See the armoured bears. New posters for The Golden Compass here and here.

Simon Pegg (Hot Fuzz) is Scotty and John Cho (Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle) is Sulu in J.J. Abrams' Star Trek. The main cast also features Chris Pine (Kirk), Eric Bana (the villain, Nero), Zoe Saldana (Uhura), Anton Yelchin (Chekov), and Zachary Quinto and Leonard Nimoy as Spock. (Coming Soon) [imdb]

The Jumper trailer, now in HD Quicktime. Stars Hayden Christensen, Jamie Bell, Rachel Bilson, and Samuel L. Jackson. Directed by Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity).

Review of Battlestar Galactica: Razor at Eclipse Magazine. HUGE SPOILER at the end.

Clips from the next episode of Heroes, "The Kindness of Strangers." (Oh, Angela Petrelli!) Also, "Milo Is Shirtless" is evidently the new Heroes tagline.

Alan Sepinwall's column on Mad Men, which is finishing up its first season next week (contains spoilers):

'One of the keys to the genius of "Mad Men" -- far and away the best new show of the year, making every network rookie look lazy and dull in comparison -- is how often the series' writers resist the temptation to spell everything out in large print.'

Trailer for Doug Liman's (The Bourne Identity) sci-fi action adventure, Jumper, based on the novel by Steven Gould. A young man discovers that he can teleport, but the ability comes at a cost - an ancient sect called the Paladins is intent on killing everyone who is like him. It stars Jamie Bell (Hallam Foe), Hayden Christensen (Shattered Glass), Rachel Bilson (The OC), and Samuel L. Jackson. THIS LOOKS SO MIND-BLOWINGLY COOL. Edited: trailer_spot has the link for the downloadable Quicktime version of the trailer. [imdb]

Edited 2: Interview with author Steven Gould about his latest book.

A new trailer for His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass. Ian McKellan voices Iorek Byrnison, Christopher Lee makes an appearance, and Stelmaria speaks with Kristin Scott Thomas' wonderful and seductive voice! (I know she doesn't appear in person, but just the thought of KST and Daniel Craig in the same oral space is enough to make me weak.) Also, director/writer Chris Weitz at the HisDarkMaterials.org blog defends his decision to move the last few chapters of The Golden Compass into the script for the sequel, The Subtle Knife. [imdb]

Eric Bana has been cast as the villain in the J.J. Abrams directed Star Trek XI. Already on board are Anton Yelchin, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana and Leonard Nimoy. Meanwhile, The Hollywood Reporter says that Chris Pine (Just My Luck) is in talks to star as Captain Kirk. Don't know who he is either? Here is a picture. [imdb]

New trailer for Love in the Time of Cholera, directed by Mike Newell (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire), based on the novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. [imdb]

Teaser trailer and some (regretably small) stills at Twitch from Three Kingdoms: Resurrection of the Dragon, a historical martial arts epic directed by Daniel Lee. It features Andy Lau and Maggie Q. The story is based on the classical Chinese novel, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms (pinyin: sānguó yǎnyì), set in the period of disunity and turbulence at the end of the Han dynasty. It's a work of fiction that has had as much an influence on the Chinese consciousness as Homer or Shakespeare do in the West. [imdb]

Slate has a slideshow of the history of the vibrator - just the thing after the latest episode of Mad Men!

Jamie King (Sin City) joins Frank Miller's adaptation of Will Eisner's The Spirit, the tale of a young cop who is murdered and comes back to life to fight the criminals in Central City. King will take on the role of Lorelei Rox. She joins Gabriel Macht (The Good Shepherd) who plays the hero, as well as Sarah Paulson (Deadwood), Morgan Freeman, Scarlett Johansson, and Eva Mendes. (IESB) [imdb]

Adrien Brody (The Darjeeling Limited) and Sarah Polley (Dawn of the Dead) will star in the science fiction thriller Splice. They'll play two young biogeneticist who become superstars by splicing different animal DNA to create fantastical new creatures. They ignore the legal and ethical boundaries and introduce human DNA into their experiment. (Hollywood Reporter)

Trailer for Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd, starring Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman and Sacha Baron Cohen. [imdb]

Neve Campbell (Scream), Rupert Penry-Jones (Spooks) and Bradley Whitford (The West Wing) will star in a 2-part miniseries thriller about oil lobbyists, environmentalists and global warming, called Burn Up. Simon Beaufoy (The Full Monty) is writing the teleplay, and Omar Madha (Spooks) is directing. (Variety) [imdb]

IGN hears that Ian McKellan and Kathy Bates will lend their voices to characters in Chris Weitz's The Golden Compass, as Iorek Byrnison and a daemon respectively. The scooper also reports that Christopher Lee will appear in the film as a member of the Magisterium. [imdb]

Via sinful_caesar, a new trailer for The Tudors, season two.

Gabriel Macht (The Good Shepherd) has been cast as the lead in the Frank Miller helmed adaptation of Will Eisner's comic The Spirit. Macht will play Denny Colt, a criminologist who fakes his own death to turn masked vigilante. (Coming Soon) [imdb]

Trailer for National Treasure: Book of Secrets, starring Nicolas Cage, Diane Kruger, Jon Voight, Harvey Keitel, Helen Mirren and Ed Harris. [imdb]

Trailer for the thriller Rendition, about a CIA operative in Cairo (Jake Gyllenhaal) who questions his assignment after observing a secret-police grilling of an Egyptian born suspect in a suicide bombing. Reece Witherspoon plays the American wife of the suspected terrorist (Omar Metwally). Also starring Meryl Street, Peter Sarsgaard and Alan Arkin, and directed by Gavin Hood. [imdb]

And last of all, the trailer and official site for We Own the Night, a crime drama starring Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Wahlberg as brothers caught on opposite sides of a drug war. They reteam with writer/director John Gray (The Yards). [imdb]

Narnia Blog offers our first look at Ben Barnes, who plays the title role in The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. (I think what I like best about the casting is how dark he looks compared to the four Pevensie children - really like he is from a foreign country, or another world.)

A second teaser poster for 3:10 to Yuma.

Abbie Cornish (Candy, The Golden Age), according to her friend and fellow Aussie actress Rose Byrne, has been offered the lead female role in Bond 22. The sequel to Casino Royale stars Daniel Craig as Bond, and is directed by Marc Forster (Finding Neverland). (Coming Soon) [imdb]

Watch Timothy Olyphant (Live Free or Die Hard, Hitman) on Jimmy Kimmel. (Just Jared)

I want me a set of Vintage Twins collectors editions. Even if I already own most of the books, it would be worth it for those gorgeous covers. (via)

Giles Foden (author of "The Last King of Scotland") at the GuardianBlog says this about the twins:

In TS Eliot's essay Tradition and the Individual Talent, the theory is advanced that the canon is retrospectively altered by the introduction of new works - works that themselves would mean nothing were it not for their historical sense, their "tradition". As he put it, "No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists."

I wonder whether Vintage Classics had the old fellow in mind when it launched its latest wheeze, Vintage Twins, which involves the shrink-wrapped pairing of past and modern masters.

Philip Pullman is working on a sequel to his Carnegie winning "His Dark Materials". In it, Pullman hopes to spell out more clearly his views on religion.

“This is a big subject and I’m writing a big, big book in order to deal precisely with that question,” he tells the magazine. “I don’t want to anticipate it too much by switching a light on the answer now. The interesting – the curious – question is, if people can be helped by something that is palpably not true, is this better than denying the thing that is not true and not being helped?” (Times Online)

That is an interesting question. The fact that Richard Dawkins, an equally vocal atheist, would probably answer that emphatically with a "No", makes me doubly curious about Pullman's thoughts. J's Boy and I were talking over just this question when I last had lunch with the couple - he was more sympathetic to Dawkins than I was (not to mention a strict Determinist), but neither of us could come to any firm conclusions.

I'm guessing fairly confidently that Eragon is going to suck. But just look at these two. I mean, ye Gods. Jeremy, you still manage to have crazy chemistry with every female on the face of the planet. HOW?!



Posters at IMPA.
High-res stills at OutNow.

~



Three more distinguished actors have joined the cast of The Golden Compass in unspecified roles: John Hurt, Kevin Bacon and Eric Bana. In the adaptation of Philip Pullman's book, Daniel Craig is playing Lord Asriel; joining him is his Casino Royale co-star Eva Green as Serafina Pekkala, and his co-star from The Invasion Nicole Kidman as Mrs. Coulter. Sam Elliott is to play Lee Scoresby, and newcomer Dakota Blue Richards is Lyra Belaqua. (Coming Soon) [imdb]

Raimond Gaita, writer and moral philosopher, wrote a critically acclaimed biographical memoir in 1998 entitled Romulus, My Father. It told the story of Romulus Gaita, who fled his home in his native Yugoslavia at the age of thirteen, and came to Australia with his young wife Christina and their four-year-old son Raimond soon after the end of World War II.

Robert Manne in his speech at the launch of the book said this about it:

Our age is haunted by the threat of a collapse into meaninglessness and by what the novelist, Kundera, calls the unbearable lightness of being. There is no lightness of being in Romulus, My Father.

As the central story at its heart unfolds -- of Romulus and Christina, of Hora and Mitru -- even though this story shaped the life of a dear friend and even though it is told with a transparent desire for a plain truthfulness to the facts, it had for me the simplicity of myth and the force of tragedy. Within this story everything has weight. In it words and acts have meanings, often terrible ones, which resonate through the years. Romulus, My Father tells of a world very far indeed from Kundera's. Its moral landscape may, for this reason, seem to some readers strange and unfamiliar.

The book has been developed into a film, with adapted screenplay by Nick Drake, directed by Richard Roxburgh, and starring Eric Bana as Romulus Gaita, and Franka Potente as Christina. Marton Csokas plays Hora, a family friend. ( photos and more )

~~

Just the headlines (for more news, see my Quick Blinks tag at BlinkList): ( The Golden Compass, Batman, Iron Man, Morgan Freeman, Fur )

~~

Heroes 1.07: ( a question )

On-location (at Oxford) photos of Nicole Kidman (Mrs. Coulter) filming The Golden Compass. (Real Movie News) [imdb]

An offer has gone to Gael Garcia Bernal for a villain role in The Bourne Ultimatum, although negotiations have yet to begin. The casting of this role when the filming on the project has already begun leads me to suppose that it's not an overly physical role (ie. with fighting scenes) that would require months of prior training. But then, neither Clive Owen (in the first film) nor Karl Urban (in the second) had hand-to-hand fighting scenes while playing their characters. David Strathairn is already signed on to play an antagonist for Jason Bourne. (Dark Horizons) [imdb]

Ghost Rider poster. (Moviefone)

Michelle Williams has joined Ewan McGregor and Hugh Jackman in psychological thriller The Tourist: "the story revolves around an accounting consultant [McGregor] who, while passing from one job to another, meets a charismatic, womanizing lawyer [Jackman] who personifies everything the numbers cruncher wishes he could be. The accountant delves into an erotic world of underground sex clubs." (Dark Horizons) [imdb]

Pretty, pretty stills from Alejandro González Iñárritu's Babel, starring Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, and Gael Garcia Bernal. (Just Jared) [imdb]

Trailer for the Christopher Guest comedy, For Your Consideration, at Moviefone.

~

Battlestar Galactica season 3:

CHUD interviews writers of the webisodes, Bradley Thompson and David Weddle: "It’s a whole new watch something – normally that process happens while you’re watching an episode, but here it’s delayed gratification on a major scale."

Maureen Ryan at the Chicago Tribune talks to executive producer/writer Ronald D. Moore about the show, war, and September 11. Moore also reveals some interesting spoilers about the upcoming season and the cylons in the second half of the interview.

ETA:: sauron18 has posted links to the first quarter of episode 3.01 at the official site (for US viewers) and a downloadable version (for non-US viewers). You can also watch the Kara/Leoben snippets on YouSpace here (uploaded by latteaddict).

Huh, what's this?

It's true. Daniel Craig is Lord Asriel. His co-stars in His Dark Materials include Eva Green and Nicole Kidman. Ian McShane will be lending his voice to Iorek Byrnison. (Cinematical) [imdb]

James McAvoy has been cast as the lead in Wanted. He'll play a man who goes from being the world's biggest loser to the deadliest assassin alive in the adaptation of the comic by Mark Miller and J. G. Jones. Russian director Timur Bekmambetov (Night Watch) will direct. (CHUD) [imdb]

Jeffrey Wells thinks that Sienna Miller's turn as Edie Sedgwick in Factory Girl is award-worthy. It's an interesting column, whatever you think of her. The film also stars Guy Pearce (Andy Warhol) and Hayden Christensen. [imdb]

Whoever designed the one-sheet for Christopher Nolan's The Prestige must have gotten it confused with Batman Begins.

Watch this trailer for Zen Noir. (Official Site)

For you lovers of The Sopranos, check out the Danish Pusher trilogy from Nicolas Winding Refn, about European gangsters and drug smugglers. Described as raw, nasty, realistic. Trailer at Apple Trailers, and a bunch of reviews at GreenCine Daily. [imdb]

~

Misc.:

The script and illustrated novella for the indie flick Brick are both up at the official site.

Ryan Stewart (Cinematical) looks at some upcoming films which feature actors from Deadwood.

Second preview for Battlestar Galactica, season 3.

Also, a hilarious video about Jamie (Bamber) and his fat suit.

Jon Stewart on George W. Bush's reading list.

Eva Green (Casino Royale, Kingdom of Heaven) has joined the cast of The Golden Compass, the film version of the first novel in Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials". She will play the witch queen Serafina Pekkala. Nicole Kidman has already been officially announced as Mrs. Coulter; no official confirmation, however, on the previously reported casting of Paul Bettany for Lord Asriel. The $150 million production will begin filming in September, for a November 2007 release. (Coming Soon) [imdb]

The sequel to Batman Begins finally has a title: The Dark Knight. Awesome! Also, Heath Ledger is definitely the Joker - the studio has confirmed it. (Moviehole) [imdb]

Detailed Guardian update on the development of Brontë, which will aim to "show how the three literary sisters created a world of romantic passions amid the cruel ordeals of life in 19th-century Haworth". The famous siblings will be played by Michelle Williams (Charlotte), Nathalie Press (Emily), and New Zealander Emily Barclay (Anne). The wonderful Brian Cox will portray their father, the Reverend Patrick Brontë, and Jonathan Rhys Meyers will play their brother Branwell. Cast also features Ben Chaplin. [imdb]

George Clooney in a Pet Cemetary remake. Um, wtf? (CHUD)

Browncoats, have you heard about a feature-length fan-doco about Joss Whedon's Firefly/Serenity called Done the Impossible? Well apparently, you can now either order it here or you have the filmmakers' permission to download it free as a torrent. (Cinematical)

The Independent:  50 hot books for summer.

Following on from my previous post about the casting of Paul Bettany and Nicole Kidman in the film adaptations of His Dark Materials, here are two articles from British newspapers the Daily Mail (14 July) and the Western Mail (15 July). Not as good as an official confirmation, but it's something.

from: Dark role for Nicole, tipped for Pullman film trilogy.(News)

source: Western Mail (Cardiff, Wales), July 15, 2006.

via: HighBeam™ Research

COPYRIGHT 2006 MGN Ltd.

from: Nicole and Paul's dark materials.

source: The Daily Mail (London, England), July 14, 2006.

via: HighBeam™ Research

COPYRIGHT 2006 Solo Syndication Limited