CBS Films has released the first trailer for The Words, a drama set for release on September 21st, 2012. The film stars Bradley Cooper as a struggling writer who steals another man’s story and publishes it as his own, and how everyone deals with the consequences of that decision.

I saw this movie at Sundance this year and it’s a well-acted drama that, aside from being a bit predictable, plays out like a pretty good mystery story. Everyone in the cast does great work, so if you’re a diehard fan of Cooper, Zoe Saldana, Jeremy Irons (who steals the show), Ben Barnes, Dennis Quaid, or Olivia Wilde, check it out when it hits theaters.

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Woody Harrelson must have a pretty great agent. After dropping off the map for a while, he had somewhat of a career resurgence with Zombieland a few years ago, and has steadily been working since. After his scene-stealing turn as Haymitch Abernathy in Gary Ross’ The Hunger Games, it looks like Harrelson has another great project lined up. Variety says he’s in negotiations to play the villain in Scott Cooper’s upcoming revenge thriller Out of the Furnace. Details below.

Out of the Furnace stars Christian Bale and Casey Affleck as two brothers in the Rust Belt, one of whom goes to jail while the other gets involved with a ruthless gang. When Bale’s character gets out of prison, he must decide whether to stay out of trouble, or go after the people who messed with his brother. Harrelson is in talks to play Curtis DeGroat, the leader of the gang. Zoe Saldana will play Bale’s love interest and Sam Shepard is set as his uncle.

Sounds like another opportunity for some scenery chewing for Harrelson, who really thrives in supporting roles like this one. I’m really excited about this movie – not only because of the cast (which is great, obviously), but because Crazy Heart director Scott Cooper is both writing the script and directing here. This sounds like a hell of a second feature film, and I can’t wait to see how it turns out.

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Whenever you hear about an action-heist script being shopped around you usually assume the likes of Mark Walhberg, Dwayne Johnson, or Jason Statham (ie. male action stars) will become involved. However, on this occasion Paramount is developing a heist project with both Zoe Saldana and Megan Fox in mind to lead.

According to Deadline a script called Swindle was chased by both Universal and Paramount, with the latter emerging victorious. Both Saldana and Fox will produce the movie alongside Michael De Luca (Moneyball), and the whole project emerged because both actresses thought it would be cool to work with each other (and knew males around the world would be lined up opening weekend).

The storyline is being kept under wraps, but it was written by Enzo Mileti and Scott Wilson. It could be a while before things get moving though as Saldana is currently shooting Star Trek 2 and will then shoot Blood Ties with director Guillaume Canet. She’s also in talks to join Christian Bale and Casey Affleck in Out of the Furnace, and then James Cameron will be requiring her for those Avatar sequels at some point.

After departing the Transformers franchise people assumed Megan Fox would disappear, but she’s been lining up a few comedies such as Friends With Kids which is out now and Sacha Baron Cohen’s The Dictator which is due out in May. She’ll also be seen in Judd Apatow’s This Is Forty with Paul Rudd.

Image made by TheIronLion.

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TrekMovie has word that the official start date for production on the Star Trek sequel is January 15th, 2012, which they point out is over 4 years since the first film began shooting in 2007.

The site also notes that co-writer/producer Roberto Orci confirmed the script has “been done for a while” and they’re currently working on the third draft. Orci commented on the site saying “rewriting is a good thing which normally makes the script better. We like to keep pushing the script, even if no one gives us notes.”

Most of the sets from the first film are being taken out of storage (such as the USS Enterprise) and VFX house Industrial Light & Magic has already started work on some of the effects shots for the movie. As there will be plenty of space shots they can begin working on them now without any cast or shot footage.

Finally, TrekMovie suggests Hawaii could be a shooting location for the film (J.J Abrams shot Lost there) as the location team are looking for a “jungle planet” environment.

Chris Pine, Zoe Saldana, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg, Anton Yelchin and John Cho are all expected to return, and while he isn’t confirmed, Benicio Del Toro could take on the villain role.

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This news won’t be a surprise to anyone as we’ve all been expecting it, but Vulture has word that J.J. Abrams “has finally committed to shooting Star Trek 2″.

Over the past year Abrams has been busy directing Super 8 so he was only able to focus his attention on Star Trek 2 this summer. Writers Damon Lindelof, Bob Orci and Alex Kurtzman have since been working on the script based on a 70 page outline they had in May, which now looks to be developed enough for Abrams to commit as director.

Vulture says “pre-production is underway”, “the script will be done by month’s end” and “Abrams will start shooting this winter”. Paramount had originally set a June 29, 2012 release date for the sequel, but the delay in filming caused them to give G.I. Joe 2: Retaliation that slot. The studio will likely be aiming for a summer 2013 release, unless they want to rush it for late-2012 (which is already pretty crowded).

Chris Pine, Zoe Saldana, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg, Anton Yelchin and John Cho are all expected to return.

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Lesson #1 bad guys: When you’re in the process of wiping out someone, be sure to take out the entire family. Yes, even the kids; for one day, they will grow up big-n-strong (or in this case, sexy and borderline anorexic) and seek vengeance upon you.

A tale of revenge is what the 107 minute Colombiana showcases. It’s another femme fatale action piece in which the main character has a Crow-like desire to avenge her slain loved ones, but institutes a spy-like approach when stalking her prey.

The opening takes place in hot and sweaty Colombia where nine year old Cataleya (Amandla Stenberg) witnesses her parents being gun-downed by criminal mafia henchmen, Marco (Jordi Molla). Right before the bloodshed, her father gave her instructions on how to get out of the country and over to the United States. The apt nine year-old succeeds and eventually gets all the way to Chicago and seeks out her Uncle Emilio (Cliff Curtis).

Emilio plays on the other side of the law and Cataleya instantly asks him to train her to be a killer. Jump ahead 15 years later, and Cataleya (Zoe Saldana) is plucking off random bad guys all over the place without leaving a trace. This has everyone at the FBI baffled, leading special agent Ross (Lennie James) to working his team around the clock looking for any type of clue to their suspected vigilante.

Cataleya has an agenda though, and her symbolic calling card left at every crime scene is a personal message to lure out the cartel that murdered her family.

For a flick that features a character that never makes mistakes, there are surprisingly a bunch of continuity errors found within the scripting. Moments where characters contradict themselves within minutes of establishing something; along with the logic of how certain things unfolded, become a bit of a stretch. This is noticed during scenes encompassing the frequent cat and mouse games played between our lead and the people she’s either stalking or trying to avoid. Clearly the script is attempting to articulate the detail in how Saldana’s character is accomplishing impossible missions and what not, yet they always leave a huge gaping hole in the plans; which will have some audiences’ members calling out “bullshit.” What this screenplay needed was a solid training sequence so the viewer can buy into everything they are seeing out of the character. Based on what we’re given, it is tough to just roll with it every now and then.

If one is able to get over this flaw – and probably the only flaw from a mechanical perspective – then they should be able to enjoy this better than average, though familiar, spy thriller. It’s definitely better than recent genre contemporaries such as Salt and Hanna by a long shot. There may not be too much drama or suspense to this story (if any), aside from the very well thought out opening act, for it’s basically relying on the stealth action and escape montages. And isn’t that what some of the heralded James Bond flicks survived on? Colombiana is pretty much that sans the fine polish and pizzazz of the performances.

Overall, Colombiana may not have the precision of a sniper but at least it’s not just spraying and praying with an Uzi. This should hit its target audience and the no-nonsense story will keep one interested, despite the obvious direction.

RATING: 3.5 out of 5

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Looking at Zoe Saldana you wouldn’t think she could take down grown men twice her size, but she’s going to be doing a lot of it in assassin/revenge film Colombiana.

A new behind the scenes video has been uploaded, and we see Saldana training with the LAPD, weight training, studying Krav Maga and gun handling in preparation for the role.

A young woman grows up to be a stone-cold assassin after witnessing her parents’ murder as a child in Bogota. She works for her uncle as a hitman by day, but her personal time is spent engaging in vigilante murders that she hopes will lead her to her ultimate target – the mobster responsible for her parents’ death.

Colombiana will be released on August 26th by TriStar Pictures and is directed by Olivier Megaton, who will be shooting Taken 2 with Liam Neeson later this year.

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When was the last time you saw a woman of color leading an action film with a decent budget? I can’t remember either, but thankfully producer Luc Besson (director of Leon: The Professional) has given Zoe Saldana her first solo starring role in assassin/revenge film Colombiana.

Olivier Megaton, who will be shooting Taken 2 with Liam Neeson later this year, is the director and looks to have created a film that has both kick-ass action and emotion.

Watch the trailer below:

A young woman grows up to be a stone-cold assassin after witnessing her parents’ murder as a child in Bogota. She works for her uncle as a hitman by day, but her personal time is spent engaging in vigilante murders that she hopes will lead her to her ultimate target – the mobster responsible for her parents’ death.

Following a great 2009 with Star Trek and Avatar one would have expected studios to consider Saldana for some of their more high-profile roles, but for some reason they seem to be more interested in actresses like Blake Lively and Scarlett Johansson. Still, Saldana will most likely be on the set of Star Trek 2 later this year, and then there’s Avatar 2 and 3 to film in 2012.

Colombiana will be released on September 2nd by TriStar Pictures.

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What better way to start off 2011 than with one of the most offensive movies I’ve seen in the past decade? The tagline for this film is “five stories that will mess you up for life,” and though they’re being a bit cocky assuming anyone will remember this film for the rest of his or her life, it’s definitely representative of the extremely bizarre subject matter featured throughout.

Full disclosure: I had never even heard of this movie before I received an invite to a screening of it, but after checking out the cast and realizing this was Christopher Landon’s directorial debut (screenwriter of Disturbia, which I liked a lot), I figured I’d check it out. I didn’t read a plot summary or anything, so I had no idea what I was getting myself into. And I’m warning you right now: if you’re even remotely offended by “taboo” content, stay the eff away from Burning Palms.

The film inexplicably presents its five Los Angeles-set storylines as if they are framed in a comic book, with page-turning transitions and artwork between each part of the anthology. This made little sense to me; it appeared Landon was just ripping of Michael Dougherty’s Trick ‘r Treat (review, podcast), which put the same stylistic effect to good use by having each of the stories overlap, providing a unity to the film that Burning Palms sorely lacks. Each story supposedly deals with stereotypes of five different areas of L.A. (Santa Monica, West Hollywood, etc.), but with as messed up as this film is, I’m not entirely sure what Landon is trying to say about each of these areas. Is Sherman Oaks a hotbed for rapists? Does Santa Monica regularly house sadistic daughters with Oedipal complexes toward their fathers? If there’s a legitimate point to this film, then I missed it. I was distracted by how “in your face” the story was at all times, all but begging us to be offended by its crassness and politically incorrect content.

This is one of the worst movies I’ve seen in the past 10 years that features relatively known actors. From an actor’s standpoint, I can see why they’d want to be in a movie like this: it provides them an opportunity to act in a way that would rarely be acceptable in a mainstream Hollywood film. So I don’t really blame them for being in this movie, but Chris Landon just takes this story past the point of entertainment and to another level entirely. Watching this film is a miserable experience, and almost all of the characters are despicable. Even the ones we’re supposed to care about are incredibly annoying – Rosamund Pike’s jealous fiancée character, Jamie Chung’s regretful schoolgirl, Paz Vegas’ mistreated maid. It’s hard to find three characters (out of about twenty) that are in any way tolerable, so perhaps relatability is this film’s greatest weakness.

I wish I could just sit here and type out everything that happened in Burning Palms so you could read it in incredulity, wondering if I’m joking. The problem is I can’t even recommend this movie to people I know who enjoy messed up movies; it’s just kind of terrible, even if it has subversive subject matter. I will give away the plot for the final story in the film, so if you plan on seeing this (again, an act I wouldn’t encourage) then stop reading for the next two paragraphs.

Spoiler Alert

The final storyline begins in an apartment decorated for Christmas, with Christmas music playing in the background. One of the first images we see is Zoe Saldana, face down on the floor of her living room, being raped by a guy named Robert, dressed in a hoodie and a white mask (played by Nick Stahl from Sin City and Terminator 3). He leaves, and she slowly recovers. The next morning, she finds his wallet under her couch and tracks the guy down at the pizza joint where he works. She confronts him and says she’ll give him the wallet back if he meets her at another pizza place later that night for dinner. He’s shocked by this, and tries to just get her to leave him alone, but eventually reluctantly agrees.

They meet for dinner and she talks him up as if it’s a date, going so far as to ask him back to her apartment. Naturally, Robert is taken aback: he just wants his wallet back and nothing to do with this scenario anymore. She’s getting kind of creepy. After she reveals that the wallet is actually back at her place, they go there, play a board game (!), and as tensions rise – this whole time we think she might be planning some massive act of revenge – she begs him to rape her again. What. The. Eff. And he does. And she starts crying because she doesn’t want him to leave. But he gets his wallet and leaves. Close up of the mask on the middle of the living room floor. End of movie.

End of Spoilers

So if you happened to read that last section, you’ll have an idea of what kind of messed up stuff you’ll experience if you ever see this film. And trust me, that’s only part of it; the entire movie has a similar tone. Normally I’d say writer/directors should be rewarded for going outside the norm and trying something different, but I can’t in good conscience recommend this to anyone. I respect the filmmakers for their efforts – it’s hard to get any movie made these days, let alone one like this – but I don’t condone what they’ve done with Burning Palms. Until next time…

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Earlier this week 20th Century Fox announced that an Extended Collector’s Edition of Avatar will be released on November 16th which contains “hours of never-before seen material including over 45 minutes of amazing deleted scenes” as well as “documentaries, behind the scenes featurettes and artwork”.

Now they have released a trailer for the Extended Collector’s Edition which finally gives us a glimpse at the unused alternate opening. We see shots of Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) walking through a crowded 2154 city, and a few more shots of him getting involved in a fight in a bar.

You can read the full specifications of the Extended Collector’s Edition here, and you can pre-order it from Amazon via these links:

DVD | Blu-ray

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