A new international trailer for Interview with the Vampire director Neil Jordan’s upcoming vampire drama Byzantium has been released online.  The film stars Gemma Arterton and Saoirse Ronan as a mother/daughter vampire duo who arrive in a small British town where their secret doesn’t stay kept for long.  This latest trailer certainly highlights the film’s impressively stylish visuals, while also showcasing the intensity of the story.  Matt caught the film at TIFF last year and expressed his disappointment with the finished product in his review, and I’m interested to see how Jordan sets this pic apart from Interview with the Vampire, which also explores the notion of cursed immortality.

Hit the jump to watch the trailer.  The film also stars Sam Riley, Caleb Landry Jones, and Jonny Lee Miller.  Byzantium opens on June 28th.

It’s apparently “Godzilla reboot news day.”  This morning we learned that Frank Darabont will be doing a final rewrite on the script for director Gareth Edwards’ reboot of Godzilla, along with the news that two of the film’s producers are battling Legendary Pictures to stay onboard the project.  We actually know very little about the redo beyond the fact that Edwards is tackling Godzilla with a grounded, realistic tone (ie. what would it be like if this monster actually appeared in real life and started terrorizing cities?), but today word has surfaced concerning the film’s firm production start date, shooting locations, and which actors the studio and Edwards are looking at to take on the lead role.  Hit the jump for Godzilla details galore.

Some casting news for you today.  Check out the info in brief below:

• Clive Owen (Children of Men) will team up with The Sitter writers Brian Gatewood and Alessandro Tanaka for their directorial debut comedy, The King of the Castle.
• Patrick Wilson (Insidious) and Liv Tyler (Armageddon) join an ensemble cast in the sci-fi dramatic comedy, Space Station 76, written and directed by Jack Plotnick.
• Caleb Landry Jones (X-Men: First Class) will join the Canadian French-language indie, Tom a la Ferme, from director/star Xavier Dolan (Laurence Anyways).

Hit the jump for more on each picture. 

When I’m in the checkout line at the supermarket, and I see all of the celebrity magazines, I’m confused.  People who would buy those magazines and tabloids don’t seem to realize that celebrities are strangers.  If Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have a baby, then I don’t see how that impacts anyone’s lives but their own.  But celebrities are viewed as a commodity, and Brandon Cronenberg‘s clever film Antiviral carries out this extension of human commodity into a perverse economy where there’s just enough shreds of truth to make us wonder if his world could really happen if the science was possible.  However, despite the fascinating ideas at the forefront, the story and characters almost feel perfunctory, and any attempts to make the movie feel like a thriller come off as heavy-handed.  Cronenberg has crafted a film that is sick, sad, smart, and serviceable.

The possibilities of the vampire story have become increasingly limited.  The story has been around for so long, and has been done so many ways, especially of late, that it’s difficult for a storyteller to come in and find a new spin within the predefined parameters of what we all agree is a “vampire”: a bloodsucking immortal.  In his new film Byzantium, director Neil Jordan has seized upon the “immortal” part and how a vampire would always be, in a sense, frozen in the past and unable to move forward.  Consequently, Byzantium has trouble gaining any momentum.  As its protagonist moans about telling a story hundreds of times but never finding anyone to listen, the film struggles to find a rhythm and gets bogged down in some cringeworthy dialogue.  But the most frustrating aspect of Byzantium is how it fails to pursue a thoughtful, gender-related idea that holds far more potential than another exploration of how vampires are accursed creatures sentenced to wander the earth alone forever and ever anon.

The first clip from the vampire drama Byzantium has landed online.  Directed by Neil Jordan (Interview with the Vampire), the film stars Gemma Arterton and Saoirse Ronan as a mother/daughter vampire duo who arrive in a small British town where their secret doesn’t stay kept for long.  This clip is a scene between Ronan and X-Men: First Class star Caleb Landry Jones, and it’s not exactly Twilight.  We see Ronan’s character react in slow motion to Jones dropping a fair amount of his blood on the ground.  It’s a bit haunting, a bit strange, and slightly disturbing, but I’m wholly intrigued.

Hit the jump to take a look.  The film also stars Sam Riley and Jonny Lee Miller.  Byzantium will premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, which is currently underway.

An unnerving trailer for Brandon Cronenberg‘s Antiviral has gone online.  The film stars Caleb Landry Jones (X-Men: First Class) as a worker at a specialized clinic where patients pay to be infected with diseases harvested from celebrities as a way to feel closer to their idols.  Judging by the trailer, Brandon Cronenberg (son of David Cronenberg) seems to share his father’s understanding that being gory isn’t enough if you want to creep people out.  You have to find the right way to destroy the human body if you want to disturb the audience.  Antiviral looks like it’s going to disturb the hell out of its audience.

Hit the jump to check out the trailer along with the poster, a clip, and a viral promo (no pun intended).  Antiviral will play at the Toronto International Film Festival next month, and I plan to check it out provided I haven’t eaten beforehand.

We’ve been provided with five clips and sixteen images from director Baltasar Kormákur’s crime thriller Contraband. The film is set in the world of international smuggling and stars Mark Wahlberg as a man trying to escape his days as a criminal. When his brother-in-law (Caleb Landry Jones) botches a deal, Wahlberg’s character must settle his brother-in-law’s debt in order to keep him safe from a drug boss (Giovanni Ribisi).  The film also stars Kate Beckinsale, Ben Foster, J.K. Simmons, and Diego Luna.

Hit the jump to check out the clips and images.  Contraband opens January 13th, 2012.

We’ve been provided with five clips from the crime thriller Contraband. The film is set in the world of international smuggling and stars Mark Wahlberg as a man trying to escape his days as a criminal. When his brother-in-law (Caleb Landry Jones) botches a deal, Wahlberg’s character must settle his brother-in-law’s debt in order to keep him safe from a drug boss (Giovanni Ribisi).

Hit the jump to check out the clips.  The film also stars Kate Beckinsale, Ben Foster, J.K. Simmons, and Diego Luna.  Contraband opens January 13th, 2012.

The trailer for Contraband has gone online and I have no idea what differentiates it from other Mark Wahlberg crime movies.  He’s either a cop or a good-guy criminal and in this movie he’s the latter.  He plays a former smuggler who’s called back into the game when his brother-in-law (X-Men: First Class‘ Caleb Landry Jones) steals from the wrong gangster (Giovanni Ribisi with a bizarre, distracting accent).  Wahlberg then puts together a team of crooks (including characters played by Ben Foster and Lukas Haas) and it looks a little like The Italian Job with smuggling and cool duct tape masks.  Hopefully, the film will have something to make it stand apart from other movies where Wahlberg plays a frantic, hard-nosed character.

Hit the jump to check out the trailer and a number of new images.  The film also stars Kate Beckinsale, J.K. Simmons, and Diego Luna.  Contraband opens January 13, 2012.

Caleb Landry Jones (X-Men: First Class) has landed the male lead role in Neil Jordan’s vampire drama Byzantium.  The film stars Saoirse Ronan and Gemma Arterton as a daughter and mother who are vampires who arrive in a small British town.  According to Variety, they reveal their secret to the town and the daughter begins a relationship with teenager dying of leukemia (Jones) which in turns forces him to struggle with his mortality, causing Saorsie Ronan’s character to struggle with her own immortality.  When we first reported on the film back in May, the cast also included Helena Bonham Carter, Ralph Fiennes, and Jeremy Irvine (War Horse), but there’s no mention of them in Vulture’s story.  Hopefully Fiennes and Carter are still on board (I haven’t seen Irvine in anything so I can’t really judge either way).

Jones was one of the weaker cast members in First Class, but in all fairness his character was broadly drawn and he didn’t get much screen time. He’ll next be seen alongside Mark Wahlberg in the crime-thriller Contraband.

While Fox may be striking out with their posters for X-Men: First Class, the trailers continue to be fantastic.  The studio has released three new trailers for the film, each focusing on a different mutant: Banshee (Caleb Landry Jones), Havok (Lucas Till), and Beast (Nicholas Hoult).  One of my main concerns about the movie is that it will be overstuffed with mutants like X-Men: The Last Stand.  However, these brief character trailers give me hope that the film has devoted time to each of the characters to not only show their abilities, but also to illustrate their personalities.  However, in the trailers for Banshee and Havok, we get an even better sense of Xavier with James McAvoy doing an excellent job of conveying the character’s compassion.

Hit the jump to check out the trailers.  X-Men: First Class also stars Michael Fassbender, January Jones, Rose Byrne, Jennifer Lawrence, Oliver Platt, and Kevin Bacon.  It opens June 3rd.

A UK trailer for X-Men: First Class has gone online.  There’s not much in the way of new footage, but it does provide a first look at Banshee (Caleb Landry Jones) in flight and Havok (Lucas Till) using his sonic blasts.

Hit the jump to check out the trailer.  The film stars James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Rose Byrne, January Jones, Oliver Platt, and Kevin Bacon.  X-Men: First Class opens in the UK on June 1st and in the U.S. on June 3rd.

With production in Hollywood getting ready to shut down for the holidays, agents all over town are scrambling to finalize last-minute deals for their clients. Hence, tons of casting news was released today.

Max Minghella, who played Divya (the Winklevoss twins’ third partner) in The Social Network, is set to star as Ben Harper in George Clooney’s The Ides of March. Clooney wrote, will direct, and stars in the political drama alongside Ryan Gosling, Paul Giamatti, Marisa Tomei and Evan Rachel Wood.

Hit the jump for many more casting announcements for The Door, The Hangover Part II, City of Bones, Contraband, and So Undercover.

Despite every bad trend that lies in waiting for The Last Exorcism to fall into, director Daniel Stamm deftly provides the route for this “found-footage” horror to excel and give us a lean and thrilling character study with scary results. Certain rules simply do not exist as a subtle but involving musical score accompanies the story of a reverend that is out to disprove exorcisms by unwittingly taking on a final challenge that puts everything in doubt. The film is all the more remarkable for the sparse special effects and the PG-13 rating that defies the odds with crafty camerawork. For those not seeking the blood bath often associated with horror these days and willing to put up with a genuine storyline being established in the first third, you will be rewarded with a horror flick that makes you think more than it will make you jump.