Two of my current favourite actors, Mia Wasikowska (Alice in Wonderland) and Michael Fassbender (Fish Tank, Inglourious Basterds), are in talks to star in a new film version of Jane Eyre, directed by Cary Fukunaga (Sin nombre). British company Ruby Films' Alison Owen and Paul Trijbits are producing with BBC Films and Focus Features from a script by British playwright Moira Buffini.

Ellen Page was previously attached to play Jane, but just recently dropped out.

Simon Baker will co-produce and star in an adaptation of Tim Winton's Breath, which won the Miles Franklin Literary Award this year.

Published in 2008, the novel is set in a small town in Western Australia where two 16-year-old boys take up surfing under the tutelage of an enigmatic surfer named Sando (Baker) and his mysterious wife. Spurred on by their mentor, the boys test the limits of courage and recklessness as they try to escape their mundane lives. (Variety)

Winton, along with the likes of Thomas Keneally and Peter Carey, is one of our (by which I mean, Australia's) best-known writers internationally. Along with countless other high school-goers here, I was forced to read and analyse his novels in English, which pretty much ruined the chances of me picking up one of his books voluntarily until...about now. Jules Smith is spot on with this description:

'His books are boisterous and lyrical by turns, warm-hearted in their depictions of family life but with characters that often have to be in extremis in order to find themselves. They have a wonderful feeling for the strange beauty of Australia; are frequently flavoured with Aussie vernacular expressions, and a good deal of emotional directness. They question macho role models (his books are full of strong women and troubled men) and are prepared to risk their realist credibility with enigmatic, even visionary endings.'

Two other of Winton's books are also currently being adapted: Phillip Noyce (Rabbit Proof Fence) is directing a film version of Dirt Music, which Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz were attached to before the project was delayed; and Cloudstreet is being turned into a miniseries by Screentime.

Writer/producer Gil Grant talks about his ideas for the one-hour police procedural based on Andrew Niccol's futuristic thriller Gattaca. (MTV Movies Blog)

Trailer for Crazy Heart, starring Jeff Bridges, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Robert Duvall and Colin Farrell. Bad Blake (Bridges) is a broken-down, hard-living country music singer who's had way too many marriages, far too many years on the road and one too many drinks way too many times. And yet, Bad can't help but reach for salvation with the help of Jean (Gyllenhaal), a journalist who discovers the real man behind the musician. [imdb]

Stuart Townsend, Ray Stevenson, and Tadanobu Asano will play Warrior's Three in Kenneth Branagh's Thor. The trio are travelling companions of the Norse god Thor, played by Chris Hemworth. (Variety) [imdb]

Cinematographers roundtable with Dion Beebe (Nine, Collateral), Roger Deakins (A Serious Man, No Country for Old Men), Greig Fraser (Bright Star), Stephen Goldblatt (Julie & Julia, Closer), International Cinematographers Guild president Steven Poster (The Box, Donnie Darko) and Eric Steelberg ((500) Days of Summer, Up in the Air).

The first poster for Crazy Heart, starring Jeff Bridges, Robert Duvall, Colin Farrell and Maggie Gyllenhaal.

'Bad Blake (Bridges) is a broken-down, hard-living country music singer who's had way too many marriages, far too many years on the road and one too many drinks way too many times. And yet, Bad can't help but reach for salvation with the help of Jean (Gyllenhaal), a journalist who discovers the real man behind the musician.'

This film has been getting some quiet Oscar buzz for a while now, even though there's so trailer out yet. You can watch this behind-the-scenes video of Bridges and Farrell singing on stage. [imdb]

The rather unexpectedly awesome trailer for Kick-Ass, starring Aaron Johnson (who you'll see soon as the young John Lennon in Nowhere Boy), Nicolas Cage, Chloe Moretz, Christopher Mintz-Plasse and Mark Strong. [imdb]

Trailer for the romantic comedy Date Night, starring Steve Carrell and Tina Fey as a bored married couple whose attempt at a glamorous and romantic evening into something more thrilling and dangerous after a case of mistaken identity. Cast also includes Mark Wahlberg, James Franco, Mila Kunis, Leighton Meester, Mark Ruffalo, Ray Liotta, Jimmi Simpson, and Taraji P. Henson. [imdb]

Trailer for another romantic comedy, Leap Year, starring Amy Adams and Matthew Goode, and directed by Anand Tucker (Shopgirl). It looks predictable and unoriginal, but hey, Matthew Goode with a Welsh accent! Actually, the more I think about it, the more it resembles French Kiss with Meg Ryan and Kevin Kline, which is actually a movie I have a lot of affection for. [imdb]

Promo for season 4 of Skins!!

Esquire interview with Robert Downey Jr., star of Sherlock Holmes.

"I've been homeless for so long," he says, without a morsel of self-pity. "I always had a place, and Susan and I have taken great care of each other, but I haven't had two nickels to rub together for a long, long, long, long time."

He now has nickels galore. The Jetta turns out to be his son's first car — Indio Downey just turned sixteen — and Downey has a Bentley. "My door prize after the two-week total of Iron Man proceeds," he says, sheepishly. "From Marvel. They're nice people."

Winona Ryder (<3), Vincent Cassel (<333) and Barbara Hershey have joined the cast of Darren Daronofsky's supernatural thriller Black Swan, which stars Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis as rival dancers at a ballet company, one of whom might be an apparition. (/Film) [imdb]

Gwyneth Paltrow will play Nicole Kidman's wife in The Danish Girl, which is based on the true story of Danish artists Einar and Greta Wegener. Their marriage took a sharp left turn after Einar (Kidman) stood in for a female model that Greta (Theron) was set to paint. When their portraits become wildly popular in 1920s Copenhagen, Greta encouraged her husband to adopt the female guise. What began as a harmless game led Einer to a metamorphosis and landmark 1931 operation that shocked the world and threatened their love. (Variety) [imdb]

Sarah Shahi (Life), Michael Trucco (Battlestar Galactica) and Virginia Williams will star in the USA pilot Facing Kate. The show centres on Kate (Shahi), a divorced San Francisco woman who leaves her job as a lawyer to become a mediator following the death of her dad, who headed a law firm. Williams will play her younger stepmother, an Trucco will play her ex-husband who is also an attorney. (THR)

HBO sneak peek video of new and returning shows, including our first look at David Simon's Treme. Its awesome cast includes Steve Zahn, Khandi Alexander, Deadwood's Kim Dickens, The Wire alums Wendell Pierce and Clarke Peters, Oscar nominee Melissa Leo, and Rob Brown (Stop-Loss). The series focuses on a group of jazz musicians in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. [imdb]

John C. Reilly and Mary-Louise Parker are in talks to join the cast of the adaptation of Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner's comic series Red. Directed by Robert Schwentke (The Time Traveler's Wife), the film stars Bruce Willis as a retired black-ops CIA Agent, Paul Moses, who has to contend with younger, more high-tech assassins who show up to kill him. Morgan Freeman and Helen Mirren are also on board the film. (Coming Soon) [imdb]

Brand new trailer and a featurette for Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes, starring Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law, Mark Strong, and Rachel McAdams. [imdb]

Teaser trailer for Phillip Noyce's espionage thriller Salt, starring Angelina Jolie, Liev Schreiber and Chiwetel Ejiofor. Evelyn Salt (Jolie) is a CIA officer who swore an oath to duty, honor, and country. When she is accused by a defector of being a Russian sleeper spy, Salt goes on the run to clear her name and ultimately prove she is a patriot. Using all her skills and years of experience as a covert operative, she must elude capture and protect her husband or the world's most powerful forces will erase any trace of her existence. [imdb]

Major shuffling continues on the thriller remake, The Tourist, with Alfonso Cuaron in talks to replace director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, and Johnny Depp in negotiations to replace Sam Worthington as the male lead. Angelina Jolie is still attached (for now) to play the female Interpol agent who ropes an everyman American tourist visiting France into becoming bait in the hunt for a wanted criminal who's also her former lover. (THR) [imdb]

New stills from The Road, including first look at Molly Parker!

Zhang Ziyi will star in and co-produce an English-language drama, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. Set in 19th century remote China, the film revolves around the lifelong friendship of Lily and Snow Flower and their imprisonment by rigid cultural codes of conduct for women. Wayne Wang (The Joy Luck Club) will direct. (THR)

I was just accosted by half a dozen masked felons all screaming for candy! We do not do trick-or-treating in Australia, kids. Nor do we keep candy in this house. However, fearing one year's bad luck or whatever misfortune is supposed to land on my house if I turned them away, I ended up handing over a Fairtrade chocolate bar for the little monsters to fight over.

Trailer for Sam Taylor-Wood's film about the young John Lennon (Aaron Johnson), Nowhere Boy. Kristen Scott-Thomas, Thomas Sangster, Anne-Marie Duff, and David Morrissey also star. [imdb]

New trailer for The Road, directed by John Hillcoat and based on the Cormac McCarthy novel. [imdb]

Angelina Julie is reportedly in talks for the female lead in Ridley Scott's Gucci, which chronicles the wild and glamorous story of the Gucci family in the 1970s and '80s, when its 153 shops moved $500 million in product annually. Jolie would play Patrizia Reggiano, who was sentenced to 29 years in jail for plotting the murder of her ex-husband, Maurizio Gucci. (Coming Soon)

Director-producers Scott McGehee and Dave Siegel (The Deep End) are developing a film based on Paulo Coelho's bestselling novel The Alchemist. (Coming Soon)

SyFy is cashing in on the vampire craze. The cable network has ordered 13 episodes of an US remake of the British supernatural drama Being Human, about three twentysomething flatmates: a werewolf, a ghost and a vampire. (THR)

A new clip from The Twilight Saga: New Moon.

True Blood spoilers from the writers' panel at the Paley Center. More spoilers were revealed at EW.

Australia's submission for the foreign language Oscar, Samson and Delilah, was runner-up for best film at the London Film Festival! Jacques Audiard's A Prophet took best picture, as well as best director, best actor (Tahar Rahim), and best supporting actor (Niels Arestrup). Best actress went to Abbie Cornish for Bright Star, and best supporting actress to Rosamund Pike for An Education. I haven't seen a single one of these films yet, not even the Australian one. This must be remedied! (Film Experience)

It still bears little to no resemblance to the book, Imperial Life in the Emerald City, on which it was based, but the international trailer for Green Zone, starring Matt Damon, is a vast improvement to the one released yesterday. It's nice to see that Brendan Gleeson's part looks to be pretty substantial.

3-and-a-half minute international trailer for James Cameron's Avatar. (via)

Director Peter Berg (Hancock, The Kingdom) has reportedly left Dune, the new film adaptation of the Frank Herbert novel. A draft of the script has been completed by Josh Zetumer.

According to Pajiba.com, Paramount is now looking for a new director.

The search, however, has run into two issues: 1) they’re looking for a director who can put the movie together for under $175 million, which sounds manageable, but they don’t want anything resembling the crap effects of the ‘84 film, and 2) they want a director who already has a preexisting passion for the novel and is enthusiastic about the project. Right now, Paramount is shopping the script to two directors: They like Neill Blompkamp (District 9), who has the right vision, but the frontrunner, at the moment, is Neil Marshall (The Descent), who was sent the script early this month. However, despite the enthusiasm of producer, Kevin Misher (Public Enemies), the studio is somewhat tepid on Marshall, uncertain about handing over a $175 million film with franchise potential to a somewhat unknown director whose only hit was the modestly successful The Descent.

I've said from the get-go that Peter Berg was a terrible choice to direct Dune. From comments he made about it in interviews, it sounded like Berg was determined to make it a "muscular" action-adventure movie that teenagers would embrace, and basically throw out all the politics and the interesting ideas about religion and ecology that were so fundamental to the novel.

I'm not sure Marshall would be any better than Berg (I think the material would just overwhelm him, although the action would probably be spectacular), but Neill Blomkamp (District 9) is a suggestion I could definitely get behind. District 9 not only showed that he could handle lots of great-looking effects on a modest budget, but it was a tremendously successful sci-fi action movie that also had enough meat in it to get people talking and thinking outside of their usual, tired patterns, without hitting them over the head with "messages". And that is what Dune the movie ought to be.

Bonus: Film School Rejects's 7 Directors Who Could Handle 'Dune'. And while we're on the subject, how about sparing a thought for the director of one of the best science fiction films of the 2000s, Alfonso Cuaron (Children of Men)?

New Sherlock Holmes poster. [imdb]

Trailer for Clint Eastwood's Invictus, based on the true story of how Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman) joined forces with the captain of South Africa's rugby team, Francois Pienaar (Matt Damon), to help unite their country. An American film...about rugby! Is the world coming to an end? [imdb]

Jeffrey Wells talks with Abbie Cornish, star on Jane Campion's period drama Bright Star. [imdb]

Some clips from The Last Station. Helen Mirren recently won the best actress award at the Rome Film Festival for her role as Leo Tolstoy's wife in the movie. James McAvoy, Christopher Plummer, Anne-Marie Duff, Paul Giamatti, and Kerry Cordon also star. (Awards Daily) [imdb]

Trailer for Paul Greengrass' Iraq thriller, Green Zone, based on the non-fiction book by Rajiv Chandrasekaran. [imdb]

Watch the first five-and-a-half minutes of Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day.

Ricky Gervais (The Office) will host this year's Golden Globes. (THR)