Back in January, Paul Dano signed on to play a crazy healer who gets taken under the wing of Brian Cox in The Good Heart. Now Just Jared has got some shots from Dagur Kari's production, as it gears up in New York. To the right, you can see Dano in hospital whites, playing frisbee. I guess Cox isn't the only one in the film who hangs in the hospital. (There's another picture over at Just Jared of both of them in their whites.)

The movie is about a man named Jacques (Cox) who runs a deadbeat bar in New York, "like a bar in a Eugene O'Neil play." Dano, meanwhile, is a young homeless man with healing powers who comes to the bar and heals all the men there -- including Jacques, who "is always in the hospital, nearly dying." In thanks, the homeless man is taken under Jacques' wing, to take over the bar, but things get tricky when a Hungarian air-hostess creates a triangle between the two men.

And then, at some point, they must find themselves committed. They're certainly not in a normal hospital if they're walking around on their own and playing frisbee. Whatever the case, the mixture of Dano and Cox sounds excellent, and it should be worth the crazy, healing, dramatic adventure.

When a movie shows up and takes a clear political stance, I find it's easier to judge its successes and / or shortcomings than when a flick dips a toe into the pool of social commentary and just waggles it around for a few minutes -- which probably explains why I both enjoyed and respected Mark Webber's Explicit Ills, an Altman-esque indie drama that has something to say about poverty, health care, and the importance of basic human kindness.

Brief, honest, and admirably to-the-point, Explicit Ills follows a group of seemingly unrelated South Philadelphia folks who try to lead normal, happy, anonymous lives -- but their station on the lower rung of the income scale means that even the most basic requirements remain frustratingly out-of-reach. (In one key scene, an excellent Rosario Dawson is denied asthma medicine for her sick little boy -- because she cannot afford the $55 price tag.) Alternate plot threads involve a pair of young druggies in love, a mega-clean couple who aim to open a health food store, and a cocky adolescent who (slowly) learns how to treat a lady.

After spending 2006 having the crap scared out of him by Daniel Day Lewis, Paul Dano could probably stand to work on something just a little more light-hearted. The Hollywood Reporter announced that Dano has signed to star in the independent romantic comedy, Gigantic. Dano will star alongside Zooey Deschanel, and plays a mattress salesman who falls in love with a young woman at the store where he works. I can only assume that Deschanel, fresh off of M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening, will play that young woman.

So far, no other cast has been named other than Frank Harts (Miracle at St. Anna). The relatively tiny cast leads me to believe that the film is going to be a pretty small affair. Although now that Dano still has some of that post-Oscar buzz surrounding him (despite being snubbed for a nomination), it could raise the profile of the film ever so slightly.

Gigantic will be directed by first-timer Matt Aselton, who also helped to write the script alongside Adam Nagata (also making his feature debut). Production is set to begin this March in New York, but a date has yet to be confirmed. After Dano finishes up work on Gigantic, he's off to work on another indie film, The Good Heart. Heart will reunite Dano with Brian Cox (the two worked together on L.I.E. back in 2001) in a story about an older man who befriends a young homeless man and makes him is protégé. Well, so much for Dano making more happy-go-lucky flicks. Gigantic is expected to be released later this year.

Paul Dano's name might not be on the tip of tongues, but you're sure to have seen him, and liked him -- he played Klitz in The Girl Next Door, Dwayne in Little Miss Sunshine, and most recently, Paul and Eli Sunday in There Will Be Blood. (If you haven't seen these, you should. And if you don't like him, why the heck not?!) Now, along with Explicit Ills, Where the Wild Things Are, and The Stanford Prison Experiment, MTV reports that he's going to be acting in the upcoming film, The Good Heart with his L.I.E. co-star, Brian Cox.

MTV talked with Cox at Sundance, and he said this new project, to be directed by Dagur Kári, is "a crazed film about a guy who runs a bar, called Jacques [Cox], in New York. It's a bar where all these deadbeats hang out, like a bar in a Eugene O'Neil play." How does Dano fit in? "This young homeless man comes in, and he has these extraordinary powers of healing; he can heal all the guys in the bar. He also heals my character, this guy who has these heart problems. The old man is always in the hospital, nearly dying." After healing the bar owner, Dano's character is taken under his wing so that he may take over the bar when Jacques passes on. Things get complicated when a "Hungarian air-hostess" comes to work in the bar and a triangle forms.

On the one hand, this sounds great. On the other, I can help but think about what it would be like with the previously-rumored stars -- Ryan Gosling and Tom Waits.

One of the best moments in There Will Be Blood comes when oilman-misanthrope Daniel Plainview first meets preacher Eli Sunday, after having already met and done a business deal with Eli's identical twin brother Paul earlier in the film. The camera lingers on Plainview's face as he examines Eli, trying to ascertain whether this is some kind of scam and if the person he's talking to is really Paul, passing himself off as the new brother for some nefarious reason. Some have speculated that this scene and the whole identical twin device P.T. Anderson uses has a lot of resonance because it shows what a disadvantage Plainview typically finds himself in when trying to know the mind of another person. (It's a problem that he deals with again in the film when a man arrives claiming to be his long-lost brother.) But it seems that we may be reading too much into it -- in a new half-hour Fresh Air interview, Paul Dano, who plays both Eli and Paul, says his casting in the roles of both brothers had a much more mundane genesis -- another actor was originally cast as Eli and then let go.

"Somebody else was cast in that role and replaced with you?" the NPR interviewer asks Dano, to which he replies "Yeah. For what reason I'm not sure. I don't care to know, or I didn't want to know." Dano says that the unknown actor had already been filming for a short while when Anderson approached him about taking over the role and he had less than a week to prepare for the part. "We looked at some scenes and talked about the part a little bit and he said 'I'd like you to do this part' and they'd been filming for a little bit already, so I said 'Okay, that's great. It's a little bit of a shock.' And he said 'And why don't you still play the Paul part and we'll just make them twins?'"

Dano also talks at length about how he views Eli, saying that "he's somebody who I think made himself up. He invented himself. I think he's quite a bit of an actor. He created this persona at a very young age once he saw what religion and his curiosity with religion could do for him." If you want to hear the rest of the interview, and I recommend it, get yourself to NPR and click on the recent Fresh Air programs.

Oh sure, we've got Paul Thomas Anderson all figured out by now. After four very fine films -- Hard Eight, Boogie Nights, Magnolia and Punch-Drunk Love -- we've surely got the filmmaker's number by now: He makes strangely sweet and slyly witty ensemble pieces, right? So then what's he doing making an adaptation of Upton Sinclair's massive tome Oil!? A straight-faced period piece in which the most recognizable names are Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Dano? This is not what we've come to expect from good ol' Paul T. Anderson!

And I suppose that's what makes the director's There Will Be Blood such a stunning surprise. It's more than a "departure" for the director; it's a monumental display of "evolution" that'll wow the established fans and impress a helluva lot more new ones. This is a dark, compelling and effortlessly engrossing film, one bolstered by a lead performance that ranks among the very best of Mr. Day-Lewis' impressive career.

The film will most often be compared to Orson Welles' Citizen Kane, so I guess I can get the ball rolling on that particular crutch -- but it's also an apt comparison. Which is not to say that There Will Be Blood will necessarily be dissected and revered 75 years from now, but the stories are certainly similar enough. Anderson's film opens with a long passage of dialog-free footage: A lone man hacks his way through a mine using a pick-ax and some dynamite. The year is 1898, and Daniel Plainview is about to become an oil man. We witness the man's unwavering resolve as he pulls himself from a vertical shaft after breaking his leg in a fall -- and if you think that accomplishment displayed some tenacity ... just wait.

Sometimes you just have a good feeling about a movie, and for me, There Will be Blood is one of those movies. Slashfilm is now hosting the first teaser poster for the period drama. But, that's not all, the P.T. Anderson fan site Red Vines and Cigarettes also has a new theatrical trailer and *news of a preview screening showcasing the first 20 minutes of the film -- and there are plenty of spoilers, so don't say I didn't warn you. Based on Oil!, Upton Sinclair's novel about a father and son in the oil business, There Will be Blood stars Daniel Day Lewis as a heartless oil prospector in turn-of-the-century Texas. Paul Dano (Little Miss Sunshine) stars as a fervent preacher who wins over the townspeople just as Lewis is alienating everyone around him.

If you don't count P.T. Anderson's 'ghost directing' Robert Altman's Prairie Home Companion, Blood will be Anderson's first film since 2002's Punch Drunk Love with Adam Sandler. Back in June, I reported that the first teaser for the film had been released online, and luckily, after watching it, I feel justified in my good feelings about this flick. Sure, it has a Terrence Malick vibe, but I have every faith in Anderson as a director. Especially since the relatively small amount of films he has made rank as some of my favorites of all time. Blood was originally slated to be released in November, but has since been moved back to December 26th. So while fans (myself included) are going to have to wait just a little while longer, it makes perfect sense if you think about it. What better time to release a film about greed and faith than during the Christmas holidays?

*Correction: Spout Blog originally broke the news of the preview screening.

[via Solace in Cinema]

To be honest, the summer crop of movies hasn't had me lining up at the box office like I thought it would. Instead, my attention has been firmly fixed on fall and winter. So you can imagine my glee when a promotional clip from the Paul Thomas Anderson film There Will Be Blood, courtesy of Al Rose Promotions fell into my lap. The movie is Anderson's return to directing since Punch Drunk Love way back in 2002 -- that is if you don't count his presence on the set of Robert Altman's A Prairie Home Companion. Based on the Upton Sinclair book Oil!, Blood stars Daniel Day-Lewis as a misanthropic oil-man who makes his fortune alongside a charismatic preacher (Paul Dano) who's making a name for himself by winning over the townsfolk. The film has been described as "a story about family, greed, religion, and oil, centered around a turn-of-the-century Texas prospector in the early days of the business" and none of Anderson's usual suspects like Philip Baker Hall, Luis Guzmán, or Philip Seymour Hoffman are known to be making an appearance. Instead, it looks like the cast has been chosen for a very specific period look.

The film was shot in New Mexico and Marfa, Texas back in 2006, and it's expected to make its world debut at the Venice Film Festival this August. Until now, there have only been a couple of photos released, and some positive news on the script, but this teaser gives us the first real glimpse at what to expect. I'm a big fan of Anderson so I could be a little biased, but from what I just saw, I'll be marking November 21st on my calendar, when There Will Be Blood hits theaters.

In the opening scene of Adam Bhala Lough's bleak and listless Weapons, Nick Cannon gets his head blown off by a shotgun blast while scarfing down a fast food cheeseburger -- and the movie gets even less subtle from that point on. I'd like to say that the film, for all its grunge, grime and bleakness, is a well-intentioned piece, but I never really got that impression from Weapons. It's basically another "teens hate everyone, especially each other" story, not very much unlike River's Edge, Mean Creek or the collected works of Larry Clark -- only not nearly as good. (OK, it's better than most of Larry Clark's stuff.)

Presented in a contorted time frame that serves no real purpose, Weapons follows the activities of a group of hate-filled youths as they spend one day and one night doing simply terrible things to one another. This one's accused of raping that one, which means this other one is all hot for revenge, while these three different ones do some drugs and spit virtual bile at each other. Meanwhile the only halfway sympathetic character in the movie (and I do mean "only") is a rather stupid young woman who harbors a crush for one particularly vile young man ... because in a world filled with anger, abuse and hatred, you gotta take what you can get, right? Jeez.

It's been almost impossible to get information about There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Anderson's epic next film, but it's finally been confirmed that someone other than Daniel Day-Lewis will actually be appearing in the movie. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Little Miss Sunshine's Paul Dano (who Erik recently interviewed) will star alongside Lewis as "a gifted, charismatic young preacher who captivates churchgoers." The film, which is "loosely based" on Upton Sinclair's Oil!, has been grandly described as "an ambitious ... and ... compelling, relevant story about family, greed, religion and oil." What, you want specifics? Oh. Well, Day-Lewis plays "a tycoon who strikes it rich after gaining oil rights to a family's ranch, turning the small town where Dano's character preaches into a boomtown." Which I'm sure leads to lots of conflicts, and epic suffering by Day-Lewis. Because, really -- who would cast that man and NOT ask him to suffer?

Until the other day, I had no feelings about Dano one way or another -- but then I stumbled across the shockingly great The Girl Next Door on cable. As a result, I'm now officially a fan of his (and of everyone else in the movie), and am really excited to see someone of his ability joining what was already an unusual, exciting project.

The movie is currently filming in Texas and California.