It's hard to deny that, in any format, The Dark Knight has made a considerable impression on the moviegoing landscape (current gross: a bajillion dollars and counting), yet it's equally difficult to deny that the IMAX showings held their own potent appeal, thanks to director Christopher Nolan's use of proper cameras to help the action fill the screen -- and if any of you haven't noticed, that's a lot of screen to fill.

ComingSoon.net has confirmed that next summer's Night at the Museum and Transformers sequels will be showcased in IMAX, while it remains rumored that this fall's Eagle Eye and next spring's Watchmen will be as well. Now, while Paramount/Dreamworks and Warner Brothers have often been equally eager to offer up super-sized blockbusters in the format, I'm curious to know if audiences have subsequently raised their expectations for this fare. For me, the nearest location is well across town, and before The Dark Knight, the last thing I bothered to catch there was Beowulf in 3-D. (I can, however, attest that announced plans to format several theaters in the AMC chain for the IMAX experience are indeed underway a wee bit closer to my neck of the woods.)

So, without the draw of IMAX in its full effect, or even the likes of 3-D technology, do you find it any more worthwhile to go out of your way and catch an anticipated film at your nearest location, or will it take something truly special from here on out?

For every hero, heroine, and sidekick, there's a nuisance -- that person who's there to mess things up and foil the plan. This week, we've got a bunch of men who make trouble and quickly become the thorn in someone, or someTHING's side.

Terminator Salvation
As if Christian Bale taking on Batman wasn't enough, now he's taking the shoes once filled by ol' Eddie Furlong and becoming John Connor in Terminator Salvation. That's right -- it's the future and Bale wants to bring those metallic jerks down. It's 2018, and John's understanding of the future has been changed by the appearance of a stranger named Marcus Wright. Connor and Wright head for the heart of Skynet and discover "the terrible secret behind the possible annihilation of mankind." Bale's being all breathy, there's lots of flashes and demolition, and Connor gets a bit of a surprise from one Hulk-sized machine. Erik thinks it's the perfect teaser trailer. Me, I'm not sold, but I'm not disappointed yet either.

Even though the inevitable backlash against Shia LaBeouf has already begun, you have to respect a guy who made his start in flicks like Dumb & Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd and made his way to the coveted spot of Spielberg's go-to leading man. Plus, he has a way of making me enjoy films that I normally wouldn't plunk down my hard-earned dollars for. Trust me when I say that it took a lot of restraint not to throw things at the screen during Transformers, so, I really hand it to the guy. Hopefully some of that magic will rub off on the Dreamworks action thriller, Eagle Eye. JoBlo now has the first look at the poster and Mr. LaBeouf seems to really be working the 'intense look' this time around.

LaBeouf plays Jerry Shaw, a slacker who returns home after the mysterious death of his successful twin brother -- gee, do you think there will be a case of mistaken identities? Along with a single mother played by Michelle Monaghan, the two are framed as terrorists, and are threatened into becoming members of a cell plotting to assassinate a politician. Joining in on the fun are Rosario Dawson, and Billy Bob Thornton as the two government agents that are a step behind.

Eye reunites LaBeouf with Disturbia director, D.J. Caruso, in an action thriller that was originally on Spielberg's to-do list. Now that we got a better look at the film, the longer trailer helped ease some of my concerns that instead of Rear Window, Caruso and company were looking to rip-off North by Northwest this time around.

Eagle Eye hits theaters on September 26.

Maybe you've seen them, maybe you haven't, but French thrillers are making a comeback in North America. That's good news for people uninterested in art houses solely for the sake of watching foreign films: You don't have to be a Francophile to appreciate smart, meticulously generated suspense, and that's exactly the appeal of several French movies hitting American theaters this year. A steady mixture of warm reviews and positive word-of-mouth appears to have helped Guillame Canet's breathlessly entertaining drama Tell No One land an impressive $240,858 at 18 locations. Earlier this year, veteran auteur Claude Lelouch, long known for his cinematic explorations of eroticism and lawbreaking, remained thematically consistent with a delightfully complex story of double-crossing novelists and dysfunctional families called Roman de Gare. The movie made over $25,000 on two New York screens when it opened in late April, and eventually pulled in more than $1.5 million after expanding to theaters around the country. It's not hard to argue that Tell No One and Roman de Gare put most recent American thrillers to shame. North America, once the haven of film noir, appears to be outsourcing.

As journalist Erica Abeel recently observed in an interview with Canet, "French filmmakers are currently making the best old-style Hollywood thrillers." It's not the first time for a country that has a long history of borrowing from American cinema, and often improving on it. At the beginning of the French New Wave in the early 1960s, former Cahiers du Cinema critics like Jean Luc-Godard discovered Hollywood genre films and decided to make their own loopy versions. The results were often strangely philosophical and experiment works, ranging from Godard's Breathless to François Truffaut's ambitious Shoot the Piano Player.

When we last saw a (teaser) trailer for Eagle Eye - the forthcoming thriller that reunites star Shia LaBeouf with Disturbia director D.J. Caruso and Transformers executive producer Steven Spielberg - I commented with something along the lines of, after "reading the synopsis, I've always thought that Caruso and company were following their Rear Window re-do with North by Northwest 2.0."

...which I then followed up with "Whether that's the case or not, I'm a sucker for a chase movie, and more so for [co-star Michelle] Monaghan. Count me in." Well, judging from the new trailer up at Yahoo! Movies, I'll be having a modest amount of crow for lunch later today, as there now seems to be enough distinct differences between that Hitchcock classic and this paranoid techno-thriller that it'll likely excite on its own merits (fingers crossed).

Sure, we seem to have another one of those incredibly elaborate plans on behalf of the baddies that already appears to have too many variables for its own good, but you know what? So long as the thing moves, I'm not above setting aside brains in favor of brawn.

With a cast that also includes Rosario Dawson, Billy Bob Thornton, and Michael Chiklis, Eagle Eye hits theaters on September 26.

A whole crop of new images have hit the net as of late, including nine brand new stills from the upcoming thriller Eagle Eye, starring Shia LaBeouf, Michelle Monaghan, Billy Bob Thornton and Rosario Dawson. The film, directed by D.J. Caruso, follows a young slacker (LaBeouf) and a single mom (Monaghan) who somehow get tangled up in a terrorist cell plotting a political assassination. Check out our brand new Eagle Eye gallery below, and keep an eye out for the film when it hits theaters on September 26.



In addition to Eagle Eye, a few more images from the The Pineapple Express were released (see updated gallery below). I'm not sure how to classify Pineapple -- is it a straight-up comedy, a stoner comedy, an action/comedy or an action/stoner comedy with dramatic elements? Either way, I keep hearing excellent things about the flick (which stars Seth Rogen and James Franco) -- and so like Superbad did last August, I'm sure Pineapple (due out August 8) will swoop in and leave us smiling as we hit summer's final stretch.



X-Files after the jump ...

Oh, that Shia LaBeouf -- isn't he just so damn charismatic? The first teaser trailer for Eagle Eye has just arrived online, and I couldn't help but think of The Matrix while watching it. Remember when Neo gets the call that guides him away from the agents looking for him at the office -- with every one of his moves carefully timed in order to avoid detection? Yeah, well that's exactly what's going on here -- except, apparently, all of it is very real and Shia LaBeouf's character is in a lot of trouble ... even if he has no idea what in the world is going on.

Regardless of the similarities, I'm totally sold -- this looks like it could be a pretty wild ride from start to finish. In Eagle Eye, LaBeouf stars as a young slacker who, along with a single mother (Michelle Monaghan), gets mixed up in a terror cell's plot to assassinate a political figure. Directed by D.J. Caruso, and based on a story from Steven Spielberg, Eagle Eye also stars Billy Bob Thornton and Rosario Dawson. Oh, and it hits theaters on September 26.

Check out the trailer over at EagleEyeMovie.com, then let us know what you think.

There's two more casting nibbles to go, again, courtesy of Variety:

• First up -- Magda's back! It seems that Lynn Cohen is the latest cast member to join D.J. Caruso's next Shia LaBeouf film, Eagle Eye. She will play Shia's landlady. This is old hat for Cohen. You might remember that she played Magda on Sex and the City -- the religious housekeeper who tried to set Miranda on the path toward familial happiness and ended up becoming an extra member of the family herself. On the cinematic side of things, she's also appeared in films like The Hottest State and I Shot Andy Warhol, and as iconic historical figures like Golda Meir in Munich and Leni Riefenstahl in The Last Days of Leni Riefenstahl. Next up, of course, is Sex and the City: The Movie.
• Finally, we've got Antoni Corone. He's often some arm of the law and civilized society -- he's played a corrections officer, a sergeant, a green beret, a cop, security, a detective, a police chief, FBI, and even more over the last twenty years. Continuing with tradition, he's nabbed himself a gig in Paul Greengrass' Imperial Life in the Emerald City -- the Matt Damon movie about a Washington Post journalist's war chronicle. He will play a colonel in Baghdad's Green Zone, which has already begun production in Spain. You can check out previous reports on the film here and here.
  

Another actor has been added to the cast of Eagle Eye, and it's none other than The Commish, The Shield -- Michael Chiklis. The Hollywood Reporter has posted that he's signed on to play the U.S. Secretary of Defense in the thriller, which is coming our way from D.J. Caruso and DreamWorks. As you might remember, this is that weird movie that stars Shia LaBeouf and Michelle Monaghan as a slack and a single mother "who form an unlikely partnership when they are framed as terrorists and forced to become members of a cell with plans to carry out a political assassination." I'm not so sure how you get framed as a terrorist and then have to become one, but this is the movies, and they pull off strange premises all the time. I imagine that Chiklis will lead some sort of manhunt for these accidental bad guys in the name of national security.

Sweetening this bit of news are the first images from the set, and they are pretty much all Shia, all the time, although there's also a little bit of Monaghan too. Looking at the images, which are over at Just Jared, I can't help but think that this guy who looks all too comfortable with a shotgun and smoke is the same curly haired peppy kid from the second Charlie's Angels. He's all grown up! They'll be filming this flick until March, and it will hit theaters for our entertainment on August 8.

[via MovieWeb]

If you've grown kind of tired of Billy Bob Thornton's recent predilection for comedy (and a little astronaut farming thrown in for good measure), all of the actor's upcoming projects should fix that -- The Informers, Tulia, and Peace Like a River. It's like he just sat and realized that he hasn't given audiences anything meaty to chew on lately and is doing everything he can to rectify that. Now a Moviehole source says he's added another -- Eagle Eye.

Originally set up by Steven Spielberg, who left the project to work on a little picture about Indiana Jones, the film is being directed by Disturbia helmer D.J. Caruso and is re-teaming him with his last star, Shia LaBeouf. It's a thriller about a young slacker and a single mother who are framed as terrorists and then get involved in a terrorist cell that's planning a political assassination while trying to clear themselves. Shia is the slacker, of course, and will be joined by Michelle Monaghan as the single mother, and Rosario Dawson as a government agent. Billy Bob could be her fellow agent, or maybe the head of the terrorist organization.

So basically, this is kind of like Disturbia without the house arrest, and it seems without his mom -- all reports are careful to say "a" single mom, not "his" single mom, but I wonder then, where his is. Moviehole says that rehearsals for the film will start tonight, so I'm sure we'll find out more about the feature soon enough.