Safe House
Directed by Daniel Espinosa
Starring Denzel Washington, Ryan Reynolds, Vera Farmiga, Brendan Gleeson, Sam Shepherd and Robert Patrick
Release Date: February 10, 2012

Corruption at the top of any organization is a touchy subject for a director to be curious about. When done right, a film depicting corruption, like Polanski’s Chinatown or The Ghost Writer, is an impressive and immersive experience. Navigating through the hypocrisy and crookedness is an act of a polished director at the top of his craft who wants to enlighten audiences about reality, not entertain them. Swedish director Daniel Espinosa is introducing himself to American audiences with a hesitating and not so sharp portrait of corruption. He wants to exploit the supposed corruption occurring in intelligence units across the world, such as CIA agents and M16 agents. Instead of having a firm and confident command on a narrative structure that would get his point across, all of his energy is directed toward articulating sensational action scenes that reek of implausibility. Espinosa has an interesting foundation to build upon thanks to David Guggenheim‘s script. Coherency and logic, though, are neglected, and an overwhelming amount of dynamism is relied on to entertain audiences, dismissing words and dialogue for guns and fists of fury [...]

Ever since I was a little kid I have always loved Star Wars. In fact, it was one of the biggest experiences of my childhood having my dad show the movies to me at home when I was about 6 or 7. I automatically fell in love with not only the characters, but this story of good and evil set in space. After the special editions of the original trilogy were released I found out that they were going to release the first of the prequels in two yrs and I was so excited, but when it happened I was a bit disappointed with the first prequel movie — Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace — itself.

Flash forward to present day. It has been 13 years since Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace was released and now since everything is going 3D, I guess creator George Lucas had to jump on the bandwagon and convert the film to 3D — the 3D reversion was released in theaters this weekend [...]

From Sunshine Cleaning to a hotly anticipated thriller? That’s apparently what writer Megan Holley has done with her latest bit of writing.

Screen Daily is reporting that HanWay has picked up the international rights to Holley’s thriller The Darkness, which is set to star Mary Elizabeth Winstead with Daniel Stamm aboard as director.

The film follows the story of “a young American student working for a charismatic tutor in an English manor house who becomes convinced that she and the children she is warding are being haunted.” [...]

Nothing says a director is growing quite like jumping from a Hitler biopic to a biography of one of the most beloved princesses the world has ever known.

That’s the trajectory for Downfall director Oliver Hirschbiegel, as he begins to prepare his upcoming Princess Diana biopic, Caught In Flight, now with a brand new actress. Deadline reports that Naomi Watts will be starring in the film, replacing Jessica Chastain. The film is currently being sold at the Berlinale, so more news on this project should be coming fast. [...]

The other day we reported that Robert Rodriguez was working on a sequel to his 2010 action splatterfest Machete called Machete Kills that would reunite the director with his longtime collaborator and Machete leading man Danny Trejo, and that he was planning to begin filming pretty soon.

Today we are bring you your first look at a promotional poster for Machete Kills that will premiere at the European Film Market this week.

You can check it out here below. [...]

Back in January it was reported that Cormac McCarthy, author of books that would one day become movies such as No Country For Old Men and The Road, had sold his first spec script, titled The Counselor.

You might not expect to hear about such a project again for an extended period of time while it’s being developed and pieces are put into place, but instead the movie progresses rapidly. [...]

Another day, another remake on the way.

It’s being reported that DreamWorks Pictures and Working Title Films will be remaking one of Alfred Hitchcock‘s many classics, the Best Picture winner from 1940, Rebecca, which starred Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine.

Screenwriter Steven Knight (Eastern Promises, Dirty Pretty Things) has been hired to pen the script, and he will be going back to the original novel of the same name by author Daphne du Maurier. [...]

Back in 2010, Lucasfilm put out a wonderful release called The Jedi Path: A Manual For Students Of The Force. The notion was to make a book that would have been used by Jedi Masters and Padawans as a reference manual – a book contained within an electronic vault that would open at the push of a button “in a wash of light and Star Wars sound effects”. For those of you who have a predilection for the Dark Side though, you’re in luck: the Sith version is now coming.

Entitled Book Of Sith: Secrets Of The Dark Side, which was released today, is similar in nature to the previous Jedi version. [...]

It was confirmed yesterday that Expendables 2 co-stars and longtime friends Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone would be reteaming for the director Mikael Hafstrom’s The Tomb.

The Tomb will be shot in Louisiana this Spring, so how did these two action icons get ready for their next big-screen effort? With some buddy shoulder surgeries!

Schwarzenegger tweeted a photo of Stallone and himself in hospital gowns lying side-by-side hospital beds awaiting their turns for shoulder surgery. Check out the photo, which the former California governor posted to his Who Say account, here below [...]

First a director, and then a new name, and now finally a star, the upcoming film 300: Battle Of Artemisia has finally gotten some momentum.

THR is reporting that Animal Kingdom star and indie darling Sullivan Stapleton has joined the cast of the 300 follow-up, and will star as Xerxes, who leads an army against the forces of Greek general Themistokles. Stapleton will next be seen in WB’s Gangster Squad [...]

Oscar-winning acting legend (and go-to man for stentorian narration) Morgan Freeman has signed on to join the cast of Universal Pictures’ Oblivion, the upcoming epic sci-fi adventure from Tron: Legacy director Joseph Kosinski.

The film, based on a comic book series created by Kosinski for Radical Publishing, takes place in a future where the surface of Earth has become too irradiated and infested by hostile aliens known as Scavengers to be inhabited by humans. Thus the remnants of mankind have taken to living in the clouds. But when a surface drone repairman named Jak discovers a mysterious woman in a crashed pod he is forced to question everything he has ever known [...]

With the recent release of their latest picture, The Woman In Black, Hammer Films is on one hell of a roll.

THR is reporting that the company has nabbed up the rights to the thriller Gaslight, penned by writer Ian Fried. The project, which was recently put on last year’s Black List, is compared to films like From Hell, and follows Jack The Ripper, who is “secretly imprisoned in a London insane asylum, is called upon to help Scotland Yard solve a series of murders.” [...]

Fan of Wedding Crashers and have been looking forward to the day to see the pair of Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn back together again? Well, Vulture has just made your day.

The outlet reports that the pair will star in the new film, Interns, for director Shawn Levy. The film will be on its way to the big screen thanks to Fox, and will feature a script penned by Vaughn himself.

Interns will follow two company men who find themselves laid off, leading them to try and re-route their careers by becoming interns at a Google-like dotcom company. One there, they’ll have to compete with eager 20-somethings to get the advancement they’re after. [...]

Apparently people love themselves some Game of Thrones.

Variety reports that Game of Thrones star Kit Harington has joined the cast of the new fantasy film, The Seventh Son along with Jeff Bridges, Ben Barnes, Julianne Moore, and Alicia Vikander [...]

I love playing Scene It?, the popular board/pop culture question game. Why do I love it, you ask? Because, depending on the subject matter of the particular edition played at the time, I DOMINATE! Put in The Simpsons or the Seinfeld editions and I will own your ass and send you crying home to mommy. Which is why I’m so excited that Screenlife, creators of the Scene It? games have announced that they will at long last be producing a Star Wars edition of the game, and yet another edition in which I will dominate.

This new edition will see release sometime in the Fall of 2012. [...]

Hot on the heels of the recent Super Bowl TV spot Walt Disney Pictures released another preview for their sci-fi adventure John Carter last night during the premiere of the ABC series The River.

You can check it out here below [...]

Can’t wait for a sequel to The Karate Kid or a live action Jetsons film? Well, it appears as though you’re going to have to, as they both have gotten a new writer.

According to Variety, Sony has tapped Zak Penn to rewrite their upcoming sequel to the huge hit that was the Karate Kid remake, and the pair of Evan Susser and Van Robichaux (the pair behind the Black Listed Chewie) have been hired to re-write The Jetsons. [...]

It’s been almost a month since we first reported the rumor that Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, one time rivals at the box office and future partners in the chintzy theme restaurant business, were looking to co-star together in the action thriller The Tomb for director Mikael Hafstrom (1408).

Now, the rumor has been confirmed, as an official statement was released regarding the plans for the project, which will be released by Summit Entertainment in North America.
[...]

Though production began long ago and we already have a wonderful first trailer to watch (a couple hundred times…per day), director Peter Jackson still had some casting to get done for his two-part adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien‘s beloved classic, The Hobbit.

It’s being reported that Jackson has brought in Billy Connolly as the final addition to the cast. He’ll play the great dwarf warrior and cousin to Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage), Dain Ironfoot. [...]

Think a movie based on the board game Battleship is silly enough? Well, get ready to play the video game based on the movie based on the board game. Confused yet?

It’s being reported that Activision and Hasbro are teaming up for a game version of their upcoming tentpole project, also titled Battleship, which will follow “elite demolitions specialist Cole Mathis as he clashes against an aquatic-based extraterrestrial peril in the sand and sea of the beautiful Hawaiian archipelago. Trapped in a veritable communications dead zone, Mathis must command the U.S. Navy fleet in a ‘siege on the sea,’ while simultaneously rallying the troops on land for a terrifying ‘war on the shore.’” [...]