Director David M. Rosenthal’s new crime thriller adaptation A Single Shot is set to premiere at the Berlinale Festival in Germany later this month.  The film, written by author Matthew Jones in an adaptation of his 2011 novel, stars Sam Rockwell (Moon) as a deer hunter whose one mistake spirals out of control and lands him in a dangerous game of cat and mouse with a pack of backwoods criminals.  Hit the jump to read the full synopsis.

The Sessions tells the remarkable, funny, heartfelt and optimistic story of California-based journalist and poet Mark O’Brien (John Hawkes, in an award-worthy performance), a man who lived most of his life in an iron lung after having survived a bout of childhood polio.  At age 38, Mark becomes determined to lose his virginity and sets out to make his dream a reality by hiring a sex surrogate (Helen Hunt), who becomes as deeply moved by the experience as he is.  From writer/director Ben Lewin, the film also stars William H. Macy, Moon Bloodgood, Rhea Perlman, W. Earl Brown, Robin Weigert and Adam Arkin.

At the film’s press day, actor William H. Macy, who plays Mark O’Brien’s priest, spoke to Collider for this exclusive interview about what attracted him to the role, what surprised him about the film, why he likes to read a script fast and go with his first instinct, how he most identified with Father Brendan, and what it was like to watch John Hawkes give this performance.  He also talked about what fans can expect from Season 3 of his popular Showtime drama series Shameless, returning on January 13, 2013, and why he loves playing Frank Gallagher.  Check out what he had to say after the jump.

[This is a re-post of my review from the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.  The Sessions opens tomorrow in limited release.]

In the movies, pretty adults are supposed to have sex. The male lead and the female lead need to be our idealized selves in an ideal relationship and they need to have attractive people sex. But in the real world, people find a way to fall in love and get it on even if they don’t have chiseled abs or amazing breasts. And then there are those people where, due to their physique, we wonder if sex is even an option and we’re sure that thought has crossed their minds as well. And no matter our physique, we’ve all probably wondered if we’ll ever find love. Those thoughts—of finding love and sex—crossed the mind of writer and poet Mark O’Brien. At the age of six, O’Brien’s body was ravaged by polio and he was placed in an iron lung, which he could only leave for a few hours at a time. As John entered his 40s, he still hadn’t had sex or found love, and in Ben Lewin‘s The Sessions—a movie based on O’Brien’s real experiences—he searches for both. The Sessions comes right up to the line of being painfully sentimental and mawkish, but strong direction and amazing lead performances make the film inspirational, funny, and genuinely heartwarming.

Four clips from the upcoming drama The Sessions have been released.  The movie stars John Hawkes as writer and poet Mark O’Brien, whose body was ravaged by polio when he was a child and stuck him in an iron lung for the rest of his life.  However, he still wanted to have sex and intimacy, and so he found a sexual surrogate (Helen Hunt) to help him learn the intricacies of intercourse.  The pic made waves earlier this year when it debuted to a rapturously positive response at the Sundance Film Festival (read Matt’s review right here), with many singling out the fantastic performances from Hawkes and Hunt.

Hit the jump to watch the clips.  The film also stars William H. Macy and Moon Bloodgood.  The Sessions opens in limited release on October 19th.

Though Clark Gregg is well-known for his work as the beloved Agent Coulson in the Marvel films, the affable actor is also a director.  He helmed the 2008 adaptation of the Chuck Palahniuk novel Choke, and now he’s gearing up for his second directorial feature Trust Me.  The dark comedy centers on “a loser agent for a young actor – and washed-up child star himself – who stumbles upon a brilliant 13-year-old prodigy (played by newcomer Saxon Sharbino) and then tries to close the mega-deal that will make her a star while managing her drunk volatile father.”

Now Deadline reports that Gregg—who also wrote Trust Me—has rustled up quite the cast for the film, as his Choke star Sam Rockwell and West Wing cohort Allison Janney have joined the ensemble cast that also includes William H. Macy, Amanda Peet, Felicity Huffman, Molly Shannon, Paul Sparks (Boardwalk Empire), and Niecy Nash (Reno 911).  Production is set to begin soon, and with Gregg onboard as the creative force driving this swell cast, Trust Me is definitely one to keep an eye on.

Here’s a new batch of posters to complement the ones we posted earlier today:

• A look at a Chilean martial artist, Marko Zaror, trading in his fists for a shotgun in Robert Rodriguez’s Machete Kills.  The sequel, starring Danny Trejo in the title role, drops sometime next year.
• Two new Spanish posters from Rich Moore’s animated feature, Wreck-It Ralph.  Featuring the voices of John C. Reilly, Sarah Silverman, Jack McBrayer and Jane Lynch, Wreck-It Ralph comes out on November 2nd of this year.
• An official poster for The Sessions from writer/director Ben Lewin.  The Sundance 2012 Audience Award Winner stars John Hawkes, Helen Hunt and William H. Macy.  Look for it in theaters starting October 26th.

Hit the jump for the new posters and synopses.

The first trailer for the drama The Sessions (previously The Surrogate) has been released.  The movie stars John Hawkes as writer and poet Mark O’Brien, whose body was ravaged by polio when he was a child and stuck him in an iron lung for the rest of his life.  However, he still wanted to have sex and intimacy, and so he found a sexual surrogate (Helen Hunt) to help him learn the intricacies of sexual intercourse.  The film debuted at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year to a rapturous response, with many singling out a superb performance from Hawkes.  Matt called the film “inspirational, funny, and genuinely heartwarming” in his review, and he’s actually double-blurbed in this first trailer.  Hawkes, Hunt, and William H. Macy are just about as good as it gets (pardon the pun), and this trailer promises a moving, funny, and hopefully insightful film not about robots, explosions, or aliens, but about people interacting with people.

Hit the jump to watch the trailer, and you can also check out Steve’s interviews from Sundance with Hawkes and Macy if you missed them.  The Sessions opens on October 26th.

Everyone’s favorite serial killer, Michael C. Hall (as Dexter, of course) will be on hand to open up festivities for Comic-Con 2012.  The SHOWTIME panel will also feature a Q&A with Hall, Jennifer Carpenter and special guest, Yvonne Strahovski (Chuck) who will be joining the seventh season.  Fans will witness an exclusive first two minutes of the season premiere, along with a new chapter in the animated webisodes, “Early Cuts: All in the Family.”  SHOWTIME will also screen a trailer for the second season of Homeland and will host a Shameless panel.  Dexter returns September 30th at 9pm on SHOWTIME.  Hit the jump for the full press release.

An indie biopic of legendary filmmaker Federico Fellini is moving forward and writer/director Henry Bromell (Homeland) has assembled himself quite the cast.  Variety reports that Elite Squad star Wagner Moura will play the famed director in Fellini Black and White, while Peter Dinklage, William H. Macy, and Terrence Howard are set to co-star.  Instead of being your run of the mill all-encompassing biopic, the film centers on a specific period in Fellini’s life.  The story is set in Los Angeles in March of 1957, and takes place during the 48 hours that Fellini went missing right before attending the Academy Awards.  Hit the jump for more.

On the Showtime drama series Shameless, actor Jeremy Allen White plays Phillip “Lip” Gallagher, the second and by far the smartest Gallagher child, who has a penchant for trouble and a relationship with wild child neighbor Karen (Laura Wiggins) that is always threatening to break his heart. With an even further strained and more contentious relationship with his father than ever, Lip begins to realize that the more he fights to be his own man, the more he may end up just like his father, Frank (William H. Macy).

While at the TCA Winter Press Tour, Jeremy Allen White sat down with Collider for this exclusive interview about how lucky he feels to have such amazing material in Season 2, how the relationship between Frank and Lip will change this season, what he’d like to see Lip do with his life, how bizarre all of the sex scenes can be, and what working on this show with this cast has taught him about the craft of acting. Check out what he had to say after the jump.

Led by a truly remarkable performance by John Hawkes, writer-director Ben Lewin‘s The Surrogate blew me away at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.  The film’s based on the true story of Mark O’Brien, a 36-year-old poet and journalist with an iron lung, who decides that he no longer wants to be a virgin.  With the help of his priest (William H. Macy) and a professional sex surrogate (Helen Hunt), we follow on his amazing journey.  Trust me, The Surrogates is great on so many levels (which explains why there was a bidding war; Fox Searchlight won), and it’s definitely going to be a contender at the 2013 Academy Awards.  For more on the film, here’s Matt’s review.

Shortly after seeing the film, I sat down with William H. Macy for an extended interview.  We talked about being at Sundance, his reaction to seeing the film with an audience for the first time, how he prepared for The Surrogate, his philosophy as an actor, karaoke, and a lot more.  In addition, with Macy currently starring on the hit Showtime series Shameless, we talked about what’s coming up on the second season, how he wrote the sixth episode, the writers room, how the second season is completely different than the BBC version, and what do people always want to talk to him about when they meet him.  Hit the jump to watch.

While HBO made some big cuts from their original programming towards the end of last year, Showtime is keeping shows around as EW has learned that the cable network has given an additional season order to Shameless, House of Lies and Californication. Shameless gets a third season after its stellar ensemble cast, including William H. Macy and Emmy Rossum, has come through with a great second season while House of Lies, with Don Cheadle and Kristen Bell, has gotten stellar ratings to earn a second season while its first season is still in progress. Finally Californication is still going strong to nab a sixth season, but I don’t know if it will last beyond that. Either way, it shows that Showtime has faith in their shows and should please fans of all three series.

In the movies, pretty adults are supposed to have sex.  The male lead and the female lead need to be our idealized selves in an ideal relationship and they need to have attractive people sex.  But in the real world, people find a way to fall in love and get it on even if they don’t have chiseled abs or amazing breasts.  And then there are those people where, due to their physique, we wonder if sex is even an option and we’re sure that thought has crossed their minds as well.  And no matter our physique, we’ve all probably wondered if we’ll ever find love.  Those thoughts—of finding love and sex—crossed the mind of writer and poet Mark O’Brien.  At the age of six, O’Brien’s body was ravaged by polio and he was placed in an iron lung, which he could only leave for a few hours at a time.  As John entered his 40s, he still hadn’t had sex or found love, and in Ben Lewin‘s The Surrogate—a movie based on O’Brien’s real experiences—he searches for both.  The Surrogate comes right up to the line of being painfully sentimental and mawkish, but strong direction and amazing lead performances make the film inspirational, funny, and genuinely heartwarming.

Today, the 2012 Sundance Film Festival announced their In-Competition line-up, and that means we’re about to get a boatload of new images from upcoming films.  After the jump you’ll find synopses and the first images from The End of Love (starring Mark Webber, Michael Cera, and Amanda Seyfried), Filly Brown (starring Gina Rodriguez, Lou Diamond Phillips, and Edward James Olmos), The First Time (starring Dylan O’Brien, Brittany Robertson, and Craig Roberts), and The Surrogate (starring John Hawkes, Helen Hunt, and William H. Macy).

The 2012 Sundance Film Festival runs from January 19 – 29th.

Comic Con 2011: At the Showtime Preview Panel, Michael C. Hall and company talked up the 6^th season of Dexter; William H. Macy, Emmy Rossum and John Wells teased the second season of Shameless; Morena Baccarin and Howard Shore discussed their new show Homeland. For all this, plus new trailers for Dexter and Homeland, hit the jump.