You have to hand it to Quentin Tarantino. Besides being a very talented director who tells interesting stories well he’s also got the ability to put together some great ensemble casts. From his fist film Reservoir Dogs, through his most recent Inglorious Basterds, the director never ceases to lock in some great actors for his films.

He’s continuing that trend with his upcoming Sergio Leone-inspired western Django Unchained. He’s already got Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Samuel L. Jackson and Leonardo DiCaprio. Now, according to Deadline, we can add Oscar-winner Kevin Costner to the mix as well.

According to the report, Costner would play Ace Woody, “the sadistic trainer of the male fighting slaves who entertain the white patrons of Candyland as well as the female slaves who are forced to be prostitutes. The club and ranch are owned by Calvin Candie (DiCaprio) and Ace Woody is the one who pits the “mandingo” fighters against one another.” Sounds like a nice guy. Mmm, not.

Once Coster is set for the role he and DiCaprio should make an interesting pair of bad guys. I’m sure it will be very interesting to see how it all turns out. The film is set to go into production in the Fall with an eye to a late 2012 release.

We’ll bring you more on this film as we get it.

If The New York Times were to break the story that the NEA has been generously funding an ongoing study of manhood and brotherhood among everyday schmoes in contemporary culture, that sure would explain a lot. Surely few phenomena have been as comprehensively documented of late as the dilemma of nondescript modern men (usually lifelong buddies) forced by extreme circumstances beyond their control (roofies, bad bosses) into the type of reckless behavior (murder, breaking-and-entering, walking into a bar in the bad part of town) they would never normally contemplate.

Almost always the upshot involves:

• •  illegal drug usage (usually unintentional)
• •  first-ever encounters with law enforcement (cue bickering recrimination scene in the back seat of a squad car)
• •  uneasy encounters with The Other (usually hip, powerful, sometimes grotesque black men against whom the protagonists’ manhoods are implicitly contrasted and found vastly wanting. In the case of Hangover The Other is represented by both Mike Tyson and Ken Jeong as an Asian Mafioso. Here, it’s a very funny Jamie Foxx.)
• •  flashes of homosexual anxiety
• •  all countered by elaborate vulgarity, gross-out humor and scatological references, as well as
• •  forced interaction with that other Other: frighteningly gorgeous and overtly sexual women who positively demand to be serviced.

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Welcome to another edition of On the Radar where we delve into all corners of the entertainment, tech and geek Internets for news, views and whatnot that may have escaped our regular coverage during the week. Let is know if we missed something interesting.

Let’s get started!

• Jamie Foxx is no Will Smith, but that didn’t stop Quentin Tarantino from getting him to play his slave (in a non-offensive way) in Django Unchained.

• We’ll be getting the final film in a mere weeks, but that hasn’t stopped J.K. Rowling from keeping the Harry Potter franchise top-of-brain with the newest marketing ploy, Pottermore.

• Pixar is being pretty secretive about their newest film, Brave. The first thing we’re getting, however, is a glimpse at the very stylized characters of the film.

• We know that Entourage is a pretty douchey show, but this new poster makes us feel like they may just know themselves, and feel really bad about it.

• A Russian company called Stoyn has helped make every 80s fanboy’s dream come true by releasing Pop Culture Popsicles. We have a feeling the Darth Vader flavor may taste more like plastic than anything else.

• The very first images of Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy have hit the web. Strangely, they look identical to Peter Jackson’s last trilogy about a ring…

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Todd Phillips may have control of the box office this June with Hangover Part 2, but this July definitely has Seth Gordon’s Horrible Bosses written all over it.

With a ginormous cast including Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, Jason Sudeikis, Jennifer Aniston, Colin Farrell, Kevin Spacey, and Jamie Foxx, you can expect lots of great things from this upcoming raunchy comedy. Here’s the synopsis:

For Nick, Kurt and Dale, the only thing that would make the daily grind more tolerable would be to grind their intolerable bosses into dust. Quitting is not an option, so, with the benefit of a few-too-many drinks and some dubious advice from a hustling ex-con, the three friends devise a convoluted and seemingly foolproof plan to rid themselves of their respective employers…permanently. There’s only one problem: even the best laid plans are only as foolproof as the brains behind them.

Like Office Space meets The Perfect Crime, you can expect some great moments with this outrageous cast. Check out the full trailer after the jump, and catch Horrible Bosses in theaters on July 8th.

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I don’t have much experience reviewing children’s movies, so, before writing this, I did some research to glean a few of the points prescient to their reviews. Fortunately the standard kid-flick critique doesn’t differ much from your standard, well, non-kid-flick review. The only theme uniting them all is to note whether adults will enjoy it as much as their brood (or whether either audience will enjoy it).

So let’s get that out of the way: The kids will probably enjoy it (the ones invited to my screening didn’t make too much noise, but that may have been due to the iron fists of their handlers); adults won’t mind it. Rio isn’t particularly sophisticated and comes with your basic (and I use this term only because it does very much apply here) cookie-cutter plot in which you already know everything that’s going to happen within the first 12 minutes, and, beyond that, there’s not a whole lot else—save for the location shots, which I’ll get to in a moment.

The story is that Blu (Jesse Eisenberg) is a rare Spix macaw, taken from his homeland of Brazil when he was a chick and shipped to Moose Lake, Minnesota, where his crate falls off the back of the truck and he’s adopted by Linda (Leslie Mann), a bookish girl who raises him over the next 15 years. Linda doesn’t make many friends in that time, but she does open a bookstore, and the story proper begins when Tulio (Brazilian actor Rodrigo Santoro), a bird scientist, drops by to inform Linda that Blu is one of the last of his species and must go to Brazil to mate with Jewel (Anne Hathaway), the other last of the species.

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I don’t think I’m alone here when I say I love Zack Galifianakis. He’s amazingly funny and also has a certain vulnerability you can respect and that also makes him so believable in any role he plays. He pretty much stole the show in The Hangover and is knocking them dead on HBO’s Bored to Death. Now, he’s in a new movie called Due Date and we’ve got a trailer for that film to share with you today.

We started talking about this movie last year when news of it first surfaced. In the Todd Phillips directed film, Galifianakis plays opposite another superb actor we all love, Robert Downey, Jr., in the story of fatherhood as an expectant dad and his unlikely travel companion (Galifianakis) race cross-country in hopes of making it home for the birth of his first child. I know what you’re thinking. Based on The Hangover Galifianakis + baby = Comedy Gold. Let’s hope history repeats itself.

In addition to Downey, Jr. and Galifianakis, the film also features Juliette Lewis, Michele Monaghan, Jamie Foxx and Alan Arkin. It hits theaters on November 5th. In the meantime, check out the trailer after the jump.

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When most comic properties dry up, the obvious next medium for Hollywood to take advantage of would be video games, we’ve seen where it can go well (at least financially) with Disney’s Prince of Persia, and where it can go awry with something like Silent Hill.

We’re holding out for the recently announced Kane & Lynch adaptation, based on the game by Eidos. It was originally announced that stunt coordinator Simon Crane was taking on directorial duties for the film, but that seems to have changed, as the studio is looking to director F. Gary Gray to take over. From Variety:

F. Gary Gray (“Law Abiding Citizen”) is in early talks to direct Lionsgate and Nu Image/Millennium Films’ bigscreen adaptation of the Eidos videogame “Kane and Lynch: Dead Men.”

Bruce Willis has long been attached to play the mercenary Kane in the actioner, and Jamie Foxx came on to play the rage-prone killer Lynch earlier this year. Foxx worked with Gray in “Law Abiding Citizen.”

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This week sees the release of several new movies and TV shows, some for the first time ever on Blu-ray. Of the ones coming out this week, we’re excited for not as many as last week. But still, the release of An Education, Collateral and Sherlock Holmes (pictured above with Robert Downey, Jr and Jude Law) is reason enough to be excited. Plus, there’s always next week. . . and the week after that.

Check them out:

Film

Alice in Wonderland (2-Disc Special Un-Anniversary Edition) ~ Kathryn Beaumont, Ed Wynn, Richard Haydn (DVD)

Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel ~ Anna Faris, Christina Applegate, Justin Long (Blu-ray and DVD)

An Education ~ Carey Mulligan, Peter Sarsgaard (Blu-ray and DVD)

Collateral ~ Tom Cruise, Jamie Foxx (Blu-ray)

I Sell the Dead ~ Dominic Monaghan, Ron Perlman (Blu-ray and DVD)

Rivals of Sherlock Holmes: Set 2 ~ Derek Jacobi, Judy Geeson, Jean Marsh (DVD)

Sherlock Holmes ~ Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law, Rachel McAdams (Blu-ray and DVD)

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This week On the Radar George Lucas seeks to capture the minds of even younger viewers, Image Comics takes a shot at Marvel, and one of the most famous music videos of all time may go 3D.  All that and whole bunch of other fun stuff!

Crispin Glover talks Back to the Future controversy

Personally, I didn’t realize Back to the Future was mired in any kind of controversy, but it is.  Speaking at a promotion for Hot Tub Time Machine, Crispin Glover, who played Marty McFly’s (Michael J. Fox) Dad spoke about the raw deal he was dealt after the first film came out:

“On the DVD to the Back to the Future trilogy, Bob Gale has said something that’s totally fabricated,” Glover told a group of reporters at this weekend’s press junket forHot Tub Time Machine. “He said I asked for twice the amount of money that Michael J. Fox asked for in the first film. In the negotiation for the second film, they offered me less than half of what any of the actors that were being asked to come back in the film—Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson and Tom Wilson. They had all done studio films, and they’d made a lot more money. I was being penalized.”

Interesting stuff.  Mind you, considering the somewhat lackluster opinions of the second and third film maybe Glover got off easy by not being in them.

Jamie Foxx to star in Kane & Lynch video game adaption?

There hasn’t been a lot of talk about the film adaption of video game Kane & Lynch other than it could star Bruce Willis as Kane.  Now, another big name is being tossed around to play opposite Willis, Jamie Foxx.  Developed by IO Interactive Nu Image/Millennium is set to finance with Lionsgate distributing.  While I’m confident in the actors involved, video games are not well known for the best of translations to the big screen.

George Lucas bringing Galactic Heroes to TV

Ask any “real” Star Wars fan and they will probably tell you that The Clone Wars cartoon is pretty childish.  Well, prepared to consider that more mature entertainment.  Looking to draw in even younger viewers to the Star Wars universe, George Lucas is working on a cartoon adaption of the Star Wars: Galactic Heroes toy line.  You know, those chunky figures with a whopping two points of articulation (usually the arms).  Worse yet, this problem means more screen time with the one Star Wars character that can relate best to 3 year olds-Jar Jar Binks.

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I liked this movie quite a bit  when I first saw it in 2003, and it was called Love, Actually.  This is nothing but a watered down and americanized version of the British movie, and it is mired in mediocrity.  Just think of this as the ugly stepsister of Love, Actually.

Despite a massive ensemble cast (Jessica Alba, Kathy Bates, Jessica Biel, Bradley Cooper, Eric Dane, Patrick Dempsey, Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, Topher Grace, Anne Hathaway, Taylor Swift, Taylor Lautner, Julia Roberts, Shirley MacClaine, Ashton Kutcher, Queen Latifah, Emma Roberts, and George Lopez) the film lacks any real zip, and for a film about Valentine’s Day, it lacks heart. Don’t let all that star power fool you.

There are a myriad of storylines woven throughout the movie, which takes place on Valentine’s Day, in Los Angeles.  Most of the principals are connected to one another in one way or another, and their connections are slowly revealed throughout the movie.  Some of the stories work quite well, and others just don’t work at all.

Ashton Kutcher plays Reed, a florist who proposes to his less than thrilled girlfriend Morley (Jessica Alba.)  His best friend Julia (Jennifer Garner) is giddy over her new boyfriend (Patrick Dempsey), who is actually a two timing married man. Her best friend Kara (Jessica Biel) is the desperate and lonely career girl with no one to spend Valentine’s Day with.

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There are many things to like about Law Abiding Citizen including both Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler’s performances, direction by F. Gary Gray, cinematography by Jonathan Sela and a rather taught and suspenseful screenplay by Kurt Wimmer.

The movie follows Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler), a family man whose wife and daughter are brutally murdered in front of him while he lies helpless during a home invasion. When the killers are caught, Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx), an ambitions Philadelphia prosecutor, is assigned to the case.

Nick offers one of the suspects a light sentence in exchange for testifying against his accomplice. Sadly, it’s not the guy who did the actual killings but his accomplice that goes to jail. The real killer goes free.

Cut to 10 years later, the man who got away with murder is found dead and Shelton, without remorse, admits his guilt. Then he issues a warning to Rice: Either fix the flawed justice system that failed his family, or more people will die in the name of real justice.

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Well, I’m  humbled and a little embarrassed to admit how much I enjoyed this movie. You see, before I actually started reviewing movies, this is exactly the type of film that would cause me to turn up my nose. I’ve made an earnest attempt to go outside my comfort zone, and damned if I am not pleasantly surprised every once and a while. All I knew about this film was that it starred Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler. I’m not exactly a big fan of either.

Law Abiding Citizen is a bloody, sick, and twisted tale of revenge. What if you crossed a gruesome revenge movie like I Spit on Your Grave with a implausible, tech-savy caper like Mission Impossible? Why, you would get something like this film.  Suspend your logic and enjoy the ride. Wholly original, Law Abiding Citizen had me on pins and needles, and there are enough twists and turns to make even the most jaded movie-goer giddy.

Let’s get my disclaimer out of the way so we can get down to the business of reviewing the movie:

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