Jamie Bell and Connie Nielsen have boarded Lars Von Trier‘s upcoming two-part feature, Nymphomaniac.  Per THR, “Charlotte Gainsbourg will star as Joe, a self-diagnosed nymphomaniac. Stellan Skarsgard will play Seligman, an old, charming bachelor who finds Joe beaten up in an alley. He takes her home to care for her and Joe recounts to him the story of her erotic life, from birth to the age of 50.”  The movie also stars Shia LaBeouf and Danish actors Nicolas Bro (Warhorse), Jesper Christensen (Quantum of Solice) and Jens Albinus (Idiots), Sweden’s Shanti Roney (Together) and German actor Severin von Hoensbroech (Ruhm).  Nicole Kidman and Willem Dafoe have been rumored for supporting roles.  THR currently doesn’t have any details on who Bell or Nielsen’s will be playing.

LaBeouf has said that all of the sex scenes will be for real, but the producers explain they “will be performed with the help of body doubles and visual effects.”  According to THR, Von Trier plans to release the films in both hard-core and soft-core versions with an eye towards a 2013 release.  The 11-week shoot in Gemany begins tomorrow.

This has been Jessica Chastain’s year as far as ubiquity goes.  She’s co-starred in The Tree of Life, The Help, Take Shelter, and she’s still got Texas Killing Fields and Coriolanus on the way.  However, of the films I’ve seen her in so far, she’s never been front and center.  She was overshadowed by Brad Pitt in Tree of Life, everything was overshadowed by Michael Shannon in Take Shelter, and she did a fine job in The Help hinting that she was the real deal.  But her latest film, The Debt, gives her the lead and she’s never able to hold the screen with any intensity or subtlety.  She’s once again overshadowed by her fellow actors and this time around she must struggle with a movie that tries to be an intense spy-thriller and ignores its strengths as a claustrophobic pressure-cooker and thoughtful moral drama.

With director John Madden’s (Shakespeare in Love) The Debt finally getting released August 31, Focus Features has provided us with six clips from the film.  The reason I say finally, is that Focus acquired the flick from Miramax, so it’s release date was pushed back from last year.  Starring Helen Mirren, Tom Wilkinson, and Ciaran Hinds as older versions of the characters played by Jessica Chastain, Sam Worthington, and Marton Csokas, The Debt is about three retired Mossad secret agents and what happened to them in the past.  From what I understand, the film cuts back and forth between 1966 and 1997, which is the reason you have two actors playing the same character.  Hit the jump to watch the clips.

What’s wonderful about director Lars von Trier’s films is that you never know what to expect.  Sometimes the outcome works and other times it doesn’t, but it will be a film-going experience unlike any other.  For example, his latest film Melancholia picks up from a normal, relatable setting—a wedding—and then goes totally batshit from there with a newly discovered planet that might collide with Earth.  Melancholia is billed as “a psychological disaster movie” and “a beautiful movie about the end of the world”. Also, going by the trailer, Kirsten Dunst might have super powers.  I have no idea what to make of Melancholia, and I can’t wait to see it.

Hit the jump to check out the trailer.