The first official image from director Alexander Payne’s upcoming film Nebraska has landed online.  The film marks Payne’s follow-up to 2011’s The Descendants and centers on an aging alcoholic father who decides to take a road trip from Montana to Nebraska to collect what he believes to be a million dollar Publisher’s Clearing House prize.  His estranged son reluctantly agrees to accompany his father in order to keep him out of trouble.  Bruce Dern and Will Forte star as father and son in the black-and-white road trip film, and Payne shot the entire pic on the road in Nebraska, Montana, Wyoming, and South Dakota—where the film’s story takes place.

Hit the jump to check out the debut image.  Nebraska will premiere at the Cannes Film Festival later this month and is slated to open in limited release on November 22nd.

With Bruce Dern and Will Forte set as the leads for his black-and-white road trip film Nebraska, director Alexander Payne is now filling out his supporting cast. The film centers on an aging alcoholic father who decides to take a road trip from Montana to Nebraska to collect what he believes to be a million dollar Publisher’s Clearing House prize. His estranged son reluctantly agrees to accompany his father in order to keep him out of trouble.  Omaha.com (via The Film Stage) reports that Mr. Show alum and Breaking Bad standout Bob Odenkirk and veteran actor Stacy Keach (The Bourne Legacy) have now joined the cast.  The site also notes that June Squibb (About Schmidt) is being eyed for a role.

Odenkirk will play Forte’s older brother while Keach is set as one of Dern’s colleagues.  The most recent batch of Breaking Bad episodes was rather Saul Goodman-lite, so Odenkirk’s involvement in Nebraska is welcome news.  Production on Payne’s The Descendants follow-up is set to begin on October 15th, and we can expect to see the film sometime next year.

Following a bit of a bumpy road, director Alexander Payne’s drama Nebraska is now firmly on track and headed towards a production start.  The film centers on an aging alcoholic father who decides to take a road trip from Montana to Nebraska to collect what he believes to be a million dollar Publisher’s Clearing House prize. His estranged son decides to accompany his father in order to keep him out of trouble.  Payne was considering a number of esteemed actors for the lead and tried hard to coax Gene Hackman out of retirement, but we heard in May that Payne had his eye on Bruce Dern for the father role and Will Forte for the son.

Now Deadline reports that deals are being closed with Dern and Forte for the $13 million black-and-white film as Payne finally has the greenlight from Paramount.  The Descendants was a swell entry to Payne’s oeuvre, but I’m highly intrigued by this small-scale yet ambitious drama.  Forte is an immensely talented comedic actor and I have no doubt that he’ll nail Payne’s balance of drama and comedy. With deals closing and the picture a go, production begins this October for an awards season 2013 release.

Having racked up awards buzz and a rather tidy box office sum with The Descendants, director Alexander Payne is set to ease back into his road-movie wheelhouse with Nebraska. Production on the project has been delayed a couple times in the past months, as Payne worked on the script and searched for the right leads. After names like Robert Duvall, Jack Nicholson and Robert Forster were bandied about, now comes news that the helmer has set his sights on Bruce Dern to play a cantankerous alcoholic and SNL alum Will Forte to occupy the role of his estranged son. The dramedy will see the two taking a car trip to collect on the father’s apparent sweepstakes win. At the moment, offers have not been made to either actor. Hit the jump for more on Nebraska.

Two projects found their screenwriters last night:

• Mike Jones will script Second Act based on a story by Teddy Grennan
• Ryan Engle will do his best to adapt the 1980s arcade game Rampage into a feature movie.

Both writers made the 2011 Black List of Hollywood’s best unproduced screenplays.  Hit the jump for details.

The nominations for the 84th Annual Academy Awards have finally been unveiled. Many of the categories have fallen in line just as most have predicted (I fared alright with my predictions, but not great), with Hugo scoring 11 nods, followed closely by The Artist with 10. The biggest surprises are War Horse and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close getting in for Best Picture, the exclusion of The Adventures of Tintin from Best Animated Feature, and The Tree of Life nabbing Best Picture and Best Director nods (hooray!). On the snub side of things, despite landing the most precursor critics awards of any other actor in the race thus far, Albert Brooks was denied a Best Supporting Actor nod for his stellar work in Drive (boo). Additionally, Tilda Swinton was overlooked for giving the best performance of the year in We Need to Talk About Kevin, and AMPAS has no love for Michael Fassbender‘s haunting work in Shame.

There’s still plenty to be happy about, as Gary Oldman has his first ever Oscar Nomination (yes, that’s right) and Melissa McCarthy is a Best Supporting Actress nominee. Hit the jump to check out the full list of nominees. The 84th Academy Awards will be presented by Billy Crystal on February 26th.

As I’ve been covering awards season pretty extensively here on the site over the past few months, I figured it would be appropriate to (foolishly) try to predict the upcoming Oscar nominations. It’s been a fairly tame year, as a few frontrunners were singled out early in the race and have held their ground throughout the grueling awards season. We haven’t been without a few surprises, as Steven Spielberg’s War Horse took a massive tumble following snubs from most of the major guilds, and David Fincher has surged back into the race bringing his adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo with him.

Though there are plenty of safe bets when it comes to the 2012 Oscar nominations, there are still a few wildcards and tricky categories. I’ve put on my prognosticating cap (those interested can purchase one of these nifty hats at your local Target) and compiled a list of who and what I think will make the cut. Hit the jump to see how I think the nods will stack up when they’re announced on January 24th.

As we move ever closer to the Academy Awards, the director’s guild has just announced the five nominees who will contend for the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film for 2011. The DGA’s are a major prognosticator for the Best Director award at the Oscars, as only six times has the DGA winner not gone on to win Best Director. This year’s nominees include Martin Scorsese for Hugo, Woody Allen for Midnight in Paris, Michel Hazanavicious for The Artist, Alexander Payne for The Descendants, and David Fincher for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Hit the jump for more, including my thoughts on the nominees.

The nominations for the 27th Annual Independent Spirit Awards were announced this morning with The Artist and Take Shelter each nabbing five nominations. In addition to The Artist and Take Shelter, Drive, 50/50, The Descendants, and Beginners will duke it out for the top prize. Absent from the Best Feature list is Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, though the film was recognized in Best Supporting Male (Corey Stoll) and Best Cinematography. Also of note, Elizabeth Olsen and John Hawkes landed nominations for Best Actress and Best Supporting Male for Martha Marcy May Marlene, and Ryan Gosling and Woody Harrelson were both singled out in Best Actor for Drive and Rampart respectively.

Hit the jump to check out the full list of nominations. Recognizing the best in independent film, the awards will be handed out on February 25th, the day before the Oscars.

And so our 2012 Oscar Preview has come to a close. Over the past three days we’ve brought you our coverage of how the race stacks up for Best Supporting Actress and Actor, Best Actress and Actor, and Best Animated Feature, Screenplay, as well as the technical categories. Today, we’re covering the big ones: Best Picture and Best Director. There are two early frontrunners for the big prize, but we’ve still got a number of unseen pics that could play the spoiler. As for the director race, does Steven Spielberg have a shot at his first trophy in over a decade, or will an Oscar virgin take home the prize? Hit the jump for the current state of the race in the Best Picture and Best Director categories.

Continuing on with our look at the 2012 Oscar race, today we delve into Best Animated Feature and the technical categories. As Pixar’s Cars 2 was the studio’s worst-received feature to date (it currently sits at 38% on Rotten Tomatoes), we’ve got ourselves an actual competition in the Animated Feature category. Not only that, but if all 18 films that were submitted to the Academy are deemed eligible, we’ll have a total of five nominated films. This leaves us to debate the merits of Rango and The Adventures of Tintin against the likes of Puss in Boots and Arthur Christmas.

Additionally, we’ve taken a stab at Best Original Screenplay, Best Adapted Screenplay, and the technical categories. As these are incredibly tricky to predict this far out (and my picks would be doomed to haunt me come February), I’ve simply listed a couple of frontrunners in each category instead of going in depth. Though it’s still early, we’ve got an overall picture of how things look like they’ll stack up; so hit the jump to check out the state of the race so far. If you missed our previous preview articles, be sure to take a look at our picks for Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress, and Best Actor and Best Actress.

In Alexander Payne’s latest film, The Descendants, actress Shailene Woodley gives a movie star-making performance as Alexandra, the rebellious 17-year-old daughter of Matt King (George Clooney). With their mother in a coma, after a tragic boating accident, Alexandra and her precocious 10-year-old sister, Scottie (Amara Miller), find themselves on a course toward rebuilding their family and lives, as their father re-examines his past and determines what that means for his future.

At the film’s press day, Shailene Woodley talked about responding to such a real and messy story, the transition in going from her hit ABC Family drama series The Secret Life of the American Teenager to this big screen role, her own rebellious period when she was 14 and 15, what it was like to work with “superhuman” George Clooney, and that she enjoys acting because it fuels a passion in her. Check out what she had to say after the jump.

In The Descendants, director Alexander Payne (creator of the Oscar-winning Sideways) follows the unpredictable journey of an American family at a crossroads. Set in picturesque Hawaii, Matt King (George Clooney), husband and father of two girls, is forced to re-examine his life when his wife is incapacitated in a boating accident. While attempting to repair his relationship with his 17-year old daughter Alexandra (Shailene Woodley) and 10-year-old Scottie (Amara Miller), he learns things about his wife and his family that he was never even aware of, but that send him down the path toward rebuilding his life.

At the film’s press day, Alexander Payne talked about wanting to bring such a human story to life, how happy he was to get to work with George Clooney on this film after deciding that he wasn’t right for Sideways, what led him to cast Shailene Woodley, and what draws him to atypical love stories. He also talked about having his next two projects lined up – a film about a father-son road trip from Montana to Nebraska, tentatively called Nebraska (scheduled to shoot in May 2012) and an adaptation of a Daniel Clowes graphic novel, called Wilson (scheduled to shoot in late 2012 or early 2013). Check out what he had to say after the jump:

[This review is a re-print of my review from the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival.]

It’s been a long seven years since Alexander Payne‘s Sideways hit theaters and his new film The Descendants shows that it’s damn good to have him back. Tackling materials that could have easily fallen into mawkishness and enough saccharine moments to give diabetes to a small country, The Descendants is instead a sweet, tender movie that never lunges for the heart-strings. It creates an emotional connection through a charming blend of humor, honesty, and a breakthrough turn from young actress Shailene Woodley, and one of the best performances of George Clooney‘s career.

Writer-director Alexander Payne has a likely Oscar-contender on his hands with The Descendants, his first movie since 2004′s Sideways.  We shouldn’t expect another seven-year absence from Payne since he’s gearing up for an April start date on his next movie, Nebraska. The film will shoot in black-and-white and is searching for a respected veteran actor to play the lead role of an aging alcoholic father.

Empire reports that Payne is already planning his follow-up to Nebraska by adapting Daniel Clowes‘ graphic novel, Wilson.  We reported last year that Fox Searchlight had acquired the book as a directing vehicle for Payne.  The movie follows “a middle-aged misanthrope who’s left floundering after the death of his father and tries to reconnect with his ex-wife and the teenager daughter he’s never known.”  Clowes (Ghost World) wrote the screenplay and the movie will be set in Oakland, California.  Hit the jump for a synopsis of Wilson.  I haven’t read the book yet, but I’m interested to see anything Payne does.  The Descendants opens in limited release on November 16th.