Fancast: The Big Picture

So we'll finally get Valkyrie, Bryan Singer's English-language take on a Nazi conspiracy to assassinate Hitler, with Tom Cruise taking the lead role of General Claus von Stauffenberg, on February 13, 2009. It's been postponed several times, and when asked about the production a month ago at the Get Smart press junket, Terence Stamp rolled his eyes at the length of the production, and had to restrain himself from saying more than that he hoped they had finished shooting.

Co-star Bill Nighy is trying to put a bit more positive spin on things.

"We just shot some extra scenes for it. One of the reasons that the date was changed was in order to do the extra scenes, which they were always going to do if they felt [the film] warranted it. They've added some new stuff, and people are very excited about it. " 'Valkyrie' is a great story, a true story, and it's a faithful account. They haven't bent the story to accommodate the movie or anything. It's an honest and serious film."

Apparently, those scenes are big action sequences that show just how Stauffenberg suffered the injuries that cost him his eye. One could say they were initially not so relevant to the general plot, but perhaps were "warranted" when people started to point at Tom Cruise in an eyepatch and laugh.

Nighy, however, isn't that serious about the film. About the official release date, he said "It's Valentine's Day, so take your date to see a movie about killing Hitler!"

Nicolas Cage and renowned director John Carpenter are about to team up for a prison drama called Scared Straight, in which Cage would play a lifer who is forced to help out a delinquent kid from a crime-prevention program who happens to be there when a riot breaks out and gets taken hostage. The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor director Rob Cohen was attached to direct at one point, but he's scaled back to producer. Carpenter's touch on a project like this will be interesting to see, as he's known for being off-center with his approach.

Watch video of John Carpenter's body of work:
Watch the trailer for John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars, starring Ice Cube and Natasha Henstridge.
Watch the trailer for Village of the Damned, starring Christopher Reeve and Kirstie Alley.
Watch the trailer for Memoirs of an Invisible Man, starring Chevy Chase and Daryl Hannah.
Watch the trailer for his masterpiece They Live, featuring the longest fight scene ever filmed between Roddy Piper and Keith David.
Watch a trailer and a bunch of clips from his classic Big Trouble in Little China, starring Kurt Russell and Kim Cattrall.
Watch the trailer for Starman, starring Jeff Bridges and Karen Allen.
Watch the trailer for the Stephen King story adaptation Christine, about a killer car.
Watch a spot from The Thing, also starring Kurt Russell.
Watch a trailer for Escape From New York, starring Russell as Snake Plissken.
Watch the trailer for the original Halloween, starring Donald Pleasance and Jamie Lee Curtis.

By Andy Hunsaker, Fancast Movies

There is little more pathetic than having a film franchise hit all the standard, by-the-numbers 'here's where all of our beloved characters are since the last movie" beats only to make you realize that you scarcely remember, much less give a damn about these people. It's especially sad when the film keeps making reference to its own storied history, and yet no one actually tells stories about it anymore. It's been so long since there's been a Mummy movie that one can almost completely forget that it was the franchise that made both Rachel Weisz and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson into big-time movie stars. It's sad that it couldn't do the same for Brendan Fraser.

He and John Hannah are the returning cast members for this third installment in the trilogy, entitled The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, and despite not looking a day older than he was in the first film, he's playing the father of a college-aged boy named Alex (Luke Ford), who was 9 in 2001's The Mummy Returns, while he's busy being bored with his wife Evelyn (now played by Maria Bello, who deserves much better) in their opulent home, both reluctantly adhering to their promise to each other to settle down. Of course, they're called into duty to ferry a shiny trinket to Shanghai only to discover that Alex has uncovered the Tomb of the Evil Dragon Emperor (Jet Li) and said trinket is the only way to wake him up. Of course, a Chinese general wants him to wake up and lead China to a new dawn of totalitarian power based on clay soldiers with spears.

The one thing that can be said for this film over the other, more famous period-piece archaeological adventurer franchise is that it has the good sense not to involve aliens. Otherwise, Indiana Jones has them beat on interesting characters and the ability to actually form a proper mystery. This film just explains everything immediately, leaving us only bland characters that aren't as funny or clever as they think they are and action that isn't as breathtaking as it thinks it is. Aside from one shining moment of sheer awesomeness, when the stunningly poorly-acted character of Lin (Isabella Leong) somehow manages to summon a pack of Yetis out of nowhere to beat up the advancing Russian soldiers, there's very little here to generate excitement.

Watch a bunch of clips from the first movie in the trilogy, The Mummy.
Watch a photo slideshow from The Mummy Returns.
Watch the trailer for The Rock's spinoff, The Scorpion King.
Watch a clip from Boris Karloff's version of The Mummy.

Watch the trailer for RocknRolla right here on Fancast.

Guy Ritchie's RocknRolla looks to be a crazy and fun crime story, and is being hailed as a sort of return to form for the director. Everyone at the panel for the film today was lavishing praise on Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels as well as Snatch, while conveniently not mentioning Revolver or Swept Away, both box office busts. The best moment of the panel was when Ritchie was asked point blank if his recent critical troubles led to any pressure to go back to what used to work for him, and he honestly replied with a loud "Yep!" without any elaboration necessary.

Yet he did speak a bit more about that later, in less cynical terms, along with his cast.

Watch the new trailer for The Duchess, starring Keira Knightley, right here on Fancast.

Keira Knightley once again takes on the role of a woman whose true passions are denied her by circumstance, propriety and conspiracy in an elegant period drama. She stars as Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, who is given away by her mother (Charlotte Rampling) to become wedded to the Duke (Ralph Fiennes) at an early age. Yet, she soon discovers her own social awakening - with the help of an earnest young politician by the name of Earl Grey (Dominic Cooper). What ensues is a tangled web of intrigue and betrayal.

Watch the first teaser trailer for The Duchess.

What if your vote truly mattered? What if the United States presidential election actually did come down to one single, solitary ballot? That's the question posed by Kevin Costner's latest dramatic comedy Swing Vote, in which he plays Bud Johnson, an unemployed single father living with his over-achieving daughter Molly (Madeline Carroll) in a trashy trailer, who must make the decision between Dennis Hopper, managed by Nathan Lane, and Kelsey Grammer, managed by Stanley Tucci, to become the next President of the United States. Check out some clips to see how this kind of scenario might play out.

Watch the trailer for Swing Vote.

Watch these Swing Vote clips:
Rude Awakening
Bud wakes up to reporters camped on his lawn.
Mistaken Identity
Bud and Molly take election officials for child services.
Think Tank
The presidential hopeful (Dennis Hopper) and his manager (Nathan Lane) talk it over.
Molly vs. Martin
Molly meets a ruthless campaign manager (Stanley Tucci).

Drew Barrymore, Doris Day, Scarlett Johansson, Penelope Cruz, Renee Zellweger and even Sean Hayes are veterans of the romantic comedy genre, and they're all here on Fancast with chick flicks that may even get guys in touch with their feminine sides. Check out these 10 Free Rom-Com Movies on Fancast!

Fever Pitch [watch the movie]
Ben (Jimmy Fallon) is a high school teacher obsessed with the Boston Red Sox, to the point where it strains his relationship with Lindsay (Drew Barrymore). The film was shot during the Bosox's actual world championship run in 2004. It was originally a Nick Hornby book about soccer, but if you're gonna Fallon it up, it's gotta be about the national pastime.

Twice Upon a Yesterday [watch the movie]
A drunk in London named Victor (Douglas Henshall) laments that his ex Sylvia (Lena Headey) is marrying some guy named Dave (Mark Strong). When mysterious Spanish sanitation workers send Victor back in time (how's that for a set-up?), he immediately starts to try to throw a wrench into Sylvia's relationship before it reaches the wedding. Yet his skullduggery is derailed when he actually meets a gorgeous bartender named Louise (Penelope Cruz) who does a good job of distracting him from his selfish mission. Learning lessons about moving on, letting go, and wooing Penelope Cruz!

A Good Woman [watch the movie]
This adaptation of one of Oscar Wilde's best plays stars Helen Hunt as Mrs. Erlynne, a widow in the 1930s who lives the good life on the dimes of a series of rich suitors. When she heads to Italy with the intention of claiming the wealthy Briton Robert Windermere (Mark Umbers) away from his wife Meg (Scarlett Johansson), the rumors of infidelity abounding begin to drive Meg into the arms of Lord Darlington (Stephen Campbell Moore). Meanwhile, Tuppy (Tom Wilkinson) actually someone who wants to win the hand of the vampish socialite Erlynne. Scandal and duplicity in high society! Tales of ribaldry with Helen and Scarlett!

Xanadu [watch the movie]
Olivia Newton-John plays a mysterious woman named Kira, who appears magically out of a mural to move and inspire a down-on-his-luck artist by the name of Sonny Malone (Michael Beck). She encourages Sonny to start a nightclub with an ex-big band leader called Danny Maguire (Gene Kelly, in a role reprised from his film with Rita Hayworth called Cover Girl), but winds up falling in love with the young man in the process. This proves a problem, because Kira's real name is Terpsichore, and she's one of the nine Muses who are charged with inspiring creativity on Earth. Which means Sonny Malone has to appeal to Zeus himself to profess his love for this amazing woman!

The Dark Knight held the box office crown for a third straight week, fending off the third installment in The Mummy franchise. The Bat-flick seems on target to become the second-highest grossing film of all time once it passes the $461 million mark set by Star Wars. On Monday or Tuesday, it will likely become the fastest film ever to reach $400 million, the 18 or 19 day haul shattering Shrek 2's record of 43 days.

1. The Dark Knight - $43.8m
2. The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor - $42.4m
3. Step Brothers - $16.3m
4. Mamma Mia! - $13.1m
5. Journey to the Center of the Earth - $6.8m
6. Swing Vote - $6.3m
7. Hancock - $5.2m
8. Wall-E - $4.7m
9. The X-Files: I Want To Believe - $3.4m
10. Space Chimps - $2.8m

By Andy Hunsaker, Fancast Movies

Comedian Bill Maher, who hosts a controversial HBO news and debate show called Real Time, is now taking his act to the big screen. He's taken a page out of Michael Moore's book by doing a documentary with no pretense of being objective. He's long held the belief that religion in general is a completely ridiculous concept, and he's incensed a lot of religious leaders in the process, as they tend to be very, very touchy.

Maher is generally enamored of himself, often smug and occasionally obnoxious, but he's never clouded by political ideology and he forms his own strong opinions that are not often presented in the mainstream media, which is why his show is often compelling viewing - you just don't see these arguments anywhere else. You also don't see a guy take a camera into a Muslim clothing store and challenge them about their treatment of women while trying to crack jokes. But you do in this new clip from Religulous, due out this October.

Watch a clip from Bill Maher's Religulous.
Watch the trailer for Religulous.

By Andy Hunsaker, Fancast Movies

It hasn't even scored its widest release yet, but with virtually no advertising at all, the French thriller Tell No One has made a pretty good showing for itself, with almost $2 million made in a very small amount of theaters. The theory is that, with all the giant superhero tentpole movies out there this summer, a smart, down-to-earth and compellingly tense and unpredictable drama stands out in the crowd. It'll soon spread "arthouse wide" to 100 theaters, so hopefully you'll be able to catch it by the end of August.

It stars a younger Dustin Hoffman - er, rather François Cluzet as Alexandre Beck, a pediatrician trying to put his life back together after his wife Margot (the captivating Marie-Josée Croze from The Diving Bell and The Butterfly) was murdered by a serial killer. Eight years after the event, however, he suddenly finds himself the prime suspect in two more murders on the same day he gets a mysterious e-mail featuring live footage of someone who could very well be Margot, alive and well, with the message to "tell no one." When his sister's lover (Kristin Scott Thomas) provides him with a high-end attorney (Nathalie Baye) to help keep him out of jail, Beck's life quickly spirals out of control, until he has to flee the authorities (Francois Berleand) in order to find out just what the hell is happening to him.

It's twisty and turny and it definitely keeps you focused and guessing. Check it out for yourself.

Watch the trailer for Tell No One, right here on Fancast.

By Andy Hunsaker, Fancast Movies

Maybe it'll be a fun kids' movie about singing and dancing dogs. But right now, most people who watch the trailer for Beverly Hills Chihuahua are cringing in fear of an unbelievably obnoxious spectacle. No one likes these rich women with their tiny purse-dogs, they only read about them in the hopes that something awful will happen to them.

This movie, however, may be getting a bad rap. It stars the voices of Drew Barrymore, George Lopez, Salma Hayek, Cheech Marin, Paul Rodriguez, Edward James Olmos and even Placido Domingo. It's directed by Raja Gosnell, who made a CG-dog movie that people liked called Scooby-Doo. The little yappy purse-dog named Chloe falls out of the purse and winds up on a crazy adventure of survival and true dogginess. Maybe it'll be fun.

But they have long memories of bad Taco Bell commercials to overcome first.

Watch the trailer for Beverly Hills Chihuahua and see if you think the movie's being unfairly prejudged.

By Andy Hunsaker, Fancast Movies

So far, it's been deceptively difficult to make a proper movie about The Punisher, Marvel Comics' gritty street vigilante who has sworn to eliminate crime in violent and murderous ways after losing his family to it. Dolph Lundgren made the first attempt, but they didn't even bother to use the iconic skull shirt, which is absolutely mandatory. This isn't a difficult comic-book character to portray - no clunky armor, no spandex. Just a guy in a skull shirt kicking ass and killing bad guys with a dark intensity. Thomas Jane's recent effort wasted too much time on expanding his origin to include slaughtering his entire extended family at a reunion, as well as John Travolta. By the end of Jane's Punisher, you're left with the feeling that the sequel to that movie would be the Punisher movie people actually want. Jane, however, didn't get to make that sequel.

Hopefully, though, Ray Stevenson of Rome fame can succeed, with director Lexi Alexander at the helm and adapting a story directly out of the best run of Punisher books in recent memory - the Garth Ennis MAX series (MAX is Marvel's 'adults only' line). The new trailer gives us our first look at the disfigured villain of the piece, a nasty piece of work named Jigsaw (who predated Tobin Bell in the Saw movies, by the way). This Jigsaw is played by Dominic West, and anyone cool enough to spend most of a movie unrecognizable behind make-up is already a leg up on Travolta. Check out the new trailer and see if you think they may have finally hit the nail on the head.

Watch the new trailer for Punisher: War Zone right here on Fancast.
Watch the first trailer for Punisher: War Zone.

A Memphis station reports that Morgan Freeman is in serious condition after a Mississippi car wreck in which he flipped his 1997 Nissan Maxima several times. He was traveling with a female passenger, whose condition is currently unrevealed. The jaws of life were required to extract Freeman from the car. More on this as it develops.

UPDATE: Apparently, Freeman was lucid and even joking when he was extracted from the wreckage. Even quipping "no freebies" when someone tried to snap his picture with a cell phone camera. This is a good sign.

UPDATE 2: CNN says "He's resting quietly and has some fractures. Nothing life-threatening. Nothing permanent." No indication of drugs or alcohol. Very good to know.

By Andy Hunsaker, Fancast Movies

The Dark Knight may soon be the second highest grossing film of all time, and if Heath Ledger hadn't died, chances are a third film with more Joker hijinks would have been a foregone conclusion. Without him, though, there can be no more Joker in Christopher Nolan's Gotham City. Which leaves the burning question of "where to go from here?"

Nerds on the internet are already hotly debating this topic, including a cool thread at the Something Awful forums about photoshopping their casting choices into interesting versions of Batman villains - currently in the lead are Crispin Glover or Michael C. Hall as the RIddler, although there's a contingent who thinks it would be brilliant to bring Jim Carrey back on to do a radically different and darker take on the same character he played in Joel Schumacher's unpleasant Batman Forever. There are also those who don't believe Aaron Eckhart's Two-Face is completely out of the picture, either.

Then, of course, there's the rumor that ex-Catwoman Julie Newmar started about the notion that Angelina Jolie has actually inquired about playing Selina Kyle in a third installment of this current Batman series. This would easily be a wet dream for Warner Bros. if they could swing it (as well as for at least half the audience). The path is clear now for a female-driven Batman film, and Catwoman and, say, Poison Ivy as an environmental terrorist and serial killer with an agenda, could make for a completely different tone, which will be necessary to do in a third film, as there's no way to out-dark The Dark Knight.

All spitballing and rumination aside, though, the central question has yet to be answered - will Nolan even return for a third Batman film?

Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2: Sisterhood of the Traveling Pantser
2 Sisterhood 2 Traveling 2 Pants
Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 The Streets
Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2: Electric Boogaloo
Live Free or Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

However you want to say it, the girls are back for more adventures with their magic pants that always fit, no matter who is wearing them. Carmen (America Ferrera), Tibby (Amber Tamblyn), Lena (Alexis Bledel) and Bridget (Blake Lively) have returned for this second installment in their continuing story of friendship, love and college. Was it as fun behind the scenes as it looks on screen? The Sisterhood speaks in this clip.

Watch this clip of the girls of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants talk about their experiences filming in Greece.
Watch the trailer for Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2.

Seth Rogen and James Franco in a Judd Apatow-produced weed comedy called The Pineapple Express. Watch the trailer, and you know you're going to see it and you're going to laugh at it. If you need more reasons to justify it, check out this batch of fun clips.

Dale tries to explain his job to Saul.
Dale goes to Saul for help after he witnesses a murder.
The Dilemma of Dale and Saul - Keep Running or Dumpster Hiding?
Saul rescues Dale from a cop.
Saul drives the getaway car that also happens to be a cop car.
After his near-death chase, Dale comes to a realization about his life.

Drew Barrymore is known primarily as a romantic comedy kind of actress these days, and her pleasantly bubbly persona tends to serve this well. But there was a long road to that upbeat state of mind, and there was a time when she used to specialize in darker fare, which went hand in hand with her troubled youth. The 1989 thriller Far From Home is one of those films from that era.

Charlie Cox (Matt Frewer) is a divorced Los Angeles writer returning from a cross-country road trip with his daughter Joleen (Barrymore). When they run out of gas in a remote desert down of Banco, Nevada, one day before Joleen turns 14, they're forced to take refuge in a ramshackle trailer park until they can find a way home. Things get scarier and scarier as it becomes increasingly clear that there's a serial killer on the loose who forms a dangerous obsession with Joleen, as well as a belligerent teenager (Andras Jones) determined to make her his. Their attempts to escape with a fellow traveler named Amy (Jennifer Tilly) don't turn out how they'd hoped, either. Who can they trust in this town?

Matt Frewer is a great actor who doesn't get enough attention, and Jennifer Tilly is Jennifer Tilly. These two, along with Barrymore, make Far From Home something definitely worth checking out.

Watch a young Drew Barrymore in Far From Home for free in its entirety right here, right now on Fancast.

Robert Downey Jr., the newly-minted action star of this summer's blockbuster Iron Man, spoke recently about the prospects of Iron Man 2, and although he denied the notion that the Hulk would be in it despite his cameo at the end of The Incredible Hulk, he would not confirm nor deny the presence of Captain America or Thor in the next film, which would set up the big superteam flick The Avengers. He spoke in vague, yet interesting terms about what he and director Jon Favreau are up to.

"It's such a big leap, before we were grounded in reality and now we're starting to go into the Marvel Universe. I don't know much about this, I just know that we go scene to scene to scene, and we have some great scenes which I think will be really surprising at how we took all of this goodwill and this success and we decided to do something ever more kind of risky and something that represents the way Jon thinks and the way I like to develop a character. So, it's going to be good."

Nim's Island [watch the trailer]
Nim (Abigail Breslin) lives on an exotic tropical island and lives a life of adventure not unlike her favorite storybook hero, Alex Rover (Gerard Butler). When the island she lives on is threatened, Nim tries to get help from Alex, but it falls to the author of Rover's stories, a mousy recluse named Alexandra Rover (Jodie Foster), to answer the call, and she's forced to face her own paralyzing fears.

The Counterfeiters [watch the trailer]
This year's Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Film, The Counterfeiters is a Holocaust story about career criminal and master forger Salomon Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics), who uses his talents to escape his avoid the Nazis' final solution for him at a concentration camp when he is recruited into a scheme to counterfeit British and American money during World War II. The plan is to destabilize their economic structures, and Sally is willing to play along to ensure his survival. The ethical minefield navigated by the film is fascinating and unsentimental.

Miss Conception [watch the trailer]