Another film to come off of the festival circuit amid early awards buzz is Jeff Nichols' low budget indie drama, Take Shelter.  The film premiered back in January at Sundance and then went on to win the Critics Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in May and its reputation just continues to grow with favorable word of mouth coming out of TIFF. The budget may have been small, but its cast is an embarrassment of riches.  Shannon costars with Jessica Chastain, Kathy Baker (who is in Machine Gun Preacher with Shannon and Gerard Butler), Shea Whigham (who is in "Boardwalk Empire" with Shannon), Ray McKinnon and Lisa Gay Hamilton.

Michael Shannon, about whom there is already Oscar talk, stars as a man who may or may not be losing his grip on reality. Curtis (Shannon) is a normally reliable husband and father who begins to suffer from terrifying, apocalyptic, nightmares about an impending storm that will doom humanity. He seeks out help, but his paranoia grows and he begins to build a tornado shelter in his backyard in case the inevitable should happen, though his marriage and career begin to fall apart in the process. Is he sheltering his family from the storm or from himself? The film also explores the fears men face everyday and even how one’s sense of masculinity can be eroded. Curtis' wife, Samantha, is played by Chastain (who while unknown a year ago, has actually been quietly toiling away for the last four years on films that for one reason or another are all coming out now), also to great acclaim.

Official trailer:

Clip featuring Shannon and Chastain:

Take Shelter plays a few more festivals in France before it opens in the US on September 30 (bit of trivia: 9/30 is the day Machine Gun Preacher goes wide-er, thus giving Shannon and Baker two films in theaters at once. If The Debt is still playing, Chastain will have two as well.)

Stay connected with us! Follow us on Twitter, fan us on Facebook or subscribe to our RSS feed. We would love to hear from you.

From MTV comes this new clip from Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.'s remake? Reimagining? Prequel? of The Thing starring Joel Edgerton (Warrior) and Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Scott Pilgrim vs the World) and a few dozen Danes. 

Official synopsis: "Antarctica: an extraordinary continent of awesome beauty. It is also home to an isolated outpost where a discovery full of scientific possibility becomes a mission of survival when an alien is unearthed by a crew of international scientists. The shape-shifting creature, accidentally unleashed at this marooned colony, has the ability to turn itself into a perfect replica of any living being. It can look just like you or me, but inside, it remains inhuman. In the thriller The Thing, paranoia spreads like an epidemic among a group of researchers as they’re infected, one by one, by a mystery from another planet. Paleontologist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) has traveled to the desolate region for the expedition of her lifetime. Joining a Norwegian scientific team that has stumbled across an extraterrestrial ship buried in the ice, she discovers an organism that seems to have died in the crash eons ago. But it is about to wake up. When a simple experiment frees the alien from its frozen prison, Kate must join the crew’s pilot, Carter (Joel Edgerton), to keep it from killing them off one at a time. And in this vast, intense land, a parasite that can mimic anything it touches will pit human against human as it tries to survive and flourish."

The clip is short and sweet and I won't spoil it:

The Thing arrives on October 14 in the US and 2 December in the UK.

Stay connected with us! Follow us on Twitter, fan us on Facebook or subscribe to our RSS feed. We would love to hear from you.

Well this is different. I did not know that Eva Mendes can sing, did you? You're watching the video of Eva Mendes as the face for Thierry Mugler's latest fragrance, Angel singing Windmills of Your Mind.

I love the train that picks her up at the beginning and the whole ethereal vibe of the commercial. I know it's not everyone's taste, but it's different and I'm impressed that she sings in it as well.

What do you think? Let us know.

Stay connected with us! Follow us on Twitter, fan us on Facebook or subscribe to our RSS feed. We would love to hear from you.

Orlando Bloom Looks Spankalicious on Men's Health

Sweet lawd I think my clothes just flew off at the fastest rate of speed yet. Orlando Bloom may be photo shopped to the man berries, but he is looking absolutely hot on the cover of Men's Health magazine.

In the magazine he talks that he has moments of doubts. Seriously? He looks like that, is as nice as can be, is married to Miranda Kerr with a beautiful baby and dude has doubts? 

And poodles he loves swordplay because among other things it's balletic. Now that is a man very comfortable with himself and that is so very hot.

Did I mention he looks spankalicious?

While I have no clue which month this issue is (like it matters) I'm thinking it's probably October. I need to lay down.

Orlando on beating his moments of doubt:"I call [doubts] my mind critters. Can I defeat myself? I really like going downhill on a mountain bike, and if I just feather the front brake and let it roll, I’m fine. But if I’m not in that zone and I clutch that brake, boom, I’m over the handlebars. Or worse."

Orlando on fear:"Fear is not a friend of mine. But it’s something to have a healthy awareness of."

Orlando on having a healthy sense of risk:"I can’t stop living. It would ruin my creativity, the person I am."

Orlando on success vs. greatness:"To an untrained eye, yes, success is what people aspire to, and only success. The thing is, success can allow you to try for greatness, can give you an opportunity to take a chance on something. I’m very blessed to have the success that I’ve had, and that’s given me so many opportunities to work on being great."

Orlando on fencing:"I love swordplay. It’s a mental and physical challenge. It can also be balletic and dancelike."

Stay connected with us! Follow us on Twitter, fan us on Facebook or subscribe to our RSS feed. We would love to hear from you.

Oren Moverman's Rampart is yet another film that I cannot believe was not on my radar. It stars Woody Harrelson, who earned an Oscar nomination in Moverman's last film, The Messenger and the script is co-written by Moverman and one of my all-time favorite writers, James Ellroy (the novels "LA Confidential", "The Blue Dahlia"-but don't hold the movie against him- among many others). Joining Harrelson and Moverman is Ben Foster, who should have been nominated for The Messenger.

Official synopsis: Based on a true LAPD scandal from the 1990's, Rampart is the genre-bending police drama/family story of Dave Brown, a cop long ago unleashed from the rules of the Los Angeles Police Department, whose past is catching up with him. Roving the streets, he governs and punishes at will. His home life is a riddle. He has fathered children with two sisters (Anne Heche and Cynthia Nixon). Somehow he still lives casually with them both, slipping in and out of a family life that's as tangled as his long career on the force. {This reminds me of The General with Brendan Gleeson-also based on a true story} Years ago, Brown may have killed a rapist and gotten away with it. The shadow of the incident still haunts him, so when his Rampart division gets caught up in a corruption scandal, Brown makes an easy target. As the controversy seeps through the department and into city hall, this hardened, reckless officer finds himself at the center of a sordid L.A. story with a D.A. and an investigator on his trail, a lover who may or may not be on his side and fighting for his sanity and survival.

THR had some exclusive first clips to share. In the first scene Brown attempts to rationalize his behavior to a psychologist (Sigourney Weaver). In the second, he interacts with a fellow vet who is now homeless and mentally disturbed (Ben Foster). And in the third, he flirts with a woman whom he has met at a bar (Robin Wright): 

The cast is impressive. In addition to Harrelson, Foster, Heche, Nixon, Wright and Weaver, Rampart features Steve Buscemi, Ned Beatty, Ice Cube, Jon Foster and Jon Bernthal.  It was one of the most hotly anticipated films to screen while still seeking distribution, going into TIFF without a release date. This will soon change.

Enjoy the stills. And, in my never-ending quest to bring you updates on every single movie playing TIFF this year, here are a few pics from the premiere as well.

Stay connected with us! Follow us on Twitter, fan us on Facebook or subscribe to our RSS feed. We would love to hear from you.

Here are first posters for Bret Ratner's new comedy,Tower Heist, starring Ben Stiller. The plot centers around a a group of hard working guys who find out they've fallen victim to a wealthy business man's Ponzi scheme and then conspire to rob his high-rise residence in order to get their money back. All of that is extremely topical. It will either suffer from "ouch-too-soon-itis" or it could be extremely funny. The writers credited with the screenplay (there are two more credited with "the story") are Ted Griffin (Oceans Eleven, Killers – hit & a miss. No help there) and Jeff Nathanson (Speed 2, Rush Hour 2 & 3, The Terminal, Catch Me If You Can – 3 strikes, a base on balls and a hit. Again no help) so it's anyone's guess.

The trailer should give us a clue, right?

Let me know if you laughed.

The film has a great cast, both comedic and otherwise. In addition to Stiller, there's Eddie Murphy, Matthew Broderick, Casey Affleck, Michael Pena, Gabourey Sidibe, Tea Leoni (where has she been?), Judd Hirsch and Alan Alda. You'd think there'd be some "there" there to get those people involved. Knowing that Bret Ratner directed Tower Heist, which stars Eddie Murphy, and is also set to direct the 2012 Oscar telecast, it kind of explains the selection of Murphy to be the host of said telecast. That decision could be a real career boost for Murphy if he pulls it off. And he can pull it off, if he chooses to. 

Tower Heist hijacks cinemas in the US and the UK on November 4.

Stay connected with us! Follow us on Twitter, fan us on Facebook or subscribe to our RSS feed. We would love to hear from you.