How do you imagine heaven? Peter Jackson's vision of the place may not be the same, based on an advance look published by Empire Magazine, and that's probably a good thing. The director of The Lord of the Rings trilogy has revealed a glimpse of his concept of the heavenly realm, from his upcoming movie The Lovely Bones, and it looks a lot like ... the Empire Magazine logo (if you click through to their site and enlarge the image; see part of it above). Yup, the Brit zine promises many more pictures in their upcoming issue, but for now all we have is one shot that makes heaven look like a studio with some clouds in the background.

If you haven't read the book, it's an absolutely devastating read, written by Alice Sebold from the point of view of a 14-year-old girl. Susie Salmon (played in the movie by Saoirse Ronan) narrates the tale from her own personal heaven: she was brutally raped and murdered by a neighbor / serial killer and has to come to terms with her own death while watching her family and friends deal with extreme emotional trauma. Susie's heaven is not like Warren Beatty and Buck Henry's Heaven Can Wait or, really, like most other heavens depicted in film, so this initial image is promising.

It's also in line with what Jackson told USA Today: "It is quite like the world of dream, using the magic of metaphor to convey Susie's psychological and emotional life." USA Today also has a different, exclusive image (see above), which shows a shadowy Stanley Tucci as the neighboring serial killer. Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz, Susan Sarandon, and Michael Imperioli also star. The Lovely Bones is due in theaters on December 11.

The latest theme to hit the Hollywood water supply and spread -- WWII Russia. Just as Defiance (the story of three Jewish brothers who escape Poland and join Russian resistance fighters) gears up to hit screens, the cast for another is just about set. Variety reports that Colin Farrell, Ed Harris, Jim Sturgess, and Saoirse Ronan are in final negotiations to star in Peter Weir's The Way Back, which Eugene wrote about back in October.

The film will focus on a group of soldiers who engineered a grueling escape from a Siberian gulag in 1942 -- walking thousands of kilometers through the Gobi desert and over the Himalayas to India and freedom. Like many stories these days, Slavomir Rawicz's tale has been challenged, but it's an interesting story, and true or not, it should make for a compelling film -- especially under Weir. Should the negotiations work out -- Farrell will be a tough and tattooed Russian, Harris will play an American, Sturgess will play a Polish inmate, and Ronan will be a Russian on the run who joins the fugitives.

I'm intrigued, and will definitely check this out, but could we please have more true, or at least confirmed accounts? Many stories coming out of WWII are compelling without added embellishments like food throwing over fences and hikes across the desert. I grew up hearing my grandfather's accounts of working for the resistance and escaping camps, plus reading accounts of fighters like the Kosciuszko Squadron -- there's plenty of cinematic war fare out there. Oh well, at least it's not more Iraq war cinema!

There have been notable women in the world since that first apple-curious gal was made from an extra rib, and Hollywood has even covered many of their stories. But it just can't seem to allow that bubble to burst fully into the X-X spectrum. The lack of female directors has been well chronicled: We've seen the challenge in following the Bechdel Rule, and the list goes on and on. Most recently, we've watched as Catherine Hardwicke earned the best box office opening for a female director ever, only to be axed and replaced by Chris Weitz for the Twilight sequel, New Moon. Not exactly the best way to wrap up 2008 and kick off 2009, but life goes on and so do we.

Hollywood also moves on, and luckily there are still women to watch for. Some are older, and some are quite young; a few have the pressures of sophomore features, and one isn't even real. But they're all women who will mold the face of Hollywood in 2009. Read on and make sure to comment with the woman (or women) of Hollywood that you're waiting to see in the new year!

City of Ember was the surprise closing-night film at Fantastic Fest, but I found out about the surprise a little early (which is always fun). I was able to see the film earlier in the week so I could interview director Gil Kenan, who showed up in Austin with surprise guest (to me, too!) Bill Murray for the closing-night festivities. Kenan has directed a pair of entertaining and visually stunning family-friendly features, the Oscar-nominated animated film Monster House and now the City of Ember adaptation, which opens in theaters on Friday. Not only that, but Kenan landed both of these projects right after he graduated from UCLA, where his short film The Lark won him a lot of attention. We talked about what he's done to make City of Ember as beautiful a film as it is, and how he found such compelling lead actors. He's currently linked to a new Robert Zemeckis production, Airman, and we took a minute to discuss that too. Check it out after the jump.

One of the most gorgeous-looking films I've seen this year is City of Ember, the Fox/Walden adaptation of Jeanne Duprau's young-adult fantasy novel about a post-apocalyptic underground city. Although the story is aimed at younger audiences, it's still enjoyable for grown-ups. The movie should be viewed on as large a screen as you can find, giving you the sense that you're this close to the fascinating and decaying city where the story is set.

The movie's prologue lays out the premise clearly. In the future, something goes haywire that causes the end of the world, but fortunately top U.S. scientists have created an underground city to keep a portion of mankind safe. The inhabitants will not be told about the Earth's past, so they won't be traumatized and will assume that their underground city is the only civilization. A box with instructions for returning to the Earth's surface will open in 200 years, which should be time enough for the Earth to be inhabitable again. However, over the course of time the box becomes lost, and after more than two centuries have passed, the city is starting to run out of resources and is falling apart.

I have a soft spot for nearly everything Danny DeVito's directed. Death to Smoochy was a waste of a cast and a concept, but most everything else -- The War of the Roses, Matilda, and yes, even the underrated Duplex (I haven't seen Throw Momma from the Train in forever, but toss that one in too) -- has a dark, unforgiving sensibility that I really appreciate. For one thing, I'm pretty sure that DeVito is the only filmmaker to truly get what Roald Dahl was all about.

DeVito's next directing project, and his first for the big screen since Duplex flopped in 2003, will be an adaptation of The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, a young adult book by a dude named Avi (yes, just Avi). It's about a 13 year-old girl who's crossing the Atlantic on her own in 1832 and gets caught in the middle of a mutiny. Saoirse Ronan, Morgan Freeman and Pierce Brosnan are attached to star.

The funny thing is, I read The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle at some point while traversing the middle school netherworld back in the mid-to-late 90's, but I'll be damned if I remember a single thing about it. (The plot does sound vaguely familiar. I think there might be a parrot involved, but I'm not sure.) To Kill a Mockingbird it ain't. But if DeVito (who also wrote the screenplay) can give it some character, I'm down.

Cinematical has just received this exclusive poster for Death Defying Acts, starring Guy Pearce, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Saoirse Ronan and Timothy Spall. The film follows famed magician Harry Houdini (Pearce), who, while on a tour of Britain in 1926, enters into a passionate affair with a Scottish psychic (Zeta-Jones). Ah, but this psychic has plans of her own, and, along with her daughter (Ronan), attempt to con the magician by using the one event that's plagued him for many years: the death of his mother. Back when Death Defying Acts premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, our own Scott Weinberg said it was "lovely to look at and packed with some solid doses of charm and wit ... this is full-bore Hollywood fantasy all the way."

Death Defying Acts arrives in theaters in NY and LA on July 11.

Cinematical has just received this exclusive teaser poster for City of Ember (click to enlarge), due out this October 10th courtesy of 20th Century Fox and Walden Media. Based on the best-selling novel from Jeanne Duprau, City of Ember was written by Caroline Thompson (Edward Scissorhands) and directed by the very talented Gil Kenan (Monster House). Oh, but the talent doesn't stop there -- check out this cast: Bill Murray, Saoirse Ronan, Tim Robbins, Martin Landau, Toby Jones and Harry Treadaway. And did I mention it was produced by Tom Hanks?

And here's a synopsis for ya: "For generations, the people of the City of Ember have flourished in an amazing world of glittering lights - underground. But Ember's once powerful generator is failing . . . and the great lamps that illuminate the city are starting to flicker. Now, two teenagers in a race against time, must search Ember for clues that will unlock the ancient mystery of the city's existence, and help the citizens escape before the lights go out forever."

Early buzz tells us the film looks gorgeous, so that's definitely a good sign. We've also been told that the first trailer for City of Ember will debut in front of Prince Caspian this weekend. (Chalk up another reason to hang with those peeps over in Narnia.) Once again, City of Ember arrives in theaters on October 10th.

So who's excited for this one?

Chalk up another stunning achievement for Joe Wright, who must now be recognized as an auteur with few equals of his age and experience in world cinema. With Atonement, an exacting and relentlessly faithful adaptation of Ian McEwan's 2002 novel about the seismic repercussions of a betrayal in a WWII-era English family, Wright has shaped and refined that uniquely blended style -- at once as calculating as Kubrick and yet receptive and attentive to intimacy and raw feeling -- that made his debut film, 2005's Pride & Prejudice, such an unexpected and welcome surprise. Much like Anthony Minghella, his more senior contemporary who has a bold acting cameo in this film, Wright is an artist who staunchly refuses to run away from the artificiality of cinema. Instead, he co-opts and embraces it. He does so in big ways, such as in a splurgy and acrobatic tracking shot that occurs halfway through Atonement and takes about six minutes to complete, and in smaller, throwaway moments, such as an aggressively painted three-shot on a boat, with Keira Knightley posed exactly in the center.

The year is 1935 and Knightley is Cecilia, a chain-smoking waif who, despite the advantages of her upper class existence, seems on the verge of expiring through sheer boredom. Her only noticeable activity is her flirtation with Robbie (James McAvoy) who is, he tells us, "not a toff." In other words, his situation is closer to that of Elizabeth Bennett in Pride & Prejudice -- he knows how to move in high society, but has not yet found a means to anchor himself to it. When we first see Cecilia and Robbie together, it's through the spying eyes of Cecilia's little sister Briony (Saoirse Ronan), a young teen whose natural tendency is toward fantasy and make-believe -- a passion that's only partly diverted into useful pursuits, like writing. As the movie opens, we see Briony finishing one of her childish plays and recruiting the household members to put it on. Later, she watches from afar as Cecilia and Robbie flirt by an outdoor fountain -- he accidentally breaks a vase, and she sinks into the water to fetch a piece of it, before stepping out again in a mostly transparent dress.

Susan Sarandon is about to play a grandmother in one of the best novels of 2002, but I was taken aback when I first read that last week -- is she really grandmother-age already? Anyway, I tend to trust Peter Jackson's decision-making (as long as an oversized ape is not involved.) He'll of course be directing an adaptation of Alice Sebold's novel, The Lovely Bones. It's an incredible story about a young woman who is abducted, raped and murdered; we follow the aftermath from her point of view as she rests in heaven, looking over the lives of her family and her killer. She (and we) watch as some family members try to get on with their lives, the sister grows into adulthood and the killer continues on his own journey. The book is a tragic, compelling story that could really benefit from a big-budget, big-screen push, and the fantastical but true-to-the-source world of Lord of the Rings that Jackson created is proof enough that he can balance his own creativity with honoring an author's vision.

The film has not only nabbed Sarandon, but another favorite of mine, Stanley Tucci, to play the murderer. Playing the kid watching everything from above will be newcomer Saoirse Ronan. And, of course, the cast also includes Rachel Weisz and Ryan Gosling. Production begins this fall and the pic will probably be ready for release by fall of 2008.