A couple of new featurettes have landed online, one for an upcoming movie and one for a 2012 film that’s vying for Oscar gold:

• Oz the Great and Powerful – A new featurette for director Sam Raimi’s prequel to The Wizard of Oz shows quite a bit of new footage and does a nice job of introducing us to the cast of characters (James Franco, Mila Kunis, Rachel Weisz, and Michelle Williams).  I find it curious that they’re trying to keep the audience guessing as to which witches are good and which are bad, since the names are the same as the ones in the source material.  The film opens in 3D on March 7th.
• Moonrise Kingdom – Hot off a Best Original Screenplay nomination for writers Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola, this new featurette focuses on the genesis of the project and the writing of the incredible script.  The film is currently available on DVD, Blu-ray, and VOD.

Hit the jump to watch the featurettes.

The nominations for the 85th Academy Awards have been announced, and it’s quite a whirlwind of nominees.  As expected, Lincoln landed the most nominations with 12, followed with Ang Lee’s Life of Pi which nabbed 11.  The big story here, though, is the Best Director category.  Shockingly, only two (two!) of the DGA nominees for Best Director made the Oscar cut: Ang Lee and Steven Spielberg.  The rest of the category was filled out by Benh Zeitlin for Beasts of the Southern Wild, David O. Russell for Silver Linings Playbook, and Michael Haneke for Amour.  It was almost guaranteed that Ben Affleck and Kathryn Bigelow would be landing nominations for Argo and Zero Dark Thirty, respectively, but shockingly neither made the cut.  Apparently those films just directed themselves.  Based off today’s nominations, it now looks like it’s (surprisingly) down to Lincoln vs. Silver Linings Playbook for the big win.

Hit the jump to check out the list of nominees, and click here to check them against my predictions (somehow I predicted the Best Picture and Supporting Actor categories perfectly).  The 85th Academy Awards will take place on February 24th.

At last, Oscar is upon us.  Back in November I shared a look at the early awards season race by way of our 2013 Oscar Preview articles, and now nearly two months later there’s still quite a bit up in the air.  This truly is one of the more exciting awards races in recent years, as 2012 is so stacked with quality that there are a surprising number of uncertainties this close to the Academy Awards ceremony.  Nevertheless, I am once again foolishly going to attempt to predict how the Oscar nominations will shake out when they’re announced tomorrow morning, January 10th.  Hit the jump to check out my predictions.

As we head into the thick of awards season, we’re starting to see how the various guilds stack up with regards to the best of 2012 (the PGA nominations were announced yesterday).  The guilds are usually a good Oscar predictor as their voting bodies overlap significantly with the Academy’s voting body, and today we have a peek into the screenplay race by way of the nominations for the 2013 Writers Guild Awards.  The list includes some pleasant surprises like Rian Johnson’s brilliantly original script for Looper and Steven Chbosky’s touching adaptation of his own novel The Perks of Being a Wallflower, as well as expected candidates like The Master, Moonrise Kingdom, Zero Dark Thirty, and Lincoln.

Each year a number of screenplays are ruled ineligible for the WGA’s, and this year is no exception as Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained, Behn Zeitlin and Lucy Alibar’s Beasts of the Southern Wild, and William Nicholson’s Les Miserables were all  ineligible for WGA consideration for various insignificant reasons.  Hit the jump to check out the full list of WGA nominations.  The 2013 Writers Guild Awards will be held on February 17th.

The first trailer for writer/director Roman Coppola’s A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III has been released.  The film stars Charlie Sheen as a successful graphic designer whose fame and fortune have made him irresistible to women.  After his girlfriend breaks up with him, he heads into a downward spiral that forces him to look back on his failed romantic history.  We previously saw some rather strange teaser posters for the film, and this trailer is certainly a trip.  Sheen is joined on his journey by Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman, who look to be playing a couple of suitably colorful characters.

Hit the jump to watch the trailer.  The film also stars Aubrey Plaza, Patricia Arquette, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and Katheryn Winnick.  A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III opens on February 8th. [Update: A batch of high-resolution images has been released and are now included after the jump.]

We recently got a promising look at writer/director Roman Coppola’s (Moonrise Kingdom) upcoming film A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III by way of a few new images, and now a curious batch of teaser posters has been released.  The pic stars Charlie Sheen as a successful graphic designer whose fame and fortune have made him irresistible to women.  After his girlfriend breaks up with him, he heads into a downward spiral that forces him to look back on his failed romantic history.  These posters boast the name of the film’s stars alongside a corresponding sexually suggestive image, and while I’m not exactly sure what it all means, I’m sufficiently intrigued.

Hit the jump to check out the posters and a brief bit of the first footage from the film.  Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, Aubrey Plaza, and Patricia Arquette also star.  A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III opens on February 8th.  [Update: We've updated the article with hi-res versions of the posters along with the first images from the film.]

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.

We’re continuing on with our weeklong preview of the upcoming 85th Academy Awards, and after running down both acting categories it’s time to take look at some of the other races.  Today we’ll be looking at the Best Animated Feature, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Original Screenplay categories in depth, and I’ll also make some way-too-early quick picks in the technical categories.  The fun begins after the jump.

We recently learned that Charlie Sheen’s new TV series Anger Management has been picked up for a whopping 90 episodes, but Sheen also has a fairly high profile feature film role coming up soon.  The actor stars in Roman Coppola’s A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III in which he plays a successful graphic designer whose fame and fortune have made him irresistible to women.  After his girlfriend breaks up with him, he heads into a downward spiral that forces him to look back on his failed romantic history.

The first images from the film have landed online today, giving us a look at Sheen and co-stars Bill Murray and Jason Schwarztman in character.  Moreover, we’ve also got some enticing plot details from Coppola, who’s probably best known professionally for his collaborations with Wes Anderson (Moonrise Kingdom, The Darjeeling Limited).  Hit the jump for more.

Set on an island off the coast of New England in the summer of 1965, Moonrise Kingdom is the charming, sweet and sometimes melancholy story of two 12-year-olds, named Sam (Jared Gilman) and Suzy (Kara Hayward), who fall in love and run away together into the wilderness.  As various authorities try to hunt them down, a violent storm is heading in from off-shore, turning the peaceful island community and all of its quirky inhabitants upside down.

At the film’s press day, co-writer Roman Coppola, who also served as a producer and co-writer on The Darjeeling Limited, talked about his collaborations with two-time Academy Award nominated filmmaker Wes Anderson, the genesis of this particular project, creating these unique young characters, and how much he was on set during filming.  He also talked about his next film, A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III, and that he hopes he has the opportunity to make more of his own features, in the future. Check out what he had to say after the jump.

A number of images have surfaced from the set of director Roman Coppola’s A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charlie Swan III. The film centers on a successful graphic designer (Charlie Sheen) whose fame and fortune have made him irresistible to women. After his girlfriend breaks up with him, he heads into a downward spiral that forces him to look back on his failed romantic history. The set photos (posted by Sheen himself) give us a look at the former Two and a Half Men star alongside co-stars Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman (sporting a peculiar hairdo and beard), as well as some sort of explosion.

Hit the jump to check out the images. The film also stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Aubrey Plaza, Patricia Arquette, and Katheryn Winnick.

Director Roman Coppola is firming up the cast for his next directorial project, and he’s putting together quite the ensemble. Variety reports that Bill Murray, Patricia Arquette, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead have joined A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charlie Swan III. The film stars Charlie Sheen as a successful graphic designer whose fame and fortune have made him irresistible to women. After his girlfriend breaks up with him, he heads into a downward spiral that forces him to look back on his failed romantic history. Coppola wrote the film himself and will also be producing and directing.

Murray has some history with Coppola, as he was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance in Roman’s sister Sofia’s Lost in Translation. While the Sheen casting had me a bit nervous about the project, subsequent additions to the cast piqued my interest, and this latest trio is a welcomed addition. Jason Schwartzman, Aubrey Plaza, and Katheryn Winnick also star. Production is currently underway in Los Angeles.

Hot off his crazytimes spell and firing from the CBS “comedy” Two and a Half Men, Charlie Sheen has landed the lead in Roman Coppola’s A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charlie Swan III. The story, which hits a little close to home for the actor, centers on a successful graphic designer whose fame and fortune have made him irresistible to women. His life heads into a downward spiral when his girlfriend breaks up with him. Variety reports that Coppola, who most recently co-wrote Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom, will write and direct with Jason Schwartzman also set to star.

Hit the jump for the casting news of Haley Bennett in Terrence Malick’s new film starring Christian Bale.

Some directors don’t even need to chum the waters to attract the big sharks. Filmmaker Wes Anderson is setting up his next picture, Moon Rise Kingdom, and rumors are already in full swing about the A-list talent circling the picture, which is a period piece set in the 1960s. According to Deadline, Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Frances McDormand, and Tilda Swinton are in talks to appear in the film, which was co-written by Anderson and Roman Coppola (The Darjeeling Limited). Producer Scott Rudin (Fantastic Mr. Fox) will join Anderson again with a target start of next spring. Hit the jump for a brief, slightly-spoilerish synopsis, more on the potential financier, and which roles these actors might play.