Latino movie news, reviews, trailers, and festival coverage

Almodovar and Tarantino to compete at Cannes

Pedro Almodovar and Quentin Tarantino will be among the directors contending for the Palme d’Or award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Almodovar’s “Broken Embraces,” with Penelope Cruz will be in competition for the top prize. So will Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds,” starring Brad Pitt, the organizers said at a news conference in Paris.

The festival will take place from May 13 to 24 in the coastal resort in the south of France.

First image of Dicaprio and Scorsese in ‘Shutter Island’

It’s Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio’s fourth film together,which officially makes them Hollywood’s hottest couple after Brad ‘n’ Angie. But Shutter Island is not just exciting because of that; it’s also shaping up to be something of a stylistic shift for Scorsese. And here’s a shot of Scorsese directing DiCaprio (as Teddy Daniels) and Michelle Williams as his wife.

Co-star Mark Ruffalo, who plays a US marshal alongside DiCaprio, said, “This could be one of [Scorsese’s] great films. He gets to do everything he loves about film: noir, dream sequences, suspense, tough urban stuff. It’s absolute madness, twist upon twist.”

Scorsese himself has likened the film to Orson Welles’ take on Kafka’s The Trial, or Hitchcock at his weirdest, which sounds pretty darn promising to us. The film’s out on October 9 in the UK and October 2 in the US. Next year’s Oscar race starts here.

Picture is from Empire Online.

Vanessa Hudgens will star in ‘Beastly’

CBS Films has tapped Vanessa Hudgens to topline teen romancer “Beastly,” with Susan Cartsonis producing via her Storefront Films shingle.

Daniel Barnz is directing from his own script, centering on an arrogant 17-year-old who’s hideously transformed in order to find true romance.

Story’s based on Alex Flinn’s fantasy novel, a retelling of “Beauty and the Beast” set in modern-day New York. CBS acquired feature rights to “Beastly” in late 2007 as one of its first projects.

Hudgens, last seen in “High School Musical 3: Senior year,” is also set for Zack Snyder’s fantasy-drama “Sucker Punch.”

Watch 9 clips from ‘Angels & Demons’!

We have been hearing that ‘Angels and Demons’ is one of the most awaited films of the 2009 Hollywood Movie calendar and we finally get a glance at how good it might be. We have just obtained 9 clips of the film for your viewing pleasure and even though it didn’t knock our socks off, the storyline is too enticing to not watch. The film will be released on May 15th and we just heard that Dan Brown’s next novel The Lost Symbol will be in stores in September. We await until then for another good read.

“Angels & Demons,” published in 2000, introduced the Langdon character which is summoned to a Swiss research facility to analyze a cryptic symbol seared in the chest of a murdered physicist. What he discovers is a deadly vendetta against the Catholic Church by a centuries-old underground organization – The Illuminati.

Jessica Alba to co-star in “The Killer Inside Me”

A state official in Oklahoma has confirmed that part of a film starring Casey Affleck, Jessica Alba and Kate Hudson will be shot on location at various towns.

Jill Simpson, the director of the Oklahoma Film and Music Office, said that principal photography for the film “The Killer Inside Me” will start in New Mexico before moving to Oklahoma. Scenes will be shot on location in Guthrie, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Enid and Cordell.

She said it will be the largest film produced in Oklahoma since the box-office hit “Twister” in 1996.

Preproduction for the Guthrie portion of the shoot for “The Killer Inside Me” will resume on Monday. One of the film’s producers, Michael Eaton of London-based Revolution Films, will arrive in Oklahoma the same day.

Conflicting schedules for the actors and lack of full financing for the film delayed the start of filming, which had been scheduled for March 24. Chad Burris, the owner of Tulsa-based Indion Entertainment Group, said the necessary funding has been secured.

“That, coupled with, I think, they finally got the actors’ schedules lined out and the stars aligned and all the other great things that have to happen before a movie can actually get going,” Burris said.

Affleck’s availability for his scenes in the film is still in flux, Simpson said, although preparations are moving forward.

“The good news is, it’s back on and they’re going to be filming here,” Simpson said.

The movie will be a crime thriller based on a 1952 novel by Jim Thompson, who was born in Anadarko in 1906. The storyline involves a likable rural deputy sheriff, portrayed by Affleck, who has the mind of a murderous psychopath.

Thompson also co-wrote the screenplays for two films by Stanley Kubrick, “The Killing” in 1956 and “Paths of Glory” in 1957. He died in 1977.

Oklahoma’s incentive of offering up to a 17 percent rebate on production expenditures for companies filming in the state proved to be a strong lure for Muse Productions of Los Angeles and Revolution, Simpson said, along with the work of Indion Entertainment.

“I’m certainly happy the film’s going to happen and, you know, I never really thought it wasn’t going to,” Burris said. “I think there are people that got a little more nervous about it than I did. I think it’s a great boon for Oklahoma. I think it’s going to do a lot for us having this production here.”

Sacha Baron Cohen’s "Bruno" gets NC-17 rating

Universal’s “Bruno,” the widely anticipated Sacha Baron Cohen docu-comedy opening in July, has been slapped with an NC-17 rating on its first submission to the Motion Picture Association of America because of numerous sexual scenes that the ratings board considers over the line, according to the studio releasing the film.

Among the objectionable scenes is one in which two naked men attempt oral sex in a hot tub, while one of them holds a baby. In another, Bruno — a gay Austrian fashionista played by Baron Cohen — appears to have anal sex with a man on camera.

The Reader

Rated: R for some scenes of sexuality and nudity.
Release Date: 2008-12-10
Starring: Bernhard Schlink, David Hare
Director(s):
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Film Genre:
Country:USA
Official Website: http://www.thereader-movie.com/

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The Spirit

Rated: PG-13 for intense sequences of stylized violence and action, some sexual content and brief nudity.
Release Date: 2008-12-25
Starring: Frank Miller, Will Eisner (Comic)
Director(s):
Distributor:
Film Genre:
Country:USA
Official Website: http://www.mycityscreams.com/

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