The world changed on September 11, but Austin Chick's second film, August, focuses on the moments right beforehand. Starring Josh Hartnett as a young start-up entrepreneur deluded by power trips, the movie moves along with a subtle pace, letting the natural drama emerge from a situation about to veer out of the control with the crash of the stock market. Chick's first feature, XX/XY, explored a three-way relationship; August, which opens in New York on Friday, explores the relationship between money and power during a key time in American history. Supporting performances from Rip Torn and David Bowie elevate the movie, while Howard A. Rodman's script keeps its conceits in check. Chick spoke with Cinematical about envisioning August's themes and working with his talented cast.

Cinematical: The film uses a very specific setting -- August 2001 -- immediately before 9/11. What interested you about that time?

Austin Chick: It captures a moment on the eve of change. If Howard (Rodman) and I were to move it to any other time, we would probably move it further back. The market really started crashing about eighteen months prior to when the movie is set. But I feel like there was still a certain amount of momentum in New York up until 9/11, this sense that things were going to turn around. The market had completely crashed, but there was still this crazy sense of decadence. All that really changed with 9/11.

Few leading male actors have followed the roundabout career trajectory of Josh Hartnett. Though indisputably tall, dark and handsome, Hartnett still manages to avoid the pratfalls of typecasting by landing roles in strange projects with questionable appeal. While this choice comes at the expense of a quality resume, his performances can lend barely competent films at least one redeeming ingredient: I could give or take Wicker Park, Resurrecting the Champ, and even the good intentions of The Black Dahlia, but each benefits from Hartnett's expressive glare, furrowed brow and whispered delivery. He's an instant generator of gravitas.

Although August, director Austin Chick's second feature after the relationship drama XX/XY, doesn't qualify as Hartnett's best movie, it's certainly one of his meatiest roles – right up there with his work in the unfairly maligned Lucky Number Slevin. As the crudely pompous CEO of the mysterious start-up company Landshark in New York City during the summer before 9/11, Hartnett offers a maddened, garrulous anti-hero replete with dark humor and sustained by a surge of baseless confidence. The movie follows the audacious entrepreneur, Tom, as his fifteen minutes begin to run out – and it concludes with him facing off against a freakishly powerful David Bowie as the icy corporate foil. Despite the age gap, both men exude an eerie amount of restraint – which is not the case for the film. August adds up to less than it aspires to be, but it's populated with enough curiosities to keep you watching.

Cinematical has just received this exclusive clip from the film August, starring Josh Hartnett, Adam Scott, Naomie Harris and ... David Bowie! Directed by Austin Chick (XX/XY), August tells of two brothers who fight to keep their dotcom start-up company afloat in August 2001, one month before the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In the clip above, Hartnett looks to be meeting with some of his advisers after his company's stock takes a massive hit and drops below a dollar. Running out of options, he may have to risk a lot more than the money in his wallet to save this puppy. But will he? August originally premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year before making stops in Seattle, Brooklyn and eventually Manhattan, where it opens on July 11.

I've been hankering for a good crime flick with a women in the lead for a long time (I can't be the only one who thinks that Catherine Zeta Jones' pregnant drug runner deserved way more screen time in Traffic). But, in the grand tradition of most crime movies, women are relegated to the sidelines as either 'the downfall of the anti-hero', or, 'sexy punching bag' -- neither of which is very flattering, but hopefully that will change with Queen of the South. Variety reports that Eva Mendes has signed to star in the big screen adaptation of Arturo Perez Reverte's crime novel, La reina del sur (Queen of the South).

The story is being touted as a "female Scarface," and centers on a woman who flees to Spain when her drug-dealing boyfriend is murdered. Once she arrives, she starts her own narcotics operation to finance revenge against her lover's murderers -- and quickly becomes top dog. Joining Mendes in the cast are Josh Hartnett and Ben Kingsley in as-yet unnamed roles.

News of the flick first surfaced last year, with Mendes, Jennifer Lopez, and Penelope Cruz on the short list for the role, but in the end Mendes won out. Personally I would have liked to see Lopez take on the role (it's been too long since we had the chance to see her be a bad ass), but I guess in a pinch Mendes will do.

Do you think Warners made the right choice with Mendes? Or is there anyone else out there who would have liked to watch Lopez 'tussle' just one more time?

Upon first hearing Josh Hartnett mention his starring role in the fantasy action flick Bunraku, I had a hard time believing the film was ever going to happen. It's not every day a movie has paper mache puppets, origami, comic books, video games AND German expressionism. Plus, Hartnett was comparing the look of the film to everything from Hitchcock to Michel Gondry. To be honest, the whole thing sounded like a mess. But, I guess it was all sorted out because The Hollywood Reporter announced that Demi Moore has just signed to star in the role of a captive courtesan to an evil warlord.

Guy Moshe (who also wrote the script) will direct the story of a lone drifter (Hartnett) who blows into town with revenge on his mind, but is soon faced with even bigger problems than he started with. Woody Harrelson also signed to play 'The Bartender' (in a bar where everyone knows your name?) and Japanese actor Shun Sugata (Kill Bill) has been cast in the role of 'Uncle'.

I'm all for actors who try and break out of a preconceived idea about themselves, but sometimes I think there are those who take it all just a little too seriously. Enter Josh Hartnett. In an interview with VH1, Hartnett spoke up his next film Bunraku. The name comes from a traditional form of Japanese puppet theater, and Hartnett told VH1 that the film, "It's a story of revenge...My character is called 'The Drifter,' and he comes into this world that doesn't look like anything like you've ever seen before. It's in the vein of 'Sin City' or something like that, where the world doesn't look like reality at all." So I guess that is where the paper mâché puppets would come in. Luckily this is not a kids movie, and Hartnett told VH1, "[The script] has a lot of fight sequences in it, but it's more about these crazy characters...Like my character, he's a gypsy and he's coming into town and he's got something to prove - and no one really knows what he's about."

The film will also incorporate CGI and traditional puppetry to create an overall look for the universe. But so far even Hartnett isn't sure what to expect when he arrives in Romania to begin shooting, saying, "It's odd; it's out there. I've been trying to do as much artistic fare as I can and things that are compelling to watch as well." Hartnett also compared the film to the work of Michel Gondry and Alfred Hitchcock's Rope. Hitchcock's film was famous for appearing to be shot in one long take. Unfortunately, it wasn't technically possible at the time and Hitchcock went for the next best thing. The master of suspense shot the film in 10 minute takes and seamlessly edited them together. But a lot has changed since 1948, so who knows how Bunraku might turn out. Hartnett mentioned that casting hasn't finished yet for Bunraku, and for some reason, he has yet to mention who might be directing this possible 'fruitcake' of a film. Until he does, stay tuned to Cinematical for any updates that might come our way.

You just saw him running from vampires in the cold, dark Alaska of 30 Days of Night. Now get ready to see Josh Hartnett evading more human adversaries on a hot, Texan football field in End Zone. According to Variety, the actor has been cast as the lead in an adaptation of the farcical Don DeLillo novel, which will be directed by George Ratliff (Joshua). The movie, scripted by Ratliff and his Joshua writing partner David Gilbert, will see Hartnett as a college football running back who is ruining his chances for stardom by thinking too much about another kind of end zone, that related to nuclear war. Also cast are Kat Dennings (Big Momma's House 2), who plays the love interest, and Joshua star Sam Rockwell, who plays the school's publicist. Another significant role, not yet filled, is a professor of international terrorism and mass destruction who sees Hartnett's character as a perfect soldier.

I can't really picture Josh Hartnett as a perfect soldier, let alone a football player. But I guess I never could have imagined him as a cop or a pilot or any other responsible position had I not seen it realized on screen. Mostly my image of him is focused on three relatively slacker roles: Trip Fontaine in The Virgin Suicides; the sex-crazed abstainer of 40 Days and 40 Nights and the "wrong man" protagonist of Lucky Number Slevin. Now that I think of it, though, I could see him as one of the pot-head jocks in Dazed and Confused, and since DeLillo's novel was released in 1972, it places Hartnett's End Zone character in almost the same environment. Of course, I don't recall Randall "Pink" Floyd ever contemplating nuclear war.

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.

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.

It was almost a year ago when Jette brought us a first look at some of the behind-the-scenes for the big-screen version of 30 Days of Night. Since then, there have been teaser posters, fancy websites, the promise of new short films, and the R rated trailer released in August ( who could forget, of course, the image of Josh Hartnett hacking at a child with an ax -- something like that tends to stay with you). Shock Til You Drop is now hosting three new posters for the vampire flick. Fans of the graphic novels have been pretty eager to see what Ghost House and director David Slade (Hard Candy) have planned for the story of a group of vampires descending on a small town in the wilds of Alaska for a 30-day feeding frenzy.

Based on the graphic novel by Steve Niles, Night stars Josh Hartnett as the local sheriff and Melissa George as his wife -- it's up to both to save their town before the vampires wipe it clean. Ben Foster (3:10 to Yuma) also stars as "the harbinger of the vampires. Well really a scout who was sent into the town because he can be out during the day. He is tentatively known as a "bug-eater", not a vampire but something akin to a ghoul. They find him snooping around town and trespassing so they arrest him" -- at least according to the message boards at IMDB, and since I haven't read the original graphic novels, I'm just going to have to take their word for it. 30 Days of Night is set for release on October 19.

[via Solace in Cinema]