With AMC’s award-winning series Mad Men returning Sunday night, I recently had the chance to participate in a roundtable interview with Elisabeth Moss.  Since the cast is always guarded when talking about upcoming storylines, most of the interview covered the big storylines of last season, Peggy’s relationship with Don Draper (Jon Hamm), what Matthew Weiner told her about her character last season, and a lot more.  Hit the jump to either read or listen to what Moss had to say.

Though the clips featured in the latest Mad Men promo from AMC all come from last season (because as we all know, creator Matthew Weiner keeps an iron grip around most of the promotional material), the message is still clear: moving forward, things are still not going to get easier for Don Draper (Jon Hamm).

The show has also released a telling poster that highlights Don’s internal struggle as he tries to move forward with his life but keeps getting pulled back into his old ways.  There have also been a few glamourous promo photos that tease the show’s movement into the 1970s.  For the latest TV trailer and a few thoughts on the upcoming season, hit the jump.

Written and directed by Academy Award winner Jane Campion, the stunning, evocative and often unsettling seven-part mini-series Top of the Lake follows Detective Robin Griffin (Elisabeth Moss), who returns home to care for her sick mother and finds herself caught up in the missing persons investigation of Tui Mitcham, a young girl who is 12 years old and five months pregnant.  But, in this breathtaking but remote mountain town, Robin quickly realizes that this case is far from simple and that she must face her own haunting past, along with evil forces as powerful as the land itself, if she is ever to uncover the answers.  The mini-series also stars Holly Hunter, David Wenham, Peter Mullan, Thomas M. Wright and Jay Ryan.

During this recent exclusive phone interview with Collider, actress Elisabeth Moss talked about how she came to be a part of this mini-series, the most challenging aspects of the role, the experience of shooting in such a desolate and vast part of New Zealand, how she approached playing this character, collaborating with filmmaker Jane Campion, that the story will continue to get darker and creepier as it evolves, the experience of working with co-star Holly Hunter, and how cool it was to work on a series where the story has the closure of a film.  Check out what she had to say after the jump.

There is something darkly meditative about Jane Campion‘s (Bright Star) work Top of the Lake, which was the first television series ever to be screened at Sundance, and definitely deserves the distinction.  The premise is reminiscent of works like The Killing or even Twin Peaks, where a special investigator begins unraveling a disturbing central mystery that is ripping a small, remote town apart.  In this case it’s Mad Men‘s Elizabeth Moss as Robin, who is home in New Zealand visiting her cancer-stricken mother when a 12 year old girl, Tui (Jacqueline Joe), the daughter of a local drug lord, is found to be five months pregnant.  The father?  “No one,” Tui writes down.  Soon she disappears completely, and what follows is a dark and twisted journey that uncovers the moral decay of what appears to be a pristine paradise.  For more on the series, hit the jump.

AMC has slowly been teasing us with promotional pictures and teasers for the upcoming season of Mad Men, but we’ve finally made the jump to color with this latest batch.  In them we see some characters not featured in the other promos, including Stan and his magnificent beard, as well as Ginsberg posing as Colonel Sanders.  Joan is resplendent with her deep cerulean blue gown while Megan’s hair is in need of a warning beacon for incoming jets.  Above all, there’s baby Eugene, who is now a toddler from the Renaissance.  Hit the jump for the pics.

Two of Mad Men’s brassiest ladies have just landed new projects:

• Christina Hendricks will play the lead role in Campbell Scott’s (Company Retreat) adaptation of the Joan Didion novel A Book of Common Prayer.

• Elisabeth Moss, Mark Duplass (Safety Not Guaranteed), and Ted Danson will star in The One I Love from first time director Charlie McDowell (Fighting Jacob).

Hit the jump for more on each casting announcement.

Although Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road was published more than fifty years ago, there has never been a film adaptation of it. All that changed when producer Francis Ford Coppola and The Motorcycle Diaries director Walter Salles signed on, adding Garret Hedlund (Tron: Legacy) as the starring role of Dean Moriarty. Now we have a look at the first trailer from the film, which is set to open in France this May with a possible domestic distribution pick up if and when the film premiers at Cannes (May 16th – May 27th). The Beat generation road trip film also stars Kristen Stewart, Sam Riley, Amy Adams, Kirsten Dunst, Viggo Mortensen, Tom Sturridge, Danny Morgan, Alice Braga and Elisabeth Moss. Hit the jump to check out the trailer.

Style, debauchery, deception, adultery, jealousy. That about sums up AMC’s Mad Men, which returns for it’s fifth season on March 25th. We already brought you the series promo and some fantastic marketing, but now the creative team has gotten a little more specific.  They’ve released some short character trailers featuring your favorite ad men and women. So far they’ve highlighted Peggy (Elisabeth Moss), Joan (Christina Hendricks), Roger (John Slattery) and, of course, Don (Jon Hamm). Mad Men returns for it’s fifth season on March 25th on AMC. Hit the jump to check out the character trailers.

In preparation for the two-hour season five premiere of Mad Men on March 25^th, AMC has rolled out some new marketing. It’s a tricky thing to do, and do well, when your popular show centers on the men and women of an ad agency, but as usual they’ve nailed it. With all the color and clutter of New York City’s skyline vying for your visual attention, these clean and minimalist billboards are refreshing, eye-catching and iconic. We’ve also got the first promo video for season five which ties in nicely to the rest of the marketing. Mad Men, starring Jon Hamm, Elisabeth Moss and Vincent Kartheiser, returns to AMC on March 25^th. Hit the jump to check out the marketing.

On the AMC series Mad Men, the work of Elisabeth Moss is one many fine points on the period drama, and now she’s taking her talents to another television outlet between her steady work as Peggy Olsen. Deadline has word that the actress is in final negotiations to lead a new six-hour mini-series from BBC 2 called Top of the Lake. Writer/director Jane Campion (who won an Oscar for her work on The Piano) is working with The King’s Speech producers Emile Sherman and Iain Canning to tell the story of Robin Griffin (Moss), a detective investigating the disappearance of a 12-year-old pregnant girl, who is the daughter of a local drug lord. Campion not only co-wrote the script with Gerald Lee, but she will also direct the mini-series as well. Right now it doesn’t have a network home in the United States, but Sundance Channel is apparently interested in picking it up. Either way, I’m sure we’ll see it here in the States sometime down the road, and certainly in contention for the Emmys when the time comes.

Fans of the Green Lantern franchise who can’t wait until Ryan Reynolds powers up in theaters might want to check out DC’s latest animated film, Green Lantern: Emerald Knights. Not only is Emerald Knights up to the same quality as previous animated DC releases, it embraces the mythos of Green Lantern to tell far more than a mere origin story. Emerald Knights possesses six stories all told: five tales from Green Lantern lore that are bookended by an over-arcing frame story. The main tale revolves around the Green Lantern Corps preparing for battle against Krona, an ancient enemy of the Corps’ progenitors, the Guardians of Oa. The five additional stories come across as fables that various Lanterns tell new recruit, Arisia, while they wait for Krona to make his move.

Check out the trailer for Green Lantern: Emerald Knights here and hit the jump for my full review.

Wither, Don Draper? For Season Four of the hit show Mad Men, Jon Hamm’s Draper and his new company Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce is holding on with one big client: Lucky Strikes. But that deal is tentative, Draper is bottoming out as a drunk, and his family is suffering from its divorce, with little Sally Beth Draper (Kiernan Shipka) acting out in more and more inappropriate ways. With all this drama it’s sad to think we won’t see where these characters end up for another year or so. Our review of Mad Men Season 4 on Blu-ray follows after the jump.

A trailer has gone online for the direct-to-video animated film Green Lantern: Emerald Knights.  The marketing of this film is beautiful in how it confuses and frustrates fanboys.  The selling point is: “Nathan Fillion as Green Lantern!”  And immediately you respond, “Wait?  What!  But I thought Ryan Reynolds was playing Green Lantern!  Is Fillion going to finally get the big break he so richly deserves?  JESUS GOD WHAT IS HAPPENING?!”  Then in fine print you see (“Emerald Knights”…animated movie…direct-to-DVD) and the world goes back to making sense.

Green Lantern: Emerald Knights has six interlocking stories that focus on different members of the Green Lantern Corps.  The voice cast also includes Jason Isaacs (Harry Potter), Elisabeth Moss (Mad Men), Henry Rollins, and Roddy Piper.  Hit the jump to check out the trailer.  Green Lantern: Emerald Knights hits DVD and Blu-ray on June 7th, ten days before the live-action Green Lantern hits theaters.

After a rough ride, On the Road is finally getting closer to completion. After the first set photos, new shots from director Walter Salles’ adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s seminal novel have been released, and appear to perfectly transcribe the poetic energy and black-and-white imagery that the story inevitably conjures up, raising the question whether the movie will also be in black-and-white.

Produced by Francis Ford Coppola, the film stars stars Garrett Hedlund (TRON: Legacy) and Sam Riley (Control) as Sal Paradise, the mystic Dean Moriarty and Sal Paradise embark on a road trip across North America in search of adventure and freedom.  The cast also boasts a long, all-star cast, including Kristen Stewart, Kirsten Dunst, Viggo Moretensen, Amy Adams, Steve Buscemi, Terrence Howard and Mad Men’s Elisabeth Moss. Hit the jump to see the photos and find out more about On the Road.

We have two bits of casting news to bring you this morning.  First, Kevin Kline, Diane Keaton, Richard Jenkins, and Elisabeth Moss have all joined Darling Companion.  The film was co-written, along with his wife Meg, by four time Oscar-nominee Lawrence Kasdan.  Companion is meant to be the third installment in a trilogy which includes 1983′s The Big Chill and 1991′s Grand Canyon.  From Risky Business, the film “follows a woman (Keaton) who takes in a stray dog as a companion to fill the void left by her distracted husband (Kline), only to see him lose the mutt after a wedding at their vacation home in the Rockies. A search for the animal includes several guests and a mysterious young woman.”  The report fails to disclose exactly what Jenkins and Moss’ roles may entail thus we are to assume Jenkins will be one of “several guests” with Moss perhaps filling the role of “mysterious young woman.”  Production on Companion is scheduled to begin within the next week in Utah.

To read about Stephen Root’s latest gigs, hit the jump.