What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly movie news column in a hurry. It’s late for a very big date. With you, dear reader. It’s always been you.

Our top story tonight, The Amazing Spider-Man and a new look at the film’s villain, The Lizard. He’s looking quite menacing now that he’s got his full CGI on. Thanks to Entertainment Weekly, we now cannot quite look through the blinds of our window out of fear. Thanks, EW, you are useful as always.

“…the wild and poetic story of a woman’s erotic journey from birth to the age of 50 as told by the main character, the self-diagnosed nymphomaniac, Joe.  On a cold winter’s evening the old, charming bachelor, Seligman, finds Joe beaten up in an alleyway. He brings her home to his flat where he tends to her wounds while asking her about her life. He listens intently as Joe over the next 8 chapters recounts the lushly branched-out and multi faceted story of her life, rich in associations and interjecting incidents.” That’s the official synopsis for Lars von Trier’s Nymphomanic, which sounds far less sexy than originally expected.

Just as I chastised them in a recent column for resting on their laurels, the folks at Warner Bros. have kicked the marketing for The Dark Knight Rises into high gear this week, releasing a bunch of images (chronicled by Jack in an article earlier today) and two TV spots. The following is my own personal favorite, as it features Batman’s new feline friend:

“We’ve got Sofia Vergara, who is a star in her own right, Jessica Alba, Michelle Rodriguez and Zoe Saldana. And guess what? I get to kiss all of ‘em.” This is what Danny Trejo said of the Machete sequel. Good on ya, you badass mothertrucker.

NBC may have thought themselves smooth about the handling of letting go Dan Harmon from Community, up until a talking points memo about Harmon’s firing was leaked  out onto the internet. It’s all pretty standard stuff, which doesn’t make it any less sad.

The folks at Art of the Title are featuring Saul Bass’ Anatomy of a Murder titles in the most recent entry in their long-running series of amazing work exposing the artistry behind the openings of some of cinema’s great films. It’s more than worth your time.

Peter Martin at Twitch has written an interesting piece on Barry Sonnenfeld and the Value of a Journeyman. Over at Thompson on Hollywood, Bill Desowitz is Tripping Out on the Cartoon Reality of Men in Black 3. In other news, Men in Black 3 was pretty entertaining.

With the imminent release of Moonrise Kingdom, easily one of the best films of Wes Anderson’s career, Slate wants you to celebrate the Anderson-tropes by playing Wes Anderson Bingo. I think you should play, as well.

We close tonight with a Song of Fire and Ice and ham sandwiches in the shower, a sing-a-long version of the Game of Thrones opening theme. It’s a bit silly. And by a bit, we’re talking full r-word silly. But it gets a few laughs.

The basic premise of The Woman in the Fifth is that Ethan Hawke is playing an American writer who moves to Paris and strikes up a romance with a mysterious widow played by Kristin Scott Thomas. After hearing this you probably immediately get visions of the two actors sipping espressos at street side cafes, browsing for books at kiosks set up along the Seine, you know… doing Parisy-type stuff. But The Woman in the Fifth isn’t that sort of movie at all. It’s much darker, and more disturbing. How do I know? Because in the film’s new trailer there’s all sorts of spooky music and Ethan Hawke is talking in Christian Bale’s Batman voice. That’s how.

Director Pawel Pawlikowski’s new thriller involves organized crime, murder, double-crossings, and basically everything that makes movies cool. Unlike a film like, say, Midnight in Paris, the Paris-set scenery here is just the icing on the cake, not the whole point of the film. No, the focus of this film seems to be on shadows, tension, and the razor’s edge that is living a life of passion. The Woman in the Fifth seems to work under the classic noir assumption that making one morally compromised decision will lead to a downward spiral of danger and despair. Which sucks for the protagonist, but is usually wickedly fun to watch for the viewer.

The film doesn’t come out until June 15, but you can get a taste of Hawke losing his shit by watching the trailer right here.

Source: Apple

The future of the Lego film franchise isn’t yet written in stone, but what’s certain is that there are a number of studio execs out there really excited at the prospect of making movies about multi-colored, plastic blocks. The first studio to fire a shot in the Lego arms race was Warner Bros., who hired Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs helmers Phil Lord and Chris Miller to write and direct Lego: The Movie, or whatever they’re going to end up calling it. Despite the fact that making movies based on a line of building blocks is completely asinine, Lord and Miller’s take on the material sounded like a case of the best being made out of a ridiculous situation; as they’ve actually come up with a promising story.

But suddenly they’re not the only players in the Lego game. Now Universal wants to get their hands on a Lego property of their own, in order to prove that they’re the only name in town when it comes to basing horrible movies off of inanimate children’s toys. Heat Vision is reporting that they’re in negotiations with The Lego Group to bring their line of Hero Factory toys to the big screen.

Before you go moaning and groaning at the thought of Universal putting out another Battleship, know that there’s a silver lining to this cloud. Unlike the peg-based board game movie that didn’t do so hot last weekend, Lego Hero Factory is actually a line of toys that has its own pre-established characters and mythology. Currently the studio is negotiating with Predators writers Michael Finch and Alex Litvak to pen a script for a live-action film, which will presumably stick to telling the story of a space factory that churns out robotic heroes tasked with battling an intergalactic evil.

This news puts us in the interesting position of dreading a project not because it’s based off of a stupid kids’ toy, but because it’s being put together by the guys who wrote Predators. Plus, it now seems like a safer bet to be looking forward to the movie that’s just about plastic blocks rather than the movie that’s about intergalactic warriors that happen to be made out of plastic blocks. What a time to be alive.

Looks like Bradley Cooper isn’t wasting much time getting his first project for his brand new production company going. THR reports that the actor is currently “setting up” a big screen adaptation of American Sniper through his company. Cooper will produce the film through his new production shingle at Warner Bros., 22nd & Indiana, which he just set up this past March. Cooper will also “likely” star in the film to boot.

The film will center on the real life story of Chris Kyle, a U.S. Navy SEAL who is the owner of one hell of a distinction – he’s recorded more career sniper kills in United States military history than anyone else. In fact, Kyle smashed the previous record (109) with his official count, which is 160 confirmed kills out of 255 claimed kills. His work earned him the succinct nickname of “The Devil” by Iraqi insurgents, who even went so far as to place a bounty on his head. Kyle’s life is also cinematically colorful, with his path to the SEALs marked by a childhood of hunting, a brief period of rodeo-riding, and a fittingly legendary tale of how he ended up signing up for the Navy (he was trying to sign up for the Marines, but the Marine recruiter was out to lunch). There’s also a weird little story about Kyle claiming to have knocked out, of all people, Jesse Ventura.

Jason Dean Hall (Paranoia, Spread) is set to adapt the script, which comes from Kyle’s biography, “American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History,” which he wrote with Scott McEwan and Jim DeFelice.

ComingSoon also points us in the direction of the book’s official synopsis:

He is the deadliest American sniper ever, called “The Devil” by the enemies he hunted and “The Legend” by his Navy SEAL brothers. From 1999 to 2009, U.S. Navy SEAL Chris Kyle recorded the most career sniper kills in United States Military history. The Pentagon has officially confirmed more then 150 of Kyle’s kills (the previous American record was 109), but it has declined to verify the astonishing total number for this book. Iraqi insurgents feared Kyle so much they named him Al-Shaitan (“the devil”) and placed a bounty on his head. Kyle earned a legendary status among his fellow SEALS, Marines, and U.S. Army soldiers, who he protected with deadly accuracy from rooftops and stealth positions. Gripping and unforgettable, Kyle’s masterful account of his extraordinary battlefield experiences of all time.

A native Texan who learned to shoot on childhood hunting trips with his father, Kyle was a champion saddle-bronc rider prior to joining the Navy. After 9/11, he was thrust into the front lines of the War of Terror, and soon found his calling as a world-class sniper who performed best under fire. In Fallujah, where he recorded a personal-record 2,100-yard kill shot, Kyle braved heavy fire to rescue a group of Marines trapped on the street; in Ramadi, he stared down insurgents with his pistol in close combat. Kyle talks honestly about the pain of war-of twice being shot and experiencing the tragic deaths of two close friends.

THR also notes that book includes emotional “passages from Kyle’s wife, who slowly watches as her husband’s affection turns from her to the SEALs and war.” You can read some of the first pages of the book, over at Amazon.

While most people would likely rather eat a shoe (or place some sort of bet on the shoe starring in a Lifetime movie about Elizabeth Taylor) than see the train wreck that will be the Lindsay Lohan-starring Liz & Dick, the production just keeps chugging along. And good on them, too, with rumors abounding that Lohan has been displeased with the parade of actors who have been brought around to try their hand at the Richard Burton role, adding still more fuel to the fire that Lohan is a bad choice for the role both in terms of her behavior (bad) and her talent (negligible). Somehow, though, they’ve finally found the Dick to her Liz!

Deadline Wellington reports that, “after an extensive search,” Kiwi actor Grant Bowler has been set to co-star as Burton in the film. Executive producer Larry A. Thompson continues to be unusually chatty about the production, proudly nattering on about how he wanted a Welsh actor for the role but how Bowler’s “gravitas” made him the perfect fit for the part. For good measure, Thompson even recited his own mini-Burton history: “Burton was a Welsh poet, a rascal, and a man’s man, who swept Elizabeth Taylor off her feet and flew her so close to the sun that they both exploded into stardust that still lights up Hollywood.” So…he was Icarus? Cool! Old Hollywood was so wacky and mythologically obtuse!

Of course, this all begs the question: just who in sweet hell is Grant Bowler? Only the owner of the one of most hilarious resumes currently in Hollywood circulation!

Perhaps best known for playing “Cooter” on True Blood (because of course), the actor is also famous for starring in a number of Australian television shows, being replaced as the host of the Aussie version of The Mole, narrating the reality show Border Security: Australia’s Front Line (who the hell would have suspected that Australia, an island, had a border control problem?), and playing Hank Rearden in Atlas Shrugged: Part 1 (it’s okay to pause for laughter now). He’s also popped up on LOST and Ugly Betty, in addition to having a small role in Killer Elite.

So, wait, where’d they get this guy? Beyond the chemistry that reportedly “erupted” in his reading today with Lohan (sounds painful), let’s just be honest here – they blew their wad on casting and insuring Lohan. At least this guy apparently likes to work. And he has the right chin.

The film is set to start shooting on June 4th. Set your DVRs now.

Horror films with hauntings and malicious ghosts at their center have been around for ages, but the last couple years have seen an odd trade-off happening onscreen. Movies like Insidious and the Paranormal Activity series have successfully increased the number of scares per minute while losing ground in other areas like narrative or character development. The PA films have some brilliantly executed scares, but none of the characters are memorable in the slightest. And Insidious is scary as hell and loaded with fun moments, but the story takes a giant dump on the audience in the final few minutes.

The Pact is a far lower profile release than either of those, and as such it takes a step back from their more bombastic approaches and instead finds a real balance between the scares, the characters and the story.

Nicole and Annie (Caity Lotz) are grown siblings whose overbearing and abusive mother has recently died. Annie reluctantly agrees to help her sister go through and clean up their mother’s house, but when she arrives Nicole is nowhere to be found. Their cousin arrives and she too soon disappears leaving Annie alone with a potentially malevolent presence, a mysterious walled-up room and a deadly secret in her family’s past. Oh, and Detective Casper Van Dien is breathing down her neck too…

Kills

Most of the folks simply disappear off-screen, but we do get a couple stabbings and a gunshot to the head.

Ills

The stabbings are bloody affairs, and the knife to the throat in particular is followed by copious amounts of the red stuff gushing from the wound. There’s also all kinds of visual creepiness in the third act.

Lust

Annie wears some nice, tight boy-shorts to bed and does much of her ghost busting in a cleavage-friendly tang-top.

Learning

Ghosts are usually after one of two things. They either want your help or they want to kill you. It’s a very important distinction.

Review

Annie’s search for the truth reveals some long buried truths about her family and her home, and while some of them will feel very familiar to genre fans writer/director Nicholas McCarthy‘s script manages to squeeze in a surprise or two. Even as the cliched parts play out on screen though the film maintains a steadily escalating pace that keeps viewers from ever getting bored or ahead of the story.

McCarthy’s direction is also worth noting as he creates most of the film’s tension and creepiness through camerawork as opposed to special effects. We follow Nicole and Annie through the house in continuous tracking shots that always leave us fearful of what’s around the next corner or through the next door. It’s simple but highly effective, and when the film’s two effects-oriented scenes do happen the result is heightened dramatically.

The film is worth watching for being a well-made horror film, but even more impressive is the lead character of Annie and in turn, the performance of Lotz. Even the smartest characters in horror make dumb mistakes usually to allow for the script’s scary setups, but Annie doesn’t make a single misstep. Not one. She hears noises in the house and immediately grabs a weapon. She’s attacked by an unseen force and immediately gets the fuck out of the house. She doesn’t scream when she sees a dead body, she brings the detective to the house with her before she investigates its nooks and crannies, and in one spectacular scene she goes on a proactive offense even as she’s bound and nearly immobile.

Lotz makes the physical action believable, but she also sells the drama of someone who’s answer to everything has been to simply leave the trouble behind. But faced with a missing sister and cousin, not to mention Nicole’s young daughter who’s now seemingly on her own, Lotz beautifully balances Annie’s desire to run with her desire to finally put an end to the pain. And in case I didn’t mention it before she looks damn fine in those boy-shorts and tang-top.

The Pact takes its time doling out the story and punctuates the narrative revelations with some genuinely creepy scenes. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it also never tries to. Fans of the genre should seek it out, but so should anyone who appreciates a strong female lead character. Annie is smart, capable and very easy on the eyes. She’s the ultimate horror film heroine and that alone is worth the price of admission.

The Rock is a hype man, born and bred. I guess that’s kind of inevitable when you grow up in a house with a dad and a grandpa who are both professional wrestlers. So any talking up of his film projects the guy does on Twitter should be taken with a grain of salt; he is a carny at heart, after all. Still though, it should be noted that after yesterday’s announcement that G.I. Joe: Retaliation was having its June 2012 release date changed to a March 2013 one (so that it could be converted to 3D) disappointed pretty much everyone else on the planet, The Rock seemed to be the only guy who was enthusiastic about the news.

Soon after the story broke, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson took to his Twitter account and had this to say: “Commitment to make GI JOE a massive world event just got bigger. New release 3/29/13. Rock + Ass kickins + 3D = #AwwwwShit”

It seems that in Mr. Johnson’s mind, a finished film that’s already been heavily marketed and was  set for release in a little over a month getting pushed back nine more months isn’t a sign that there are serious problems with the finished product, it’s just a sign that the studio is more committed than ever to making sure that it’s the most awesome movie possible. Kind of like how Marvel just gave Iron Man 3 an extra $60 million to play with, only completely backwards.

Confirmation of Johnson’s staunch enthusiasm in the face of anything isn’t the big news that came out of The Great One’s Twitter account yesterday, however. The intriguing news came a little later when he addressed a fan’s disappointment over the film’s delay. He tweeted: “It will be. Designing new scenes to enhance 3D. RT: @JimmyinGA: Was looking forward to GI Joe next month. Hope the 3D is worth the wait.”

Though the news that the film is going to be shooting additional scenes does little to assuage the fears that the real reason it’s going back in for tinkering is that it isn’t very good, the news that said new scenes are being conceived specifically to work in 3D does work a little to assure everyone that they won’t have to sit through a shoddy 3D conversion that nobody asked for in the first place. At least the 3D might look cool?

And, who knows? Maybe G.I. Joe: Retaliation really is just making this move in order to be bigger and better. Maybe The Avengers really did open more eyes than just Marvels to the fact that if you want a movie to succeed in today’s summer blockbuster climate it has to be crazier and more epic than anything anyone has ever seen. Maybe, when all the re-shoots have happened, and all is said and done, G.I. Joe: Retaliation will be the greatest action movie ever made. And if you believe that, The Rock has another one he wants to sell you…

Two TV spots, new pictures, and banners from The Dark Knight Rises? What else could you ask for in about a day’s time? To make that month and a half wait we have left until the film finally opens a little more tolerable, there’s plenty to chew on and savor here. In usual Christopher Nolan cult fan fashion, it’ll be interesting to see how the fandom dissects the meaning of Joseph Gordon-Levitt “kneeling,” what secret Bruce Wayne and Miranda Tate are “talking” about, or what Selina Kyle is really looking at.

These new pictures and posters (courtesy of Empire) don’t give us the answers we need, but some message boards out there will most likely come up with countless theories over the matter.

First up, here’s a slew of gritty pics, all featuring nothing but gumdrop smiles and a much needed reminder of Nolan’s undying love for “happy” characters:

The other day, a truly terrible poster was released for The Dark Knight Rises (which put our own Kate Erbland on the first choo-choo to Dreamland) and, almost as an apology, Warner Bros. has given these nifty banner posters to Collider.

And how could we forget the TV spots (via Batman-news)? Bruce Wayne isn’t looking too hot in this footage, but let’s take a wild guess and say he’ll overcome the insurmountable odds and somehow save the day…

The Dark Knight Rises opens in theaters on July 20th.

Remember the first time you watched Home Alone? You probably enjoyed it quite a bit, but still, somewhere deep in the back of your head, you knew it was missing something. That something was most likely extreme violence, bloody murder and a hot older sister.

Lucky for you director Steven Miller and writer Ben Powell thought the very same thing. Their new film, The Aggression Scale, is about a group of thugs who invade a family’s home in search of money and kicks but find an emotionally disturbed boy instead. Owen is prone to violence, knowledgeable in the art of weapon-making and booby traps and very, very angry. He would eat Kevin McCallister for breakfast.

The always wonderful Ray Wise stars as the mobster behind it all, and Dana Ashbrook joins him as his right-hand man and lead enforcer. That’s right…it’s a mini Twin Peaks reunion! Also along for the ride is Derek Mears who should be recognizable to all as the star of Kickpuncher.

Anchor Bay is releasing the movie on May 29th, and they’re giving away two copies of the Blu-ray to help spread the home invasion fun. Keep reading to see how you can win.

The murderous little Owen is just the latest in a long line of cinematic kids who kill. Leave a comment below telling us who your favorite homicidal child from the movies is and what exactly makes them so special. Doesn’t matter if they’re murderers or acting in self-defense, just as long as they’ve taken a life. And no, dolls don’t count. Human children only!

When out-on-bail mob boss Bellavance (Wise) discovers that $500,000 of his money is missing, he sends four hardcore hit men (including Ashbrook and Mears) to send a “loud and messy” message to the suspected thieves’ families. But when the killers invade the Rutledge home, they’ll meet the household’s emotionally disturbed young son Owen (Ryan Hartwig). Owen has a history of violent behavior, knows how to make lethal booby-traps and is about to teach these thugs some deadly lessons in extreme vengeance.“

This contest is only open to U.S. residents, and it ends Saturday, May 30th. Be sure your comment (or Disqus profile) includes your email address so we can contact you if you win.

The Aggression Scale hits DVD and Blu-ray on May 29th.

Poor ‘lil Stevie Spielberg. Come Oscar season he may have a tough act to follow with his Daniel Day Lewis-starring Lincoln pic, the one which probably won’t feature Lincoln’s finest achievements: chopping off vampire heads, marrying Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and getting Anthony Mackie to somehow be your sidekick. All in all, that’s quite the life, as this bloody red band trailer for Timur Bekmambetov‘s Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter shows.

Check out Abraham Lincoln acting like a “mad man”:

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter opens in theaters on June 22nd. [IGN]

As far as we know on Reject Mars, Andrew Stanton‘s John Carter is “full of action,” and that’s exactly how we like it. The Disney epic from Edgar Rice Burroughs‘s classic Barsoom series was so many years in development that, for awhile there, it felt like it would never get made. But get made it did! And, in the case of a film like John Carter, one that relies so much on world-building, alien creatures, and massive battles to tell its story, it’s perhaps best that the film was crafted in a time rife with the kind of cinematic technology that could bring Barsoom to life.

Next month, Disney will release John Carter on home video, and they’re cramming the release full of all sorts of goodies that center on the making of the film, including a bonus scene that focuses on the work that went into one of the film’s most impressive scenes. In our exclusive first look clip below, a very excited Mark Andrews (who penned the screenplay with Andrew Stanton and also served as 2nd Unit Director on the film) explains to us how one of John Carter‘s biggest and flashiest stunts was accomplished, using green screens, skill, and some good old-fashioned ingenuity. Check it out after the break!

• Blu-ray 3D (film only)
• Blu-ray Feature Film + Blu-ray Bonus
• DVD Feature Film + DVD Bonus
• Digital Copy of Feature Film
• Disney Second Screen — Explore John Carter’s journal with this innovative in-world experience and uncover a trove of fascinating details that extend the mythology of the movie
• 360 Degrees of John Carter — Experience every aspect of the filmmaking process on one of the movie’s biggest production days
• Deleted Scenes with optional commentary by Director Andrew Stanton
• Barsoom Bloopers
• 100 Years in the Making — Follow the journey of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s story, from its origins as a pulp novel to its arrival onscreen
• Audio Commentary with Filmmakers

Barsoom bloopers? Sold!

You can check out more details about the home video release HERE, along with pre-ordering opportunities.

Why Watch? Yes, there’s some great CGI at work in Clark Baker‘s Vessel, but it’s a movie that also celebrates atmospheric horror greats with its practical creature design. That blend is the bedrock for a solid science fiction trip. It follows a group of passengers on an airplane that come into contact with another ship midair and end up fighting back a group of tentacled baddies who definitely aren’t from around here. “Here” being, you know, our atmosphere.

Everything about the short is pro-level. The score and strong performances from leads Brandon Bales and Julie Mintz are among the highlights, but it’s all here. Right on down to the sound design. Baker isn’t afraid to put his creatures front and center, and the design definitely pays off as the giant gooey roach/pig mutants are a thing of terrible beauty. Plus, the  script from Ross and Matt Duffer has just the right amount of chemistry and chaos. Overall, it’s an excellent film with plenty of fear and adrenaline.

What will it cost? Only 12 minutes.

Skip Work. You’ve Got Time For More Short Films

I had the opportunity to see one of my favorite composers perform selections of his work live a few weeks back, and to say it was a magical evening would be an understatement. But before I went completely over the moon (pun!) from the experience, I was given the opportunity to speak with the man himself about the evening, what led him decide to bring his scores to the stage and his process as one of the industry’s most successful and innovative composers.

Keep reading for my interview with composer Clint Mansell (Moon, Black Swan, Requiem For a Dream) and keep your eyes (and ears) peeled as it sounds like these live performances may just be the start of a whole new way of experience film scores.

What made you want to take on this challenge of bringing your music to the stage?

(Laughs) Well I suppose there’s got to be some amount of ego involved in there somewhere – the Mick Jagger in all of us that just can’t be contained. I used to play in a band [Pop Will Eat Itself] and I used to really enjoy playing live so I had thought about it for quite a long time and an opportunity came up a few years ago when I had won a couple of awards at the World Soundtrack Awards in Belgium. They invite you back to perform the following year if you’ve won and usually what composers will do, they’ll use the Belgium State Radio Orchestra, which always plays at the festival there, and either they’ll conduct or maybe sometimes they’ll just sit in the audience and hear arrangements of their music.

I wanted to do something a little different.

A lot of my scores aren’t big orchestral things, orchestra is part of it, but it’s not totally what it’s about so I figured maybe with some friends here in LA I could put together a sort of working band that could play and interpret my music and hopefully retain that special character that I hope (Laughs) is in my music!

But there are things that are important to me, that make my music my music to me, so I wanted to retain that so you’re hearing the music as it is. So the festival organizers in Belgium were really accommodating with us and they flew the players over that I wanted to use here in LA and we also rehearsed over there and that was just brilliant, that really set us up, and then I always wanted to play here in LA and we finally got a chance to put something together for the Last Night release.

But I’ve always enjoyed playing live – there’s something about just hearing that music live, I don’t get to hear it often, I don’t really watch films that I’ve worked on and I don’t sit around playing my old CDs of scores so it was sort of cool to do it, but I also really love the guys and gals in the band so it’s good to hang out with them as well so it’s really just a nice holiday from our day jobs.

And it definitely came across in the performance that you guys were having a great time.

Which is sort of weird because I don’t think my music is the type of thing you would pigeonhole with the “great time”! But I feel there’s even a certain amount of celebration and joy in the dark and the melancholy, I suppose. It’s just different emotions and hopefully, with the combination of the different film projections, we can give something that’s a moving evening or an evening you can connect with.

I think you guys definitely succeeded at that.

Thank you.

How did you go about developing the performance? Were there certain songs you knew that you would want to include or was it more of an organic process trying to figure it all out?

Well, I mean, you know there are obviously the “hits,” for lack of a better phrase, that if I’m going to do it, it would seem sort of foolish for me not to do Requiem for a Dream because you think, “Oh you hear that everywhere” or whatever people might say. To me, because I had never done this before, it wasn’t a case of like if you’ve been in a band for twenty years you might get sick of playing your hits, but obviously I’m not at that stage so it was a bit of a no brainer to some degree.

But then there were just a few extra bits to try and build a set that has some sort of ebb and flow to it and that sort of had more of an impact in the arrangements within each piece that we did. Moon in particular, which is like a 13-14 minute piece, to try and get the arrangement for that that works, not just within itself but within it’s place in a set, it takes a bit of working out. Like I said, we’d done gigs in Europe before, but we learned from those gigs, we had sort of re-worked the set a little bit this time and re-worked some the arrangements and like anything that you do a number of times, you gain some experience and you can develop because of that.

By the time we did these LA shows I thought that we were not all the way maybe, there’s still plenty that we could do, but it was still a good step forward from last time we played so I was really pleased. And the audience response just blew my mind. I could not believe it.

You definitely seemed surprised by the response! But having been in the audience we were just so thrilled to be there, I think everyone was just ready to take in whatever you guys had planned.

You know it was just the attention! Because there are a lot of quiet passages within the music and you could hear a pin drop! It was incredible. Just brilliant, I loved it.

You mentioned Requiem for a Dream, which of course was featured, and I noticed those were some of the pieces that didn’t have visuals accompanying them – was there a reason behind that decision?

There were a number of factors – I did have some film footage for it, but I just felt that – the idea with the film footage in general was – I suppose it was just like a continuation for me, really. Obviously the film footage had nothing to do with the films from whence they came, but I sort of wanted to create a similar, not necessarily the same emotion, but a similar emotion that would feel right and organic with the music played in that sort of setting.

But the thing with Requiem for a Dream is I felt it’s so bold and it’s so connected to that film, I mean I know it does get played here and everywhere else, I just felt like there was nothing that we could really do that would help sort of transcend it a little bit. I just felt that everything would kind of fight it a little bit so I just thought that was maybe the place to go for just the pure musical experience.

When you performed some of the music from Pi, you had mentioned that with that particular film it was early on in your career so you were basically left to your own devices and it ended up being some of your most memorable work – do you find that less restrictive environments allow you to be a little bit more creative or do you actually do better under more constrictive demands?

Well you know you always need a bit of discipline and a deadline to focus the mind I suppose, but for me there is nothing more satisfying than being able to find the film in my music or my music in the film. Obviously when you start working with a filmmaker or the producer, they’ve been involved with the film for a long time and got certain ideas about what they need. But it’s the same as any relationship if you were sort of on the same page and the relationship is fertile it’s really exciting when things start making sense and organically this piece of music fits the film and know that it’s now part of the film.

And not all films would respond to that – certain films are a bit more, I don’t want to say formulaic, but some films can’t sort of handle anything other than what it really needs so I prefer films that have a certain sort of poetry about them already so they’re looking for the music to join in with them and help support. I’m always looking for films like that really rather than the big action sequences or “here’s the sad piece” or whatever. So it’s really more about me just fine tuning my choices that I make and finding the areas in which I think I can do the things that excite me most which will hopefully result in me doing the best work that I can do.

Wes Anderson loves family dramas dressed as fantasies, and this notion is no less palpable with The Royal Tenenbaums, the film that essentially set him on the map. A lot of us remember finding Bottle Rocket in video stores or trekking out with friends to see Rushmore, but that was mostly because of Bill Murray. The Royal Tenenbaums was the movie that made people realize this voice in the world of independent film making had arrived.

11 years later, and Anderson’s latest, Moonrise Kingdom, another light-hearted drama made to look like a fable, is upon us. However, we felt it was time to go back and see exactly what the writer/director had to say about his pinnacle film, The Royal Tenenbaums. There’s sure to be references of French movies and anecdotes about writing with Owen Wilson, but that’s the obvious stuff. We’ve got 28 more items beyond that. So help yourselves with what we learned from the commentary for The Royal Tenenbaums.

Cue the Elliott Smith.

The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)

commentators: Wes Anderson (co-writer/director)

• “One of the initial ideas for this movie was that it would be based on a book, a book that doesn’t actually exist,” says Anderson right at the beginning of the commentary. He notes this is why the opening shot of the film is of someone checking the book, “The Royal Tenenbaums,” out of a library. He also mentions the opening title shot is a reference to Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger‘s opening titles, particularly The Red Shoes.
• Owen Wilson had told Anderson he should write a screenplay about his parents’ divorce, and this was the director’s intent with this film. “As soon as Royal began to speak, his answers were nothing like the answers my father had given under similar circumstances with my brothers and I,” Anderson says. He goes on to say the more he wrote Royal and the events in the film, the less it became about his own experiences.
• The shooting incident seen at the beginning of the film was inspired by a real event where Owen Wilson shot his brother, Andrew, with a BB gun. According to Anderson, you can still see the BB under Andrew’s skin on his hand. You know, something for him to remember Owen by. The shot of Chas showing his father the BB in his hand is actually Andrew Anderson‘s hand.
• Originally, Etheline, played by Anjelica Huston, was to blow out the candles to Margot’s birthday cake. A few shots of this were captured, but, as Anderson recollects, her hair caught on fire on the fifth take. It was Kumar Pallana‘s quick thinking that got the fire out before Huston got too badly burned. This makes up for him stabbing Gene Hackman later on.
• Anderson notes before Royal Tenenbaum was even a character, before he had him fleshed out and set in the story, he knew Gene Hackman was going to play him. “That was one of the core ideas,” he says. “I just wanted to do something with him. That was the mission.” And there are far worse missions you can set for yourself.
• The time setting for the film is brought up, as Anderson doesn’t have a specific period of time in which the events of the movie takes place. He does point out that each character is dressed in the attire that calls back to “when they were at their best.” When Ben Stiller asked Anderson why his character and his two sons are always wearing a bright red warmup suit, the director mentioned it was so his kids could find him and each other in crowded areas. He made this reason up on the spot. “It’s the same reason why they have curly hair,” Anderson says. “I thought it was funny.”
• “I don’t think you’re really allowed to go this far without starting the story, but we did,” says Anderson at 11:34.
• Bill Murray‘s character, Raleigh St. Clair, is based off of Oliver Sacks, a British neurologist who Anderson is a big fan of. The director read a piece of him in the New York Times that spelled out his lifestyle. Anderson felt this character would be a perfect fit for The Royal Tenenbaums. “Before you’ve ever heard of him, you might have read a profile of him in the New Yorker back when the New Yorker wrote profiles about people you’d never heard of,” Anderson says. “I feel like that’s part of the New York the movie is kind of about.” Anderson wrote the part for Murray more or less just to give the actor a part.
• Hackman was “disturbed,” as Anderson says, by the way Kumar was positioned in an early scene, directly in front of and completely hiding the Statue of Liberty. This was early in shooting, and the director found difficulty in trying to explain to Hackman why he had Kumar stand in this spot. “I don’t think he ever fully agreed with the choice,” Anderson says. No one stands between Hackman and Lady Liberty.
• The Royal Tenenbaums is the third movie Anderson and Owen Wilson wrote together, and the director mentions how their writing collaboration has been different in every one. He mentions Bottle Rocket as the movie where the two worked the closest, but Wilson quickly became a successful actor and then star after that. “In the case of this movie, I ended up on my own much more than I would like to be,” Anderson says. He goes on to say the center of their collaboration as writers is the voice they established together in their similar senses of humor and books and movies they admire. “Even if I’m writing something alone, I’m drawing on something Owen and I share,” he says.
• The scene where Richie, played by Luke Wilson, sees Margot as an adult, played by Gwyneth Paltrow, stepping off the bus was one of a few scenes Anderson had written down on notes a number of years before he even wrote the screenplay. “This music would go with this image,” he says, “although I didn’t know who was really walking off the bus, and I don’t even think it was a bus. But the thing I didn’t know about was the expression on her face, which is the thing I think that makes it work.”
• Anderson notes music in his films is very important, as he likes to incorporate songs and pieces of music that inspired ideas in his screenplays. He also mentions music can drive the overall tone or themes of the film.
• The dalmatian mice were created using a Sharpie marker. “I don’t know if that’s illegal,” notes Anderson. We’re not sure either, but you gotta have dalmatian mice, right?
• Anderson’s mother was an archaeologist. The director remembers visiting her dig sites with his brothers as a child, and he incorporates much of this into the scenes at Etheline’s dig and much of his own mother into the Etheline character in general.
• Margot’s wooden finger was an element Anderson originally intended for the Margaret Yang character in Rushmore. The finger was meant to have been blown off in a science experiment, but he brought it back and used it fully for the character here.
• The voices of the commentators during Richie’s awful tennis match are Andrew Wilson and Wes Anderson. “Some people think it’s Jason Schwartzman for some reason,” says Anderson, sounding nothing like Schwartzman.
• Anderson goes through the paintings in Eli’s house and mentions who painted what, but they’re a bunch of names you’ve never heard before. Listen to the commentary if you wanna know. The point is, the painting behind Eli while he’s sitting was purchased by Anderson a few years before he filmed The Royal Tenenbaums. He thought it was funny and notes how he thinks the characters are probably on mescaline, like Eli.
• The director mentions how important the house was for The Royal Tenenbaums. He had written the screenplay, and they were about ready to shoot, but it didn’t really come together until they found the house in which they shot. The first time he walked through it he knew exactly which rooms match which character. He also notes how the house helped the actors connect to their characters and the other characters. Location, location, location, you know?
• Anderson and Wilson don’t think about themes when they’re writing, and any themes that come out in the end, he says, come from the characters. “The movie didn’t mean anything for me until the characters started to become connected to things that I had been through,” he says. He recalls showing the screenplay to a friend who found obvious themes in it that Anderson didn’t even intend. “We just didn’t discuss them, I guess,” he says.
• As Anderson explains, “Coltrane,” which Royal calls Henry Sherman (Danny Glover), is a rare racial slur. Hackman wanted to change the line to Satchmo, but Glover agree with the director that Coltrane seemed to work better. “I don’t know what it means, exactly,” says Anderson.
• Don McKinnon, who plays the detective, hadn’t acted in a film before but was a friend of Anderson’s and Bob Wilson. Anderson introduced McKinnon to the writer and director Hampton Fancher at a party. It was Fancher’s idea to use McKinnon as a detective. Anderson stole his idea. “I apologize to Hampton for that,” says Anderson, with very little genuine remorse in his voice.
• Anderson mentions confusion he has heard from audience members about Richie’s line “I’m going to kill myself tomorrow” followed by him slitting his wrists. The director explains it’s a line taken from Le feu follet or The Fire Within, a Louis Malle movie, which Anderson notes was a huge influence on The Royal Tenenbaums. He explains this was a “turn” Richie makes and decides then and there to kill himself immediately.
• Anderson forgot to establish Royal’s new job as an elevator operator, and decided on set to include the shot where Royal is told of Richie’s attempted suicide.
• Originally, Richie and Margot were brother and sister, not adopted in Margot’s case. This was another reference to The Fire Within and was also pulled from like situations Anderson saw as a kid. He recalled a kid he knew in fourth grade who was in love with his own sister. “But, eventually the Margot character, I decided to have her adopted because of other things it would do to her character,” he explains. He also mentions it filled out the character better and made the relationship between the two more realistic. Because nothing says “bogus” like incest.
• Anderson notes they included the bird Mordecai’s caw in the film here and there, almost to show the bird is always in Richie’s life and always watching over him. The bird in the scene where Mordecai shows up is actually Mordecai’s sister. Let’s call her Esther. According to Anderson someone in New Jersey found the bird, kept it, and tried to get ransom money for it. Police became involved, and it took two weeks to get the actual bird playing Mordecai back. “It’s very complicated to fly birds in the city,” says Anderson. “It really shouldn’t be done.”
• He isn’t sure if it’s lost on the audience, but every table at the ice cream parlor during the scene where Royal tries to reconnect with Margot has fathers and their daughters. He also notes this scene was written as being very funny, but it became more dramatic once the actors performed it.
• The beagle seen throughout the movie, Buckley, was a reference to Snoopy of the Peanuts cartoons. Anderson notes they tried to get it across that the dog was sick and dying, and even thought about including coughing sounds from the dog, but this idea was scrapped thinking it too cartoonish. “I think you have to do CGI or something to have dogs coughing,” he says. This was intended to help lessen the drama when the dog gets run over near the end. Take that as a lesson. Driving over sick dogs? It’s not that bad.
• Before shooting the scene between he and Hackman near the end, Ben Stiller asked Anderson if he’d be shooting coverage, that is shooting from many different angles to provide a comfortable amount of footage for editing. This question is what gave Anderson the idea of showing all the characters – Margot excluded – after the aftermath of Eli crashing his car in one, continuous shot. Anderson recalls Stiller letting out a dejected sigh after the director told him the conversation between he and Hackman would be one shot. Anderson believes the scene between the two of them works, though. “This is take 18,” he says. He also mentions it’s the most important moment of the whole movie.
• The line “Wind’s blowing up a gale today” was improvised by Owen Wilson. Anderson notes Wilson improvised this line in Behind Enemy Lines, as well.
• When Anderson told Luke Wilson he would be the last one to leave the grave site in the final shot, the actor was surprised. He never felt there was much emphasis on Richie, but Anderson notes he thinks this is the “center of the movie.” “And then Kumar closes the gate to the family plot, and that’s the end of the movie.”

Best in Commentary

“The movie was always meant to be a New York movie, but, somewhere along the way, it became, as I feel everything I’ve done, a fable.”

“I think, among other themes, one of the big ones in the movie has to do with failure, and the effect it has on people. In the case of this family, all these children…I got this expression from Bob Wilson, which is they peaked early.”

“I’d quit smoking. This movie ended that.”

Final Thoughts

Remember what we said last week – and the week before – about director flying solo on these commentary tracks? Scratch that, because Wes Anderson knows exactly how to deliver ample amounts of insight and anecdotes about The Royal Tenenbaums here. Granted, this is a Criterion Collection disc, and if there’s anyone who won’t stand for 10 minutes of silence in a commentary track, it’s the people at Criterion. Once again they prove their worth, and, once again, Anderson makes it clear how incredibly talented and full of knowledge he is.

There are several references brought up in the commentary, most of them being relayed by Anderson brushing on what inspired certain sections of the film. There is a definite passion for films of old, outside-the-box music, and left-of-center artists he is fascinated by. All of that comes through on the commentary, and it’s one that anyone, not just fans of the man’s work, should seek out and listen to.

Now if only Criterion would be us a Fantastic Mr. Fox Blu, we could all die happy.

Check out more commentary commentary in the Commentary Commentary archives

Or Enjoy a Different Feature

As Todd Solondz explains, Dark Horse is a different kind of take on the Judd Apatow celebration of the Manchild. It’s a bit more aggressive, a lot more realistic, and complex in the way that fans have come to expect from the director of Welcome to the Dollhouse and Palindromes.

Set beyond cheerful pop music, the film follows Jordan Gelber, looking a lot like Jeff Garlin, as he attempts to navigate what he views as a cruel, unfair world in the yellow hummer his parents bought for him. He discovers something like love with the depressed Miranda (a differently-named character reprised by Selma Blair from Storytelling), and he struggles (often hilariously) to understand a world shifting around him.

Fortunately, Solondz took some time out to discuss his take on later-life childhood, how to respond to fans who laugh at child-rape, and how the indie filmmaking world has changed since the 1990s.

Download Episode #135

On This Week’s Show:

American Otaku [The Beginning - The End]: Todd Solondz on Dark Horse.

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The Most Anticipated Movies of Cannes 2012

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According to Variety, J.J. Abrams‘s Bad Robot and Paramount are working together to develop a spec script purchased from Matt Stuecken (associate producer on the soon-to-be-seen  G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra) and Josh Campbell. It’s a small budget, science fiction thriller, and there’s literally no more information than that. Most likely, per Abrams’s request.

Finding a director could be a crucial element in discovering some excitement here beyond the basic idea of having Abrams produce something with both science and fiction involved.

But there’s the larger question. Is Abrams’s name and his usual sense of mystery enough to get you interested in something he’s producing?

For a long time heavy-weight director Pedro Almodovar attempted to bring an adaptation of Peter Dexter‘s excellent novel “The Paperboy” to the screen, and a cursory glance at the story details of that novel confirm exactly what promise the Spanish auteur saw in that potential project. The book focuses on the case of death row inmate Hillary Van Wetter, convicted for the death of a local sheriff who murdered his cousin, and whose romantic relationship with letter-writer Charlotte Bless leads to the involvement of two investigative journalists from Miami who look into the possibility of Van Wetter being innocent.

Without wanting to give away too much, as the book progresses, all is not what it seems, leading to a catastrophic ending.

It seems that Almodovar was not the man to bring a film version of The Paperboy to life, and Precious director Lee Daniels stepped in to offer his own take on the story, investing a good deal more social outrage and shifting the focus onto the younger brother of one of those journalists. Zac Efron plays that brother – Jack Jansen – a former swimmer kicked out of college for an angry act of vandalism, and Matthew McConaughey his elder brother Ward, who enlists the help of writing partner Yardley Acheman (David Oyelowo) to investigate Van Wetter’s (John Cusack) innocence, at the behest of local vamp, and regular inmate letter write Bless (Nicole Kidman).

At first the case seems controversial, with missing evidence and an ignored testimony by the defendant suggesting his innocence, and Ward and Yardley eventually resolve to write an expose for their newspaper in an attempt to get Van Wetter freed. But then the fabric begins to be unpicked as Yardley’s motivations come into question, and Jack becomes obsessed with temptress Charlotte himself, and it becomes plainly obvious that the decision to publish the article without checking some of the basic facts further was a dangerous mistake. On the face of it, the basic story elements are the same, despite Daniels’ decision to leave out the detail of Van Wetter’s murdered cousin, and the shift of perspective to include a stronger love story element, but it is the director’s injection of far more explicit contextual social issues that changes the story the most.

To his credit, the narrative changes do not derail the success of the story, and it remains compelling throughout, with enough twists and turns to keep interest pricked, but the same cannot be said for some of the aesthetic and stylistic choices that frame the narrative. Taking a far more artistic approach than in Precious, Daniels embellishes the film with unnecessary visual flourishes which do threaten to derail the story. Dream sequences and odd artistic touches are no more than frustrating distractions, and unfortunately the preference of artifice over realism does dilute the impact of the story.

It also doesn’t help that Daniels fails to develop the suspenseful tone that one might expect from such a procedural film (even if it turns the amateur detective story on its head), and the films lacks developmental scenes which would give its various revelations more impact: the key is of course to reserve those revelations for effect, but even the most basic of thrillers offers the kind of sign-posts that audiences lap up. Here, though secrets aren’t so much hinted at as sledge-hammered without generation down the audience’s throats.

Daniels populates his film with grotesque caricatures, mostly monstrous, unevolved folk either driven by prejudices or primal desires – for sex, for power, in anger – and in the entire cast there are only a number of characters who are even likable at all. That isn’t to say the performances that shape the characters are poor – John Cusack is extremely good, and suitably menacing as Hillary, a man driven by physical impulses and prone to explosive desire, and Nicole Kidman tackles her most challenging role in years with aplomb, offering an eye-catching take on the “sexed-up Barbie doll” vamp that is Charlotte.

Zac Efron does his part too, but he is rather hamstrung by the fact that he isn’t the biggest presence in his own story, undermined by the pressing, and not altogether welcome omnipotent presence of Macy Gray’s narrator.

There can be no doubt that Daniels wants Gray to be the heart of the film, handing her the narration duties (which oddly shift from being directed as an unknown inquisitor at the very start to direct audience address) and the most generous scenes, but crucially over-estimating Gray’s abilities as an actor in a role which required something more. She is neither homely nor authoritative enough, and brings too much of a modern spin to her servant, which fundamentally undermines Daniels’ intentions for her.

In a story that invites us to care – about injustice, about personal struggles and about wider social elements – the fact that the script doesn’t really allow us to care about any of the characters is a major misstep, regardless of how successful some of the performances are.

Unfortunately, The Paperboy is a tale of a director getting in the way of fine source material, badly fudging his lines and distracting from the finer elements of his film – story and performances – with an artistic agenda that is muddled and occasionally inarticulate. It is a major shame, because Dexter’s novel is great, and in deciding to stamp his own identity on the story without the required restraint or intelligence, Daniels seems to have done his best t0 undermine it.

The upside: The story is excellent, and most of the performances match it for quality.

The downside: It’s all a little bit muddled, and unfortunately Daniels’ decision to take a more arty approach largely gets in the way of the film’s substance.

Complete Cannes 2012 Coverage

If you think about it, the Robocop remake actually has a lot going for it. Other than the baggage of being a remake. Director Jose Padilha has a successful action franchise in Elite Squad under his belt; co-writer James Vanderbilt wrote The Rundown, Zodiac and The Losers. co-writer Nick Schenk wrote Gran Torino; star Joel Kinnaman was fantastic in Snabba Cash/Easy Money and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

It’s got some great names involved. Rising talent. But, you know, who needs a remake of Robocop?

According to The Hollywood Reporter, an actor just made it even more interesting. Gary Oldman is joining the movie as the scientist who wrestles with his own sense of ethics when he finds himself in the middle of a big corporation’s needs and a former human’s humanity.

There’s no denying the gravitas and intensity that Oldman brings to the project. It was already interesting, but it just got interesting.

What is Movie News After Dark? It doesn’t have time to explain it to you, yo. We just gotta get out of here, Mr. White!

We begin this evening with the first image from the upcoming fifth and final season of Breaking Bad, courtesy of AMC. And guess what? It’s a shot of Walt (Bryan Cranston) and Jesse (Aaron Paul) standing in a field looking less than pleased with their surroundings. Even though it’s a shot we’ve seen a million times in four seasons, it never ceases to be interesting. 

This interview with Brave director Mark Andrews, as conducted by /Film’s Germain Lussier, is a great read. He too was disappointed with what happened to John Carter.

Vulture ruminates on five consequences of the sinking of Battleship, including one that ought to be true: “From now on, only members of the Billionaire Boys Club will getshoot-for-the-moon budgets.” Only serious mothereffing filmmakers should get to play with big dollars, that’s the lesson here. The same should go for 3D.

Over at Pajiba, Cindy Davis delivers a massive list of 108 Reasons We Still Miss Lost, all of which somehow have merit. My personal favorite (and something that I caught upon my first viewing, a fact of which I’m quite proud): 72. Dharmashark!

Melissa McCarthy and Sandra Bullock will be buddy cops in a movie directed by Paul Feig. There’s seriously nothing wrong with that.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead, star of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (remember this thing? It’s still happening…) is on the cover of the upcoming issue of Complex. The cover (seen below) is nice, as is Matt Barone’s interview with the lovely dame. More like Mary Elizabeth Winstead: Heart Slayer. Or Sex Bob-omb… (I agree, that’s enough.)

“…there is still one event that makes it worthwhile to trek out to the theater; a ritual that represents for me a near-ideal cinematic experience… The midnight show.” This is a money quote from a fantastic essay about How to Enjoy Going to the Movies Again by Alexander Huls over at The New York Times.

Gary Oldman joins Robocop, and will play the scientist who creates Robocop. His character Norton is “the scientist who creates Robocop and finds himself torn between the ideals of the machine trying to rediscover its humanity and the callous needs of a corporation.”

An ALF movie. This is the last thing we need. Have we learned nothing from Battleship? Dear Hollywood, please see the link to the Vulture story at the top of this article.

There’s a new Tumblr blog out there called Movie Simpsons, chronicling the classic film homage shots from the epic run of The Simpsons. Some of these are obvious (and blatantly called out in the show), while others are a bit more subtle. It’s in its infancy, so lets hope it keeps going. Lord knows there’s plenty of material.

A fine thinker named Adam Bertocci, whose long-form essays we’ve linked to in the past, is Overthinking Ghostbusters. A lot.

This new Mondo poster for The Iron Giant, from artist Laurent Duriex, is gorgeous:

It completely makes up for the steaming pile of ass that is this Rocky III poster by Jay Shaw. This will also likely sell out:

We close tonight with a video found via the folks at Wired. It’s a mod for Grand Theft Auto IV that allows you to play as R2-D2. It’s all quiet and easy until the little robot begins f’ing up a bunch of mother-f’ers.

If we were all to make lists of the young faces in Hollywood who are clearly destined for acting greatness, chances are that Mia Wasikowska’s name would appear near the top of most. From her coming-of-age turn in The Kids Are All Right, to her period work in Jane Eyre, to the mountains of box office business she did with Alice in Wonderland, Wasikowska is an actress who has shown limitless potential up to this point. It’s not hard to imagine that if she stays her current course, she’s bound to become one of those actresses who has a number of gold statues sitting up on her mantle by the time she decides to call it quits.

So it’s with great interest that we follow the next few crucial steps that she takes on her career journey, and it just so happens some news on a new project the actress has signed on for has come out of Cannes today. Variety is reporting that Wasikowska has signed to star in Tracks, an adaptation of the memoirs of Robyn Davidson that’s set to be helmed by The Painted Veil and Stone director John Curran.

Davidson’s memoirs, of the same title as this adaptation, have become pretty beloved since their mid-90s publication. Amazon describes her book by saying, “A cult classic with an ever-growing audience, ‘Tracks’ is the brilliantly written and frequently hilarious account of a young woman’s odyssey through the deserts of Australia, with no one but her dog and four camels as companions. Davidson emerges as a heroine who combines extraordinary courage with exquisite sensitivity.”

Davidson took her actual journey in 1977, and had “National Geographic” photographer Rick Smolan along for the ride. One would think that her chronicled thoughts combined with his photo journal of the experience will make for a pretty damned good road map for Curran as he looks to turn this story into a film. Plus, it should afford Wasikowska the opportunity to not only act against some wide open spaces, but also don some ’70s-era garb and really get into the skin of her character.

Could Tracks prove to be the next big step that will help hoist Wasikowska into the upper-echelon of Hollywood? Who knows…but it should be a pretty interesting journey finding out.