A new promo image for director Lars von Trier’s very curious new film Nymphomaniac has been released.  The drama picked up considerable attention last year when we learned that the film’s actors will be performing unsimulated sex acts in the pic, which stars Charlotte Gainsbourgh as a self-diagnosed nymphomaniac who recounts her life story to Seligman (Stellan Skarsgard), an old, charming bachelor who finds Gainsbourhough’s character beaten up in an alley.  This promo image highlights the film’s cast—which includes Willem Dafoe, Shia LaBeouf, Uma Thurman, and Christian Slater—as they’re shown in various suggestive positions.

Von Trier is currently editing Part Two of the film, but Nymphomaniac is slated to debut on December 25th in Denmark, with a rollout in other territories (including the U.S.) to follow via Magnolia Pictures.  Hit the jump to check out the image.

Marvel has released the first trailer for director Alan Taylor’s (Game of Thrones) sequel Thor: The Dark World and it looks great.  Like every well cut trailer, it showcases a ton of impressive looking action, while revealing new details about the story.  I especially liked the reveal of how Loki (Tom Hiddleston) will be involved in the sequel.   If you dug the first Thor, you’re going to love this trailer.  Hit the jump to watch and let me know what you think in the comments.  

Thor: The Dark World stars Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Christopher Eccleston,Stellan Skarsgård, Idris Elba, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Kat Dennings, Ray Stevenson, Zachary Levi, Tadanobu Asano, Jaimie Alexander, Rene Russo, and Anthony Hopkins.  Thor: The Dark World opens in 3D on November 8th.

The first trailer for director Carlo Carlei’s adaptation of Romeo & Juliet has landed online.  Written by Julian Fellowes (Downton Abbey, Gosford Park), the film stars Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit) as Juliet and Douglas Booth (The Pillars of the Earth) as Romeo, with a rather impressive supporting cast that includes Paul Giamatti, Stellan Skarsgard, and Homeland’s Damian Lewis.  Carlei maintains the original setting of Shakespeare’s play and looks to be taking a rather classical approach to the storytelling.  Following a rather awkward opening with “movie trailer guy” reciting Shakespeare, the clip sufficiently teases the romantic and intense aspects of Shakespeare’s source material.  However, with a story that’s been told countless times, it’s tough to be excited by a new adaptation unless its told in an original or interesting fashion.

Hit the jump to watch the trailer.  The film also stars Ed Westwick, Kodi Smit-McPhee (Let Me In) and Natascha McElhone.  Romeo & Juliet is set for release in the U.K on July 26th, but a US distribution deal has yet to be made.

Though Phase One of Marvel Studios’ film slate came to an end just a few months ago with The Avengers, production on Phase Two is already well underway.  The studio is currently in the midst of filming two upcoming sequels at the same time: Iron Man 3 and Thor: The Dark World.  The Iron Man production is winding down to a close ahead of that film’s May 2013 release date, but filming on Thor: The Dark World is still going strong in London and today the first official synopsis for the Asgardian pic has been revealed.

The logline essentially tells us what we already know: Thor (Chris Hemsworth) must fight against Maleketih (Christopher Eccleston) and his race of Dark Elves, Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) is back, the fate of the universe is in the balance, etc.  However, the synopsis does tease the film’s epic scope and the fact that Thor is forced to “sacrifice everything” in order to save us all (Thor dies?!).  Hit the jump to check out the full synopsis, which includes the full cast list.  Directed by Alan Taylor, Thor: The Dark World opens on November 8th, 2013.

Some major casting announcements to make today.  Here they are in brief:

• Ewan McGregor (Salmon Fishing in the Yemen) will join the stellar cast of John Wells’ August: Osage County, which already touts Julia Roberts, Meryl Streep and Chris Cooper among others, with George Clooney producing.
• Christian Slater (Broken Arrow) has been cast in Lars Von Trier’s pornographic duet, Nymphomaniac, two full-length features which will both be released in softcore and hardcore versions.  The pictures star Charlotte Gainsbourg in the title role along with Shia LaBeouf, Stellan Skarsgard, Jamie Bell and Connie Nielsen.

Hit the jump for more info.

Yesterday, we showed you a deleted scene that will be on the upcoming Blu-ray/DVD for The Avengers.  Today, the gag reel and a behind-the-scenes clip have gone online.  Cobie Smulders absolutely steals the gag reel, and it makes me wonder when we’ll get to see her in some comedic roles other than Robin Scherbatsky from How I Met Your Mother.  As for the behind-the-scenes clip, if you’ve ever wanted to hear famous people say nice things about Samuel L. Jackson, this is the clip for you.

Hit the jump to check out the special features.  The Avengers hits Blu-ray, DVD, and Digitial Download on September 25th.

Shia LaBeouf (Transformers) is the object of desire for director Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac.  The erotic drama is the next project from the Danish director, whose previous efforts include 2011′s Melancholia and 2009′s Antichrist.   It will follow the erotic events in the life of a woman from her youth to age 50; Charlotte Gainsbourg (Antichrist) will play the lead with Stellan Skarsgard (The Avengers) attached as her husband, who listens to her recount the adventuers.  There is limited information as to how large (ha!) LaBeouf’s role will be.  Hit the jump for more on Nymphomaniac.

The first images from Carlo Carlei‘s Romeo and Juliet have gone online.  The film retains the original setting of Shakespeare’s play, but the tone is aimed at wooing the Twilight crowd.   Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit) stars as Juliet, and Douglas Booth (The Pillars of the Earth) is her fair Romeo.  I’m not sure how Carlei plans to reconcile what’s arguably a “dated” setting with a modern attitude, but I like the look of the film, I’m eager to see Steinfeld’s follow up to True Grit, and the great supporting cast includes Paul Giamatti, Stellan Skarsgard, Damian Lewis, and Natascha McElhone.  Bring on the star-crossed lovers.

Hit the jump to check out the images.  The movie currently has no U.S. release date, but it’s set to open in the U.K. on February 14, 2013.

The success of Marvel’s The Avengers has allowed the comic book universe to introduce its rogues gallery to theater-going audiences, bringing in such extraterrestrial villains as Thanos, the Mad Titan.  Thor was the first of the recent Marvel movies to use other-worldly magic as a power source instead of Tony Stark’s technology in Iron Man or the science behind the genesis of Captain America and the Hulk.  In a recent interview, Kevin Feige confirmed that the death-obsessed Eternal would not be making an appearance in Thor 2; another big villain would be stepping in.  We know that Chris Hemsworth and Natalie Portman will reprise the roles of Thor and Jane Foster respectively (not to mention the return of Idris Elba as Heimdall).  We also know that Tom Hiddleston will return as Loki, but that’s not a new big villain.  And we know Mads Mikkelsen is set to play a villain, so who could it be? Hit the jump to see what Feige had to say.

Sir Ben Kingsley is apparently itching to be in as many films as humanly possible.  He’s currently filming Ender’s Game, he’s set to play the villain in Iron Man 3 which begins shooting next month, he’ll film the crime thriller Cut Bank this fall, and he recently signed on to star in the indie sci-fi comedy Convention.  Now comes word that Kingsley will star alongside Stellan Skarsgard, Tom Payne (Luck), and Olivier Martinez (S.W.A.T.) in the medieval period drama The Physician.  The film is based on Noah Gordon’s novel and centers on a healer traveling across Europe in the 11th century.

Payne will take the lead role of Rob Cole, a physician searching for “the scientific truth of illness and healing in a medieval world dominated by religion and superstition.”  Kingsley will play the so-called “doctor of all doctors” while Skarsgard will play Cole’s first mentor.  Hit the jump for more, including a synopsis for the book.

Nothing like The Avengers has ever been attempted in Hollywood history.  No major motion picture has ever been the culmination of four different blockbuster franchises, each with its own protagonist, and crossing them over into one gigantic film.  It’s bigger than a sequel or even a planned trilogy.  Marvel had to take pieces from their previous superhero films to assemble The Avengers.  The studio wedged set-up into Iron Man 2, wove the covert government agency S.H.I.E.L.D. into Thor, and tacked bookends to Captain America: The First Avenger.  The plan for The Avengers was audacious to the point of near-hubris, but writer-director Joss Whedon has managed to deliver an absolute powerhouse of a payoff that’s truly worthy of Marvel’s astonishing ambition.

We’ve got a smattering of casting news to throw your way this morning.  First up, Stellan Skarsgard and Hiroyuki Sanada (the upcoming action flick 47 Ronin) have joined the Colin Firth, Nicole Kidman, and Jeremy Irvine (War Horse) in Jonathan Teplitzy‘s drama The Railway Man.  Firth plays real-life World War II British officer Eric Lomax, who was captured and tortured by the Japanese.  Decades later, he’s persuaded by his wife (Kidman) to find and confront one of his captors in order to repair the psychological damage.  Irvine plays the younger Lomax who was in the war.  According to Variety, “Skarsgard will play the best friend who accompanies the older Lomax (Firth) back to the scene of his torture. Sanada plays a Japanese officer from the prison camp whom Lomax tracks down.”  This is turning out to be a terrific cast, and judging by the synopsis, this could be a big role for Sanada, whose previous credits include Speed Racer, Sunshine, and Lost.

Hit the jump for more casting news on the indie flicks Jobs, Kilimanjaro, and You Are Here.

We recently brought you a nice batch of new images from The Avengers featuring a swell Captain America silhouette and a very good-looking Scarlett Johansson, and today a few more images from the film have hit the web. Instead of stills from the actual movie, these images highlight director Joss Whedon on set with his rag tag team of superheroes. We get a fun look behind-the-scenes of the highly anticipated comic book adaptation, including a nifty shot of Whedon sporting Cap’s shield and some Hawkeye action.

Hit the jump to check out the images, and if you missed it be sure to take a look at the new featurette from the film. Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Clark Gregg, Stellan Skarsgård, Cobie Smulders, Tom Hiddleston, and Samuel L. Jackson star. The Avengers opens in 3D on May 4th.

Even though the trilogy had already been made into films (with many of those film’s cast members moving on to American roles), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was such an international phenomenon that the notion that people don’t like reading subtitles allowed for an American version. To make it into a big prestige project, director David Fincher and writer Steve Zaillian were brought in to adapt the successful novel for the big screen. Here Lisbeth Salander is played by Rooney Mara – who got an Oscar nomination for her work – and Mikael Blomkvist is played by Daniel Craig. Their characters investigate the Vanger family at the insistence of Henrik (Christopher Plummer), because he thinks someone in the family killed his niece. Our review of the Blu-ray of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo follows after the jump.

For some people, the wait to see The Avengers assemble will end a month earlier than expected. Marvel has set the world premiere date for the penultimate comic book movie for Wednesday, April 11th at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood. Heat Vision reports that the red carpet will feature the following cast members before attending the 7:00 pm screening: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Tom Hiddleston, Cobie Smulders, Stellan Skarsgård and Samuel L. Jackson. What, no love for Clark Gregg’s Agent Coulson? It seems even the employees of S.H.I.E.L.D. will have to wait to see The Avengers with the rest of us when it opens to a wide release on May 4th. Hit the jump for the synopsis and latest trailer.