Last week, we reported that Matthew McConaughey was circling Christopher Nolan‘s upcoming sci-fi film, Interstellar.  Nothing is known about the film other than it’s “a heroic interstellar voyage to the furthest reaches of our scientific understanding.”  Today, the Star Tribune (via CHUD) reports that McConaughey told them, “I’m confirming.”  He wouldn’t say anything beyond that, and I’m sure all of the actors who sign on will have the super-strict NDAs that come with joining a Nolan project.

McConaughey has entered a new phase in his career where he’s taking challenging and interesting roles, and I’m excited to see what he’ll bring to the project.  The actor is currently filming the HBO anthology drama series True Detective with Woody Harrelson, and recently wrapped shooting on the AIDS drama, The Dallas Buyers Club.  He’ll next be seen in theaters turning in another great performance in Jeff Nichols‘ Mud.  Interstellar opens on November 7, 2014.  Filming is set to begin this summer.

Alright, alright, alright.  As Christopher Nolan brought his Batman trilogy to a close last summer with the release of The Dark Knight Rises, interest then turned to what Nolan would choose as his next project.  We finally learned in January that Nolan had settled on the ambitious sci-fi film Interstellar as his next directorial outing, and now it appears that he’s decided on who he wants as his lead: none other than Mr. Matthew McConaughey.  Hit the jump for more.

We’re only a short week away from the 85th Academy Awards, and with the close of Oscar season approaching, we’d thought this would be a nice opportunity to take a look back at how some of the races have played out, chronicling the ebbs and flows of the past 12 months or so that got us to where we are today.  We’re kicking things off with one of the more open categories: Best Supporting Actor.

One important thing to keep in mind when looking at the Oscars is that the race is incredibly fluid.  A film could be the clear frontrunner in a category one week, then might stumble to second or even third place in the ensuing weeks.  With this series of articles, we’ll be looking at exactly how much each race has changed, starting with Best Supporting Actor.  Hit the jump to read on.

I was with Killer Joe right up until the very end. For the first 95%, it held me tight in its grip: another brilliant collaboration between playwright Tracy Letts and director William Friedkin. The former brings the juicy hard-boiled dialogue, while the latter makes the story feel cinematic rather than canned theater. It’s a wild ride from the get-go… which makes its badly misplayed finale all the more disappointing. Hit the jump for my full review.

Jeff Nichols‘ Mud almost has it all.  It’s a sweet coming-of-age story, an adventure, a crime-thriller, and a romance.  Lead actors Tye Sheridan and Matthew McConaughey give outstanding performances as a boy and a man, respectively, who bristle when the world won’t conform to the mythic journey they’ve envisioned.  Nichols gives the movie a sweet, soft, and loving tone that takes the best of identity of the Deep South (i.e. avoids racism), and uses it as a rich backdrop for a captivating tale.  The film’s only flaw comes from implicitly agreeing with the main characters’ immature belief that women are not to be trusted.  To the film’s minor detriment, Nichols doesn’t examine how his characters can grow up when the script embraces such a facile and childish notion.

We saw the first two clips from writer/director Jeff Nichols’ Mud back in May of last year, but now the first trailer has been made available.  Starring Matthew McConaughey (Magic Mike) as a fugitive drifter who finds safe harbor on an island in the Mississippi River, but is discovered and befriended by two teenage boys (Tye Sheridan and Jacob Lofland).  The trailer gives a great sense of the tension that builds over the course of the picture and hints at the dangerous situation the boys unwittingly become involved in.  Also starring Reese Witherspoon, Sam Shepherd, Michael Shannon and Sarah Paulson, Mud opens in limited release on April 26th.  Hit the jump to watch the trailer.

Just yesterday we got a look at the 104 scores that will be gunning for the Best Original Score Oscar at the upcoming 85th Academy Awards, and today the Academy has unveiled the list of 75 songs that will be competing for the coveted Best Original Song trophy.  While the expected contenders like “Suddenly” from Les Miserables and “Song of the Lonely Mountain” from The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey appear, one of the pleasant surprises is Adele’s “Skyfall” from Skyfall.

Since Adele’s magnificent Bond track draws a few cues from the franchise’s theme, many assumed that the Academy might rule it ineligible for the Best Original Song trophy.  Not so, it appears, and now it looks like Adele just might land herself an Academy Award to keep those 47 Grammys company.  Also of note, Matthew McConaughey could find himself a Best Original Song nominee for “Ladies of Tampa” from Magic Mike.  MAKE THIS HAPPEN, PEOPLE.  Hit the jump to check out the full list.  The nominations for the 85th Academy Awards will be announced January 10th.

The New York Film Critics Circle has kicked the awards race off in earnest, and the love was spread primarily between Zero Dark Thirty and Lincoln.  The drama about the hunt for Osama bin Laden took home Best Picture, Best Director for Kathryn Bigelow, and Best Cinematographer, while Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln was awarded Best Screenplay, Best Actor, and Best Supporting Actress.  The group also had a couple of left field choices with the Best Supporting Actor award going to Matthew McConaughey for Magic Mike (alright, alright, alright) and Best Actress going to Rachel Weisz for The Deep Blue Sea.  McConaughey winning the trophy was a pleasant surprise, but Weisz’s win is a tad baffling.

Hit the jump to check out the full list of winners, and click here to peruse our recent Oscar Preview features.

We saw that Jared Leto lost a lot of weight to play a flamboyant cross-dresser with HIV in The Dallas Buyers Club in these set photos.  But there he was covered by a bulky fur coat.  To show off his dramatic transformation, Leto recruited photographer Terry Richardson for a shirtless shoot, and oh my goodness!  Leto has become the kind of skinny that is hard to look at.  I admire his commitment to the role, but I can’t imagine a scenario in which the verisimilitude is worth the health issues.

Matthew McConaughey has also drawn attention for his weight loss to play the lead role in Dallas Buyers Club, based on the true story of Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaughey).  Woodroof was given six months to live after a 1986 AIDS diagnosis, but instead survived six years on the medication he smuggled into the U.S. that he shared with other patients.  Jennifer Garner co-stars in the Jean-Marc Vallée-directed drama.  Check out the Leto photos after the jump.

The nominations for the 2013 Independent Spirit Awards have been announced, and Oscar hopefuls Silver Linings Playbook and Moonrise Kingdom lead the pack.  Both films picked up nominations for Best Feature, Director, and Screenplay with Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper landing acting noms for SLP and Bruce Willis garnering a swell Best Supporting Actor nomination for his work in Moonrise Kingdom.  Beasts of the Southern Wild, Bernie, and Keep the Lights On round out the Best Feature nominees, while The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Safety Not Guaranteed were singled out for the Best First Feature award.  Also, Matthew McConaughey pulled double nominations for his stellar work in this year’s Magic Mike and Killer Joe, landing a Best Supporting Actor and Best Actor nod, respectively.  Notably shut out of the race entirely was Leos Carax‘s critically-lauded Holy Motors.

Hit the jump to check out the full list of nominations.  The winners of the 2013 Spirit Awards will be announced on Saturday, February 23, 2013.

Oscar season is in full swing, folks.  2012 has been a fantastic year in film so far, and with merely weeks to go before 2013 begins there are still a couple of highly anticipated films that have yet to be seen.  Just like last year, I’ll be running down a preview of the upcoming Oscar race during this fine Thanksgiving week, giving readers a look at what the state of the race looks like right now.  To be clear, this isn’t a personal list but rather an objective look at how things look to be shaping up.  I’ve divided each category into frontrunners, likely to be nominated, and other contenders in order to parse out where things stand at the moment.  There are multiple strong contenders in nearly every category, so this is looking to be a rather heated run to the finish line.

We’ll be looking at a couple of different major categories each day over the next four days, and we’re kicking things off with the Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress categories.  Hit the jump to read on.

Some images from the set of a couple of upcoming films have surfaced online.  First up, though we just saw the first trailer for the film last week, Brad Pitt is back on set doing reshoots for director Marc Forster’s zombie apocalypse pic World War Z.  We know that the third act was reworked by Damon Lindelof and Drew Goddard, so presumably these images are from the film’s finale – which explains why Pitt is so bloody.  World War Z opens on June 21, 2013.

Additionally, following a five-year break from acting Jared Leto is back in a big way on the set of the AIDS drama The Dallas Buyers Club.  Based on a true story, Matthew McConaughey plays a Texas electrician who, after being diagnosed with AIDS in 1986, began to smuggle alternative and illegal treatments into the US and into the hands of other patients.  We previously heard that Leto would be playing a flamboyant cross-dresser with HIV who helps McConaughey’s character, and these set photos prove that the actor isn’t doing this thing half-heartedly.  Hit the jump for the images from both films.

Channing Tatum came close to being an also-ran, but this year turned him into a star. Between The Vow, 21 Jump Street and Magic Mike, he went from being a lunkhead into a likeable lunkhead. He got the joke. Magic Mike was directed by Steven Soderbergh, and the story was that Soderbergh was so intrigued by Tatum’s life as a male stripper, he saw potential for a movie there. He was right, there is a good movie in his story, and Magic Mike was one of the best mainstream films of the summer. Our review of the Blu-ray follows after the jump.

Paramount Pictures is looking to stay in the Martin Scorsese business, as the studio behind Shutter Island and Hugo has picked up the director’s latest film, The Wolf of Wall Street, for domestic distribution.  Based on the memoir of Jordan Belfort, the pic stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a hard partying, drug addicted stockbroker who was indicted in 1998 for security fraud and money laundering and served a 22-month federal prison stretch.  The fantastic supporting cast includes Jonah Hill, Kyle Chandler, Matthew McConaughey, Jean Dujardin, Margot Robbie, Joe Bernthal, and Rob Reiner.

Given the film’s pedigree, it’s no surprise that Deadline reports Paramount is planning a fourth-quarter 2013 release date.  That puts Wolf of Wall Street in prime awards season placement, so the film should be a significant player in the 2013 Oscar race.

Four Canadian character posters have been released for Lee Daniels‘ The Paperboy.  The film is about a reporter (Matthew McConaughey) and his younger brother (Zac Efron) working with a nymphomaniac (Nicole Kidman) to free her beloved felon (John Cusack).  It’s pretty terrible.  However, I can’t argue with the pull quote that describes the movie as “sweaty”.  I would add that the flick is also sticky, rancid, and pungent.  But it does have famous people in it, and these posters convey that fact perfectly.

Hit the jump to check out the posters.  The Paperboy opens October 5th in the U.S.  It opens October 19th in Canada.