With the entire original run of The Twilight Zone available to watch instantly, we’re partnering with Twitch Film to cover all of the show’s 156 episodes. Are you brave enough to watch them all with us? The Twilight Zone (Episode #110): “Miniature” (airdate 2/21/63) The Plot: A man becomes obsessed with the contents of a dollhouse. The Goods: On a trip to the museum, the timid Charley Parkes (Robert Duvall) believes he sees movement inside a dollhouse. As any normal human would do, he keeps heading back to see if he can spy the same motion or find out what it is. What he finds, is a young woman with whom he falls in tiny love.

Alexander Payne’s next planned film, Nebraska, is about “a geriatric gin-hound of a dad who takes his estranged son with him from Montana to Publisher’s Clearing House headquarters, with a detour through Omaha, Nebraska, in order to claim his million-dollar sweepstakes prize.” Personally, I love Alexander Payne’s painfully realist aesthetic and pitch black humor, so this is a project that I’m interested in. When I hear that Payne wants to shoot the film in black and white, I get even more intrigued. Pre-production has already hit a snag, though. Apparently the studio will only let Payne film it in black and white if he gets a big name star to attach himself as the father. That might be a problem, except that we’re dealing with a director whose upcoming release The Descendants is doing well on the festival circuit, gathering some Oscar buzz, and improving his already well-respected position in the film industry. Surely he must have someone in mind for this role that he can convince to sign, right? Well, word has it that he has a few people on his short list, and any one of them would be awesome. The list reportedly consists of Robert Forster, Robert Duvall, and Jack Nicholson. Any of these actors would be great news in my mind, and Nicholson has already worked with Payne for About Schmidt, so that pairing isn’t unlikely at all.  There is, however, a fourth name on the list that’s really got me excited. Apparently Payne is looking to get the retired-from-acting [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]

Christopher McQuarrie’s upcoming adaptation of the Lee Child novel “One Shot” continues to make curious casting decisions. First it cast Tom Cruise, the diminutive head of the militant wing of the Church of Scientology, as the hulking, brute of a protagonist Jack Reacher. And now it has cast a German man in the role of The Zec, a Russian ex-POW who acts as the story’s antagonist. And not just any German man, the most German man in the world: Werner Herzog. To the public at large, that name might not mean much, but for those of us reading a film site, it’s kind of a big deal. Herzog is one of the most respected directors of film on the planet, his narrative works include things like Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre: The Wrath of God and his documentary work includes titles like Grizzly Man and the upcoming Into the Abyss. We’re used to hearing his voice narrating his docs, and he’s even showed up in features with small roles before (my favorite being his turn as the creepy father in Julien Donkey-Boy), but this will be the first time he ever gets a meaty role in a mainstream Hollywood film. Is it now only a matter of time before the entire country falls in love with Herzog’s rich, comforting grandfather voice? Is it only a matter of time before we see bumper stickers and novelty Ts carrying catchphrases about trees being in misery and birds screaming in pain? Is this the beginning [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]

Billy Bob Thornton hasn’t directed a non-documentary since 2001’s Daddy and Them. That’s kind of a shame, because it seems like the guy could be pretty good at it. Dude made Sling Blade after all. I take it as good news then, that Thornton has a cast in place and funding secured for his next feature Jayne Mansfield’s Car. Not much is known about the film yet, but Thornton co-wrote the script with his writing partner Tom Epperson, and it’s said to be about two families from different parts of the world experiencing a culture clash in 1969. Young actor John Patrick Amedori is set to star in the film and names like Robert Duvall, Kevin Bacon, Robert Patrick, Ray Stevenson, John Hurt, Dwight Yoakam, and Dennis Quaid are locked in to round out the cast. That’s a ridiculously impressive list of actors, but where are all the ladies? Perhaps that’s a mystery for another day.

This trailer is the kind of efficiency that will make you proud to live in the era you live in. Before Star Wars, there was THX 113. Newcomer George Lucas expanded his short film Electronic Labyrinth THX 1138 4EB while shortening the title to create this vision of the future. He also wrangled Robert Duvall and Donald Pleasence for this sci-fi epic about what all sci-fi Dystopian epics are about: two humanoids finding love in a drug-addled world that forbids it. Also like most Dystopian futures, some of the dialogue (SEN’s) is drawn directly from Richard Nixon’s speeches.

We made it! As birds fall dead from the sky, fish show up dead around the world, politicians are being shot while picking up the produce, you and I have made it, dear reader. What a wild week it has been around the world — the apocalypse could very well be right around the corner. So if we’re all going to go out in a blaze of glory, lets take a moment for some delightful diversion. My suggestion — read the work of the FSR staff as we continue our ongoing coverage of the world of film. It may not be a homeless guy with the perfect radio voice, but it’s worth a look either way.

Robert Duvall turns 80 today, and that’s an achievement all on its own. It’s also important to keep in mind that Duvall has been in the filmmaking business for 49 years. That’s 61% of his life. The last thing any of us dedicated that much time to was our Regarding Henry action figure collection and doing the math for that problem. Duvall is an icon amongst icons, a living legend that has put just as much love into his craft as he’s gotten back, a cinematic luminary that still continues to make great films. Attempting to pay tribute to him is a difficult task not only because there’s not enough space on the internet to do it, but because his career is a difficult one to wrap one’s mind around. He’s done just about everything except compose a film score, and he’s done so while staying at the top of his game through almost five decades of Hollywood evolution.

It’s become common wisdom to say that the best remakes are those made of non-canonical, non-classic films; that is, it’s typically better to give a second go to a film that – while possibly venerated, is hardly deemed a work of perfection that can’t be improved upon – than to redo a classic. Such a rule isn’t set in stone, of course, but it can be argued through example via some of the most celebrated of remakes (like The Thing or, in a more modest and more recent example of improvement-on-imperfection, The Crazies), and are often a result of a genuine inspiration from the source material rather than a simple means of capitalizing from its name. With the Coen brothers’ quite popular and much celebrated remake of True Grit, however, the distinction of what kind of a remake it is isn’t exactly so clear, as what kind of movie the original is proves to be something of an enigma in of itself.

With the ninth annual Tribeca Film Festival under way in New York, Robert Levin chimes in with some reviews. First: Robert Duvall and Bill Murray in ‘Get Low.’

Join Robert Duvall, Bill Murray, Sissy Spacek, director Aaron Schneider, and producer Dean Zanuck for lunch as they discuss Get Low.

It’s difficult to find the words to express in reaction to Get Low, mainly because the film doesn’t say much in and of itself. This is not to say that the film is either terrible or magnificent; when one watches Get Low it’s hard to get the sense that it is good or bad as much as it is simply a non-event.

There’s something so beautiful and captivating about the end of humanity, the last gasping breaths of life as we know it. This is why post-apocalyptic movies have been so popular in recent years.

A month ago, there was very little known about the Jeff Bridges led drama Crazy Heart, from first time director Scott Cooper. But ever since Fox Searchlight set a release date, we’ve been hit with a flood of new info that has piqued our interest.