Family Guy mastermind Seth MacFarlane’s next feature directorial effort is adding yet another impressive castmember.  MacFarlane’s Ted follow-up, A Million Ways to Die in the West, already has Charlize Theron, Liam Neeson, Amanda Seyfried, and Giovanni Ribisi set to star alongside MacFarlane, and now Heat Vision reports that Sarah Silverman is in negotiations to join the cast.  The Western comedy centers on a cowardly farmer who backs out of a gunfight and subsequently loses his girlfriend (Seyfried).  He later meets the wife (Theron) of a notorious outlaw who teaches him how to shoot, but runs into trouble when her outlaw husband (Neeson) returns to town seeking revenge.

Should she sign on, Silverman would play the town prostitute who has had her way with just about everyone, “but refuses to have sex with her fiancé (Ribisi), believing that as Christians the couple should wait until marriage before lying down together.”  I’d say that’s pretty spot-on casting.  Production is set to begin this spring.  Hit the jump for casting news concerning the holiday comedy A Friggin’ Christmas Miracle. 

[This is a repost of my review from the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival.  Looper opens today.]

Sacrifice goes against our biological imperative of self-preservation. If we have a will to survive, then shouldn’t we do everything in our power to stay alive? Or is life only worth living if it’s the good life (whatever that means)? Shouldn’t we celebrate our desire to live? Rian Johnson‘s sci-fi film Looper casts a dark spell over our need for self-preservation, and bitterly twists it into a world where people would go so far as to kill themselves to live. Anchored by tremendous performances from leads Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis, Johnson manages to deliver thrills as intense as the ideas he wishes to explore. However, his quest to reach a thoughtful conclusion stumbles over new characters, plot shortcuts, and an extreme tonal shift that leaves the big ideas intact, but fractures the powerful storytelling.

Sacrifice goes against our biological imperative of self-preservation.  If we have a will to survive, then shouldn’t we do everything in our power to stay alive?  Or is life only worth living if it’s the good life (whatever that means)?  Shouldn’t we celebrate our desire to live?  Rian Johnson‘s sci-fi film Looper casts a dark spell over our need for self-preservation, and bitterly twists it into a world where people would go so far as to kill themselves to live.  Anchored by tremendous performances from leads Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis, Johnson manages to deliver thrills as intense as the ideas he wishes to explore.  However, his quest to reach a thoughtful conclusion stumbles over new characters, plot shortcuts, and an extreme tonal shift that leaves the big ideas intact, but fractures the powerful storytelling.