Moneyball was a great film and it was very interesting to watch Jonah Hill stand toe to toe with Brad Pitt and deliver Aaron Sorkin dramatic dialogue like a pro. So the news that he has signed on to a new dramatic feature is exciting.

Deadline is reporting that Jonah Hill will be joining forces with James Franco, himself another actor fully capable in drama or comedy, for the upcoming film True Story. A film about a New York Times journalist who’s identity had been stolen by a wanted murder while on the run from authorities.

Like Moneyball, this is another opportunity for Hill to veer from his comic persona. He will play Finkel, who was a writer at The New York Times Magazine in 2002 when he learned that Christian Longo was captured in Mexico after a long stint on the FBI Ten Most Wanted List for killing his family. The strange part was that he had been living under the identity of Finkel.

The very next day, the real Finkel was fired by the editors of The Times, right after they ran an editor’s note declaring that he had falsified parts of an investigative article. His career seemed over, until Longo (who’ll be played by Franco) declared that the real Finkel was the only journalist he would talk to. 

Sounds very interesting, hopefully we are just getting to meet a whole new side to Jonah Hill.

Pretty much every guy has questioned their friends on who they would rather sleep with between Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton. Just the same, every girl has probably questioned her friends if they’d rather marry Brad Pitt, George Clooney or Matt Damon.

But what about those times where you can’t say “I’d sleep with all of them” and had to decide to actually marry a hot mess like Spears, Lohan or Hilton instead of just kicking them to the hoe-side curb they deserve to be on? Or, what about choosing between killing off Batman, Superman or Spider-Man? Kill/Marry/Fuc by Sarah Huber combines all three.

The way it works, turn to a random page and you have decide one person / object / concept /etc. that you’d want to marry, one you’d want to kill and one you’d want to get down with. Some of these are easy decisions, but others really make you think. That’s right. A book about hooking up, marrying and killing really starts turning the gears for some people.

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If you’ve been keeping with our previous posts, you can see that this year is going to be quite the melting pot of horror films. In today’s installment, we sum it all up with the final films of 2012.

Check out Part 1 and Part 2 if you haven’t yet. Now onto the rest.

October 5, 2012 – The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3D

(Distributed by Lionsgate Films) This film is intended as somewhat of an alternate sequel to the original 1974 film directed by Tobe Hooper and advances thirty five years into the story.

October 19, 2012 – Paranormal Activity 4

(Distributed by Paramount Pictures) The film is a continuation of the series.  If you’ve seen one then you’ve pretty much seen them all.

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The upcoming World War Z is one of the more interesting high profile films of 2012. It is based on one of the best pieces of Zombie fiction yet written, and it has a stellar cast and crew. Yet there are reports that the studio wants a PG-13 rating and any one familiar with the source material is concerned about the structure this film will take.

So any positive sign from the people involved with the film is encouraging, and we got exactly that when Brad Pitt sat down with the Los Angeles Times:

For Pitt, the big sci-fi thriller also represents his strongest bid to have a big film franchise of his own, which might be viewed as the missing piece of his career jigsaw puzzle. Forster and Paramount Pictures each view “World War Z” as a trilogy that would have the grounded, gun-metal realism of, say, Damon’s Jason Bourne series tethered to the unsettling end-times vibe of AMC’s “The Walking Dead.”

World War Z is not a strait narrative type book, with many stories that are generally unrelated but come together to form an oral history of the great Zombie war. Knowing that they not only have faith in the product to view it has a franchise, but also have no intention of wrapping up the Apocalypse in one film is fantastic to hear.

In what will surely come as a surprise to many people who don’t follow the Internets (also, most likely to mainstream audiences), Terrence Malick’s The Tree Of Life was the top film at the 15h annual Online Film Critics Society Awards. The awards are given out by the Online Film Critics Society, an organization made up of film reviewers, journalists and scholars based in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Latin America and the Asia/Pacific Rim region.

Malick’s film took the top prize for best picture as well as director, supporting actress (Jessica Chastain), editing and cinematography. No other film won more than one award.

Michael Fassbender took best actor for Shame and Tilda Swinton was best actress for We Need To Talk About Kevin. Best supporting actor went to Christopher Plummer for Beginners.

Click through for the full list of winners:

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Just when you thought things couldn’t get more bizarre than seeing a film that was originally released in 1994 making #1 in the box office two weeks in a row, how about a film about a dolphin hitting #1 after it’s second week.

That’s right, Warner Bros’ Dolphin Tale managed to pull together $14.2 Million this weekend, bringing it in as the #1 winner for the three days. The film has only hit a total gross of $37.5, just slightly more than its production budget.

In second this week, Brad Pitt’s Moneyball came in with an estimated $12.5. All the while, Lion King in 3D is still creeping up on $100 Million, with an estimated $11 Million this weekend, bringing it to a total of $79.6 for the re-release.

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It seems, according to this weekend’s box office report, that audiences still aren’t tired of 1994′s Lion King, even 17 years later. The film’s re-release in 3D has made the #1 spot again in two weeks, bringing in $22 million this weekend.

That ranks the film up to over $60 million in 3D, and over $400 million combined with the film’s original domestic total from the 90s. Not too shabby for a film that ripped off a Japanese anime series from the 50s.

The rest of the weekend’s releases weren’t too shabby, either. Brad Pitt’s Moneyball, which almost didn’t get made, pulled in $20.6 million at the #2 spot, while Morgan Freeman’s adventure saving a sea mammal in Dolphin Tale came in 3rd with just over $20.2 million.

The big flops of the weekend came in the form of the #3 and #4 spots. Taylor Lautner’s attempt at being Matt Damon in Abduction brought in $11 million, which is less than a third of the film’s production budget.

All the while, the action-packed Killer Elite, which had a production budget of $70 million, only brought in $9.5. Not a good sign for the DeNiro/Statham/Owen on-screen team.

Next weekend, a few possible sleeper hits with Universal’s Dream House, cancer drama 50/50, and the romantic comedy What’s Your Number?. Who will win? We’ll find out in one week!

Tales from the Crypt, the campy-yet-excellent horror staple of the early 90s television, is back in news as producers are hoping to reignite that spark once again with a modern reboot. After 15 years of being off the small screen, the horror series will be returning to television.

The new series is being developed by Gil Adler, a producer on the original HBO series, and Andrew Cosby, best known for his work on Eureka. The hour-long series will be based on the comics. Unlike it’s predecessor, the new series will not follow the anthology format, but will follow a standard series format using the characters in an ongoing storyline format.

Those of you who read the original comic books will see this is a strange turn of events as the comics didn’t have much in the way of returning characters. Other than The Crypt-Keeper, The Vault-Keeper and The Old Witch, all other characters and the “victims” of the stories always changed. It is also being reported that  The Crypt-Keeper, The Vault-Keeper and The Old Witch are not going to be part of the new series.

The original HBO series, which spawned collectibles and movies through out the 90s, ran for seven seasons. It attracted an impressive stable of directors and actors including Robert Zemeckis, Dan Aykroyd, Steve Buscemi, Tim Curry, Whoopi Goldberg, Teri Hatcher, Kirk Douglas, Joe Pesci, Brad Pitt, Ewan McGregor, Malcom McDowell, Bob Hoskins, Brooke Sheilds, Benicio Del Toro, Demi Moore, Martin Sheen, Richard Donner, Walter Hill, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tom Hanks, William Friedkin, Tobe Hoober and Michael J. Fox.

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Even as those of us here in the US celebrate our independence day, our friends across the pond are hard at work still bringing the news. One awesome bit that’s surfaced today are the first set photos from the eagerly anticipated film World War Z.

The Daily Mail has a bunch of photos from the Malta set, dressed to look like an Israeli border checkpoint, featuring the film’s star Brad Pitt and the first glimpse of the evil zombie hordes that will menace him, and the world, during the film.

In the film, Pitt will play the author of the World War Z book Max Brooks, and tell the story of his exploits collecting the stories and experiences of those who have survived the human victory over the zombie hordes, also known as World War Z.

Even though we seem to be getting a lot more zombie stories these days, the fact that this book is finally getting the big screen treatment is welcome news. Love the book and can’t wait to see the film. For more, you can check out my interview with the real Max Brooks over at ComicMix.

Click through to check out all the pics. The Marc Forster-directed World War Z is expected sometime next year.

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How do you even begin to describe a film like Tree of Life? Words such as “art-house film,” “sweeping,” and “transcendent” are accurate, but misleading in their connotation. Typically they evoke the image of a self-important, storyless mess, mired in ambiguity and bereft of substance.

In its defense, the tone is humble. The story is of a son recalling childhood memories of his father and reconciling the differences between them. The clarity is in the simplicity and beauty of its scenes. And the substance is in the detailed moments it creates to evoke our own similar experiences.

With an opening shot of the universe itself, director Terence Malick (Badlands, The Thin Red Line) implies mammoth importance, but he avoids pretension by never forcing a message. This shot and others show an awe and respect (to say nothing of their magnificence) for the subject matter that ask us to appreciate rather than tell us what to think.

Similarly, Tree of Life has a message, but it doesn’t preclude the audience from appreciating its scenes on their own terms. A small sequence accompanied by Gorecki’s Symphony number 3 had a very deep impact on me. Other audience members laughed and were then were quiet when one of the boys tries to accompany his father on the guitar.

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The upcoming film Moneyball has already had its share of problems. After being shutdown only days from shooting in 2009, the film finally found its way back into production with a new director, Bennett Miller, and will be released later this year.

As the release is getting closer, we’ve got the first trailer for the film today from the folks over at Yahoo Movies. In this one we get an earnest Brand Pitt and a rebellous and wisecracking Jonah Hill.

Together, they make an unusual odd couple but at least in the trailer, the odd pairing seems to work. Now if the film can only live up to all the hype surrounding it and Pitt and Hill can really pull things off.

Well then, friends, we may just have a homerun on our hands. See what I did there? Sports metaphors and all that. . . nevermind.

Moneyball, which in addition to Pitt and Hill features Philip Seymour Hoffman, Robin Wright and Chris Pratt, hits theaters on September 23rd. Check out the trailer after the break.

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Breathtaking.  Profound.  Beautiful.

I can see why this film got mixed reactions at the Cannes Film Festival this year, yet still managed to win the Palm d’Or, the most prestigious award of the festival.  To some, this film might seem a bit melodramatic and abstract for their taste.  But to others, like myself, I found Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life to have a rare and honest beauty to it that can only be described as fine art.

What you have to realize going in is that this feels more like a visual poem than a film.  A cinematic ballet that brings together stunning imagery with powerful storytelling.  Writer and director Terrence Malick is only one of the few remaining auteurs left in filmmaking, meaning that all his films consistently reflect his personal creative vision.

Sure, some could argue that a little more dialogue added to the film could have made it more relatable to a wider audience, but that is not the film Malick wanted to make.  His film is elegant and sophisticated, told both with expertise and creativity.

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