Here’s more of today’s casting news:

• Dominic Cooper (Captain America: The First Avenger) is in negotiations to join Luke Evans in Dracula, the Universal picture directed by Gary Shore.
• Alicia Vikander (Anna Karenina) is in talks for The Man from U.N.C.L.E., the Guy Ritchie-directed adaptation of the TV series that stars Tom Cruise and Armie Hammer.
• Pierce Brosnan (The Thomas Crown Affair), Jessica Alba (Sin City) and Kristin Scott Thomas (The English Patient) will star in How to Make Love Like an Englishman for director Tom Vaughan.

Hit the jump for more on each casting announcement.

If the promos are any indication, we could be in for an entertaining Oscars ceremony with Seth MacFarlane as the show’s host.  This year’s Academy Awards will feature a tribute to James Bond, and a new promo has MacFarlane mocking Bond’s famous and nonsensical drink order.

Hit the jump to check out the promo.  In other Oscars news, a recent press release confirms an earlier story that Mark Wahlberg and Ted will co-present as this year’s ceremony.  “I’m excited to present an Oscar with Mark Wahlberg,” says Ted. “I’m spending the next month learning to pronounce ‘Quvenzhané.’”  The Ted spotlight will be even brighter with Norah Jones singing the Oscar-nominated song from the film, “Everybody Needs a Best Friend.”

When it comes to boxed sets, the James Bond franchise faces a fascinating dilemma. Unlike Star Wars or Harry Potter, which have viable endings – or even Star Trek, which can be broken down into identifiable “phases” – Bond lacks any sense of closure. You could divide it up by actors, but that leaves some sets with up to seven movies and others with only one or two. You could go by era, but that, too, proves rather messy. And as for completion… this franchise can (and probably will) bury us all. So how do you pick up a “complete” set, knowing that you’ll just have to add to it in a couple of years?

The 50^th anniversary of the franchise provides as good an opportunity as any to pick up a “definitive” collection, and the studio makes sure that the effort is worth it. Little about the set is new or different, but the simple fact of holding all 22 Bond films in Blu-ray form is enough to make most film geeks cackle with glee. Hit the jump for my full review of Bond 50: The Complete 22-Film Collection on Blu-ray.

We’re happy to debut some new images from the upcoming James Bond documentary Everything or Nothing: The Untold Story of 007.  Directed by Steven Ridley (Fired in Babylon), the film focuses on how producer Albert R. Broccoli, Harry Saltzman, and author Ian Fleming created one of the most iconic and longest running film franchises in history.  The doc includes interviews with many of the Bonds, and these images offer a revealing behind-the-scenes glimpse at a few of the films.

Hit the jump to check out the images.  Everything or Nothing debuts on EPIX on Friday, October 5th.

Filming has commenced on director Pascal Chaumeil’s (Heartbreaker) adaptation of the Nick Hornby novel A Long Way Down.  The story revolves around a group of strangers who coincidentally meet on the top of a London skyscraper on New Year’s Eve where they individually had gone to commit suicide.  The four strangers make a pact to stay alive until Valentine’s Day at least, and the story follows this group of unlikely friends “as they try to pull back from the brink.”  The ensemble cast includes Pierce Brosnan, Toni Collette, Aaron Paul, and Imogen Poots, with Sam Neill and Rosamund Pike (Pride and Prejudice) also signing on.

The four central strangers are played by Brosnan, Collette, Paul, and Poots, who are set as a once-beloved TV personality, single mother, failed musician turned pizza-delivery boy and a “sassy teen” respectively.  Hornby is the author behind such great works as High Fidelity, About a Boy and Fever Pitch, so the source material is a solid foundation.  Jack Thorne (How I Live Now) wrote the screenplay and production is taking place in England and Spain.  Hit the jump to read the full press release (which includes a synopsis) and to check out the first image.

Earlier today, TIFF announced that they were adding new films to their already stellar Galas and Special Presentations line-up.  Among the new additions are:

• Passion (directed by Brian De Palma) Starring Rachel McAdams, Noomi Rapace, Karoline Herfurth, and Paul Anderson.
• Love Is All You Need (directed by Susanne Bier) Starring Pierce Brosnan, Trine Dyrholm, and Paprika Steen.
• Spring Breakers (directed by Harmony Korine) Starring Selena Gomez, James Franco, Vanessa Hudgens, and Heather Morris.
• Yellow (directed by Nick Cassavettes) Starring Sienna Miller, Gena Rowlands, Ray Liotta, David Morse, Lucy Punch, Max Theoriot, Riley Keough, Daveigh Chase, Heather Wahlquist, and Melanie Griffith.

Hit the jump to check out the images and synopses.  The 2012 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 6 – 16th.

Two movies found their North American distributors today.

• Dimension Films picked up Compulsion, a psychological thriller led by Heather Graham, Carrie-Anne Moss, Kevin Dillon, and Joe Mantegna.
• Sony Pictures Classics acquired Love Is All You Need, a romantic comedy set in Italy, directed by Susanne Bier (In a Better World).  Pierce Brosnan, Trine Dyrholm, and Paprika Steen star.

The announcing press releases provide all the details after the jump.

It was announced today that Pierce Brosnan and Dominic Cooper have been set to star in the espionage action-thriller November Man.  The film is based on Bill Granger’s novel There Are No Spies and “tells the tale of an ex-CIA operative who is brought back in on a very personal mission and finds himself pitted against his former pupil in a deadly game involving high level CIA officials and the Russian president-elect.”  Production is set to begin in October in Berlin, with Roger Donaldson (The Bank Job) onboard to direct from a script by Michael Finch (Predators) and Karl Gajdusek (Tresspass).

Cooper has had a string of high profile roles as of late, as he starred as Howard Stark in last year’s Captain America: The First Avenger and turned heads with his stellar performance in The Devils Double.  He’ll be seen this summer in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.  Hit the jump to read the full press release regarding November Man.

Two new casting additions for a couple of thrillers to report today.  Here they are at a glance:

• Elijah Wood has been cast in the indie thriller, Grand Piano, pitched as “Speed at a piano.”
• Pierce Brosnan is set to join the  action drama The Coup alongside Owen Wilson.

Hit the jump for much more.

Tony, Toni, Toni.  We’ve got three casting notes for you today featuring one for Tony Danza and two indies for Toni Collette.  Here they are at a glance:

• Tony Danza has been tapped for Jospeh Gordon-Levitt’s directorial debut, an untitled dark comedy that also stars Julianne Moore and Scarlett Johansson.
• Toni Collette is eyeing the indies Miss You Already and The Long Way Down.

Hit the jump for more on each of the projects.

The first trailer for the Sarah Jessica Parker-starred I Don’t Know How She Does It has gone online. The romantic comedy, directed by Douglas McGrath (Emma) and written by Aline Brosh McKenna (The Devil Wears Prada), is based on the book by Allison Pearson, which tells the story of a working mom (Parker) trying to balance the many competing elements of her life. While it doesn’t necessarily look like a home run, the trailer seems a bit more promising than your standard “Kate Hudson is crazy but no one seems to notice” fare, if only because of the fantastic cast.

Parker stars alongside Greg Kinnear, Pierce Brosnan, Kelsey Grammar, Christina Hendricks, Olivia Munn, Seth Meyers and Jane Curtin. The Weinstein Company will release the flick on September 16^th. Hit the jump to watch the trailer.

The first trailer for Fox Searchlight’s Salvation Boulevard has been released. Starring Pierce Brosnan, Jennifer Connelly, Ed Harris, Greg Kinnear and Jim Gaffigan, the comedy centers on the preacher of a mega church who frames an ex-hippie for a crime he didn’t commit. The flick premiered at Sundance where Matt wasn’t too thrilled by the finished product. Hit the jump to watch the trailer.

Pierce Brosnan will star in Susanne Bier’s upcoming light-hearted romance movie All You Need Is Love.  Bier, who won an Oscar for In a Better World and is known more for her stark family melodramas, told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica that All You Need Is Love is “a tender story with a much lighter atmosphere than my previous works: Enough with conflicts.”  24 Frames reports that Bier wrote Brosnan’s role with the actor in mind.  Oddly, La Repubblica reports that the film will center on a Danish family, and Brosnan doesn’t speak the language.  However, it’s possible that movie is bilingual or that the Danish family will simply speak English.

I’ve found Brosnan to be a far more exciting actor ever since he broke free of James Bond.  Those films gave his profile a boost and he did a fine job, but he’s done far more memorable work since then in movies like The Matador, Seraphim Falls, and The Ghost Writer.  He recently joined the comedy I Don’t Know How She Does It and will next be seen in the religious comedy Salvation Boulevard.

In my review of Higher Ground, I noted that religion is a tricky topic but that it was easy to mock it.  Salvation Boulevard can barely even manage that.  The story features a mega church and celebrity pastor and there’s great fun to be made at the absurdity of these elements in modern evangelical Christianity.  Instead, co-writer and director George Ratliff uses this setting as the thinnest of backdrops for a chase movie that goes absolutely nowhere.

Greg Kinnear and Jane Curtin are the latest additions to the adaptation of Allison Pearson’s novel I Don’t Know How She Does It.  The current cast includes Sarah Jessica Parker, Pierce Bronsnan and Kelsey Grammar, as well as recent additions Christina Hendricks (Mad Men), Olivia Munn (The Daily Show), and Seth Meyers (SNL). Douglas McGrath (Infamous) directs from a script by Aline Brosh McKenna (The Devil Wears Prada).

I Don’t Know How She Does It tells the story of a working mom (Parker) trying to balance the many competing elements of her life. Variety reports that Kinnear will play Parker’s husband, while Curtin will take on the role of Kinnear’s mother. The Weinstein Company will produce.  Hit the jump for a synopsis of Pearson’s novel.