Bill Hader is leaving Saturday Night Live after eight wonderful seasons.  In all those years, Hader’s signature recurring character Stefon somehow never grew tired.  Hader and co-creator John Mulaney consistently kept the formula fresh, coming up with inspired club names, passwords, and characters for each new Weekend Update appearance.

In last night’s season finale—hosted by Ben Affleck, who also hosted when Stefon debuted—the writers of course had to bring back Stefon for a farewell appearance.  It puts a nice button on the romantic tension between Stefon and Update host Seth Meyers, and in doing so, assembles all the crazy characters (most of them midgets) Stefon has mentioned in his guide to New York nightlife.  Watch it after the jump.

Saturday Night Live is closing out their 2012-2013 season strong, bringing back three SNL veterans to host.  Previously announced for the May 4th show was Zach Galifianakis, who has The Hangover Part III coming out next month as well.  Galifianakis has hosted SNL before, and I can only hope he brings out his chops singing Annie again.  SNL has had plenty of opening monologues that involved singing this year, but I can’t help but think that Galifianakis is going to have a stand out one regardless.  The musical guest will be Of Monsters and Men.  Hit the jump for more on the episodes hosted by Kristen Wiig and Ben Affleck.

Warner Bros. has reportedly closed on a deal to adapt Nathaniel Philbrick’s upcoming book Bunker Hill: A City, A Siege, A Revolution with Ben Affleck tagged to possibly direct.  Affleck will send the book to screenwriter Chris Terrio (Argo) which marks it as a substantial project moving forward.  Affleck is currently busy adapting the Dennis Lehane novel Live By Night which he’ll direct, produce and star in.  Hit the jump for more on Bunker Hill. 

The U.S. theatrical trailer for Terrence Malick’s To the Wonder is now available.  The mesmerizing trailer isn’t shy about touting the main theme of the film: love, in all of its dynamic incarnations.  In between shots of the main characters in the throes of passion or struggling with a relationship that’s lost its fire, a sermon on love narrates the changing nature and transformative power of the complicated emotion.  What’s starts out as a big-budget version of a jewelry advertisement eventually sinks its hooks into you if you let it.

Starring Ben Affleck, Olga Kurylenko, Javier Bardem and Rachel McAdams, To the Wonder opens on April 12th.  You can read Matt’s review of the film here.  Hit the jump to watch the new trailer.

The first clip from Terrence Malick‘s To the Wonder has been released.  In the vague semblance of a plot, Olga Kurylenko plays a woman who travels to Oklahoma to be with the man (Ben Affleck) she loves only to discover that their relationship isn’t as strong as they previously thought.  There’s also a story involving a priest (Javier Bardem) who grapples with his loneliness and has almost no narrative relation to the other plotline.  This clip does play to the amount of silence in the film, but it’s a hollow silence that carries almost no dramatic weight.

Hit the jump to check out the clip, and click here to read my review of the film from TIFF.  To the Wonder opens April 12th.

For proof that 2012 was a nutty year for awards contenders, look no further than the Best Director category.  Over the past few days, we’ve been looking back how the ebbs and flows of the past 12 months have shaped the awards race in a number of categories, and one of the most dynamic shifts came with Best Director.  After the jump, we run down how the race for Oscar glory progressed over the past few months to give us the five nominees who will be vying for the gold on Oscar Sunday.  Hit the jump to read on.

A new batch of presenters has been announced for the upcoming 85th Academy Awards ceremony, and we figured now would be a good time to round up all of the presenters announced thus far in one handy story.  It was announced today that Jane Fonda, Kristen Stewart, Jennifer Garner, and Kerry Washington have joined the rather long list of presenters for the ceremony, which will be hosted by Seth Macfarlane.

We already learned that Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Samuel L. Jackson, Jeremy Renner, and Mark Ruffalo from The Avengers will be presenting together, and Macfarlane has put together a tribute to movie musicals from the past decade that includes Dreamgirls’ Jennifer Hudson, Chicago’s Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Les Miserables’ Hugh Jackman, Amanda Seyfried, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway, Eddie Redmayne, Aaron Tveit, Helena Bonham Carter, and Samantha Barks.  Hit the jump to take a gander at the entire list of presenters, and click here to catch up on all of our recent Road to Oscar series.  The Oscars will be held this Sunday, February 24th, at 7pm EST on ABC. 

A couple of new featurettes for writer/director Terrence Malick’s upcoming romantic drama To the Wonder have made their way online.  The story involves a woman (Olga Kurylenko) traveling to Oklahoma to be with the man she loves (Ben Affleck), only to discover their relationship being tested by his childhood friend (Rachel McAdams) and a wayward priest (Javier Bardem).  These featurettes are beyond fascinating for any cinephile, as they give us a peek inside the filmmaking process of elusive director Terrence Malick.  The cast and crew talk about Malick’s atypical, improvisational filmmaking process, as many of them are never given a script and have to react to things Malick says while they’re filming a take.

Hit the jump to watch the featurettes, and click here to read Matt’s review.  To the Wonder opens on April 12th.

Like a lot of Best Picture contenders, Argo has been swallowed up by the hype of Oscar season. The perceived slight of director Ben Affleck turned the former dark horse into the current favorite, prompting all kinds of speculation as to whether the film itself actually deserves its front-runner status. Don’t worry: it does. Amid a very strong field of contenders (at least five of the nine nominated films legitimately deserve to win), it makes a damn strong case. Hit the jump for the full review.

The freight train that is Argo kept on trucking last night.  Though the film’s Best Picture Oscar chances were all but dashed when Ben Affleck was snubbed for Best Director (it’s incredibly rare for a movie to win Best Picture without a Best Director nomination), the film picked up the top awards at two major guilds—the Screen Actors Guild and the Producers Guild.  Now two becomes three, as the Directors Guild Awards were held last night and Argo pulled off the hat trick by landing Affleck the Best Director DGA trophy.

There is one major precedent that everyone keeps pointing towards with regards to Argo: 1995’s Apollo 13.  That film won the PGA, DGA, and SAG awards, only to find Ron Howard left out of the Best Director Oscar nominations and it ultimately lost Best Picture to Braveheart.  Is Argo in the same boat as Apollo 13 or can it pull off the win?  Furthermore, who wins Best Director at the Oscars?  Hit the jump for more, along with the full list of DGA winners that includes Looper’s Rian Johnson for his work on Breaking Bad and Girls’ Lena Dunham.

We’re delighted to bring you an exclusive look at six new images from writer/director Terrence Malick’s To the Wonder, a romantic drama starring Ben Affleck, Olga Kurylenko, Javier Bardem and Rachel McAdams.  The story involves a woman (Kurylenko) traveling to Oklahoma to be with the man she loves (Affleck), only to discover their relationship being tested by his childhood friend (McAdams) and a wayward priest (Bardem).  Check out Matt’s review of the film here.  To the Wonder opens April 12th.  Hit the jump to see the new images.

It’s finally happened, folks.  After weeks of shortlist stories, rumors, and denials, it appears that J.J. Abrams will be directing Star Wars: Episode VII.  Lucasfilm Chief and Star Wars producer Kathleen Kennedy has apparently been courting Abrams for a while, and Abrams himself “revealed” in December that he turned down the directing gig because he’d “rather be in the audience not knowing what was coming, rather than being involved in the minutiae of making the film.”  So much for that.  Hit the jump for more, including who else was in contention for the job.

New images from two upcoming April films that both star Olga Kurylenko have been released online.  First up, a new image from director Joseph Kosinski’s sci-fi pic Oblivion has been released.  The story takes place on a dystopian Earth and stars Tom Cruise as a drone repairman who finds himself holding the future of mankind in his hands after discovering a crashed spaceship.  This new image doesn’t feature Kurylenko, but it does give is a nice look at Cruise making his “intense running” face while flanked by what looks like a bubble helicopter.  Oblivion opens on April 19th.

New images from writer/director Terrence Malick’s upcoming romantic drama To the Wonder have also been released.  The film stars Kurylenko as a woman who travels to Oklahoma to be with the man she loves, only to discover that their relationship isn’t as strong as they previously thought.  Ben Affleck and Rachel McAdams also star and are featured in these images, but it’s my understanding that Kurylenko is the main focus of Malick’s dialogue-lite pic.  To the Wonder opens on April 12th.  Hit the jump to take a look at the images. [Update: More new images from To the Wonder have been released including a look at Javier Bardem.]

The 2013 Golden Globes have just wrapped up.  I only watched the last hour of the ceremony because the Globes no longer have their awards season power due to voting schedule changes.  Reading tweets and Facebook posts, it seems like it was a fairly entertaining show (keep an eye out for Jodie Foster‘s acceptance speech for her Lifetime Achievement Award).  As for the winners, they were very “Globes” in that they were more populist choices that are unlikely to have much bearing on the Oscars.  Argo may have had a good night at the Globes by winning Best Picture (Drama) and Best Director, but I still think Lincoln is the picture to beat when it comes to the Academy Awards, especially since Ben Affleck was snubbed for the Best Director Oscar nomination.

Hit the jump for the full list of winners.

The Broadcast Film Critics Association announced the winners of the 18th annual Critics’ Choice Movie Awards tonight.  While Ben Affleck was noted as the lesser of the Best Director snubs when Oscar nominations were announced this morning, the BFCA named Affleck Best Director and his Argo Best Picture.  They feature genre awards—action, comedy, and sci-fi/horror all have their own Best Picture category—so there’s a bit of an “everybody gets a trophy” philosophy.  But that allowed Jennifer Lawrence to pick up two trophies: Best Actress in an Action Movie (The Hunger Games) and Best Actress in a Comedy (Silver Linings Playbook).  Silver Linings Playbook earned four total; the Best Comedy winner brought Lawrence’s co-star Bradley Cooper Best Actor in a Comedy and the rest of the cast Best Acting Ensemble.

The four primary acting awards went to major Oscar contenders Daniel Day-Lewis, Jessica Chastain, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Anne Hathaway.  But the BFCA also found room for Collider favorites Skyfall, Looper, and Cloud Atlas.  See the full list after the break.