Of the 42 massively anticipated films coming out over the next year, only one of them is a new Tarantino film. Django Unchained is one of the most exciting concepts to come down the pike in a long time, and the addition of such an amazing cast only cements the expectations.

Entertainment Weekly has unchained the first official shots from the film showcasing three of its high class stars. The first shot looks incredibly western-y with Christophe Waltz and Jamie Foxx looking fantastic in some period gear.

The second image is far more exciting. Leonardo DiCaprio as evil plantation owner Calvin Candie, who makes his strongest slaves fight each other to the death. This cruel basterd has Foxx’s wife, and the plot of the movie will generally revolve around his attempts to save her.

With a Christmas release date, hopefully we should be seeing some actual footage soon. Inglorius Basterds and Kill Bill were high water marks for Tarantino’s visual style, so there is great excitement to see what he does with a western sandbox. The possibilities are staggering when a filmmaker is on a career high, his concept is solid gold and has the cast to pull it off.

Check out the full pictures after the jump.

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Some days it just doesn’t pay to get outta bed. First, the news broke this morning that Ridley Scott is jumping aboard the sequel/reboot train once again with a new Blade Runner movie which, let’s face it, is basically a terrible idea and completely unnecessary.

Now word comes that his brother Tony is prepping a reboot of Sam Peckinpah’s western classic The Wild Bunch. WTF? Sorry Tony, but that’s about as stupid an idea as rebooting or making a sequel to Blade Runner. Oh, wait. . .

Instead of mining classic films looking for good ideas you obviously can’t come up with yourself, how about finding some smart writers to come up with some ideas for you? I’m sure you can find one or two talented writers in all of Hollywood.

If you’re having trouble, I’ll get some friends of mine to send you over some scripts. Really, it’s no trouble. In the meantime, stick to making ridiculous movies about trains that won’t stop or trains that get taken over by terrorists or, well, you get the idea.

Please, leave the actual thinking to others. It’s painfully obvious you’re not capable of doing any yourself.

Oh, on another note, nobody plays baseball in the rain. It’s just stupid.

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.

I was surprised at how much trouble I had narrowing down my top ten movies this year.  My top 20 were all very close, but here are the movies that I ultimately enjoyed the most. I readily admit that I did not see near as many foreign films as I would have liked, but by the time I cover most of the mainstream fare, there is simply no time left.

Honorable Mentions: Fair Game, Tiny Furniture, Greenberg, Cyrus, The Tillman Story, The American, Mother and Child, Scott Pilgrim.

10. Waiting for Superman
This Documentary was equal parts frustrating, inspirational, and heartbreaking. Director Davis Guggenheim (No End in Sight) sheds light on the dismal state of our public school system. He follows the plight of several children who live in various geographic regions who are placing all of their hope for an decent education into lottery systems for charter or private schools. Guggenheim relies on their compelling stories for a narrative, while interspersing lots of graphics and cartoons illuminating some pretty harrowing statistics.

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If the noontime opening day crowd for True Grit is any indication of how this film will do at the box office, I think I can safely predict a couple of things. First, seasoned citizens, like myself, who saw the 1969 original starring John Wayne, Glen Campbell, Robert Duvall, and Kim Darby, will warily pay for senior-citizen discounted tickets in large numbers and then proceed to give the movie a CSI-like scrutiny searching for any hint of anti-Wayne blasphemy.

Second, I feel just as strongly that people who have not seen the Duke’s portrayal of U.S. Marshal Reuben “Rooster” Cogburn, will come away from this iteration well-satisfied that they have been well and truly entertained. No one from either demographic should be disappointed with this version of Charles Portis’ 1968 serialized Saturday Evening Post of family duty, determination, and revenge.

In a recent interview, frequent John Wayne co-star, Maureen O’Hara, spoke about the 1963 movie, McLintock! One memorable scene had Ms. O’Hara running through town, being chased by Wayne, wearing only her bloomers. When, prior to shooting this scene, she asked Wayne if the bloomers could be shortened to display her dancer’s legs, he adamantly refused, stating, “We make family pictures!” And therein lies the genesis of many of the films’ differences.

There are several scenes in the 2010 Coen brothers’ version of True Grit that would never have made it past The Duke. Wayne’s Batjac Productions wouldn’t have allowed severed fingers, an outhouse interview, or snakes crawling from a desiccated corpse, to mention just a few things. But that doesn’t make one version better or the other worse, it only makes them different.

While some might say that John Wayne’s Oscar-winning performance as Rooster Cogburn could best be described as a little over-the-top (and it was), Jeff Bridges is able to provide a slightly more somber approach to this complicated, demon-driven character, while still being able to deliver an occasional light-hearted moment. It would be foolish, however, for anyone to try and compare the two actors as Mr. Bridges takes command of his role from the very beginning leaving all thoughts of a Wayne-Bridges comparison in the obscuring dust of the trail.

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By Jarrett Mellenbruch

Just go ahead and give Mattie Ross whatever it is she demands. Trying to bargain with this 14 year old , played by Hailee Steinfeld, will eventually leave you weakened and bewildered. Her relentless pursuit of justice for the murder of her father calls upon her vast reserve of cunning, quick wits, and masterful tongue.

Cast opposite the craggy and weathered drunkard U.S. Marshall  Rooster Cogburn, masterfully played by Jeff Bridges, she holds up her part and then some in this perfect balance between a game innocent and an extremely experienced, blunt yet perceptive hired gun.

Thanks to Hailee Steinfeld, the young actress who plays Mattie, women viewers who venture out to see one western every decade would do well to make True Grit their choice for the Teens. This may be the one movie where a mother/daughter night out to see a shoot-em-up may rival the father/son crowd. That’s not to say the men should stay away, only that there is something for everyone here, including the strong central heroine.

Matt Damon, Barry Pepper, and Josh Brolin nicely round out the cast and offer some extra color and comedic moments. Damon’s LaBoeuf is the cowboy nerd who rides the fine line between charming and annoying, and he rides it well. Pepper plays bad guy Ned Pepper, who probably is the grittiest part of the whole movie. And Josh Brolin is the seemingly simpleminded crook who killed Mattie’s father and kicked off this whole goose chase.

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Way back in February we brought you some casting news about the Coen Brothers remake of the John Wayne classic western True Grit. And now, thanks to the magic of the Interwebs, we can bring you the first teaser trailer for the film.

With a cast that includes Matt Damon as La Beouf, Josh Brolin as killer Tom Chaney and Jeff Bridges as Rooster Cogburn (the role made famous by Wayne) the trailer brings us a bit of the flavor of the film and brings to light the fact that this film is going to be pretty amazing. The original film, based on a 1968 novel by author Charles Portis, starred Wayne in a role so popular it earned him his only Oscar.

In case you’re not familiar with the story, it concerns 14-year-old farm girl Mattie Ross who sets out to capture her father’s killer. To help, she hires tough yet abrasive U.S. Marshall Rooster Cogburn, a man with “true grit.” Over Cogburn’s objections, Maddie accompanies him on the quest and they are joined by another Marshall, La Beouf, who wants Chaney for his own reasons.

True Grit hits theaters on December 25th. Check out the trailer after the jump.

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In the new movie Red Hill starring True Blood’s Ryan Kwanten (aka Jason Stackhouse) he plays young police officer Shane Cooper who relocates to the small country town of Red Hill with his pregnant wife Alice to start a family. And if that’s where the story ended, we probably wouldn’t be talking about it today.

Instead, when news of a prison break sends the local law enforcement officers into a panic, Shane’s first day on duty rapidly turns into a nightmare. Enter Jimmy Conway, a convicted murderer serving life behind bars, who has returned to the isolated outpost seeking revenge.Isn’t that the way it always is. Those darn convicted murders.

Now caught in the middle of what will become a terrifying and bloody confrontation, Shane will be forced to take the law into his own hands if he is to survive. I’ll bet he probably does but still, looking forward to this movie anyway. It sounds pretty good.

Plus ladies, I believe Kwanten takes his shirt off at least once during the film. So see, its not just a movie for guys. Check out the trailer after the jump.

Red Hill will play Chicago International Film Festival, the Mill Valley Film Festival, Fantastic Fest, and the Philadelphia Film Festival before its November 5th release.

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When you discuss the Western, there’s three shadows that loom over the main street at noon — John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, and Gary Cooper.  The sturdy Randolph Scott (who made dozens upon dozens of Westerns) doesn’t warrant much of a mention except in exhaustive compendium books about the genre.

I suspect this is because a lot of his Westerns were the muddled, bloodless movies most people associate with the genre. He didn’t really have a script that would allow him to stretch out and strike an iconic pose like Wayne or Eastwood. The makings were there, though.

To quote THE BFI Companion to the Western (by way of Scott’s Wikipedia page):  “In his earlier Westerns … the Scott persona is debonair, easy-going, graceful, though with the necessary hint of steel. As he matures into his fifties his roles change. Increasingly Scott becomes the man who has seen it all, who has suffered pain, loss, and hardship, and who has now achieved (but at what cost?) a stoic calm proof against vicissitude.”

It’s true. Scott was, in a weird way, his own icon or character — this stalwart and sad survivor of many a gunfight.   I think this is what makes Ride the High Country so affecting. Like The Shootist or Unforgiven,  Scott is looking back at the long and dusty trail, and wondering what it all meant and whether it mattered.  It seems particularly poignant for him since he was so overshadowed by successors and competitors.

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“I’m a dying man, scared of the dark.”

I’ve put off watching The Shootist for a long time.  It has such a weighty legend hanging over it.   It’s John Wayne’s final film, and features melancholy appearances from a lot of  greats such as Jimmy Stewart and Richard Boone. Even Humphrey Bogart’s ghost looms over it because of Lauren Bacall’s sad and spare performance.  Even the horse figures prominently — Dollar was Wayne’s favorite horse, and its appearance was a condition of his doing the film.

My goal was to watch (or rewatch) all of Wayne’s Westerns before tackling this one.   But it’s been hanging on my DVR for a few weeks, tempting me, and I decided to stop putting it off.  Wayne died several years before I was born. There’s a finite amount of his movies any way you slice it, and why put off the inevitable?

Which is, of course, what The Shootist is about.  Acceptance.   It’s a powerful film. No matter how you feel about Wayne, it’s a moving portrait and one of his best performances.   We all know Wayne wasn’t the most nuanced or gifted actor. He played himself.

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The Western genre has plenty of subgenres. There’s deconstructionist Westerns, post apocalyptic Westerns, spaghetti Westerns, classic Westerns, and so on. I’ve found you can also split the entire genres into two character categories — the young gunfighter, or the aging lawman / gunfighter.   It seems to me that you don’t see a lot of the latter in the heydays of the classic Western — the 1940s and ’50s — but as the stalwarts of the era aged, we started seeing more elegiac  tales come into vogue.

While John Wayne and Gary Cooper still maintained their crackling or saintly demeanor in movies like The Train Robbers or Vera Cruz, the stories still reflected that they were a little older, a little slower, and much grayer.  Movies such The Professionals and Lonesome Dove or even the recent Appaloosa spend a fair amount of plot wistfully thinking about the good old days.

Sam Peckinpah’s Ride the High Country falls in the same vein. Aging lawman Steve Judd (Joel McCrea) is hired to escort a shipment of gold from a mining camp. The film gently pokes fun at his age (he’s utterly bewildered by the modernizing town) and the townsfolk are pretty blunt about it. He has a great reputation, but is he too old for the job?

By chance, Judd meets up with his pal Gil Westrum (Randolph Scott) who works for dimes as a gunfighter in a circus sideshow.   Westrum agrees to lend his gun to the mission, and brings in a young partner named Heck Longtree (Ron Starr) to assist.  What Judd doesn’t know, however, is that old age and circus living have changed Westrum for the worse.

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Some kids find a magical creature — perhaps Frankenstein’s Monster or an extra-terrestrial — who sends them on a wild and magical adventure where they learn life lessons. Other kids find Lee Marvin, and embark on a wild and wacky adventure where they become bank robbers. Only one of these youthful scenarios has a happy ending. But what do you expect when you find Marvin copiously bleeding outside of your barn?

The Spikes Gang initially sells itself as a lighthearted, Cat Ballou type of Western. Will (Gary Grimes), Les (Ron Howard), and Tod (Charles Martin Smith) decide to be kindly and patch Harry Spikes (Marvin) up. They do the typical teen thing, and hide him away from their parents, bringing him clothes, food, and money.

He generously turns down the money, revealing that he’s a well-padded bank robber, and sells the boys tales of silk shirts, women, Cuban cigars, and expensive bourbon. They’re drooling. Who wouldn’t? Marvin could use that raspy voice to tell me the sky was green, and I’d ride off with him in a heartbeat.  (Or live in polygamy — but that’s another Marvin movie.)

But these are better boys than I, and they morosely watch Spikes ride off.  The damage has been done, though, and those tales of bourbon and babes prey on their young, impressionable minds.  Their grubby, poor, and sternly Christian lives seem more unbearable than before, and it takes only one belt-whipping before they ride out into the sunrise.   For farm boys, they’re woefully unprepared, and it isn’t long before they’re starving and desperate enough to do like Spikes would do, and rob a bank.

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