Jennifer Lawrence Is Back in a New Thriller!

After a long absence – has it really been since last December’s Passengers?– Jennifer Lawrence, Oscar-winning actress and America’s Sweetheart, is returning to screens this fall in a psychological thriller/horror movie called Mother! (yes, the exclamation point is part of the title).

It’s written and directed by Darren Aronofsky, who did the masterful Black Swan, so we should expect lots of mind games from the script. Let’s take a look at the excellent, intriguing trailer:

My first impression is that the trailer is very tense, aided immeasurably by the music, which I don’t recognize. (This is a major plus, as modern trailers all seem to use the same five or so musical selections; boring.) Is it from the film? I hope so!

New WALKING DEAD Show To Debut Online, Cross Over to TV

A special, stand-alone THE WALKING DEAD story will be broadcast online during the upcoming sixth season of the hit AMC horror series.

In the special, airline passengers will face a walker attack at 35,000 feet aboard a passenger jet. The story is set during the FEAR THE WALKING DEAD timeline, and one of the survivors of the in-flight attack will go on to star in FEAR THE WALKING DEAD’s second season, according to Entertainment Weekly.

While it will debut online, the special will be broadcast on AMC in chapters alongside the main show.

The sixth season of THE WALKING DEAD debuts with a 90-minute episode on Oct. 11.

‘Sin City 2’ Poster: A Retouch of Class

Remember that poster for Sin City: A Dame to Kill For that the MPAA rejected for being too sexy? Well, Dimension Films came back with a slightly retouched version that apparently tamped down Eva Green‘s hotness sufficiently for the censorship board industry trade panel to sign off on it.

Yeah, the two versions look essentially the same, but if you look closely, titular character Ava Lord’s white robe has been darkened enough to obscure more of her right nipple, which was the primary sticking point for the MPAA.

So now, this poster is perfectly appropriate for viewing by impressionable young children. Unlike the sure-to-be-R-rated movie itself.

I’m Too Sexy for Your Poster…

The sequel to 2005’s Sin City is coming, but when Sin City: A Dame To Kill For opens on Aug. 22, it will be with a different poster than the one the studio submitted to the Motion Picture Association of America, because the trade group just rejected that image for being too sexy!

The poster in question, seen here, depicts Eva Green in character as femme fatale Ava Lord, the titular dame. The MPAA took one look and clutched its collective pearls over “nudity — curve of under breast and dark nipple/areola circle visible through sheer gown,” according to gossip site Page Six. (Don’t enlarge image if you’re in a NSFW environment.)

Dimension Films, which is distributing the film, confirmed to Deadline that the poster is “being reworked.”

Visit M. Night Shyamalan’s WAYWARD PINES

It would be difficult to spawn more TWIN PEAKS comparisons than Fox’s new WAYWARD PINES does with this initial trailer. From the strangely quaint town full of colorful characters to the federal agent in way over his head to the star-studded cast, WAYWARD PINES is just begging to be measured against David Lynch’s seminal weird series.

About the only thing that will distract from the allusions to the adventures of Special Agent Dale Cooper in the great Pacific Northwest is the presence of creator/producer M. Night Shyamalan – the onetime cinematic wunderkind-turned-cliché-turned-Hollywood punch line. Everyone is trained to expect the “unexpected” from Shyamalan, so his greatest achievement here would be to get anything past the audience.

I’m calling it right now: This series will be overwhelmed by fan arguments over whether lead character Ethan is dead or not. I can almost see Twitter the next morning; and it won’t be pretty. Beyond TWIN PEAKS, this series also appears to borrow heavily from Shyamalan’s 2004 movie The Village, doesn’t it?  And how about that PRISONER vibe?

WAYWARD PINES is being held until 2015 on Fox.

Jack Is Back in First 24: LIVE ANOTHER DAY Trailer

Kiefer Sutherland’s iconic Jack Bauer character returns in the reboot of 24 — now trimmed down to a lean 12 episodes — that finds international fugitive Jack trying to prevent the assassination of the U.S. president in London.

However, just like every other series of 24, no one believes Jack, and this time he’s being hunted by CIA operative Kate Morgan, played by CHUCK’s Yvonne Strahovski (last seen in the tragically disappointing DEXTER series finale).

As you can see, Chloe O’Brian (Mary Lyn Rajskub) is back, and William Devane’s James Heller has been elevated from secretary of defense (in 2007’s series) to president! Also glimpsed: Kim Raver as Audrey Raines!

24: LIVE ANOTHER DAY debuts May 5 on Fox.

Scarlett Johansson: Nudity is ‘Liberating’

In her new thriller, Under the Skin, Scarlett Johansson plays an alien sent to Earth to prey on human males — and the seductress role in the film directed by Jonathan Glazer called for her to be naked. Quite a bit.

Not accustomed to such displays, Johansson had to psyche herself up for it — despite being one of the most beautiful women on Earth. She told Yahoo Movies:

“I’m a pretty private person. It’s not like I want to be displaying myself all over the place. But I think I realized that through the process of just letting go and allowing myself as the character to be totally present in the moment, and making the discovery of my own self, as [my character] does… I realized what kind of judgment I place on myself, and how self-conscious I am about all different kinds of things. That wasn’t just the nudity, but many different situations, where I just had to…. We just couldn’t capture what we needed unless I was totally free of myself. That, in a sense, was very liberating.”

Under the Skin opens this Friday, April 4. (Yes, Scarlett is going up against herself in Captain America: The Winter Soldier.)

 

Vertigo Plugs “Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” Adaptation

What we have here are two TV commercials promoting a two-volume graphic novel that adapts The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson’s runaway best-selling prose novel and first installment of the “Millennium Trilogy,” originally released in 2005. The graphic novels are being published by Vertigo, an imprint of DC Comics that concentrates on material that is more mature than run-of-the-mill superheroes and adolescent power fantasies.

Take a look, and then we’ll discuss after the jump…