Check the freaky, comic-booky new poster for The Darkest Hour. Filmed on location in Russia, the film follows five young people who find themselves stranded in Moscow, fighting to survive in the wake of a devastating alien attack.  

I really liked the trailer and it did leave me with the impression this could be a lot of fun. As I said before, it may or may not have anything to offer the ever expanding 'alien-invasion genre', other than "the classic beauty of Moscow", but that might just be enough.

The Darkest Hour stars Emile Hirsch, Olivia Thirlby, Max Minghella, Rachel Taylor and Joel Kinnaman (who is breaking in the US in a big way) and many Russians. It's scheduled for a December 23 release in the US and 13 January in the UK.

The focus of the new Rampart poster is clearly on Woody Harrelson and from what I’ve heard, that’s as it should be. His Dave Brown is completely psychotic and over the top and Harrelson gives a bold, brash performance and owns the movie. Based on a true LAPD scandal from the 1990's, Rampart is a genre-bending police drama/family story. Brown is a cop long ago unleashed from the rules of the LAPD, whose past is catching up with him. Roving the streets like his personal fiefdom, he governs and punishes at will. He has children with two sisters (Anne Heche and Cynthia Nixon) and somehow still lives casually with them both, slipping in and out of a family life that’s as tangled as his long career. {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.

The rest of the cast is impressive: Ben Foster, Heche, Nixon, Robin Wright, Sigourney Weaver,  Steve Buscemi, Ned Beatty, Ice Cube, Jon Foster and Jon Bernthal all star.  After TIFF, Rampart was picked up by Millennium Entertainment. Faith in Harrelson’s performance is so strong that they’re doing a limited release November 23 in NY/LA before opening wide January 27.

Another poster for Contraband, this one showcasing a bit more of the cast and less of Mark Wahlberg’s torso.  Contraband is a remake of an Icelandic film called Reykjavik-Rotterdam. While I didn't see the original, the trailer for this one looks like it kicks all kinds of ass.

The synopsis: A security guard with financial troubles considers a return to his smuggling ways when an associate offers a potentially lucrative opportunity.  That's not even half the story though. It's another one of those tales where like Michael Corleone said in Godfather 3, "just when I think I'm out…they PULL me back in", only this time it's family man Mark Wahlberg who gets sucked back into 'the life' thanks to his ne'er do well brother. Kate and the kids are in all sorts of danger. Ooooo.

The cast of Contraband includes the excellent Giovanni Ribisi, the equally excellent Ben Foster (again), J. K. Simmons, Lukas Haas, Caleb Landry Jones, Diego Luna and Marky Mark's older brother, Robert Walhberg. Contraband opens January 13 in the US and 16 March in the UK.

Last but definitely not least, we have another new poster for David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I’m about to cry ‘uncle’ on this one. Enough with the teasing and the trailers and spooky websites and viral videos. You win Fincher! I’ll see your remake. Give me the damn movie already! I need my Daniel Craig fix! *shakes fist*

Sigh… I’m sure there will be more “surprises” before we’re finally allowed to see the thing.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo FINALLY opens in theaters December 21 in the US and Canada and 26 December in the UK. (The date on the bottom is the German and Turkish release date although the poster is in English. Curious)

The new trailer for Lynne Ramsay’s We Need to Talk About Kevin, aimed at the US market, goes further than anything we’ve yet seen. It also makes sure we know that Tilda Swinton gives an amazing performance, then again, what else is new. She always does. She and John C. Reilly star as the parents of a teenage old boy (Ezra Miller) who goes on a high-school killing spree and must try to deal with their grief and feelings of responsibility for their child's actions.

Official synopsis: Eva (Swinton) puts her ambitions and career aside to give birth to Kevin. The relationship between mother and son is difficult from the very first years. When Kevin is 15 , he does something irrational and unforgivable in the eyes of the entire community. Eva grapples with her own feelings of grief and responsibility. Did she ever love her son? And how much of what Kevin did was her fault? 

I’ve loved every trailer I’ve seen for this. Usually the music used gives us cues as to what the mood and tone are of what we're about to see. If that were true here, coupled with the expression on Swinton's face for the first half of it, I'd think this was a comedy of sorts. The mood and tone shift about half-way through and we know we're dealing with something much darker, but it doesn't tell you how to feel about it.

We Need to Talk About Kevin  wowed at Cannes and at TIFF and every festival you can think of. It won the BFI London Film Festival’s equivalent of Best Picture last week and has already opened in the UK. It gets a limited (grrrrrr) US release on December 2. 

Toronto double-dipper Gerard Butler joined his director and co-star, a rather hirsute Ralph Fiennes, along with Jessica Chastain and Brian Cox for the Coriolanus leg of his personal TIFF-apalooza yesterday September 12. Butler, exhausted, but still gregarious, charming and gorgeous and company did a press conference in the morning (mere hours, possibly even minutes, after he closed his eyes after the festivities surrounding Machine Gun Preacher the night before, then it was a day of non-stop interviews before the Coriolanus premiere at the Elgin Theater’s Visa Screening Room.

Following the premiere it was off to Toronto’s SoHo House for the after party where the cast was joined by other TIFF attendees like Abbie Cornish, Tahar Rahim and various industry types.

Coriolanus is based on the Shakespeare play of the same name in which a banished hero of Rome, Caius Martius Coriolanus (Fiennes) allies with a sworn enemy, Tullus Aufidius (Butler) to take his revenge on the city. The film stars, along with Cox and Chastain, the ethereal Vanessa Redgrave who has already been tipped for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance as Coriolanus’ mother, Volumnia.Coriolanus will get an awards qualifying run in December before opening wide in January.  Enjoy the pics!

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Fresh from his Best Actor win at the Venice Film Festival, Michael Fassbender jumped a plane to make an appearance at the Toronto International Film Festival premiere of Steve McQueen’s Shame. He missed out on the premiere of his other TIFF contender, David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method, to stick around for the prize-giving on the Lido but did make it in time for the screening of the film for which he won the award.

Shame was greeted with much the same sort of enthusiasm in Toronto that it met with in Venice, which should come as no surprise. The Venice/TIFF overlap can often up the buzz on a film coming straight from one festival to the other. By all accounts the film lives up to the hype. So can we expect a repeat? No. TIFF does not have a jury and is non-competitive.  Awards handed out at other festivals for categories such as “Best Actress” or “Best Film” do not exist at the Toronto International Film Festival. The major prize is the People’s Choice Award and is given to a feature-length film with the highest ratings as voted by the movie goers at the festival. (Last year’s winner of that prize was The King’s Speech.)

Enjoy the pics!

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Surrounded by the enormous crowds that typically turn out for a movie starring Gerard Butler, Marc Forster’s Machine Gun Preacher had a gala red carpet premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival Sunday night, September 11. Walking the red carpet were the director and his stars Butler, Michelle Monaghan, Michael Shannon and Madeline Carroll. The man on whose life the film is based, Sam Childers, made the trip to Canada along with his wife Lynne, who are portrayed in the film by Butler and Monaghan.

Some accounts have accused Butler of “mugging” for the cameras, as if that’s a bad thing. The man takes so much time, every time, that he appears at these things, to let his fans know he appreciates them almost as they appreciate him, I can imagine it must be exhausting, but in my opinion, it was probably just nerves. Machine Gun Preacher is an important film, for Forster, for Childers, for everyone involved, but especially for Butler who acted in as well as produced it. While it’s not the first time he’s done that, this project has been an affair of the heart from the beginning. He still becomes emotional when talking about his experience. His fans have been hoping the project lends his career the gravitas needed to take him to the next level.

Apparently he needn’t have worried. The audience in Toronto stayed glued to their seats until the final credits rolled and then gave the film and the filmmakers a standing ovation.

Enjoy the pics!

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Photos: Dominic Chan/WENN

Check out this hot first poster, a TIFF exclusive courtesy of indiewire.com for Terrence Davies’ The Deep Blue Sea. I showed you some stills last week along with a clip that promised a good old-fashioned, yet passionate movie full of beautiful people and lots of period details. Well the poster’s got those things, it’s also got steam coming off of it in waves! All you Twi-hards who thought those posters for Breaking Dawn Part Whatever were hot, take a good look at this. This is grown up eroticism between two real people and the chemistry does not come from the Photo Shop.

The Deep Blue Sea is the tale of the wife of a British High Court Judge who is caught in a self-destructive love affair with a Royal Air Force pilot and stars Rachel Weisz and Tom Hiddleston as the clandestine lovers and Simon Russell Beale plays the judge. The director, Terrence Davies adapted Terence Rattigan’s play of the same name. It premiered at TIFF this weekend with Weisz, Hiddleston and Davies in attendance. I sincerely hope TIFF generates the buzz this film needs to secure some release dates. Right now, it’s only definite in the UK for a November 11 release.

Enjoy the pics of Weisz and Hiddleston at the TIFF events for The Deep Blue Sea, including the premiere on Sunday September 11.

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