Now playing in limited release and expanding nationwide this weekend is writer/director Scott Cooper’s (Crazy Heart) drama Out of the Furnace.  Shot entirely on location in and around Braddock, Pennsylvania, the film stars Christian Bale as an ex-con steel worker who seeks vengeance when his brother (Casey Affleck) disappears after getting involved with a local crime ring.  Out of the Furnace also stars Woody Harrelson, Zoe Saldana, Sam Shepard, Willem Dafoe and Forest Whitaker.  For more on the film, watch the trailer or read all our previous coverage.

At the recent Los Angeles press day, I landed a video interview with Christian Bale.  He talked about knowing when he has to do a project, his character in the film and his thoughts on what kind of movie it is, what it was like working for Terrence Malick and how Bale used gopros on set to film some of the movie himself, and more.  Hit the jump to watch.

Christian Bale is having a pretty swell 2013 as the star of two fairly prestigious films, Out of the Furnace and American Hustle, but he also has a pair of highly anticipated Terrence Malick films on the horizon—or so we thought.  In late 2011 and throughout 2012, the newly prolific Malick began production on two new films that were to be shot back-to-back, one focusing on the music industry (previously titled Lawless) and another taking place in Hollywood (Knight of Cups).  Bale is the star of the latter and also shot scenes for the music film, but now the actor has revealed that he’ll probably be cut out of the untitled picture.  Hit the jump for more, including a status update for both films.

Rooney Mara shines opposite Casey Affleck in Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, writer/director David Lowery’s eloquent, poetic story of love, motherhood and searching for peace while faced with an unrelenting past.  Although set in 1970s Texas Hill country, the film feels timeless as it draws on the mythology of westerns to explore the dueling notion of romance and responsibility that is central to the tale.  In a riveting performance, Mara allows her character to disappear into the texture of the film without making it feel too modern.  Opening in theaters on August 16^th, the movie also stars Ben Foster and Keith Carradine.

At a recent roundtable interview, Mara talked about what drew her to the script and the characters and made it appealing to work with Lowery, why she found it easy to play a mother for the first time and to perfect her character’s accent, and how her shooting schedule with Affleck mirrored the long distance relationship between their characters.  She also discussed the impact of her Oscar nomination, her aspirations to direct, her experience working with different directors like Terrence Malick, David Fincher, and Steven Soderbergh, and the status of her Terrence Malick film and The Girl who Played with Fire.  Hit the jump to read the interview.

Earlier today Natalie Portman attended D23 to show off some new footage from Thor: The Dark World.  (Here’s Dave’s recap of what was shown.)  Shortly after leaving the stage, I participated in a group video interview with her backstage.  She talked about what it means to be part of the most popular genre on the planet, working with Chris Hemsworth again, what the word family means to her, and what was it like working for Terrence Malick.  Hit the jump to watch.

Opening this week is director Rawson Marshall Thurber’s (Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story) R-rated comedy We’re the Millers.  The film centers on a single, small-time pot dealer (Jason Sudeikis) who ends up in debt to his supplier (Ed Helms).  In order to bring the next shipment of drugs up from Mexico, he puts together a fake family comprised of his stripper neighbor (Jennifer Aniston), an eager teen (Will Poulter) and a streetwise punk (Emma Roberts).  The supporting cast also includes the hilarious Nick Offerman and Kathryn Hahn.  For more on the film, watch seven clips or read Matt’s review.

The other day I landed a phone interview with Nick Offerman.  Besides making me laugh a number of times, he also talked about what the last year has been like for him, making We’re the Millers, working with the great cast, how often he laughs during takes, the future of Parks and Recreation, filming the upcoming season premiere in London and how the locals treated Ron Swanson.  In addition, Offerman talked about working with Terrence Malick on Knight of Cups, who he plays, and the way Malick filmed his scenes.  Finally, he talked about his work on The Lego Movie and Lake Bell‘s In a World.  Hit the jump to either read or listen to what he had to say.

We’ve seen plenty of set photos from Terrence Malick‘s Knight of Cups, but now an official image has been released.  The image is a nice shot of a scene we previously saw in set photos with Christian Bale and Natalie Portman frolicking on a beach.  If you focus, you can almost see the lyrical cinematography and whispered narration.  There are few details on Knight of Cups other than it’s about the Los Angeles movie business and features half of Hollywood.  In addition to Bale and Portman, the cast includes Cate Blanchett, Isabel Lucas, Antonio Banderas, Wes Bentley, Imogen Poots, Freida Pinto, Teresa Palmer, Ryan O’Neal, Jason Clarke, Joel Kinnaman, and Shea Whigham (hat tip to The Playlist for keeping count).  However, these are actors who have only been seen in set photos; we don’t know who will make the final cut.

We also don’t know when Malick will have that final cut.  He’s editing multiple movies, and he has no problem spending years in the editing room.  As The Playlist reminds us, it took 18 months between the first photo of To the Wonder to the film’s release.  Footage from Knight of Cups is currently being shown to possible distributors at Cannes this week.  Hit the jump to check out the image.

As if enigmatic filmmaker Terrence Malick didn’t already have enough on his plate with post-production work on two films he shot last year, it appears that he’s also retooling one of his past films as well.  The Days of Heaven director returned to the cinemas after a six year absence with 2011’s brilliant The Tree of Life, and subsequently began working at an incredibly quick pace as he shot and released this year’s To the Wonder and filmed two movies back-to-back—Knight of Cups and an untitled feature—throughout the latter half of last year.

Malick is known for taking his time (usually a year or two) in the editing room on his films given that he shoots a lot of footage and crafts the finished film in post-production, but in addition to editing his two recently shot films, editor Billy Weber reveals that Malick is also working on a director’s cut of Tree of Life.  Weber also notes that the director’s long-in-the-works documentary Voyage of Time is expected in 2014.  Hit the jump for more.

The U.S. theatrical trailer for Terrence Malick’s To the Wonder is now available.  The mesmerizing trailer isn’t shy about touting the main theme of the film: love, in all of its dynamic incarnations.  In between shots of the main characters in the throes of passion or struggling with a relationship that’s lost its fire, a sermon on love narrates the changing nature and transformative power of the complicated emotion.  What’s starts out as a big-budget version of a jewelry advertisement eventually sinks its hooks into you if you let it.

Starring Ben Affleck, Olga Kurylenko, Javier Bardem and Rachel McAdams, To the Wonder opens on April 12th.  You can read Matt’s review of the film here.  Hit the jump to watch the new trailer.

A couple of new featurettes for writer/director Terrence Malick’s upcoming romantic drama To the Wonder have made their way online.  The story involves a woman (Olga Kurylenko) traveling to Oklahoma to be with the man she loves (Ben Affleck), only to discover their relationship being tested by his childhood friend (Rachel McAdams) and a wayward priest (Javier Bardem).  These featurettes are beyond fascinating for any cinephile, as they give us a peek inside the filmmaking process of elusive director Terrence Malick.  The cast and crew talk about Malick’s atypical, improvisational filmmaking process, as many of them are never given a script and have to react to things Malick says while they’re filming a take.

Hit the jump to watch the featurettes, and click here to read Matt’s review.  To the Wonder opens on April 12th.

We’re delighted to bring you an exclusive look at six new images from writer/director Terrence Malick’s To the Wonder, a romantic drama starring Ben Affleck, Olga Kurylenko, Javier Bardem and Rachel McAdams.  The story involves a woman (Kurylenko) traveling to Oklahoma to be with the man she loves (Affleck), only to discover their relationship being tested by his childhood friend (McAdams) and a wayward priest (Bardem).  Check out Matt’s review of the film here.  To the Wonder opens April 12th.  Hit the jump to see the new images.

Warm Bodies, a loose adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, substitutes the Capulet’s Juliet for Julie – a gun toting survivor in a post-apocalyptic wasteland – and Romeo for an undead flesh-eating zombie. Teresa Palmer (I Am Number Four) stars as the Juliet substitute, whose ‘love’ slowly brings to life the undead ‘R’ (Nick Hoult). It’s hard to be surprised at such a development because if anyone can bring to life the undead, it would most certainly be someone as fetching as Teresa Palmer.

In the following interview with Palmer, she discusses recreating the famous ‘balcony sequence’ from the play albeit in a different context, having John Malkovich play her disapproving father and working opposite Terrence Malick in the upcoming Knight of Cups. For the full interview, hit the jump.

The prospect of working with Terrence Malick is too great an opportunity for any actor to pass up.  Malick is one of the greats – Badlands, Days of Heaven: classics in their own right.  Add to the fact – the elusive, press shy filmmaker notoriously takes quite awhile between films (although his output as of late puts to doubt such a deliberate reputation).  Thus not only is working with Malick a chance to star in one of greatest living director’s films but more so who knows when/if the guy will make another one… The ‘catch’ however: Malick is a fickle editor and prone to cutting his actors out from his films (see: Adrien Brody in The Thin Red Line, Sean Penn in Tree of Life).  You may act in a Malick flick but who knows if you’ll even end up in the finished cut?  At the recent press junket for Warm Bodies, Teresa Palmer discussed working with Malick on the recently wrapped Knight of Cups and addressed whether she fears her role will end up on the cutting room floor.  Hit the jump to watch.

The first trailer has been released for Terrence Malick‘s To The Wonder.  In the vague semblance of a plot, Olga Kurylenko plays a woman who travels to Oklahoma to be with the man she loves only to discover that their relationship isn’t as strong as they previously thought.  There’s also a story involving a priest who grapples with his loneliness and has almost no narrative relation to the other plotline.  I caught the picture at TIFF, and although To The Wonder is one of Malick’s shortest films, it feels like his longest.  His attempt to make an intimate film about intimacy caved in on itself, and most of the movie is just people whispering narration and twirling.  The majesty presented in this trailer is almost completely misleading.

Hit the jump to check out the trailer.  The film also stars Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, and Javier Bardem.  To The Wonder is set to open on April 12, 2013.

We’ve recently seen a number of interesting photos from the set of two new films that director Terrence Malick has been shooting this year, but we now have word on when we might get to see the filmmaker’s follow-up to 2011’s The Tree of Life.  Malick notoriously takes his time in the post-production process, and his most recent film To the Wonder (which was shot in 2010) finally premiered this past fall at the Venice and Toronto film festivals.  The story revolves around a European woman (Olga Kurylenko) and her tumultuous relationship with an Oklahoman man (Ben Affleck), and following a mixed-to-negative response, Magnolia acquired the pic for distribution.

Now The Film Stage reports that Magnolia is eyeing an April 2013 release for the pic, following its February 22nd UK release.  Despite the mixed reactions (read Matt’s review right here), I’m eager to see the latest work from the reclusive auteur.

Director Terrence Malick’s currently-shooting untitled film set within the Austin music scene isn’t exactly lacking in actors, but we all know that just because you shoot scenes for a Terrence Malick movie doesn’t mean you’ll actually be in a Terrence Malick movie.  The latest actor to possibly join the cast is Val Kilmer, and based on images of the actor on set, I’m really, really, really hoping he makes the final cut.  Rooney Mara, Ryan Gosling, Natalie Portman, Christian Bale and Michael Fassbender star the pic, and we’ve previously seen images of Mara shooting scenes while “performing” on stage with Black Lips.

Kilmer recently filmed some scenes onstage with Mara and Black Lips, and in true Val Kilmer fashion he didn’t exactly play it straight.  Images show him using a walker, cutting his own hair, and wielding a chainsaw next to Mara.  I’m not sure if his role is more of a manifestation/presence than an actual person (which isn’t out of the question for a Malick pic), but this is some wonderfully weird stuff.  Hit the jump to take a look.