Anne Hathaway Catwoman

.

--- Hot For Hobbitses - There's been some filling out of the Shire lately with Peter Jackson's The Hobbit currently filming - 100% Heterosexual Actor Luke Evans joined the cast as Bard the Grim (he's a human archer that'll have more of a role in the second film, apparently); meanwhile Lost's Evangaline Lilly will be playing a woodland elf, Benedict Cumberbatch, who is apparently really named that, will be voicing the dragon Smaug, and Barry Humphries, aka Dame Edna, will be playing the Goblin King (in mo-cap a la Gollum).

--- Snow Falling - A single bit of promo art's made its way online, plus a couple of desciptions of others, for Tarsem's next project, his Snow White movie with Julia Roberts as the Witch and Armie Hammer as the prince.

--- Queen Carla - MNPP loves Carla Gugino so we love this week's Take Three in appreciation of three of her performances over at The Film Experience.

 

--- Bedevilled Dom - The quad version of the poster for The Devil's Double has been released and they smartly kept their focus squared on Dominic Cooper's bulky golden crotch for it.

--- Goodbye Hellboy - According to Mike Mignola, Hellboy's creator, things ain't looking good for the time being for a third Hellboy movie from Guillermo Del Toro.

--- Join The PTA - A couple new young actors have joined the cast of Paul Thomas Anderson's next film, which has officially been titled The Master, a title that was up in the air for a bit there. 

--- A Clash of Kings - Having ended their first season last evening - I haven't watched the episode yet, will do so tonight - HBO's A Game of Thrones will begin filming its second season in July. People seem pleased with how the first season's gone? I am.

--- Fresh Meats - When I went to Austin last year it was either go and visit the graveyard where the opening scene of the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre film was shot, or go an hour outside of the city to visit the house where the film was shot which's been moved from its original location and turned into a restaurant. I chose the former - see my pics here! - but now there's a look at the latter going around that's worth checking out for sure.

.

.

Okay okay his name's Josh Pence, we all know that already. He was a male model - shocking I know, judging by these pictures - and he's already got roles in Battleship and The Dark Knight Rises. So perhaps he'll stumble out from under Armie Hammer's long, tall, manly shadow. Although that seems like a desirable place to stay for your live long life, if ya ask me.

A note: Remember how Blogger went down last week, and all the posts I wrote on Thursday disappeared? Well Blogger's finally returned several (though not all of them, yet) of them to my saved pile, but not republished them at the appropriate in-the-past place. I'm too distracted today to figure out when they were originally scheduled, and also all the comments y'all made on them are gone now anyway, so I'm just gonna republish each one right now. So yes, you've seen these stories before, and yes they are nearly a week old. Let's do the time warp, et cetera...

.

--- Swamp Sweat - The first clip with actual footage from the fourth season of True Blood is online and you can watch it at PopWrap. And yes, as you can see there to the ?, they are highlighting their finer points.

--- And speaking of the finer things on True Blood, Alexander Skarsgard has joined the cast of a movie where he will be married to Julianne Moore. I want to watch them make out.

--- No Escape - John Carpenter's The Ward is getting dumped released on VOD on June 8th. It'll then get chucked into a couple of theaters on July 8th. It is supposedly awful. Dammit, John. I'll watch it at some point no doubt, but just dammit.

--- We Need To Talk About We Need To Talk About Kevin - I mention all this in the comments of the post I'm about to link to, but I started reading Lionel Shriver's book We Need To Talk About Kevin last night and the ol' cliche came true - I couldn't put it down! I lay there til my exhausted eyes ached, completely and immediately sucked right in. Shriver's writing is wonderful. Anyway over at The Film Experience Nat's talking about the reviews coming out of Cannes today for the film adaptation with Tilda Swinton, and how he's staying away from those clips that came out earlier this week. Me too!

--- Block Busted - I'll be in Italy when these happen so I'm gonna miss it - and I'm not that unhappy about missing it since I will be in motherfucking Italy - but that "British kids fighting aliens" movie Attack the Block that's got every blogger from here to thither foaming at the mouth over it is screening in 25 cities on May 25th. Find out more at that link. Word is that it won't be out in the US for real until Fall.

--- Hard For Hammer - You can hear a few thoughts from screenwriter Dustin Lance Black on the subject of his latest politically minded movie, J. Edgar, over here. This bit was up my alley:

--- And finally, it's a fairly lengthy piece but it's really all sorts of wonderful - here's Alexander Chee talking about what the X-Men meant to him thirty-five years ago growing up bi-racial, and what they mean now in the world we live in.