Links of the Week

The latest /Filmcast and /Filmcast: After Dark (I actually sort of appear in the After Dark, so check it out).

/Film‘s David Chen interviews Let The Right One In director Tomas Alfredson here.

Actor Seth Green (Sex Drive) will direct an adaptation of the comic book he co-created here.

Javier Bardem (Vicky Cristina Barcelona) will star in Biutiful from director Alejandro González Iñárritu (Babel) here.

McG (We Are Marshall) will direct the adaptation of the novel Dead Spy Running here.

Crispin Glover (Epic Movie), Christopher Lee (The Golden Compass) and Eleanor Tomlinson (Angus, Thongs And Perfect Snogging) have all joined the cast of the new Alice In Wonderland movie from director Tim Burton (Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street) and Burton regular composer Danny Elfman has confirmed he’s doing the music here and here.

Chris Columbus (Rent) is in talks to direct Ripley’s Believe It Or Not here.

Ian McDiarmid, the guy who plays Palpatine in the Star Wars saga, is amazing here.

Mother And Child and lots of Mexican dudes

The holy trinity of internationally known Mexican directors, aka Alfonso Cuarón (Children Of Men), Guillermo Del Toro (the Hellboy films) and Alejandro González Iñárritu (Babel) will produce Mother And Child, a new ensemble drama from Colombian filmmaker Rodrigo García (Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her), who also wrote the script.

The $4.5 million project, produced with Mockingbird Pictures president Julie Lynn, follows the intersecting lives of a 50-year-old woman, the daughter she gave up for adoption 35 years ago and a black woman looking to adopt a baby.

Set to begin a Los Angeles shoot in late December or January, the film continues Garcia’s examination of female characters found in his dramas “Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her” and “Nine Lives.”

In the meantime Garcia’s latest film, the intriguing supernatural thriller Passengers (see the trailer), currently watchable in Greece, Spain and Iceland, will open in the US on October 24th, in the UK on November 28th and in Australia on December 4th.

Source

New Trailer: The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button

Response to footage of The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button, the new film from cult director David Fincher (Zodiac), has been rather lukewarm so far but I must say this trailer looks amazing, just like the first one. Naturally, this new trailer gives us more insight into the movie’s plot and it seems fascinating, while reminding me a bit of last year’s Youth Without Youth, the overlooked comeback of legendary director Francis Ford Coppola (The Rainmaker).

Written by Eric Roth (Lucky You) and Robin Swicord (The Jane Austen Book Club), based on a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby), The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button tells the story of a man who’s born with the body of an old man and who grows younger as he ages. It stars Brad Pitt (Burn After Reading), Cate Blanchett (Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull), Tilda Swinton (Burn After Reading), Elle Fanning (Reservation Road, also Charlotte’s Web actress Dakota’s younger sister), Elias Koteas (Shooter), Jason Flemyng (Mirrors) and Julia Ormond (Kit Kittredge: An American Girl) among others.

In any case, this promises another brilliant performance for Pitt. The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button will premiere around Christmas in the US and Australia and in most other countries in January & February 2009. But to me the real question is, what’s with all the Brad Pitt & Cate Blanchett pairings recently? First they were supposed to co-star in The Fountain, then they were together in Babel and now this…WTF?