Nowhere Boy to close LFF

News of this leaked out last week so it wasn't much of a surprise when it was officially announced today that Nowhere Boy would close the 53rd BFI London Film Festival on October 29. Directed by artist Sam Taylor Wood from a script by Matt Greenhalgh (Control), Nowhere Boy stars Aaron (Kick Ass) Johnson as the 15-year-old John Lennon who finds a kindred spirit in the teenage Paul McCartney (Thomas Sangster).

"We're delighted to be closing our festival with the world premiere of this first feature by Sam Taylor Wood, who brings her customary sensitivity and visual flair to this story of the formative years of one of the UK's cultural icons," said Sandra Hebron, the LFF's artistic director. "Less a biopic and more a love story, Nowhere Boy is as accomplished as it is moving and will ensure the festival ends on a high note."

When Jack met Jan

January Jones was the best thing about Mad Men this year. Jack Nicholson's still the Man. Interview put them together and the result makes entertaining copy.

Rose Byrne

Underrated and beautiful. The Daily Telegraph interviews the talented Aussie actress.

The Informant! UK poster

This striking UK quad for Steven Soderbergh's latest popped up online yesterday. Sorry for only just getting round to posting it. But if you hadn't yet seen it...

Alien prequel officially announced

The blogosphere has reacted enthusiastically to the news yesterday that Ridley Scott will direct a prequel to his landmark movie Alien. And while I certainly share that enthusiasm, I'm even more intrigued by the writer on the project, a chap by the name of Jon Spaihts. I must admit, I'd never of Spaihts before, but reading Michael Fleming's Variety story, it seems like I'm going to be watching films written by him for years to come.

"Spaihts has become a go-to-guy for space thrillers, writes Fleming. "After Keanu Reeves became attached to his Warner Bros. sci-fi script Shadow 19, Reeves hired Spaihts to write the space journey epic Passengers which is berthed at Morgan Creek. That script got Spaihts the meeting with Fox and Scott Free and he won the job with an Alien reboot take that the studio and Scott loved. Fox has separately hired him to rewrite The Darkest Hour, with Timur Bekamambetov to produce with Tom Jacobson. Spaihts is writing Children Of Mars for Disney and Scott Rudin and he will follow by rewriting St. George And The Dragon for Sony and Red Wagon."

Busy bloke.

Fantastic Mr Fox trailer

It's a Wes Anderson film, with puppets. Formal framing, great design, hip music, quirky characters talking directly to camera. Plus Bill Murray. And Jason Schwartzman. In short, it's stop-motion animation, but not as we know it.

Just a shame they didn't figure Roald Dahl's name was worth mentioning. "Based on the book by the author of Charlie And The Chocolate Factory." Pur-lease.

That aside, I like this. I like this a lot.

Empire: Smoking Hot Preview issue

The new issue of Empire arrived in the post today with its typically comprehensive preview and a nice five pages on Alice.

Venice 2009 line-up

The line-up for the 66th Venice Film Festival was announced a short time ago and while there's no place for the Coens' A Serious Man, there's a lot of interesting and potentially great stuff unspooling, including John Hillcoat's adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's The Road, George Romero's Survival Of The Dead, Werner Herzog's Bad Lieutenant remake Port Of Call New Orleans, Todd Solondz's Life During Wartime, Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story, Faith Akin's Soul Kitchen, Claire Denis' White Material, and Shinya Tsukamoto's Tetsuo The Bullet Man all playing in the official competition, and Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza's [REC]2, Grant Heslov's The Men Who Stare At Goats, Antoine Fuqua's Brooklyn's Finest, Abel Ferrara's Napoli Napoli Napoli, Joe Dante's The Hole and Soderbergh's The Informant among those showing out of competition. It looks a terrific line-up. And I hope to see as many as I possibly can.

Full details of all the films at this year's Venice Film Festival can be found here.

Film review: The Taking Of Pelham 123 (**1/2)

As remakes go, it's hardly faithful, taking the set up — a gang of robbers hold up a New York subway train and demand cash in exchange for not killing the passengers — and very little else, but it's never less than entertaining. Director Tony Scott, whatever you say about him (and I normally say nice things) knows how a) to tell a story compellingly, b) to shoot action with an eye to the audience, and c) to hook in a terrific cast. Here, he's working with Denzel Washington for the fourth time after Crimson Tide, Man On Fire and Deja Vu, while Scott debutant John Travolta looks more like a 70s porn star than the former Wall Street banker he turns out to be. Based loosely on John Godey's novel which was previously an adapted into Joseph Sargent's 1974 feature The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three starring Walter Matthau from which Tarantino pilfered the colour-coded criminal monikers for Reservoir Dogs, and a 1998 TV movie with Edward James Olmos, this Brian Helgeland-scripted reboot amps up the technology and turns down the slowburn tension in favour of more action and bursts of gratuitous violence, although Washington's morally suspect transport worker Garber is allowed to engage in a series of scenery-chewing tete-a-tetes via radio mike with Travolta's nefarious Ryder. Scott holds back slightly on the hyper visuals that dogged Domino, although there is one ridiculous conversation involving a gallon of milk that will have you rolling your eyes. Slickly enjoyable if intellectually bankrupt, you'll have a fine time watching but forgot about it the moment the credits roll.

Toy Story 1 & 2 in 3D

Pixar's John Lasseter is the recipient of this year's Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and they're going to be showing these two as part of a special 3D strand. For everyone else, they're out in October.

A Serious Man trailer

A new Coen Brothers film is always a cause for celebration and I'm hoping this is going to be playing in Venice when the line-up is revealed today. For now, here's the trailer for A Serious Man which is available via Apple. The film stars Michael Stuhlbarg and Richard Kind and, according to the Apple blurb, is "the story of an ordinary man's search for clarity in a universe where Jefferson Airplane is on the radio and F-Troop is on TV". Looks great. And bleedin' hilarious. And very Jewish. "The rabbi is busy..." Gotta love it.

Believe the hype

For once, it's true. Carey Mulligan is the brightest acting talent to emerge in years.

Last night I finally got to see Lone Scherfig's adaptation of Lynn Barber's memoir An Education which had been the Sundance success story this year and everything that's been said and written about this young actress is justified. She's an exceptional talent and her finely nuanced performance as the 16-year-old Twickenham schoolgirl wooed by Peter Sarsgaard's older man looks odds-on to scoop her an armful of gongs come awards' season. The film, too, is quite superb, with a sensitive (and often very funny) script by Nick Hornby and a great comic turn from Alfred Molina as Mulligan's father.

I first noticed this captivating young actress as Keira Knightley's younger sister in Joe Wright's Pride & Prejudice and then as Sally Sparrow in the brilliant Dr Who episode Blink. She had a blink and you'd miss her part opposite Johnny Depp in Public Enemies, stars with Pierce Brosnan and Susan Sarandon in The Greatest and Natalie Portman and Jake Gyllenhaal in Jim Sheridan's Brothers, and plays the lead role of Kathy opposite Knightley's Ruth and Andrew Garfield's Tommy in the eagerly anticipated Kazuo Ishiguro adaptation Never Let Me Go.

Wolfman bumped. Again

Universal last night announced that The Wolfman reboot starring Benicio Del Toro and Emily Blunt was being moved from November 6 in the US to February 12, 2010.

It's the fourth such move for the Joe Johnston-directed film which had initially been due on February 13 this year before being moved first to April 3, then November 6.

According to Variety, the move is, inevitably, to do with money and finding the perfect release date. But when a film moves so often it gives rise to all sorts of negative rumours, especially given the fact The Wolfman underwent a few weeks of reshoots earlier this year, mainly focussing on a new ending.

Having witnessed Rick Baker's makeup up close and personal, and given the calibre of the cast, I actually can't wait to see the film.

But now it seems I'm going to have to wait a while longer.

Loving Dollhouse

I must admit, I wasn't sure at first. But then it all clicked for me during the episode Man On The Street in which Federal Agent Paul Ballard's moon-eyed neighbour Mellie turned out to be a sleeper active named November, and I suddenly started to have a sense of where Joss Whedon was going with it. Can't wait for the above box set to watch it advert free.

Hamm and Hall

Two of my favourite actors of the moment, Mad Men's Jon Hamm and the very lovely and talented Rebecca Hall who starred in Chris Nolan's The Prestige and Woody Allen's Vicky Christina Barcelona, have joined the cast of Ben Affleck's The Town, his follow up to the pitch perfect directorial debut Gone Baby Gone.

Adapted from the Chuck Hogan novel Prince Of Thieves, The Town stars Affleck as a bank robber smitten with the teller (Hall) of the bank he held up. Hamm will play the FBI agent who's after him and who also falls for Hall's character. The film will shoot in Boston next month.

Colin

Congratulations to British filmmaker Marc Price whose no-budget zombie film Colin has scored a theatrical distribution deal with Kaleidoscope Entertainment and will be released in British cinemas in October after first showing at Frightfest. The film, which reportedly cost £45 to make, and which made something of a splash at Cannes this year, was shot on a camcorder and took 18 months to complete. It's a great underdog story, along the lines of Robert Rodriguez and El Mariachi, although I'm not sure I completely buy that it cost less than fifty quid to make. Here's the trailer.

Fantastic opener

Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr Fox will open this year's 53rd Times BFI London Film Festival on Wednesday October 14.

Anderson, whose Darjeeling Limited closed the festival two years ago, declared: "Fantastic Mr Fox is a British film, based on a Roald Dahl book, set in the UK, produced in the UK, so I am especially pleased to have been invited to be the opening night movie of this year's London Film Festival. We had a wonderful experience at the LFF with my previous film and I am eagerly looking forward to introducing Fantastic Mr Fox to the world in this wonderful venue."

Anderson, George Clooney, Meryl Streep and Jason Schwwartzman are expected to attend the opening, along with other members of the voice cast.

This year's festival runs October 14-29 and the full programme will be announced on September 9.

Coming soon

Hammer Glamour, published September 25, priced £24.99, a lavish new coffee table book from the good folk at Titan Books.

Written by Hammer historian Marcus Hearn, this lavish hardback celebrates Hammer's femme fatales with their barely restrained clevage, and is, to quote the press release, "bursting at the seams with rare and previously unpublished photographs". Sounds good to me.

Stuff I read today...

Emma Brockes skips along the Yellow Brick Road to celebrate The Wizard Of Oz at 70.

The Guardian muses on Hollywood's strained relationship with the internet.

A King Kong prequel is, apparently, heading our way.

The New York Times lays into Orphan.

Where The Wild Things Are featurette

I adore Maurice Sendak's book Where The Wild Things Are and can't wait to see what Spike Jonze has done with it. This exclusive featurette, which played at Comic-Con and which is now available on the Apple trailers site, reveals the love and care and passion Jonze and his co-writer Dave Eggars have brought to their adaptation. And boy, it sure looks gorgeous.

Tron: Legacy footage

I loved the original Tron and this looks the same but different. If you know what I mean.

Comic-Con '09: Kick Ass

I was particularly pleased to see that Kick Ass did indeed kick ass at Comic-Con the other day, drawing wild praise from all who witnessed Matthew Vaughn's hardcore adaptation of Mark Millar and John Romita Jr's hardcore superhero comic. The film, which stars Aaron Johnson as Kick Ass, Nicolas Cage as Big Daddy, Christopher Mintz-Plasse as Red Mist and Chloe Moretz as Hit Girl (pictured) promises to reset the bar on not only what's possible in comic book movies but what's acceptable.

Elsewhere Titan Books unveiled the Kick Ass: Movie Book which features "creator Mark Millar's unique commentary on the conversion of his bestselling comic to the big screen, with hundred of photos" and interviews by yours truly.

Wes Anderson on Fantastic Mr Fox

"It was the first book I ever owned," writer-director Wes Anderson tells USA Today in an exclusive peak at his adaptation of Roald Dahl's children's classic Fantastic Mr Fox. "My brothers and I loved Mr Fox and all the digging. We were obsessed with underground forts and tunnels."

As I've said before, I visited the Fantastic Mr Fox set several times during the course of production and interviewed many of the people involved in the making of this unique and delightful movie. Expect a trailer in the not too distant future.

Comic-Con '09: Astro Boy

Wired has a first look at Astro Boy.

Alice teaser (again)

Here's a much better quality version of the Alice teaser. It's funny to think I was there the day Alice fell down the rabbit hole...

And remember, this isn't how the finished version's necessarily going to look. As Tim has pointed out, this is where they are now.

Comic-Con 2009: Avatar panel

How I wish I'd been at this and seen the 20 plus minutes of footage from Avatar that James Cameron unveiled yesterday, but the good news is that August 21, at IMAX cinemas the world over, is Avatar Day. Fifteen minutes of Avatar will be shown, free, in IMAX 3D for everyone to see, ahead of its December release.

Check your nearest IMAX cinema for details.

Book Of Eli trailer

Looks like The Road with more action but minus the cannibals, to me. That said, I'm a sucker for a post-apocalyptic tale. And it's great to see The Hughes Brothers back on the big screen. Click here for the HiDef version from Apple.

Down the rabbit hole

Aint It Cool has posted pictures and a description of the Alice In Wonderland touring exhibition that I got an exclusive peak at in London in June.

Back then, no photos were allowed. Now that the teaser trailer's out, and the first official photos have run, it's clearly a different matter.

Nightmares & Ninjas

Got it!