Happy Super Bowl Sunday! Did the Giants win yet? While you’re all downing all of the beer, pigs in a blanket and football you can, I’m here to make sure you’ve got your weekly dose of movies news here waiting for you when you’re ready. Let’s face it, there’s just so long the Super Bowl will sustain a conversation at school or work this week. Well, unless the Giants really do win and you’re from New York like myself. Anyway, on the table this week is the return of James Wan’s Insidious as well as some casting updates for the remake of Evil Dead. Viola Davis, Jessica Chastain and Joel…

The first thing that drew Ami Canaan Mann to the film “Texas Killing Fields” wasn’t the script. “The thing that really drew me was the research material that came along with the script,” she said. The research expounded on the script, which is based on the real-life string of murders that happened in the 1970 through the 1990s along I-45, near League City, TX (according to Mann, the murders happened in Texas City, which is 30 minutes south of Houston). When Mann finally read the script, written by Don Ferrarone, she was just as affected. “It had such a visceral quality,” she said. By the time she had read the…

Title: Coriolanus Directed By: Ralph Fiennes Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Vanessa Redgrave, Brian Cox, Gerard Butler, James Nesbitt, Paul Jesson, Jessica Chastain, Lubna Azabal, Ashraf Barhom Back in high school, I always knew I should appreciate Shakespeare, but getting through his work was so tedious, it often took away from the narrative. Then, once I finally understood the text and perhaps should have gone back for a second go-around to appreciate it as a story, it was onto the next book of the semester, forever branding his work a mere school assignment rather than something that was meant to be enjoyed. Thanks to Ralph Fiennes, if Coriolanus ever comes up in…

I guess this is really the first Movie News Cheat Sheet of the year. Sure, we ran one on January 1st, but considering that edition was packed with the top stories of 2011, this is your first taste of the best of the best in movie news for 2012. There’s a couple big casting updates to report from Joel Edgerton signing on to lead Kathryn Bigelow’s Osama bin Laden feature to Spike Lee losing another villain option for his remake of Oldboy. Then, of course, awards season nominations continue to come in and this time around, it’s the Writers Guild and Producers Guild pinpointing the finest films of last year….

The Beverly Hills Hotel played host to the International Press Academy’s 16th annual Satellite Awards on Sunday night, a lively evening which saw prizes handed out recognizing the year’s best entertainment in film and television. After red carpet arrivals and some spirited cocktail conversation, the awards show proceeded at a nice clip before being capped off by a sumptuous dinner. Some of the winners’ names were familiar just kicked-off awards season — Alexander Payne’s Hawaiian-set “The Descendants” was named Best Picture, as it also was recently by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association – but perhaps the biggest winner of the night was Nicolas Winding Refn’s neon-lit, criminally overlooked “Drive,” which sadly…

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Well, for some of us. With the end of the year fast approaching, the awards nods are rolling in and this past week a big list was revealed – the Golden Globe nominations. Generally the right films snagged the honors – The Artist, The Descendants, The Help – but we did have a few upsets, namely the lack of Steven Spielberg’s name on the Best Director list for his work on War Horse. Brendan Meyer will certainly be having a very merry Christmas. The young actor was just cast as Stilson in Ender’s Game while Spike Lee turned to Clive Owen for…

Title: The Help Directed by: Tate Taylor Starring: Emma Stone, Viola Davis, Bryce Dallas Howard, Octavia Spencer, Jessica Chastain, Sissy Spacek, Allison Janney and Cicely Tyson Running time: 146 minutes, Rated PG-13, Available on standard DVD At the start of the civil rights movement, an aspiring journalist decides write a book filled with a compilation of events as recounted by the maids who work for white families in Jackson Mississippi. The special features on the Blu-ray include a “making-of” featurette and a tear-jerking featurette “Tribute to the Maids of Mississippi,” and they are important to watch after the film. Author Kathryn Stockett and Director Tate Taylor are childhood friends whose…

Jessica Chastain has been cast in director Oliver Hirschbiegel’s upcoming Princess Diana biopic ‘Caught in Flight,’ Collider is reporting. There’s no word yet who ‘The Debt’ actress will play, but the movie will focus on Diana’s real-life secret affair with a heart surgeon, Dr. Hasnat Kahn, who is believed to have been the love of her life. The two-year affair began in 1995, which Kahn remained silent about until he spoke to The Telegraph in 2008. Pre-production on ‘Caught in Flight’ is expected to begin in March 2012. Chastain is also set to appear with Ralph Fiennes in ‘Coriolanus,’ and with Tom Cruise in the sci-fi blockbuster ‘Horizons.’ Hirschbiegel spoke…

As we enter November, the Oscars can’t be too far off. This famous awards ceremony honors movies released during the calendar year, meaning that some actors have multiple films eligible. Jude Law released a mammoth six films back in 2004, three of which earned Oscar attention, though not for his performances. Academy rules don’t permit an actor to receive two nominations in the same category, but earning one lead and one supporting mention is permissible. Often, a big year for an actor with one knockout movie role might lead to two nominations, even if the second is undeserved. For instance, was Jamie Foxx really Oscar-worthy in Collateral or was he…

Title: Take Shelter Directed By: Jeff Nichols Starring: Michael Shannon, Jessica Chastain, Tova Stewart Well paced movies aren’t necessarily swift, but if the storytelling approach is more on the calculated and wallowing side, there better be a strong payoff. While writer-director Jeff Nichols presents Take Shelter as a piece that’ll rock a powerful crescendo, what we get is one that feels rather one-note most of the way through until it spikes just before the end. Nichols makes an honorable attempt at wrapping the piece up in a fulfilling and stirring way, but the jagged build doesn’t make it nearly as satisfying as it could be. Curtis (Michael Shannon) makes a…