A few international film festivals have announced their jury heads today, so here's a roundup, plus other fest circuit news:

• Chinese auteur Wong Kar-Wai (2046) will be replacing the late Anthony Minghella as the head of the jury at this month's Shanghai International Film Festival. Minghella, who died in March, will be honored by the fest, which runs June 14-22. Other jury members include filmmaker Bille August and Joan Chen, who once starred in a film co-written by Wong (1986's E nan).
• Actor Danny Huston (Children of Men) will head the Michael Powell jury at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, which runs June 18-29. He and others, including actress Joely Richardson and filmmaker Iain Softley, will be voting for the winner of the prestigious Michael Powell award. Last year's winner was Anton Corbijn's Control.
• Italian film critic Gian Luigi Rondi has been invited to be the new president of the three-year-old Rome Film Festival following a political shakeup that caused the resignation of former president Goffredo Bettini. Rondi was the artistic director of the Venice Film Festival between 1983 to 1986 and currently heads Italy's version of the Academy Awards, the David di Donatello Awards. He has so far declined that he will accept. The 2008 festival will run October 21-31.
• Jean-Luc Godard may be boycotting the Tel Aviv Student Film Festival, but other French filmmakers are set to attend another event, the Tel Aviv French Film Festival, which begins June 10. Those scheduled to appear include Alexandre Arcady, Diane Kurys and Laetitia Masson. Popular films set to screen include The Secret of the Grain and Love Songs, my review for which you can read here.

It was supposed to be a story about a British dude who ticks off the celebrity and Vanity Fair masses, relayed in a voice that charms some, but annoys many. But then the first short little trailer for How to Lose Friends and Alienate People popped up, and as Christopher Campbell said last December, "the trailer makes How to Lose look like a Ben Stiller comedy."

Now the international trailer has hit the waves, and yes, indeed, it still looks like a Stiller comedy -- right down to the dog accidentally flying out the window. Where's the snark? (Okay, snark without cute undertones.) I was expecting bitterness, not slapstick -- a questionable lead, not a seemingly innocent Simon Pegg. At least it's got some Danny Huston without the vampiric language and sharp teeth.

Still, I don't know what to think anymore. My world is all askew, because Kirsten Dunst's moments in the trailer actually seemed more interesting than Pegg's bumbling shenanigans. The film will hit screens this fall.

Warning: Watch for foul language.

[via Ace Showbiz]

I am in no way a history buff. I like to think I know all I needed to know when I graduated fourth grade -- names, faces, places, dates and documents. It's not that I'm not interested in history, it's just that I never found time to dive into everything. I've enjoyed reading up on New York's history (where I'm from) and I'll enjoy the occasional historical flick (until everyone trashes it for not being accurate), but apart from that ... nada. However, lately I've been pulled into the first two installments of HBO's John Adams, starring Paul Giamatti as that legendary pimp (aka the second President of the United States). Should we just give him the Emmy now?

The mini-series is a great conversation piece; my wife and I stayed up late last night watching the second part, then looking up stuff on Wikipedia and discussing the events just prior to the American Revolution. In case you haven't watched it yet, the first two parts (which premiered this past Sunday) cover everything from the Boston Massacre up to the writing of the Declaration of Independence (loved the scene where Adams, Franklin and Jefferson are reading over the Declaration, sharing notes). Additionally, the cast is pretty awesome -- you have Laura Linney (as Abigail Adams, John's wife), Tom Wilkinson (as Benjamin Franklin), Danny Huston (as Samuel Adams), David Morse (as George Washington) and Justin Theroux (as John Hancock).

The only issue I was having was that the series jumps around in years, and you need to pay close attention to dialogue in order to figure out where we are in time. But other than that, I'm absolutely addicted already. It's intense, it's extremely well-acted, it's beautifully shot and it's definitely something you should watch ... if only to learn a thing a two about how we here in the United States came to be.

How about you? Early reactions?

Well, we've been waiting for months to hear who finally landed the gig as a younger version of William Stryker in the upcoming X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and it appears JoBlo finally coughed up the answer: Danny Huston. Brian Cox first portrayed the character of Stryker in X2, and served as that film's main villain. A few different actors were reportedly circling the role of a young Stryker; more recently, Michael C. Hall (Dexter) and Christian Clark were two names that cropped up. Originally, Liev Schreiber was thought to be playing the role, however it later came out that, instead, Schreiber would be playing Sabretooth.

JoBlo claims to have heard of Huston's casting through a "source close to the production" and say that the actor is already on location in New Zealand prepping for the role. As some of you may recall, Huston recently played the head vampire in 30 Days of Night, and he's also shown up in films like The Kingdom and The Number 23. We're not exactly sure how big the Stryker role will be, but nevertheless this casting sounds pretty good to me. Gavin Hood is directing X-Men Origins: Wolverine off a script by David Benioff, and the recently-released pic of Hugh Jackman in his Wolverine get-up can be viewed here. Those claws will attack theaters on May 1, 2009.

UPDATE: IESB also claims that Lynn Collins has nabbed the part of Silver Fox in the film, after both Maggie Q. and Michelle Monaghan were considered.

Ever wondered what it would be like to see every vampire movie ever made, all rolled into one? If so, 30 Days of Night is for you -- it's got a little bit of everything. For Dracula-lovers, there's a hillbilly Renfield, played by everyone's new favorite actor, Ben Foster. His arrival in town at the outset, with a shambling gait and greasy-roadie haircut, foreshadows the arrival of some nameless master who he's bound to displease in some way. The vampires, when they arrive, turn out not to be Hungarian sophisticates, but feral beasts who look like a cross between a cougar and Marilyn Manson. They take their movement cues from The Lost Boys, attacking from out of frame and grabbing their prey up into space or yanking them into a dark corner. Instead of sucking blood, they tear their victims' limbs apart as easily as restaurant rolls. An apparent nod to the Blade series also creeps in, when the vamps begin speaking some erudite, subtitled language and spouting faux-profound aphorisms like "things which can be broken must be broken!"

On top of this heady mishmash of genre staples there's a nifty overarching conceit, taken from the comic on which 30 Days is based -- the location of the carnage is a remote town in Seward's Folly, where the sun doesn't shine for a full month. (Why did it take vampires so long to hear about this place? And mightn' it have been more interesting if all the world's vampires came gunning for this place, instead of a handful? But that's neither here nor there.) The vamps that do descend on the snowy Alaskan hamlet must go head to head with two pretty local cops, played by Josh Hartnett and Melissa George, and one of the best things about 30 Days is that it acknowledges straightaway that the humans are physically no match for the vampires. Those who survive the initial assault must scramble into hiding places to save their necks and what follows is a sort of 'Anne Frank vampire film', with Hartnett and George and a ragtag group holing up in an abandoned attic and waiting for the vamp patrols to move on.

The hunk ... He's a fairly disputed figure in the world of cinema, subjected to the taste and whims of anxious, heterosexual women everywhere. The hunk's popularity is often fleeting -- the beefcake stud for one year is often forgotten by the next. But most importantly, the hunk is entirely, and completely, subjective. One woman's pearl is another woman's stale, salty oyster.

One might argue that some tastes are, therefore, off, but subjectivity and sex are one of the world's big blessings. We don't all lust for the same people, and thus, the earth can stay safe. Otherwise, imagine a world-wide Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered. It wouldn't be pretty. So, what follows are my list of hunks.

I am sure you will question some of my picks, and I will admit -- some don't have the stellar physique that the others do. That being said, each of them have been in horror movies, and they've done their fair share of testosterone bewitching. But this is just my own, subjective taste, which will probably bother and bewilder some. But that's where the comments come in. Share your horror hunks, who have chased, or been chased, on-screen -- extra points if they're a little surprising. This is Halloween, after all, which is all about a world that's just a little different...

That last R-rated clip from 30 Days of Night was pretty cool, but wait'll you get a load of this new one. It's definitely more my kind of thing, since I prefer zombies to vampires, and the clip makes the pic look more like a zombie movie. What could be better than Mark Boone Junior driving around in some kind of chainsaw-esque tractor, slicing through multiple baddies while simultaneously blowing away others with a shotgun? Exactly. Nothing could be better. In fact, I think I like this scene better than that sequence in Dawn of the Dead where they're driving the modified bus around. But that partially has to do with my appreciation for Mark Boone Junior. He just looks like the perfect guy to be in charge of a task like this. Anyway, once again you have to prove you're 18 (or otherwise get through the sign-in page) in order to watch the clip. Or you could just wait until Friday when the movie hits theaters.

Cinematical wimp pansy editor-in-chief, Erik Davis, saw the film and loved it, even though he's probably back to sleeping with a night light. He even claims it's the most beautiful horror film he's ever seen. For those still out of the loop, the movie is based on Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith's graphic novel about a small town far up north where the sun disappears for a whole month -- ripe time for a crop of vampires to go on a rampage. Directed by David Slade (Hard Candy), it stars Josh Hartnett, Ben Foster, Melissa George, my favorite supporting actor these days, Danny Huston, and, of course, Mark Boone Junior.

I'm not much of a horror buff myself, but if there is more stuff like this new clip, I'm pretty much sold on going to see it. And though I don't think I've ever needed a night light, I bet I'll have at least one nightmare as a result. It just looks like that kind of movie. At the very least, I'm sure I'd at least get freaked out the next time I'm walking around late at night in the snow. Between 30 Days of Night and the recently released The Last Winter, I'm pretty set never to go up to the arctic circle.

If you're one of those people who have been itching for more fan-food about 30 Days of Night, this should please you. A ton of pictures have been released for the film -- an appropriate 30 to be exact. Lots of stills action to go through. While it's pretty much a still-by-still account of the great trailer that Scott alerted us to the other day, their resolution is high enough to get a closer look at all of the scenes contained within. There's the usual terror and crying of any horror movie, and of course, an ominous axe. There are good shots of Josh Hartnett and Melissa George (Camilla Rhodes from Mulholland Drive), a Buffy-esque brow-wrinkly Joel Tobeck and an incarcerated, vampiric Ben Foster (Angel from X-3). Don McKellar fans might also recognize Mark Rendall in there -- the kid who played Taylor Brandon Burns in Childstar. Unfortunately, just like the trailer, there's only that little itty bit of Danny Huston's Marlow.

The horror thriller follows an Alaskan town that has to try to defend itself against a horde of vampires said to be the last of their kind. Unfortunately, they're in the middle of 30 days of night, so their wait for the sun to rise is just a wee bit longer -- and the vamps also don't seem to be affected by that whole home invitation thing, which makes things easier. The movie is an adaptation of Steve Niles' 30 Days of Night, a graphic novel that came out in 2003. Perhaps I, along with some others at Cinematical, are being overly optimistic, but this is looking like one great flick. I never really minded Hartnett, and actually like him on occasion, and I don't see how you can go wrong with Foster and Huston as insidious baddies. My only regret: Melissa George would've made a great, mysterious female vamp -- her mysterious look was great in Mulholland.

I keep wondering if I will like the movie version of Toby Young's memoir How to Lose Friends & Alienate People. I hated the book, mostly because I couldn't stand Young's pathetic voice, but so far the casting of the adaptation has me intrigued. With the exception of Kirsten Dunst, the players are of a high enough caliber to make all the unlikeable characters at least enjoyable to watch -- especially now that the great Jeff Bridges has signed on to play the character based on Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter (named Clayton Harding in the script). Also added to the cast is Gillian Anderson, who will play a top PR person. Bridges and Anderson join Dunst, Danny Huston and Simon Pegg, who will star as Young.

The casting of Bridges as Carter should make How to Lose Friends even more comparable to The Devil Wears Prada, but I hope the actor won't make his character as much of a caricature as Meryl Streep made hers -- though I don't mean to put Streep's Oscar-nominated performance down. I would just rather Bridges play a more complex, believable person, who could be completely understood as the villain in Young's miserable world, while also appearing to audiences as a smart, justifiably difficult boss. After all, the book suggests that -- unlike Andy's resentment of Miranda in Prada -- Young actually has a lot of admiration for Carter. And more than Carter, the other Condé Nasties or anyone else, Young is his own villain.

In addition to the casting, I am anxious to see what the tone of How to Lose Friends will be. Directed by Robert B. Weide, who is an enormous fan and documenter of the work of Kurt Vonnegut, Lenny Bruce and the Marx Brothers, as well as a former director for Curb Your Enthusiasm, the movie will hopefully be influenced by the humor of at least one of those subjects. I also hope that the movie is good enough to get Weide some more clout in Hollywood. For ten years I've been dying for him to get to work on a project he once mentioned interest in: an adaptation of Vonnegut's The Sirens of Titan. How to Lose Friends & Alienate People begins shooting next month.

"All the characters in this book are fictitious, and anyone finding a resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, should proceed no further ..." Disclaimer from the novel 'The Number 23.' Sadly no such disclaimer was given to the beginning of this film, which could serve as a warning to people who might be wanting those two hours from their lives back, should they ignore it and watch the film. Okay, that might be a bit harsh, but not by too much. This film reunites director Joel Schumacher with star Jim Carrey, who both worked over-the-top together in 1995's Batman Forever. Oddly enough (although unrelated) that was the same year that gave us Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls. It would still be a few more years, three to be exact, until we would start to see the serious side of Jim Carrey, in 1998's The Truman Show. Since then he's dabbled in more dramatic roles in films like Simon Birch, The Majestic, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and arguably Man on the Moon, but he has never really managed to capture audiences when he plays a dramatic role the same way he does when he's in a comedy.

In fact, Bruce Almighty grossed more than those four films combined. So, with all that in mind, it might seem strange that Carrey would turn to a much darker role in a thriller like The Number 23. Although on paper the film actually sounds intriguing: a happily married man with a teenage son starts to become unraveled by a mysterious novel his wife gives him one day. It taps into a hidden obsession that some people have with "The 23 Enigma," and he soon becomes obsessed with it. He is also convinced that the book is actually written about him, and that somehow the author used his life as a template for the book. In some of the particularly darker scenes in the film, Walter (Carrey) imagines himself as the main character, Detective Fingerling, in the novel, and his wife Agatha (Virginia Madsen) as the dark and sexy Fabrizia, his love interest. His wife's friend and academic Isaac (Danny Huston) who tells Walter about the 23 enigma is also cast in his dark fantasies as psychologist Dr. Miles Phoenix.