I have a confession to make: I’ve dropped too much cash on sweet, sweet movie poster prints and frames the last month or so. In addition to my Mondo/Jock The Dark Knight Rises print (which was secured for me by my friend and fellow Collider teammate, Bill Graham), I’ve also picked up Mondo/Phantom City Creative’s The Cabin in the Woods and this little Drive gem by artist Louis Fernando Cruz all in a matter of a few weeks. While I couldn’t be any happier with my purchases (well, I could have stood to pay a little less for The Cabin in the Woods), the truth remains that I’m quickly running out of wall space and disposable income. With all of this in mind, I do have to give a big “thank you” to my wife for tolerating my plans to adorn our house with movie posters. I’ve promised her that my buying flurry will now subside. Unless, of course, someone out there has a Gallery 1988/Rhys Cooper Robocop print they want to part with on the cheap, in which case, I think I have just enough wall space and unaccounted for monies to make one last purchase.

Poster hunting aside, in this week’s edition of the Top 5, I’ve compiled for your reading pleasure our Lawless interviews with Shia LaBeouf, screenwriter/composer Nick Cave, and more, a week filled with rumors surrounding Warner Bros.’ Justice League pic, For a Good Time, Call… video interviews with Ari Graynor, Lauren Miller, and more, a well deserved red-band trailer for The To Do List, and some encouraging, some not so encouraging, news from the set of director Jose Padilha‘s Robocop reboot. A brief recap and link to each awaits after the jump.

“It is not the violence that sets men apart,” Forrest Bondurant (Tom Hardy) tells his younger brother Jack (Shia LaBeouf) in John Hillcoat‘s Lawless.  “It is the distance he is prepared to go.”  The film presents two approaches to the gangster world: the imagined and the practical.  Jack dreams of being a gangster without the violence.  Forrest doesn’t need the gangster flash, but he is willing to take a pair of brass knuckles and punch out someone’s throat.  Hillcoat and screenwriter Nick Cave take a curious look at how two men approach the violence that must be done in order to ensure their survival, and ask themselves what they’re surviving for.  Is it for family?  Is it for personal pride?  Between Jack and Forrest, there’s a serious, meditative story.  But beyond them lies distractions of half-developed romances and a cartoonish villain.

Lawless – adapted from author Matt Bondurant’s fictionalized account of his family, The Wettest County in the World – tells the story of the infamous Bondurant Brothers, three bootlegging siblings in Prohibition-era Virginia.  Forrest (Tom Hardy), Howard (Jason Clarke) and Jack (Shia LaBeouf) are entrepreneurs with a thriving local moonshine business, until corrupt and lethal Special Deputy Charlie Rakes (Guy Pearce) shows up from Chicago to take a piece of what the brothers have built, threatening everything that they represent.  Directed by John Hillcoat and written by Nick Cave, the film also stars Gary Oldman, Jessica Chastain, Mia Wasikowska and Dane DeHaan.

At the film’s press day, Collider got the opportunity to participate in a roundtable and 1-on-1 interview with screenwriter/music composer Nick Cave, in which he talked about how he ended up as the screenwriter on Lawless, what led him to transition into writing films, how he’s always been a visual writer regardless of the medium, making the villain more flashy for Guy Pearce, collaborating with the actors for 10 days prior to shooting, how his scoring collaboration with Warren Ellis works, detaching from the script to enjoy the finished product, how the original cut was about three hours long, and his reluctant cameo in the film.  He also talked about being more interested in collaborating with John Hillcoat than with being a screenwriter for hire, the possibility that he could produce and compose the soundtrack for Guillermo del Toro’s stop-motion Pinocchio, and what happened to The Threepenny Opera that he met with Andy Serkis about doing.  Check out what he had to say after the jump. 

As one of our most anticipated films of the current quarter, I’m anxious to get a look at director John Hillcoat’s Prohibition drama, Lawless, which debuts at the end of the month.  Two new behind-the-scenes featurettes have gone online that show not only new footage from the Depression era film, but the true story behind the plot.  Nick Cave (The Proposition) adapted the novel by Matt Bondurant which tells the tale of the bootlegging Bondurant family and the government officials who wanted to wet their beaks. Starring Tom Hardy, Shia LaBeouf, Guy Pearce, Gary Oldman, Jessica Chastain and Mia Wasikowska, Lawless opens August 29th.  Hit the jump to see the new featurettes.

As most of you know, I recently did an epic hour-long video interview with director Guillermo del Toro, and every day this week I’m posting part of it.  For today’s installment I’ve got del Toro talking about DreamWorks Animation’s Rise of the Guardians and co-directing the 3D stop-motion animated iteration of Pinocchio with Mark Gustafson.  Here’s some of the highlights from what he said:

• Rise of the Guardians is the first DreamWorks Animation film that del Toro was able to work on from inception.  He came into Puss in Boots in the middle of production.
• Del Toro and the other people involved were giggling when they watched the opening to Guardians because they couldn’t believe they got away with putting “a dark, moody, and poetic piece” in a big studio movie.
• The images that have been released for Pinocchio are from when Gris Grimly was in charge of production, so del Toro is going to redesign some of the characters now that he’s co-directing. However, the character of Pinocchio will remain the same.
• They’ve already started puppet construction on Pinocchio and del Toro now has to get Nick Cave to start writing the songs for the film.
• He hopes to begin voice recording by January or February of 2013.
• The script is in its fourth or fifth draft, and del Toro has to do one more pass himself then they’ll start casting the film.
• His dream casting is to have Tom Waits as Geppetto.
• Ron Perlman will play a character named Mangiafuoco, who in the Disney version was called Stromboli.

Hit the jump for more.

Guillermo del Toro, The Jim Henson Company, and Pathe are set to produce a 3D stop-motion animated adaptation of Pinocchio.  Deadline reports that Gris Grimly and Mark Gustafson (animation director for Fantastic Mr. Fox) will direct the new version which will be “edgier” than the 1940 Disney adaptation. Grimly illustrated a 2002 book based on the character that will serve as the basis for the project.  Del Toro and collaborator Matthew Robbins (Mimic, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark) crafted the story with Robbins penning the script.

Hit the jump for more exciting details on this project, including the participation of writer/composer Nick Cave (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford).

With 2010 coming to a close, and the imminent arrival of an entirely fresh, unexplored, and unpredictable decade of cinema, what better time to start bombarding you with top ten lists of past highlights? We’ve done top ten posters, top ten trailers and top ten Christmas movies (and an alternate Christmas list for those who disagreed with the first).

This time: scores and soundtracks. There is a distinction between the two, but it’s murky, and as more and more films are using a mix of both original scores and pre-existing tracks, who are we to try to keep them separate?  Hit the jump for more.

Shia LaBeouf has long been linked to The Wettest County in the World, a period thriller from director John Hillcoat (The Road).  Of course, so were Amy Adams and Ryan Gosling, but those deals fell through.  However, 24 Frames confirms LaBeouf’s involvement and identifies Tom Hardy (Inception) as his co-star.

The screenplay from Nick Cave (The Proposition) centers on “a family of Prohibition-era bootleggers, and crimes committed by and against them.”  The film is an adaptation of the Matt Bondurant novel of the same name, based on a true story.  Hit the jump for the synopsis.

I have a tough time envisioning Mark Wahlberg as goth, but he may getting into the white face paint.  According to Bloody Disgusting, Wahlberg has been offered the lead in Stephen Norrington’s remake/re-adaptation of The Crow.  This was a film I was completely uninterested in until musician/screenwriter Nick Cave (The Proposition) came on board to do a re-write.  We don’t know much about the remake other than it will be set in Detroit and follow the same plotline of a man coming back from the dead to avenge his and his fiancée’s murder.  However, before Cave came on board, we reported that Norrington’s reboot  “will focus more on the mythology of the actual crow as a character with a distinct personality.”  The Crow was originally played by Brandon Lee in the 1994 film.  Other actors to play the role include Vincent Perez, Eric Mabius, and Edward Furlong.

Wahlberg will next be seen in David O. Russell’s The Fighter.  He’s also attached to the thriller Contraband, and is considering The Odd Life of Timothy Green and Seth MacFarlane’s comedy Teddy Bear.

And just like that, I’m interested in Stephen Norrington’s remake of The Crow.  The Wrap reports that writer/musician Nick Cave (The Proposition) has been brought on to re-write the screenplay for The Crow remake.  Norrington wrote the original draft of the script, which was set in a southwestern area (e.g. Mexico or Arizona) and an urban location (e.g. Detroit or Pittsburgh).  I can’t help but wonder if Norrington feels like he’s losing control again and flashing back to his last film, 2003′s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

Cave’s most frequent collaborator is director John Hillcoat.  In addition to The Proposition, Cave also wrote the scripts for Hillcoat’s Ghosts…of the Civil Dead and the un-produced The Promised Land and Death of a Ladies Man.  Cave also wrote an amazing/batshit insane script for a Gladiator sequel.  While I have no interest in The Crow as a character or his goth world, Cave’s involvement has instantly landed this movie on my radar.

Although there’s certainly no way this will raise more money for Haiti than the new “We Are the World” confab, I’m just as sure the folks who turned out for that didn’t have nearly as much fun as these guys and gals did.

Now, when you’re talking about a party convened by drunkard’s saint Shane Macgowan, things could have certainly gone South very quickly. But as you’ll see from the video, his view-askew all-star gathering of sorts to croon Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ “I Put a Spell on You” actually turned out something remarkably listenable – and even bordering on good.

As you’ll see, the vocals are handled by sometime Pogue MacGowan, Nick Cave, Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders, Bobby Gillespie of Primal Scream and Paloma Faith, and if you stick around to the end, you’ll find none other Johnny Depp contributes a passable guitar solo too.  Hit the jump to see the video:

By now you’ve probably noticed that Steve got an ungodly amount of material from this year’s American Film Market (AFM). The place where buyers and sellers do business to bring you the films you’ll hopefully be seeing in the near future, AFM has tons of artwork and synopses which are used to promote films but which we will use to bring you news on these films.  We have reached the last piece of our AFM coverage.  It’s been a long and fruitful journey and you can follow it by reading parts Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, and Part 7 by click on their respective links.

Below you’ll find posters for Conan and The Promised Land (The Wettest County in the World), images and synopses for animated film Dorothy of Oz and Jackboots on Whitehall plus images and synopses for the live-action movies Singularity, The Last Dragon, and my favorite, Alien vs. Ninja.  Hit the jump to check them all out. Please note that all the synopses are copied down directly from the original materials with no editorial alterations.

We’re going to need a word which is harsher than “bleak”.  The word “bleak” does not do justice to The Road, John Hillcoat’s faithful adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel.  Set in an apocalyptic wasteland of nothing but ugly grey, “Man” (Viggo Mortensen) and his son “Boy” (Kodi Smit-McPhee) struggle with survival where the only point is to survive, and that’s not much of a reason.  When suicide is the best thing in the world and the best use of a bullet is to kill your son to make sure he isn’t eaten alive by cannibals, you come to understand that “bleak” just doesn’t get the job done as far as adjectives go.  Neither does “hopeless”, “grim” or “dismal”.  But perhaps the greatest flaw of The Road isn’t its inability to conjure up dark adjectives, but that Hillcoat completely embraces the journey of his characters: pointless.