Sony Pictures has released the first trailer for Paul Greengrass‘ Captain Phillips.  The movie stars Tom Hanks as real life ship captain Richard Phillips who allowed himself to be taken hostage by Somali pirates in exchange for the safety of his crew.  Judging by the trailer, the adaptation keeps the crew on board, and sets the tone for an action-drama in the vein of Greengrass’ previous film, Green Zone.  Green Zone was a bit of a disappointment, as we saw in Greengrass’ Bloody Sunday and United 93, the director knows how to find powerful drama in true stories.

Hit the jump to check out the trailer along with the promo poster.  Captain Phillips is set to open on October 11th.

This fall we reported the early whispers that Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg would be back to produce a third World War II miniseries for HBO, new details of which have emerged.  The two collaborated on the highly successful (and highly decorated) series Band of Brothers which first aired in 2001, and followed it up with The Pacific in 2010.

The new series, called Masters of the Air, would explore the aerial wars of the men known as the “Mighty Eighth,” using Donald L. Miller’s historical book Masters of the Air: America’s Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany as source material.  Hit the jump for more on the project.

In director Steven Spielberg’s four decade-long career, the filmmaker has tackled a variety of genres and topics that amounts to a delightfully diverse oeuvre.  In the early 2000s, Spielberg was coming off three back-to-back films that dealt with fairly heady material (Saving Private Ryan, A.I., and Minority Report) and decided to tackle something a bit lighter.  He assembled a top notch cast led by Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks, and the result is arguably one of the most entertaining films of Spielberg’s entire career: Catch Me If You Can.  The 2002 film has been digitally remastered and released on Blu-ray for the very first time, and you can read my review of the home video release after the jump.

If you caught Tom Hanks doing any of the press rounds for Cloud Atlas, you may have noticed his oh-so-regal mustache.  The atypical facial hair was for a high profile role that Hanks is currently filming: that of Walt Disney in the real-life drama Saving Mr. Banks.  The story centers on Disney’s twenty-year pursuit of the film rights to author P.L. Travers’ (Emma Thompson) novel Mary Poppins and the rocky relationship that formed between the two.  Our first images of Hanks and Thompson in character have surfaced today, as the production filmed a few scenes on the grounds of Disneyland.

Hit the jump to take a look at the images.  Directed by John Lee Hancock (The Blind Side), the film also stars Colin Farrell, Ruth Wilson, Rachel Griffiths, Bradley Whitford, Paul Giamatti, and Jason Schwartzman.  Saving Mr. Banks opens on December 20th, 2013.

The Tom Hanks-produced JFK feature film Parkland just landed three impressive actors.  It was announced today that Paul Giamatti, Billy Bob Thornton, and Jacki Weaver have joined the cast of the real-life drama.  The film revolves around the chaotic events that occurred at Parkland Hospital in Dallas on the day that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.  Parkland Hospital is where Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald, and Jack Ruby all died.

Peter Landesman wrote the screenplay based on the book by Vincent Bugliosi and will make his directorial debut with the pic.  No word on what characters the aforementioned actors will portray, but production is set to take place in Austin.  The film is being planned for a 2013 release around the 50th anniversary of the assassination, which will be November 22nd.  Hit the jump to read the full press release.

Tonight the wife and I are hosting an inaugural Halloween gathering for three primary reasons: 1) it’s an excuse to hang out with friends, 2) it’s an opportunity to watch horror classics with said friends and 3) our street name is Elm and we can’t pass on the chance to christen the get together with the least original Halloween party name of all time (I’ll let you do the math). All of this in mind, I was finding it difficult to strike a healthy balance of scary movie goodness that was equal parts frightening (for fans of the horror genre like myself) and fun/of the “Halloween spirit” (for those who don’t necessarily enjoy the genre but can appreciate the season). That was until I remembered that we owned Ernest Scared Stupid on Blu-ray. Now the biggest concern I have is making sure no one walks out of the house at the end of the night with that little gem in hand.

All Hallows Eve 2012 party plans aside, in this week’s Top 5 we’ve got a lineup that includes a visit to the New Zealand set of The Hobbit, the first trailer amongst other new assets from Iron Man 3, Cloud Atlas interviews with Tom Hanks, Halle Berry and more, the first red band trailer for director Fede Alvarez‘s Evil Dead remake, and a heartfelt plea for a Hollywood adaptation of The Legend of Zelda. A brief recap and link to each lives on after the jump.

Put Tom Hanks in a sketch and he’s going to be golden.  I’m surprised Saturday Night Live doesn’t have a constant rotation of Hanks, Alec Baldwin, and Steve Martin.  Hanks showed up on The Colbert Report for some good Halloween fun…or at least that’s what Stephen Colbert was led to believe.  Instead, we see that kids this year don’t care about dressing up as The Avengers for Halloween.  The kids are all about Tom Hanks’ movies, including Cloud Atlas.  It’s a great sketch with an awesome cameo at the end.

Hit the jump to check it out.  Cloud Atlas opens today, and maybe you should go see it.

[This is a re-post of my review from the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival.  Cloud Atlas opens today.]

“My life exists far beyond the limitations of me,” a character notes in Cloud Atlas. By the same token, The Wachowski Siblings and Tom Tykwer‘s film exists far beyond the limitations of genre, narrative, identity, and time. It is a work of sweeping ambition, engrossing stories, compelling characters, and powerful emotions. The filmmakers have taken David Mitchell’s novel, and rebuilt it into a captivating sextuplet filled with love, hate, redemption, damnation, bravery, cowardice, and more. Through skillful editing and astounding performances, Cloud Atlas is a cinematic experience like few others, and it will leave viewers in awe.

The wildly ambitious adaptation of Cloud Atlas is a brilliant piece of filmmaking from writers/directors Lana and Andy Wachowski and Tom Tykwer, but it’s also a very hard sell for general audiences.  The film takes place across multiple settings and time periods, with the fantastic ensemble cast taking on a number of different characters.  In order to entice those who may be a bit apprehensive about the film, an extensive 13-minute featurette has been released that features interviews with the directors and the entire cast explaining how the film works.  It’s a fascinating watch not only to see how The Wachowskis and Tykwer pulled this thing off, but also to get a look at the whole cast in their various make-up and costumes.

Hit the jump to watch the featurette, and click here to catch up on all of our previous coverage.  The film stars Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Susan Sarandon, Doona Bae, Hugh Grant, Jim Broadbent, Hugo Weaving, Jim Sturgess, Keith David, Ben Whishaw and James D’Arcy.  Cloud Atlas opens on October 26th.

From acclaimed filmmakers Andy & Lana Wachowski (The Matrix trilogy, Speed Racer) and Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run) comes the stunning, epic and powerful Cloud Atlas, based on the best-selling novel by David Mitchell.  Through various genres and time periods, spanning 500 years, and with the actors playing a variety of characters that cross genders and races, the story contains drama, mystery, action and love, interwoven in such a way that illustrates how everything is connected and that the actions and choices in one era can have consequences in another.  The film stars Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Susan Sarandon, Hugh Grant, Jim Broadbent, Hugo Weaving, Jim Sturgess, Ben Wishaw and James D’Arcy.

At the film’s press day, co-stars Tom Hanks and Halle Berry, who each play six different characters, talked about how fun this entire process was, the challenge of getting to play so many different roles in one movie, the dizzying experience of going back and forth between directors and time periods, the fear that this would never work, the fight to get this story to the big screen, and the collaborative spirit throughout.  Check out what they had to say after the jump.

I have been looking forward to this weekend for a long time, because this is Cloud Atlas weekend.  Since I was convinced by the word Wachowski from day one, I have stubbornly avoided watching too much beyond the first trailer to go in as fresh as possible for what looks to be one of the few truly ambitious wide releases this year.  Thankfully Dave is still around to help provide context for a “ridiculously cool” featurette.  Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Susan Sarandon, Keith David, Ben Whishaw, Hugh Grant, and Jim Broadbent discuss the multiple characters they get to play in the five-minute clip—titled “An Actor’s Dream”—which features plenty of behind-the-scenes footage.

Co-directed by Andy Wachowski, Lana Wachowski, and Tom Tykwer, Cloud Atlas opens on October 26.  Watch the featurette after the jump.

Check out the offerings from our latest poster round-up:

• The U.K. poster for Ang Lee’s Life of Pi, starring Suraj Sharma, Rafe Spall, Gerard Depardieu, Irrfan Khan and Adil Hussain. Life of Pi opens in 3D November 21st.
• A huge banner poster for Cloud Atlas, from directors Lana and Andy Wachowski and Tom Tyker.  Starring Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Hugo Weaving, Hugh Grant, Jim Broadbent and more, Cloud Atlas opens October 26th.
• A teaser posters for Warm Bodies, a zombie romance (zomance? zom-rom?) starring Nicholas Hoult and Teresa Palmer, which opens February 1st, 2013.

Hit the jump for the posters and synopses. 

If your heart has mended since having seen the WWII HBO miniseries Band of Brothers, which first aired in 2001, and you have gotten through the pain and triumph of The Pacific, the follow-up series that took place in the Asia theater of war (and aired in 2010) then prepare for a new soul-crushing possibility: a third series that would follow the aerial battles in the Pacific.

The original installment seemed to act as a springboard for a huge number of actors who have continued rising in their fame (such as Michael Fassbender, Ron Livingston, Jamie Bamber, Tom Hardy, Colin Hanks and Simon Pegg), including Damian Lewis, whose heroic Major Dick Winters is miles away from his current role as the compromised former patriot Nicholas Brody on Showtime’s Homeland (Dick Winters would never be turned against America!)  For more on the upcoming project, hit the jump.

Warner Bros. has released a new behind-the-scenes featurette for The Wachowski Siblings and Tom Tywker‘s Cloud Atlas.  The studio has a difficult task of selling the movie because it’s so different than what audiences are used to, and yet the film is surprisingly accessible if you’re willing to go along with its central conceit: six storylines with overlapping themes and shared actors.  The trailers and TV spots are pushing glowing pull quotes and the overarching plot devices, and this new featurette is in line with that marketing approach.  The only hurdle is in trying to get audiences to go in even though they don’t know the individual plotlines.  It’s a challenge viewers need to meet or else they’ll be missing out on one of the year’s best films.

Hit the jump to check out the featurette, and click here for my review of the film.  The movie stars Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Hugo Weaving, Jim Sturgess, Doona Bae, Ben Whishaw, James D’Arcy, Xun Zhou, Keith David, David Gyasi, Susan Sarandon, and Hugh Grant.  Cloud Atlas opens October 26th.

After tooling around with motion-capture for the last decade, director Robert Zemeckis makes his return to live-action this year with the drama Flight.  It’s a welcome change for the Back to the Future filmmaker, and it now looks like he plans on sticking with non-rubber faced people for the time being as Tom Hanks has provided a promising update on the space adventure Major Matt Mason.  The 3D pic is an adaptation of the popular action figure and will star Hanks as the titular Mason, an astronaut trapped on a moon base with a group of people.  The story is one of survival, as the film won’t feature any aliens or antagonists.

Major Matt Mason has been in development for some time, and last we heard Zemeckis was in talks to direct the pic.  Now it looks like things are finally moving forward, as Hanks has co-written the screenplay and is now on the hunt for buyers.  Hit the jump for more.