Director Bryan Singer has shared a new image from the set of X-Men: Days of Future Past, and it’s a perfect encapsulation of the mix of new and familiar that the film’s story involves.  We see Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine and Nicholas Hoult’s Beast standing side-by-side in Professor X’s familiar underground hallway, but they’re decked out in 1970s clothes given that the year is 1973.  It’s a fantastic tease for fans, as we see that Hoult’s Dr. Hank McCoy has somehow found a way to suppress his Beastly appearance.  Interesting…

Hit the jump to take a look at the image.  and if you missed them check out Singer’s images of Jackman as Wolverine,  Halle Berry as Storm, Patrick Stewart as Professor X, James McAvoy as Professor X and Shawn Ashmore as Iceman.  The film also stars Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Ian McKellan, Anna Paquin, Ellen Page, Omar Sy, Daniel Cudmore, Booboo Stewart, Fan Bingbing, and Peter Dinklage.  X-Men: Days of Future Past opens July 18, 2014.

Director Bryan Singer may have just given X-Men fans a sneak peek of the new look for Beast in X-Men: Days of Future Past.  The story of the film will include not only the characters seen in Matthew Vaughn’s successful X-Men: First Class, but will also incorporate a huge cast of characters from Singer’s original X-Men trilogy.  While the exact details of the film have been under wraps for the most part, the plot from the mythology involves Kitty Pryde/Shadowcat traveling back in time to warn past X-Men of an event that could rock the globe.

Singer recently tweeted an image of what appears to be concept art for Beast, and the design is a bit different from the one seen in X-Men: First Class.  Hit the jump for more, including the image.

Check out the latest casting announcements below:

• Nicholas Hoult (Jack the Giant Slayer) will join Charlize Theron in Dark Places from writer/director Gilles Paquet-Brenner who adapted the Gillian Flynn novel.
• Abigail Spencer (Oz the Great and Powerful) will join Jason Bateman in This Is Where I Leave You, directed by Shawn Levy.  Timothy Olyphant (Justified) and Ben Schwartz (House of Lies) have also joined the cast.
• Addison Timlin (Derailed) will lead the MGM remake of The Town That Dreaded Sundown directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon.

Hit the jump for more on each project.

Every once in a while I use this space to tout a recently released Blu-ray/DVD that I missed in theaters but, via the magic of home video, was finally able to check out from the comfort of my couch (click here to see me gush about The Perks of Being a Wallflower). Today I’ll do the same by encouraging you to check out co-writer/director Scott Derrickson‘s horror pic Sinister. There’s nothing spectacular going on here, it’s just an effective movie with several scenes that I found genuinely frightening/disturbing. Moreover, it’s probably the last widely-released horror entry since Insidious that left me turning some of the lights on in the house shortly after it ended.

With my “Super Cool Blu-ray Pick of the Week” out of the way, this week’s Top 5 includes interviews from the set of The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, some drama-inducing first set images from The Amazing Spider-Man 2, a set visit recap and interviews for Park Chan-wook‘s Stoker, Jack the Giant Slayer interviews, and the first trailer and poster for director James Wan‘s The Conjuring. As you may expect, a brief recap and link to each of these can be found completely free of charge after the jump.

There are two ways to read a bedtime story to a child.  The first is to be animated, and to draw the child into the world.  You move around, you do the voices of the characters, you pause for dramatic affect, and you help the child craft a dream.  The other way is to lethargically read the words on the page, and hope the damn kid goes to bed already.  Bryan Singer‘s Jack the Giant Slayer plays like bored parent who begrudgingly recites the same familiar tale.  Most of the cast seems to have no idea what to do with their one-dimensional characters, and they’re stuck in a bland world that offers few challenges.  Furthermore, the film looks astoundingly cheap from the CGI effects right down to the costumes.  There’s no imagination to Jack the Giant Slayer, and it fails to make a case for why it even needs to exist.

While some may remember Nicholas Hoult as the kid in About a Boy, over the past few years he’s proven that he’s definitely capable of playing adult roles in films like A Single Man, X-Men: First Class, and Clash of the Titans.  While Hoult was certainly becoming more well-known as an adult actor, he hadn’t ever lead a film before.  That all changes in 2013.  With leading roles in Warm Bodies and Bryan Singer’s Jack the Giant Slayer, Hoult is starting a new chapter in his career, and based on what I saw while visiting the set of Jack back in 2011, I think he’s going to easily make the jump.

Recently I landed an exclusive phone interview with Hoult.  We talked about the success of Warm Bodies, what it’s been like promoting Jack, how the film changed during production, deleted scenes, working with all the CGI characters, and more.  In addition, we also talked about George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road, X-Men: First Class and the sequel X-Men: Days of Future Past, and his other upcoming projects.  Hit the jump for what he had to say.

Up until this point, I wasn’t entirely clear on the tone of Bryan Singer’s Jack the Giant Slayer, but these three new featurettes help to clarify that issue.  In terms of recent fairy tale movies, Jack the Giant Slayer appears to be more tonally in line with the lighter Mirror Mirror than the more “gritty and realistic” Snow White and the Huntsman.  Approaching the film with this expectation (and knowing that Ewan McGregor gets rolled up in dough like a pig in a blanket), one would probably enjoy it more for the fun family adventure film that it is.

Also starring Nicholas Hoult, Eleanor Tomlinson and Ian McShane, Jack the Giant Slayer opens in 3D on March 1st.  Hit the jump to watch three new featurettes. 

Warner Bros. has released a slew of high-resolution images from director Bryan Singer’s upcoming fantasy adventure epic Jack the Giant Slayer.  The images highlight the film’s massive scale and large amount of visual effects, as well as the impressive ensemble cast which includes Nicholas Hoult, Eleanor Tomlinson, Ewan McGregor, Stanley Tucci, Ian McShane, and Bill Nighy.  There’s a lot to sift through, but they definitely give us a good idea of what to expect from the full film.

Hit the jump to take a look at the images.  If you missed any of Steve’s set visit coverage, be sure to check out 15 things to know plus a video blog recap, and his interviews with Singer, Nicholas Hoult, Ewan McGregor, and Eleanor Tomlinson.  Jack the Giant Slayer opens in 3D on March 1st.

A handful of clips and some Russian character posters from director Bryan Singer’s upcoming fantasy adventure epic Jack the Giant Slayer have made their way online.  The clips tease more of Singer’s fantastical world, highlighting protagonist Jack’s quest to rescue a kidnapped princess from the titular creatures.  If you missed any of Steve’s set visit coverage, be sure to check out 15 things to know plus a video blog recap, and his interviews with Singer, Nicholas Hoult, Ewan McGregor, and Eleanor Tomlinson.  Hit the jump to take a look at the clips and a few nifty international character posters.  Jack the Giant Slayer opens in 3D on March 1st.

We’ve got a couple of casting stories to share this afternoon.  First up, Jennifer Aniston has joined the large cast of director Peter Bogdanovich’s (The Last Picture Show) upcoming film She’s Funny That Way (previously referred to as Squirrels to the Nuts).  The film stars Brie Larson as a hooker-turned-Broadway-thesp and follows the recurring intersection between these two facets of her life.  Owen Wilson plays a married Broadway director who falls for Larson’s character, and The Wrap reports that Aniston has signed on to play a therapist with a mother in rehab for alcoholism.

Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach are producing, and the impressive ensemble cast also includes Jason Schwartzman, Kathryn Hahn, Eugene Levy, and Cybil Shepherd.  Production is set to get underway in New York City in June.  Hit the jump for casting news regarding Rise of the Planet of the Apes director Rupert Wyatt’s next film.

A new trailer has been released for director Bryan Singer’s Jack the Giant Slayer.  This trailer takes on a wildly different tone than the previous trailer and TV spots, as the film is painted as more of an “intense actioner” rather than a “fantasy adventure,” complete with pulsating rock music fast-cut fight sequences.  Though I’m all for a new adventure film from Singer, something still feels a bit off with Jack the Giant Slayer.  The CG giants don’t necessarily look all that convincing or threatening, and I’m hoping there’s more fun to be had than the trailers are letting on.  Nicholas Hoult more than proved his ability at leading a film with the swell Warm Bodies and Ewan McGregor looks to be having a blast, so hopefully the full feature delivers on the adventure aspect.

Hit the jump to watch the new trailer, and if you missed any of Steve’s set visit coverage, click here. The film also stars Eleanor Tomlinson, Stanley Tucci, Ian McShane, and Bill Nighy. Jack the Giant Slayer opens in 3D on March 1st.

A new teaser for a new trailer for Bryan Singer’s Jack the Giant Slayer is now available.  It does the job well (ie, teasing) as, in just thirty seconds, we see Jack, a magic bean, a house-crashing beanstalk, a disrobing princess, a bewildered group of soldiers and a stampeding army of giants.  Not bad for a teaser!

Starring Nicholas Hoult, Ewan McGregor, Eleanor Tomlinson, Stanley Tucci and Bill Nighy, Jack the Giant Slayer opens in 3D on March 1st.  Hit the jump to check out the teaser trailer and come back on Monday February 11th for the full new trailer.

Quite the impressive ensemble is being assembled for director Jake Paltrow’s (The Good Night) upcoming futuristic thriller Young Ones.  Variety reports that Nicholas Hoult, Michael Shannon, Elle Fanning, and Kodi Smit-McPhee (Let Me In) have signed on to star.  The story centers on a 14-year-old boy forced to use his wits to survive and “is set in a violent near-future where water has become the most precious—and fastest-dwindling—resource on the planet.”  Paltrow wrote the script and will direct, with production already underway in South Africa’s Northern Cape desert.

This isn’t Hoult’s first go at apocalyptic landscapes, as he recently wrapped director George Miller’s sequel Mad Max: Fury Road.  He recently scored a hit in his first leading turn with Warm Bodies, and also plays the title character in next month’s Jack the Giant Slayer.  After Young Ones, he’ll report to the set for the sequel X-Men: Days of Future Past.  Since the lead in the film is a 14-year-old, though, one assumes Smit-McPhee is playing the main character.

Prior to last Sunday, Zero Dark Thirty was my favorite pic of 2012 by a considerable margin. However, after my matinee viewing of Silver Linings Playbook, that margin has been replaced with a draw. Whereas Zero provided me with a tension that left me on the verge of breathless at moments, Playbook‘s spectacular performances and head-on portrayal of mental illness and our ability to help each other cope/prevail proved not only hugely entertaining but also quite cathartic.

My 2012 movie scorecard aside, this week’s Top 5 includes our set visit coverage of Oz the Great and Powerful, Duncan Jones being tapped to helm the World of Warcraft movie, more visit coverage from the set of Jack the Giant Slayer, a slew of news from X-Men: Days of Future Past, and a Sundance 2013 wrap-up. A brief recap and link to each of the above is promised after the jump.

In order to keep the zombie genre from rotting, it needs fresh life.  28 Days Later did away with the “z-word” and turned zombification into a virus.   Last year, ParaNorman took a compassionate view of the undead by seeing that they were just misunderstood albeit terrifying.  Warm Bodies moves in the direction of the latter to the point where it’s straining to even be a zombie movie.  Instead, Warm Bodies is more of a romance that embraces its reinvention of Romeo & Juliet, but with so much sweetness and charm, it’s hard to begrudge the lack of brain-eating or flesh-rotting.