Last month we heard several actresses, including Diane Kruger, Paula Patton, Eva Green and Eva Mendes, were in contention for two lead roles in Len Wiseman’s Total Recall remake. Now according to Deadline Wiseman has offered the role of Lori (played by Sharon Stone in the original film) to Kate Beckinsale, who also happens to be his wife.

Beckinsale is currently filming Underworld: New Dawn, but Wiseman wouldn’t have offered her the role if he knew she was busy, so she will probably be free to accept the offer.

The site also mentions Eva Mendes and Rosario Dawson are serious contenders for the other lead role, Melina, who will help Colin Farrell get to the bottom of the futuristic scandal on Mars.

The original 1990 film followed a man (Arnold Schwarzenegger) haunted by a recurring dream of journeying to Mars who buys a literal dream vacation from a company called Rekall Inc., which sells implanted memories. The man comes to believe he is a secret agent and ends up on a Martian colony, where he fights to overthrow a despotic ruler controlling the production of air.

This updated version is being described as a “new, contemporized adaptation”, so it should be quite different to what we saw 20 years ago. Kurt Wimmer (Salt) has written the screenplay, and filming will begin over the upcoming months.

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Director Tony Scott returns to the world of high speed pursuits in Unstoppable, his fifth collaboration with star Denzel Washington. Inspired by true events, the film follows an out-of-control train as it tears through the Pennsylvania countryside and the two mismatched railroad employees who take it upon themselves to stop it.

I must admit: while Tony Scott’s filmography is fairly populist and mostly enjoyable to me, I’m beginning to tire of his frenetic style and predictable storylines. Never has this been more apparent than in Unstoppable, a movie that – by the very nature of its plot – almost demands that you sit on the edge of your seat but never actually does anything to earn that demand.

Most of the reason I didn’t particularly care for the film is due to the lackluster script by Mark Bomback. It’s exactly the type of movie you think it’s going to be, and the movie takes absolutely no risks in telling this story. Every character is a walking cliche, from the hard working but under-appreciated Connie Hooper (Dawson) to her buffoonish boss (Dunn), and the movie somehow manages to make the main characters almost totally uninteresting. There are the standard family issues – Washington’s Frank Barnes is losing touch with his teenage daughters, Pine’s Will Colson has a strained relationship with his wife and son – but there is so little time spent building those relationships that we don’t particularly care if the issues are resolved.

Sometimes a movie can be so mediocre that it angers me more than a truly awful film. I feel bad ragging on a movie like this because A) I’m not a screenwriter, nor do I know to what degree the studio altered the script and B) it’s actually a competent movie and I’m sure a lot of people will like it. It’s comfort food for your eyes on the big screen, with serviceable performances from everyone involved but nothing fresh about the presentation. Many of Scott’s films tell stories that have been told before, but usually he brings something new to the table that at least makes it interesting (Top Gun‘s dogfighting sequences, for example). In Unstoppable, even the action is predictable and without consequence. (Small spoiler alert – even the one railroad worker we think dies in an action scene is revealed to have miraculously survived in a cheesy end-credits explanation scene.)

Nearly everything about this movie seems uninspired or too on the nose, even down to Scott’s fetishistic portrayal of machines as villains and the John Henry-esque human spirit triumphing over it. This film also had trouble gaining speed (so to speak) in preproduction; Washington dropped in and out of involvement and rampant budget cuts came down from the studio, and those problems seemed to translate into the final product. There’s no life in this film, and everything is frustratingly average. The only patch of brightness belongs to Ethan Suplee, who sells the guilt of causing this whole thing with ease but – again – doesn’t bring anything new to the table.

MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD

I was thoroughly unimpressed with Unstoppable, but what did you think about it? Did the Apollo 13 ending seem endearing to you or more like an inadequate imitation? Sound off in the comment section. And shouldn’t this movie have been called Stoppable? Until next time…

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Yesterday we saw an international trailer for Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief, and now we have a new domestic one. It’s similar to the one we got yesterday but it’s longer, contains new footage, and we find out that Percy Jackson is the son of Poseidon and can control water. People who have read the book will have known that already, however having only just found out I think it’s pretty cool.

Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief is directed by Chris Columbus and stars Logan Lerman, Sean Bean, Kevin McKidd, Uma Thurman and Rosario Dawson, and will be released next February.

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We have a new international trailer for Percy Jackson & The Olympians The Lightning Thief, and it’s probably the best trailer released so far. Not only do we see more of Pierce Brosnan and Rosario Dawson, we get our first look at Uma Thurman as Medusa.

Percy Jackson & The Olympians will be released next February, and Clash of The Titans will be released in March. That means we will be getting two potentially cool movies based on Greek gods within 30 days of each other. Although, Percy Jackson has taken the mythology and given it a modern twist so there should be no conflict. I’m interested to see who plays the best Zeus though. Will it be Sean Bean or Liam Neeson?

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A second trailer for Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief has YouTubed it’d way online, and while it is still more of a teaser it does show us a bit of extra footage, including our first look at Pierce Brosnan and Rosario Dawson. Watch below!

Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief is based on the book by Rick Riordan and follows a young boy who discovers he is the descendant of a Greek god and sets out on an adventure to settle an on-going battle between the gods. These aren’t just any gods however. Sean Bean plays Zeus, Kevin McKidd plays Poseidon and Steve Coogan plays Hades. We also have Pierce Brosnan as Chiron, Uma Thurman as Medusa and Rosario Dawson as Persephone.

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Clash of the Titans isn’t the only movie being released next year that features Greek Gods. Percy Jackson is getting in on the action too. Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief is based on the book by Rick Riordan and follows a young boy who discovers he is the descendant of a Greek god and sets out on an adventure to settle an on-going battle between the gods. These aren’t just any gods however. Sean Bean plays Zeus, Kevin McKidd plays Poseidon and Steve Coogan plays Hades. We also have Pierce Brosnan as Chiron, Uma Thurman as Medusa and Rosario Dawson as Persephone.

Surprisingly the teaser trailer contains none of these familiar faces. Instead we see Percy Jackson, played by Logan Lerman, inside the Empire state building and he somehow finds himself on the Mount Olympus floor. Easy mistake to make.

The film is directed by Chris Columbus who directed the first two Potter films, so it should be in safe hands. Although i’ll admit the reviews for his most recent film I Love You, Beth Cooper don’t fill me with confidence.

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The last we heard on Sin City 2 was that the script had been written, and Frank Miller said filming could begin in April. Well it is now March and is doesn’t look like filming will begin any time soon, however Rosario Dawson told MTV that filming could till take place this year.

“Yeah, I talked to Robert [Rodriguez] and Frank [Miller],” she said of a recent conversation with the director and writer who joined forces with Quentin Tarantino for the hit 2005 film. “They actually just finished the script for ‘Sin City 2’ a few months ago.”

“There’s talks about it shooting sometime this year.”

If they intend to start filming this year we should start hearing some casting buzz over the upcoming months.

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Here we have a first look at Shia LaBeouf’s latest movie that yet again involves Steven Spielberg (no suprise there!) Eagle Eye sees LaBeouf re-team with his second favourite director, D.J. Caruso. Shia plays a young slacker whose overachieving twin brother mysteriously dies. When he returns home, both he and his single mother find that they have been framed as terrorists. Forced to become members of a cell that has plans to carry out a political assassination, they must work together to extricate themselves.

As with all movies that involve people being framed, the phrase ‘Somebody’s set me up‘ appears in the trailer. Very cliché. However, it does look interesting. Eagle Eye also has a great cast, consisting of Michelle Monaghan, Rosario Dawson and Billy Bob Thornton.

Check it out below!

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