Anne Hathaway Catwoman

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If you've seen the trailer then you know the movie to expect, and that is exactly the movie you should expect. For a movie about "two men who don't follow the rules!" Warrior follows the rules to a tee. It doesn't much try to add side-dishes of flavor to the stew like David O. Russell's The Fighter did - it's the same straight-forward recipe we've been tasting for decades. I won't spoil the ending for you - I'll leave that to every other sports movie ever made to do.

But! There is a but! (Unfortunately there aren't any butts though. They got in this kind of shape and couldn't find a single shower scene? Really?) Back to the but - Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton are two extraordinarily talented young actors and they take this material and they work little wonders with it. The moments where the director allows the stock story to rest for a breath, his actors express effortless power. Hardy for me especially - with him it's as if the quieter and stiller he gets the more you can feel this explosion being muffled up inside, and he underplays every turn of a movie screaming out for screaming out with real grace. Edgerton too - they make a rock-solid (god they're solid) pair, KO'ing cliches left + right! (Spoiler: The cliches win on a technicality.)

But if you're not as cynical as cynical ol' me this is an easy movie to get swept up in - it hits all the beats that drive an audience looking for their "Ooh-rah!" experience to their feet with a cheer. They bring in a Drago-esque Soviet villain for us to hiss at! Hiss! Hiss! The end.

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I think I end up doing something akin to this every year - scanning through EW's galleries of celebrities at Comic Con and posting my favorites, that is. This year though, man it seems like I've snatched up a lot. Have I just gotten geekier? Am I reaching Total Geek Capacity??? Oh noes! Meh, mostly it just seems there were more hot guys standing around then usual is all I think this means. Speaking of, look at what I did! I crammed a bunch of hot guys all next to each other in one epic picture! (Click to embiggen)

L-R: Chris Carmack, Chris Zylka, Dustin Milligan and Sinqua Walls from Shark Night 3D; Chevy Chase and Joel McHale, Community; Max Minghella, Joel Kinnaman and Emile Hirsch from The Darkest Hour; Chris Hemsworth and Sam Claflin, Snow White and the Huntsman, Sendhil Ramamurthy, Covert Affairs; Noted Homosexual Luke Evans, Henry Cavill, Kellan Lutz and Stephen Dorff from Immortals.

Ha ha Emile Hirsch looks so tiny next to Chris Hemsworth,
it is ridiculous. Yadda yadda, here's a bunch more.

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Photographer Tim Palen is the man who took that memorable picture of Eli Roth with the giant penis prosthetic that one time, so he knows a little something about eye-catching male exploitation. Well NYMag has just posted a new gallery of pictures by him of Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton and a couple of the other dudes in Warrior, and we like them. You will recall the film's equally beef-tastic poster; this film's having the advertising campaign I once never would've dared to dream it would have the stones for. That's Joel Edgerton up top; here are the Tom Hardy shots below. See more at the NYM link.

(via) I totally want to see Warrior - for obvious reasons - but somehow it feels as if it's already been out and we've already seen it, doesn't it? I suppose it's got that air of "seen this movie in a thousand different iterations" about it. Rah rah sports! But this time the above spectacle is in it, not to mention Joel Edgerton, and that makes it worthwhile. It's out on Sept. 10th.

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Good goddamn this is a banner day for fresh hotness. The John Carter trailer this morning, that shot of Andrew Garfield's ass in his Spider-Man costume that has guaranteed my entry into the world of cos-play, and now a trailer for The Thing remake with Ramona Flowers and Joel Edgerton.

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Via Glenn at Stale Popcorn who tells it like it is:

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We heard the other day that the role of Tom Buchanan in Baz Luhrmann's apparently 3D Great Gatsby movie was up between recent-gratuity-recipient Aussie Joel Edgerton and the Heterosexual Welshman Luke Evans; well Baz went for his home-boy and Joel got the part. He's the flavor of the moment! Him and Tom Hardy and Michael Fassbender, ohhhhh my. 

Hmm... now there's a Do Dump or Marry for ya...

Joel Edgerton, Tom Hardy, Michael Fassbender... well?

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--- The Lovers, The Dreamers - You can see a photograph of the poster for The Greatest Muppet Movie Made over at AICN, along with word that one of the original songs written for the film is already making grown men burst into tears. Hooray! November 23rd can't get here soon enough.

--- Sob Story - Hooray for praise of Barbara Hershey's performance in Beaches at The Film Experience! Her work really was overshadowed by her lip injections at the time; cornball lady-hysteria aside, she's wonderful in the movie. It makes me short of breath just thinking about the scene where she collapses for the first time, so well does she sell the sickness.

--- The Kings Layer - I haven't watched last night's Game of Thrones yet but I hear there was lots of gratuitousness right up my alley to behold so I'm looking forward to it. For now, we can read this interview from this past Friday at PopWrap with the Kingslayer himself, Nicolaj Coster-Waldau.

--- I See A Samuel - Over at Stale Popcorn, Glenn takes a look at some movie called Road Train, and by "takes a look at" I means posts several pictures of its star Xavier Samuel, last seen by me in 2010's best horror movie The Loved Ones, looking mighty fine.

--- Coop On Chris - Over at Low Resolution, Joe lists the eventual blockbusters still coming out this Summer in order of preference. Special shout-out to the never-stops-being-completely-hysterical shot of Dominic Cooper checking out Chris Evans' pecs in the Captain America trailer is given. Word.

--- Wood Man - It went through about thirty different actors hands, but Snow White and the Huntsman finally has its Huntsman - Thor himself, Chris Hemsworth will star opposite Kristen Stewart as SW and Charlize Theron as the Wicked Queen. I've avoided the Twilight movies like the plague so I don't necessarily dislike Kristen Stewart, but I'm still hoping with those stars attached that Hemsworth and Theron toss her out a window and end the film in each other's arms. Because that'd be HOT.

--- A New Riding - I guess if anybody could maybe make a coherent script for a remake of the terrific British TV trilogy Red Riding, I guess it could be the guy who wrote Zodiac, with its thousand characters and dangling strands. I say they rehire Andrew Garfield for it! And then make him walk around in his little underpants again.

--- Just Josh - Josh Duhamel's signed on for a couple of movies, and this will be the last time you'll hear me mention either of them until the pictures of him with his clothes off in said movies arrive.

--- More Monsters - The original director Gareth Edwards will only produce, he's busy trying to make that Godzilla movie, but a sequel to last year's cost-nothing success Monsters is gonna get made. One of the other producers says they'll be making "much more of a straight genre picture" and "upping the ante," so basically they're planning on canceling out everything that made the first film unique. Mkay.

--- Canadian Idol - Ryan Gosling is becoming a director. I guess we should've seen this coming. He's set to star in and direct a remake of Taylor Hackford's 1980 film The Idolmaker, about the rock n' roll promoter Bob Marcucci, who discovered Frankie Avalon.

--- Pretty Vacuum - Kellan Lutz, Shiloh Fernandez, and Amber Heard are going to star in a movie together. I mean, I'm not sure if it'll be the sheer force of prettiness or the vacuum of the absence of acting skills that'll destroy the world when this happens, but it'll be one of those two. Perhaps the union?

--- Two Tom Cats - Joel Edgerton - see his recent gratuitous post here - and Luke Evans, who is totally 100% straight or something, are both up for the role Ben Affleck almost took, Tom Buchanan in Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby.

--- And finally, have you seen the original ending to Alexander Payne's Election yet? (via Slash) It's terrible. Terrible! It might be the best example I've ever seen of test audiences working out for the best, because the ending they actually came up with for the finished film is about twenty-thousand times better than this.

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