I'm sorry for being so cryptic with the title, but I would like to save those who haven't seen The Dark Knight yet from a few of the film's big reveals. That said, if you haven't watched the movie yet, I'd suggest not reading this post. Unless you don't care either way, here we go ... spoilers ahead ...

On the phone with Cinematical's Scott Weinberg last night discussing which jewelry we're bringing to Comic Con (I have the perfect, purtiest necklace for the Terminator: Salvation panel!), we got to talking about The Dark Knight. More specifically, we pondered Scarecrow's purpose in this film. Why was he there? Why bring Cillian Murphy on set for one scene with very little to do and then not come back to him for the remainder of the flick?

Now, the purpose of the scene itself was pretty clear: To re-establish Batman's war on crime and to show how the hero's popularity has spawned a number of copycat Batmans. So they bring these two drug gangs together for a secret meeting/transaction, and one of them is run by Scarecrow. And just as business is about to go down, a bunch of Batmans arrive on the scene -- all hell breaks loose -- and the real Batman eventually gets the job done.

Great. Wonderful. So why was Scarecrow there again?

Let it be known that little live but lies,
Love-lies, and god-lies, and lies-to-please. Dylan Thomas

Back in 2006, I couldn't say that I was itching to see The Edge of Love, which was then titled The Best Time of Our Lives. Keira Knightley was attached to star, which wasn't surprising since her mom wrote the script, but Lindsay Lohan was attached to co-star. LiLo was already getting into tabloid trouble and it seemed like a slap in the face to Dylan Thomas fans, and a moment of insanity within the casting powers that be. Luckily, she dropped out, and Sienna Miller stepped in.

Now, finally, we've got a trailer. I could do without the first pointless closeup of Keira's face, but the trailer soon goes through the basics of the story, and it's looking like a sweet literary drama. Edge focuses on the love triangle between Caitlin (Miller) and Dylan Thomas (Matthew Rhys) and friend Vera Phillips (Knightley), and how this led Vera's husband, William Killick (Cillian Murphy), to open fire on the Thomas home with a machine gun and hand grenade in retaliation. Normally, I get a bit perturbed about literary dramas that focus on the romance rather than the writer, but this is a strange story, and it looks like it was captured well for the big screen.

I'd be remiss to not mention that this certainly has Atonement similarities (although one quote in the movie says that this flick is better!), but as a Thomas fan, I'm hoping it can shine in its own light.

The Edge of Love currently has no US release date, but is scheduled to arrive in the UK at the end of June.

At the press junket for Atonement in Manhattan on Tuesday, one brave soul piped up during the roundtables to ask Keira Knightley if she was or was not interested in returning for a fourth Pirates of the Caribbean film. You may remember that the third one ended on that rather ambiguous note, but then sort of doubled-back with a pretty definitive, boxed-into-a-corner end-credit teaser. Knightley seemed to be ready for this question and had a very definitive answer. She quickly responded, with a tone of sadness and seriousness in her voice, "I can't imagine doing another one. That was an amazing experience, really was, totally extraordinary, but I think three for me is probably enough." This was probably to be expected. The Pirates series is subject to the same industry realities as the X-Men series -- the more money those movies make, the bigger the paychecks the cast members are going to demand for future installments. I think you can almost certainly say goodbye to Elizabeth Swann and Will Turner.

Regarding her other projects, Knightley reported that she has completed her work on The Duchess, as well as The Edge of Love, opposite Sienna Miller and Cillian Murphy. As far as future work, she had nothing to report on that front. Another interesting note: although Knightley showed up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for today's junket along with her co-star James McAvoy, director Joe Wright was a no-show despite being in Manhattan as recently as last night. Joe, are you sick of us press people already?

It's not as if this is the first time there has been talk of a live-action version of the anime classic Akira. Back in 2003, a script had been written by James Robinson and Stephen Norrington signed to direct -- but that did not last long, and there hasn't been a peep out of the project since ... until now. Bloody Disgusting's sources are reporting that Warner Bros. has not given up yet on the project. Far from it, in fact; they have now hired Irish director Ruairi Robinson to helm the flick. The 29-year-old has only directed two short films so far, one of which got him nominated for an Oscar. But it was his sci-fi short The Silent City starring Cillian Murphy that got the director noticed by WB, according to BD's sources.

Akira was released back in 1988 and was based on the manga series by Katsuhiro Otomo. Based on the original storyline of the comics, Akira centered on a post-nuclear Tokyo overrun with gangs and social unrest. If you haven't seen the film, believe me, it's a pretty complicated storyline and frankly defies a quick summation. But since it is considered one of the best anime films of all time, it's worth your while to give it a viewing. According to BD's report, WB is trying to get the film off the ground pre-strike (which sounds pretty ambitious if you ask me). This is all just speculation at this point, so stay tuned until we hear something official -- or until another four years have gone by and the rumor is resurrected one more time.

[via justpressplay.net]

The good parts keep coming for Cillian Murphy. The Hollywood Reporter tells us he will officially be starring opposite Al Pacino in the film adaptation of Dali & I: The Surreal Story. The book Dali and I was originally written by Salvador Dali's (you know, the guy who paints things that melt?) real life protege Stan Lauryssesn, who Murphy will portray in the film. The movie concentrates on the span of twenty years in Dali's life where he was already an established iconoclast in the surrealist world, and his eccentricities in both personality and appearance drew more attention to him than his work. Throughout these years is when Dali (Pacino) met Lauryssesn (Murphy), an art dealer and artist who looked to Dali as a mentor.

Bio pics are such a tricky genre of film. I definitely have my favorites (In Pollock, Ed Harris and Marcia Gay Harden were brilliant!) and ones I hated (Frida was beautiful, but like so many others it packed in every life detail, forgetting that the audience has no time to care about the person on screen.), but I'll give them a fighting chance before I see each film. I'm glad to see Pacino is finally taking on what could be a great role. It's been years since I've seen him do something worthy of his talents (S1m0ne, sigh) and I crave for something as candid and profound as in his youth -- another Dog Day Afternoon please, Mr. Pacino! Dali & I: The Surreal Story will be directed by Andrew Niccol and starts shooting in Spain and New York at the beginning of next year.

Facing a roundtable of interviewers in San Francisco, director Danny Boyle's animated and enthusiastic talking about his new science-fiction epic, Sunshine, which follows a group of astronauts on a desperate mission to re-start the sun -- gesturing with his hands to show the narrow story constraints of sci-fi as a genre, leaning back and forth as he relates the differences in tone between his latest film and his previous work. Boyle burst onto the scene with his debut film, 1994's Shallow Grave; he followed it up with an impressive string of projects that leapt from genre to genre: Trainspotting, 28 Days Later, Millions. Some of Boyle's films have been considered flops (notably The Beach, the multi-million dollar Leonardo DiCaprio-led adaptation of Alex Garland's novel) , but he's constantly tried to do something different -- a constantly moving point of innovation in a British film industry that too often seems awash in period-piece Jane Austen adaptation and wispy, wistful rom-coms.

Boyle spoke about researching sealed environments ("We couldn't get on an oil rig -- because of security -- but we could get on a nuclear submarine. ..."), putting his actors through a two-week pre-production 'space camp' (" ... I had to promise them that there were no cameras -- that it wasn't a type of Big Brother sort of thing. ...") and much more. Cinematical's questions are indicated.

Cinematical: What was the biggest technical challenge in bringing the emotional arc of the story to life - and what was the biggest story challenge in bringing this very technical piece of 'hard' science fiction to life?

Boyle: They're both the same, really -- They're both about 'Can you create this star -- and not just create it as an impactful wonderful thing to see, but can you sustain it and grow it so it grows as an experience throughout the film so it gets bigger and bigger and more a part of their lives?' Because, in a way, that's the emotional relationship in the film -- their relationship with the sun, what happens with it, how it kills them off gradually, or how they grow into it or learn to accept it, their relationship with it. And it was trying to sustain it. Because you can create impact (claps hands together to suggest a blast of sunlight): WHOOOOM! SSSSCH-OOOOOOWWW! But after about five seconds of that, it's just ... white. And really boring. So one of the basic ways we (built the experience) is that we made the inside of the ship, we made everything non-orange or red. It sounds boring and trite, but it works, believe me. It's an old, old trick: You rob the audience for maybe as long as 15 minutes, they don't get ... (reaches out to grab the hem of an interview participant's red dress) ... there'd be nothing like that allowed in the costume, nothing; everything had to be in the gray-green-blue range, and then you step outside (the spaceship of the film, into view of the sun) and it's like "Oh!" It's like you've been without it, like you've been starved of it.

That was one way that helped sustain it, really. It's the biggest technical challenge, really. Because obviously, you see the film through the actor's eyes, and they cant see anything of what we were creating, because it all took 9 months, a year for the CG. So the biggest technical challenge was creating things for them to look at. And I don't just mean pictures of the sun, I mean things that had a tactile impact on them -- whether light or dust or whatever it was, freezing water for Chris Evans. They're not thinking "He's told me to do it like this because eventually it's going to be like this. ..." It's like "Just react to what happens now to you." So you get a dust storm blown at you ... and then I replaced whatever I needed to replace with CG, but the actors are reacting to something tactile and tangible.

The sun is dying in Sunshine, but the familiarity of Trainspotting director Danny Boyle's latest makes one think an equally dire death is the sci-fi genre's aptitude for invention. A gorgeously crafted intergalactic saga sorely lacking in originality or profundity, Boyle's film marries 2001 aesthetics with an Alien narrative to create a rather straightforward – and superficially entertaining – adventure devoid of much meaning. Talk of God, humanity and morality abound but Alex Garland's screenplay only lightly grazes such heady philosophical issues, instead investing most of its time and energy on decently drawn characters, an authentic sense of setting, reasonably taut set pieces, and custom-built showcases for dazzling CG sunscapes, twinkling light flares, and immense cascades of roiling fire hungry to fill the void of space. On a purely visceral level, Sunshine is never less than engaging, and frequently gripping. Yet the general emptiness of its head is frustrating given its pretensions of high-minded deepness, and the commonplaceness of its plot is ultimately dispiriting for a movie seemingly so in awe of the beguiling, near-incomprehensible mysteriousness of the vast universe.

Boyle's film charts the mission of those aboard Icarus II, who have been charged with traveling to the perishing sun and reigniting it with a nuclear bomb (dubbed the "Payload") in a last ditch effort to save Earth from the grip of a solar winter. Icarus II is a marvelously envisioned vessel, its interiors full of high-tech doodad-ery made raggedy after 16 months of use by its human inhabitants, and its exterior marked by a giant, circular solar-paneled shield that protects the craft from the sun's lethal rays. Less impressive is the standard-issue motley crew, comprised of a stoically heroic captain (Hiroyuki Sanada), a sensitive girl (Rose Byrne), an arrogant coward (Troy Garity), a nondescript nobody (Michelle Yeoh), an out-there shrink (Cliff Curtis), a cold pragmatist (Chris Evans), and a sympathetic hero (Cillian Murphy). Save for Evans, who finds himself stuck with the most thanklessly schematic of roles, the cast admirably infuses their sketchily conceived astronauts with a dollop of relatable personality. Their hopes, dreams, and quasi-religious musings, however, are mere specks on the cosmic windshield of Sunshine, whose primary focus always remains on its computer-generated intergalactic wonders.

Well, it's not like feminist icon Germaine Greer would be the first person who was angry about their big screen representation. Judging by Greer's comments in the U.K. newspaper The Guardian, it proves that after all these years, she hasn't lost her ability to talk tough. The center of the scuffle is the film version of Richard Neville's memoir, Hippie Hippie Shake. The book recounts his time as editor and regular contributor of the counter-culture publication Oz Magazine, a magazine that ran from 1963 to 1973. She originally declined to participate in Neville's book, which was first published back in 2005, and now she seems to be equally unhappy with the film adaptation. Greer wrote in her piece to The Guardian, "You used to have to die before assorted hacks started munching your remains and modelling a new version of you out of their own excreta." Taking it a step further, she goes on to take a shot at Neville, saying he was "one of the least talented people on the London scene in the 60's" -- ouch.

The film is being directed by Beeban Kidron (Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason) and was adapted by Billy Elliot scribe Lee Hall. Back in May, Monika confirmed that Sienna Miller and Cillian Murphy had signed on for lead roles. Playing Greer in the film is model-turned-actress Emily Booth, and in talking about the film Greer doesn't let Booth off the hook either, saying that the actress should get "an honest job." Shooting for Hippie Hippie Shake is set to start this September, and in the end, Greer might have ended up giving the film a little free publicity -- I'll admit I'm now curious to see what all the fuss is about.

Tomorrow (June 21) marks the summer solstice, and I guess to celebrate the beginning of the season, director Danny Boyle (Trainspotting) has sent Cinematical this compilation of trivia about the solstice and the sun. Boyle isn't just sharing us some random facts, though; this is obviously a promotion for his latest movie, Sunshine. It would seem to have made sense for Fox Searchlight to release the sci-fi pic, which stars Cillian Murphy, this weekend rather than exactly one month after, but whatever (its better than waiting until December). The movie has already opened in other parts of the world, way ahead of the appropriate date.

For those unaware of Sunshine, it is about a crew of spacemen sent to jumpstart our solar system's dying star. Yes, it sounds a little like an exo-version of The Core, but with Boyle and his usual screenwriter Alex Garland (since 28 Days Later, anyway -- he also wrote the source novel from which Boyle made The Beach) involved, Sunshine is sure to be much, much better. So far, the movie has a great score over at Rotten Tomatoes, though the reviews seem to be more enthusiastic about the look of the film than its story. Regardless, I am really looking forward to the pic; I haven't disliked one of Boyle's films yet, and I'd hate for this to be the first.

Click on the pic for the full-sized, Boyle-approved facts. For other, more directly-related promotional materials for Sunshine, check out the links to Cinematical's past coverage after the jump.

For those just joining us, The Edge of Love is a semi-biopic of *poet Dylan Thomas that's currently filming in some bog in the U.K. (When I tried to interview one of the stars, Cillian Murphy, by phone for a Tribeca film a couple of weeks ago, I was told that he was "filming somewhere so remote that he's even unreachable by phone.") The story of Edge will revolve around a bitter rivalry between two of the poet's muses, who will be played by Keira Knightley and Sienna Miller. Lindsay Lohan was originally set to play the Miller role, but this became one of the many films she's opted out of lately. Thomas will be played by Matthew Rhys, Miller will play his wife Caitlin, while Knightley has the role of a chlidhood friend and Murphy is the friend's husband. Got all that? Okay, good. We now have, from a gossip rag, the first pic from the film, of Keira Knightley looking very dowdy and black-haired. She's got the whole 'jealous harpy' thing going on, I think.

By the way, if you're wondering how rising star Murphy got aced out of what would seem like the plum role -- the poet himself -- from what we know of the film it seems like he actually has the good part. His jealous husband character is actually a military nut who ends up attacking Thomas with a machine gun and a grenade! No doubt he'll make the most of that. One final note about the film -- there are two different titles floating around for it, the one mentioned above and The Best Times of our Lives, which I could have sworn was the official title up until a couple weeks ago. I have to say I'm not really crazy about either of them. They should put their thinking caps on while there's still time and come up with something better, don't you agree?

*I originally wrote Irish poet, while thinking of Irishman Cillian Murphy.