Over the last few years, Dominic Cooper has played small but important roles in films like Captain America: The First Avenger, My Week with Marilyn, Tamara Drew, An Education, and The Duchess. In director Timur Bekmambetov‘s Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, he again plays a small but important role, except this time he’s a vampire.   In the film, Cooper plays a good vampire named Henry Sturgess, and he helps train and guide our President against the vampires that would do us harm.

Last year I visited the production when they were filming in New Orleans and participated in an extended group interview with Cooper. He talked about his initial reaction to the title, how he prepared for the role, the tone of the film, the physical demands of the role, working with the rest of the cast, and more. In addition, Cooper talked about playing Howard Stark in Captain America: The First Avenger and if he might be back in the sequel, his experience making The Devil’s Double, possibly playing Robert Capa, and more. Hit the jump for what he had to say.

The best movie posters come from Mondo, other art-boutiques, and individual artists who take their passion for a film and turn it into something that every fan has to own.  Studios don’t have that luxury.  They need to sell a movie to an audience that has no idea what they’re in for.  They need to find a way to appeal to everyone, or at least get their attention.  Usually studios go for the dull route of floating movie star heads and/or blue-orange color schemes.  My picks for the best studio-produced posters of 2011 were the posters that went beyond and tried to do something better.

Hit the jump to check out my choices for the Top 10 Posters of 2011.

What’s fascinating about The Devil’s Double is that Dominic Cooper gets to give two performances – often playing against each other – that are of such different pitches it’s as if the whole movie existed solely as an actor showcase. On one hand he’s playing Uday Hussein, the son of Saddam Hussein and a Caligula-in-training who likes having sex with schoolgirls and killing people. And then he’s also playing Latif Yahia, the man who looks enough like Uday to be hired (under protest) by Uday to be his body double. It’s Cooper’s movie and he nails it. The film itself (directed by Lee Tamahori) is a bit tired and formulaic, with interesting notes here and there, and a good whore with a heart of something performance by Ludivine Sagnier, but it’s hard not to walk away dazzled by its star but not the movie. Our review of the Blu-ray of The Devil’s Double follows after the jump.

At Comic-Con, I had the great pleasure to sit down with Dominic Cooper one-on-one to talk about his upcoming film, The Devil’s Double. Although I haven’t seen the film myself, I have heard his portrayal is phenomenal. Because we were at Comic-Con, though, we started off talking about what he thinks about all of it and then jumped into the film. We really dug into his dueling roles as Latif Yahia and Uday Hussein and how it was shot. Along the way we also talked about his experience on Captain America: The First Avenger (he plays Howard Stark), the upcoming Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, and how it was to work with director Timur Bekmambetov. Hit the jump to check out the full audio and a complete transcription of my interview.

This year’s Los Angeles Film Festival will kick off with Richard Linklater’s Bernie, and two more worthwhile films have been added to the festival.  Joe Cornish’s Attack the Block and Lee Tamahori’s The Devil’s Double will join Chris Weitz’ A Better Life, Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive, and Martin Campbell’s Green Lantern in the LA Film Fest’s “Galas” section.  I can personally vouch for Attack the Block and I’ve heard that The Devil’s Double is a lot of fun.

Passes to attend the Festival are currently available to the general public, with special rates for Film Independent members.  The links to buy passes for Attack the Block and The Devil’s Double are currently marked “N/A”, which I guess means they’re either sold out or they haven’t been put up for sale yet.  The 2011 Los Angeles Film Festival runs from June 16 – 26th.

The first trailer for The Devil’s Double has been released. The film stars Dominic Cooper in the dual roles of Saddam Hussein’s sadistic son Uday and Uday’s body-double Latif Yahia. The trailer definitely looks interesting, and Steve himself caught the film at Sundance and thought it was great, calling it “batshit crazy.” I like the vibe of the flick that the trailer suggests, and can’t wait to see more.

Hit the jump to watch the trailer. The Devil’s Double opens July 29th. Click here to read Steve’s interview with Cooper about the film.

Lionsgate has released an eye-catching poster for Lee Tamahori’s upcoming action-drama The Devil’s Double.  The film stars Dominic Cooper in the dual roles of Saddam Hussein’s sadistic son Uday and Uday’s body-double Latif Yahia.  The film played at Sundance and speaking to people who saw it, the general consensus seemed to be that it’s fun and excessive in a Scarface kind of way.  Steve caught the film and thought it was great, saying “if you’re a fan of gangster films, excessive violence, and a crazy story that’s never been told on screen, I definitely recommend The Devil’s Double.” I’m looking forward to seeing it when it hits theaters this summer.

Hit the jump to check out the poster, which I like but think it could use more gold.  The Devil’s Double opens July 29th.  Click here for Steve’s interview with Cooper about the film.

[Update: We've updated the article with the high-resolution version of the poster. Hit the jump to check it out.]

One of the many films to premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival was director Lee Tamahori’s The Devil’s Double.  The film’s loosely based on the life of Latif Yahia and his interaction with Uday Hussein (Saddam Hussein’s son).  Yahia is rumored to have been Uday’s body double and supposedly had plastic surgery to make his appearance even more realistic.  In the film, Dominic Cooper plays both Hussein and Yahia and he does an incredible job playing both characters and brings each to life in a unique way.  While the story of Latif Yahia was never proven to be true, Tamahori has taken the premise and created a new type of gangster film.  The constant in every gangster film is eventually the cops will get involved.  But in this story, Hussein is the son of the man who runs the country, and he literally has the freedom to do anything he wants.  The other thing to know about Hussein in The Devil’s Double is that he’s a raging psychopath that tortured and raped young women, killed people without warning, and treated everyone around him like play things that were there for his amusement.

Again, if you’re looking for a factually accurate film about the fall of Iraq, this isn’t it.  But if you’re a fan of gangster films, excessive violence, and a crazy story that’s never been told on screen, I definitely recommend The Devil’s Double.  I thought it was great.

Anyhow, a few days ago I sat down with director Lee Tamahori and we talked about how the project came together, making the film look more expensive than it actually is, the gangster genre, casting Dominic Cooper, what it’s like being at Sundance, editing the movie, his next film (a Western based on the Witi Ihimaera book Bulibasha: King of the Gypsies) and a lot more.  Hit the jump to watch:

We’ve got three posters tonight from films that have hit the festival circuit in the past few months.  Max Winkler’s Ceremony premiered to positive notices at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, led by Michael Angarano, Uma Thurman, Lee Pace.  Like Ceremony, Homework centers around a young writing talent, but wasn’t received quite as well at Sundance despite the affable presence of Freddie Highmore and Emma Thomas. Fellow Sundance entry The Devil’s Double isn’t about youth so much as it’s about Saddam Hussein’s son Uday and his body double Latif Yahia, but by all accounts it’s a solid twist on the gangster genre.  If that sounds interesting, you should definitely check out Steve’s interview with Dominic Cooper, who plays both Uday and Latif in the film.  View all three posters after the break:

One of the many films to premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival was director Lee Tamahori’s The Devil’s Double.  The film’s loosely based on the life of Latif Yahia and his interaction with Uday Hussein (Saddam Hussein’s son).  Yahia is rumored to have been Uday’s body double and supposedly had plastic surgery to make his appearance even more realistic.  In the film, Dominic Cooper plays both Hussein and Yahia and he does an incredible job playing both characters and brings each to life in a unique way.  While the story of Latif Yahia was never proven to be true, Tamahori has taken the premise and created a new type of gangster film.  The constant in every gangster film is eventually the cops will get involved.  But in this story, Hussein is the son of the man who runs the country, and he literally has the freedom to do anything he wants.  The other thing to know about Hussein in The Devil’s Double is that he’s a raging psychopath that tortured and raped young women, killed people without warning, and treated everyone around him like play things that were there for his amusement.

Again, if you’re looking for a factually accurate film about the fall of Iraq, this isn’t it.  But if you’re a fan of gangster films, excessive violence, and a crazy story that’s never been told on screen, I definitely recommend The Devil’s Double.  I thought it was great.

Anyhow, a few days ago I sat down with Dominic Cooper here at Sundance to talk about how he got involved in the film and what it was like to make it.  We talked about the challenges of playing two characters, the really high production values (the film looks like a big budget Hollywood film), what it’s like being at Sundance, can he watch himself on screen, what he wants to do in the future, his role as Milton Greene in My Week With Marilyn, and so much more.  Hit the jump to watch:

Continuing our coverage of films that will be featured at the Sundance film festival in January, today we bring you two films that will premiere in the out-of-competition category at the prestigious festival: The Devil’s Double and Life in a Day. The Devil’s Double stars Dominic Cooper, Ludivine Sagnier, Mimoun Oaissa, Raad Rawi, and Phillip Quast. The film provides a chilling vision of the House of Saddam, told through the eyes of the man who knew too much.

Director Kevin MacDonald’s Life in a Day is a historical worldwide experiment to create the world’s largest user generated film. The flick was created by numerous user-generated YouTube videos that professional and amateur filmmakers made to capture a glimpse of their life in a single day. Hit the jump to check out images and a brief synopsis for both films, which will be playing out-of-competition.  The 2011 Sundance Film Festival runs from January 20 -30th.

Sundance has announced the premieres playing out-of-competition at this year’s 2011 Sundance Film Festival.  While we knew that Kevin Macdonald’s documentary Life in a Day and Kevin Smith’s Red State had already made the cut, we now have some other exciting films to add to the list.  Among the films in the “Premieres” category, I’m particularly stoked for Cedar Rapids (starring Ed Helms and John C. Reilly), My Idiot Brother (starring Paul Rudd), The Details (starring Tobey Maguire and Elizabeth Banks), Margin Call (starring Kevin Spacey and Paul Bettany), Salvation Boulevard (starring Pierce Brosnan and Jennifer Connelly), and Tom McCarthy’s Win Win (starring Paul Giamatti and Amy Ryan).

But I’m even more jazzed for some of the documentaries.  There’s a Reagan biopic from Eugene Jarecki (Why We Fight), Morgan Spurlock’s The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, and Steve James’ The Interrupters, just to name a few.  Hit the jump for the full line-up.  Click here for a list of the films playing in-competition and click here for a list of the other films playing out-of-competition.  The 2011 Sundance Film Festival runs from January 20th – 30th.

By now you’ve probably noticed that Steve got an ungodly amount of material from this year’s American Film Market (AFM).  The place where buyers and sellers do business to bring you the films you’ll hopefully be seeing in the near future, AFM has tons of artwork and synopses which are used to promote films but which we will use to bring you news on these films.

Below you’ll find images and synopses for From Time to Time, Love Hurts, The Cup, The Devil’s Double, The Horseman, The Steal Artist and Wedding Bros. Hit the jump to check them all out. Also, all the synopses are copied down directly from the original materials with no editorial alterations. You can read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 and Part 6 by click on their respective links.