornton will be Jackie O, and Weaver will be Lee Harvey Oswald. Makes sense, no?

Listen, okay, your parents like to go to the movies, too. They really do. It’s fun for them. It’s good to get out of the house and sit in a room that they don’t have to clean up when they’re done. Those previews? They’re the tops! Even the commercials are fun! And the popcorn? Forget about it! That Nancy Meyers? What a talent! And here comes a brand new movie that sounds pretty much exactly like a Meyers flick, without a Meyers attachment. What a golden age of cinema!D Deadline Hollywood reports that Michael Douglas and Diane Keaton are set to star together in And So It Goes…, a new project penned by As Good As It Gets scribe Mark Andrus that will be directed by PJ Hogan. Amazingly, as our friends at The Playlist note, Douglas and Keaton have somehow never worked together over the long course of their respective careers.  Also, someone tell me that there is room in this cast for Michael Keaton, because wouldn’t that be just a hoot? The film will see Douglas as “a self-absorbed and eccentric realtor whose life is turned upside down when his estranged son abruptly drops off a granddaughter the realtor never knew. With the help of his determined and loveable neighbor (Keaton), the realtor is pulled out of his selfish life and into a new one.” Now isn’t that just charming? And just what your moms and pops will very much enjoy taking in at the local cinema.

Jon Turteltaub‘s “geriatric Hangover” buddy comedy, Last Vegas, has finally locked in its final member of its wolf pack (geriatric wolf pack?). Deadline Henderson reports that Kevin Kline will join Robert De Niro, Morgan Freeman, and Michael Douglas in the Dan Fogelman-scripted comedy. The film centers on “old friends who decide to throw a Las Vegas bachelor party for the only one of them who has remained single.” Hilarity (and broken hips?) ensues! Previous articles on the film also refer to a love triangle element to the story, with the bachelor in question (a known playboy) falling for a lounge singer that another one of his pallies (a widower) also has his eye on. There’s no word on who will play who as of yet, but let’s just go for the obvious here – De Niro as the playboy and Freeman as the widower? That sound about right?

Last month it was reported that Dan Fogelman’s long-gestating script Last Vegas was finally going to be put into production. After several stops and starts, the story of four aged friends going to Vegas for one last crazy bachelor’s party was said to be going forward with Jon Turteltaub set to direct and Michael Douglas signed on to star. That was what we knew for sure – who would be signed to fill out the rest of the film’s wrinkly but still rocking quartet was up in the air. Early reports had Robert De Niro and Christopher Walken rumored as being likely candidates for two of the characters, and since that time De Niro has indeed become confirmed, but nothing further has been said about Walken’s involvement. Today Deadline Greenwood has some new info regarding the film’s casting process, and how their scouring of Tinsel Town’s old folks homes is going. Apparently veteran actor and all around suave fellow Morgan Freeman is currently in negotiations to join the cast. This can only be seen as a terrific choice, because not only is Freeman a recognizable name who can pull off anything that’s asked of him, but he’s also already got experience being in an old-guys-doing-stuff movie because of his work in The Bucket List.

Last Vegas is one of those movies that’s been in the works for quite some time, with several years of actors almost becoming attached to it and the movie almost getting put into production already under its belt. Written by Dan Fogelman (Crazy, Stupid, Love), Last Vegas tells the story of a bunch of old guys who are probably too old to be having a bachelor’s party in Las Vegas having a bachelor’s party in Las Vegas anyway. Think of it as the mash-up of The Bucket List and The Hangover that everyone’s been clamoring for. While the initial buzz from The Hangover that was palpable when this project was first being talked about has been significantly lessened over the past year or so, the success of a movie like Bridesmaids has to mean that there have been movie execs out there somewhere looking for a project that could do for old men what that movie did for women; so now a new series of deals has been made that sees Last Vegas moving full speed ahead. Yesterday THR reported that the film is scheduled to start shooting this fall under the watch of CBS Films, and in order to bring the printed word to the big screen they’ve hired director Jon Turteltaub (who made Cool Runnings and 3 Ninjas back to back!) to helm, and a returning-from-a-medical-leave-of-absence Michael Douglas to star. That’s a heaping truckload of Hollywood clout right there, but the parade of news involving Last Vegas isn’t

Back when Universal was looking to get a script together for a Bad Santa sequel, one of the names they were looking at to write was John Phillips, who got on the studio’s radar by selling them a script for a comedy called Dirty Grandpa. It turns out this guy knows a lot about filth. While the Bad Santa sequel isn’t said to be filming until the fall, and there’s yet to be any word on whether Phillips’ version of the script is the one the studio chose, things are starting to gear up for Dirty Grandpa now. Vulture has a report that Universal has offered Jeff Bridges the starring role, which tells the story of an uptight college kid who gets conned into taking his perverted, recently widowed grandfather with him on a spring break trip to Florida. If Bridges accepts the offer, he’ll be bringing the method approach to stinkiness that he perfected in films like Crazy Heart and True Grit to a comedy, where he’ll theoretically get plenty of chances to rub his hairy, dirty body all over a bunch of buxom, young co-eds.

The absolute worst thing you could say about Steven Soderbergh’s latest film is that its lead, Gina Carano, is consistently out-acted by Channing Tatum. On its surface and for obvious reasons that’s a pretty damning statement. But when viewed as a whole performer instead of just an actress you quickly realize that Carano has a very particular set of other skills. Skills she has acquired over a very long career. Skills that make her a nightmare for people like Tatum, Michael Fassbender, Ewan McGregor and other male stars with recognizably pretty faces. A nightmare for them, but entertaining as hell for the rest of us.

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr dresses up in his favorite Jedi robe, grabs his lightsaber and heads out to see the latest George Lucas movie…and boy does he look stupid. After realizing that Red Tails has nothing to do with the color of creatures’ backsides in the Tattooine cantina, he then dresses in his favorite “Team Jacob” tee shirt to see the latest vampire/werewolf movie. Again, he looks ridiculous. Finally, he sulks into a movie theater showing the new Steven Soderbergh film, falls in love with new action star Gina Carano and is happy.

Moving away from the feature-length hand sanitizer commercial that was this year’s Contagion, director Steven Soderbergh returns to the screen with another one of his trademark all-star cast outings, but one with significantly more ass-kicking delivered at the hands (and feet) of a particularly-picked leading lady. In Haywire, Soderbergh lets loose cinematic newcomer Gina Carano, a real-life MMA fighter who can more than hold her own with the boys club that rounds out the film’s cast (including Ewan McGregor, Channing Tatum, Michael Fassbender, Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas, and Bill Paxton). Packaged as a double-crossing spy thriller, Haywire is big on impressive and crowd-pleasing fight scenes, but the film fizzles when it comes to delivering a particularly clever story for all those flying fists to play out against. The meat of Haywire’s plot is just a standard double-cross story that’s pumped up with the sort of stylistic flash and flair that Soderbergh can deliver handily. Carano plays a highly skilled ex-Marine who now works in the “private sector” on black ops jobs that involves messy endeavors like extraction and assassination. Carano’s Mallory Kane is very good at her job, good enough that she’s often a special request (an “essential element”) for a number of her company’s various contracts, a fact that irks her boss and ex-flame Kenneth (McGregor). Mallory is dispatched for an extraction job in Barcelona that goes well enough, but her performance there directly leads into her next job, a gig that’s ostensibly presented as glorified babysitting, done in

Steven Soderbergh has been trying to get a movie about the life of Liberace off the ground for a while now. Or, more specifically, he’s trying to make an adaptation of a book called “Behind the Candelabra: My Life With Liberace” that was written by Liberace’s long-time live-in lover Scott Thorson. Thorson’s book details his relationship with the famous singer, what their last meeting was like, and gives a little bit of insight into both men’s childhoods. Even though it won’t be coming to a theater near you, Soderbergh will still get his wish, as HBO Films has greenlit the project for production. Don’t think that because HBO is doing this and not one of the big studios that it’s going to be any sort of B-level affair though. Very A-list actors Michael Douglas and Matt Damon have already signed on to portray Liberace and Thorson, so this movie is set to be a big deal, no matter where audiences can find it. Of the HBO distribution model, Soderbergh had this to say, “From the inception of this project, we’ve had two priorities: getting it right creatively, and getting as many people as possible to see it. HBO’s fearless approach to original programming and their unparalleled ability to pull in viewers make them the perfect fit for us. Apart from my hair growing back, I couldn’t be happier.” Soderbergh himself will still direct the film from a screenplay by Richard LaGravenese. I’ll bet Douglas and Damon are off in a

Steven Soderbergh is perhaps the most versatile director working today. He hates to be pinned down, he enjoys non-actors acting, and he revels in action as much as dialogue. With Haywire it seems he gets to combine a lot of his creative interests into one throat-crushing experience. The trailer has hit, and it feels like every story ever told about an agent that’s the best of the best of the best being taken out back by her government. Of course, when it all goes wrong, she wants to know why and seek revenge. Beat by beat, it’s been told a hundred times, but Soderbergh is also a storyteller with tricks up his sleeve, and as for pure action, Gina Carano looks like she’ll pull everyone’s kidneys out through the hole she rips in their shoulders. Check out the trailer for yourself:

Have you ever sat at coffee shop, minding your own business and munching on a tasty croissant, when pleasantly and unexpectedly a handsome man or beautiful lady sits down across from you? If life were a movie, one of you would drop something, reach to pick it up at the same time, and charmingly knock heads. Engaging conversation would ensue, you’d fall madly in love, music would swell, and credits would roll like the tears down your movie-self’s cheek. Le sigh and scene. But like movies are oft to show, so much sexual passion can just as easily bring out the evil in characters as it does the good. Movie love can be so intense it borders on destructive, and a budding couple’s sanity can unravel before the audience’s eyes as the story reaches its climax. Sex unites the couple and keeps them together longer than it rationally should, until both partners become weaved so heavily in a tangle of sex-caused insanity neither can see where reality and delusion lie.

I was living in New York in September 2008, and took some time a couple of days after the stock market crash to visit way downtown Manhattan and see what was going on. The quietude was shocking, as the alarms being sounded on cable news networks made it sound like I shouldn’t be surprised to see brokers peddling on the street, people running around on fire for no apparent reason, or CEOs segway-ing off of cliffs. As I rarely visited the Financial District, I had no idea whether or not this was normal. Maybe the crash had invoked a necessary meditation or speechlessness, a rare time of reflection for capitalists-run-amok. But the truth was that such panic wouldn’t be visible on the street amongst the common folk (houses around the country owned by low and middle-income families told that story), rather the chaos was happening inside the buildings themselves. Oliver Stone’s latest entry into his “W” trilogy dealing with major 21st century American events (alongside World Trade Center and W.), Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, is an attempt to inquire on the conversations that may have gone on in those buildings.

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr is coming at you in eye-popping 3D, and like money, he doesn’t sleep. He sets his time machine way way way back to 2002 to pick on Kristen Bell in high school. The story is loosely chronicled in You Again. Kevin also practices some insider trading with Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps then takes flight with a bunch of CGI owls from Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole

For 36 days straight, we’ll be exploring the famous 36 Dramatic Situations by presenting a film that exemplifies each one. From family killing family to prisoners in need of asylum, we brush off the 19th century list in order to remember that it’s still incredibly relevant today. Whether you’re seeking a degree in Literature, love movies, or just love seeing things explode, our feature should have something for everyone. If it doesn’t, please don’t make us go down on Charlie Sheen in the back of a limo. Part 34 of the 36-part series takes a look at “Ambition” with Wall Street.