After the gut-wrenching terror of No Country for Old Men (I haven't been that tense in a movie theater since, well, ever), I can safely say that I am incredibly relieved that the Coens' next film, Burn After Reading, looks like it is going to be a lot more fun. First Showing now has some stills from the Coens' black comedy, and it would appear that the brothers are returning to what I like to call their 'Raising Arizona roots.'

Burn is the story of a CIA agent (played by George Clooney) who is assigned to investigate the case of a former agent named Ozzie Cox (John Malkovich) who has taken his revenge on the agency by writing a tell-all memoir. When Cox's ex-wife (played by Tilda Swinton) steals the only copy and leaves it behind at her gym, the gym's owner (Frances McDormand) and star personal trainer (Brad Pitt) see an opportunity to engage in a little blackmail.

The Coen flick just got the nod to open the Venice Film Festival this year, but Burn will not be making an appearance at Cannes this year (which is a little strange considering the luck they had at the French festival last year). This makes it zero for two for Pitt now that his other high-profile film, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, also failed to make the list for Cannes. Burn After Reading is scheduled for wide release on September 12th, 2008.

I really like Tilda Swinton, and I think she's a great actress. That being said, I think that her Oscar win this year was just a little silly. While it was, by no means, a bad performance, it didn't seem like the sort that would ever be considered the best there was last year, especially over Amy Ryan or even Cate's Bob Dylan. Was the win due to Tilda getting all pit-sweaty? Whatever the case, I'd like to see her acting chops praised for a wow performance rather than a normal good one. She has a whole ton of projects on the way, and has just added another, so maybe it will be one of these.

Variety reports that Swinton will once again team up with Italian director Luca Guadagnino (The Protagonists) to star in his new romantic drama, I Am Love (lo sono l'amore). She will play "a foreign society matron in Milan who falls for a young chef," and Variety says the film focuses on "the irreparable consequences brought about by love in a high-bourgeois family." Italian actress Alba Rohrwacher also has a role, but the rest of the cast hasn't been set yet.

I imagine this will be mostly romance with a wee little bit of food while the chef is at work, but the foodie in me hopes that we can get a good dose of Italian delicacies to feast on as well.

Even though a lot of fans of The Coen Brothers haven't been all that happy with the results of their collaborations with George Clooney (I think I was one of the eight people in the world who actually enjoyed Intolerable Cruelty.), I've still got a good feeling about their CIA comedy, Burn After Reading. The Hollywood Reporter has announced that Focus Features will release the dark comedy on September 12th of this year.

Burn has an all-star cast including Clooney, John Malkovich, Frances McDormand, Brad Pitt, and Tilda Swinton. I would guess that it's been like 'old home week' on set; we all know that Clooney and Pitt are buddies, and Swinton could be an honorary member of the boys club after her Oscar winning performance in Michael Clayton (and judging by her acceptance speech, she seems comfortable with a little verbal rough-housing).

The comedy stars Malkovich as Ozzie Cox, a CIA vet who gets fired for being an alcoholic, and writes out his revenge in a memoir. His soon-to-be ex-wife (Swinton) accidentally leaves the memoir at a gym, where it falls into the hands of a trainer, Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt), and the gym's owner Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand), who want to exploit the discovery. It sounds like a pretty 'fluffy' flick, but I think we could all use a break from the Coens' more "intense" point of view, wouldn't you agree, friendo?

When news broke about Jim Jarmusch's next film back in November, The Limits of Control, it was said that JJ regular Isaach De Bankolé would star, along with "an international collection of bankable stars." Well, they're certainly living up to the promise so far. Reuters reports that the filmmaker has once again grabbed Bill Murray and Tilda Swinton for roles, both of whom appeared in Broken Flowers, as well as Gael Garcia Bernal. That fills the old comedy contingent, the drama power, and the young Mexican boy-crazy crowd.

It turns out that this will be a road movie of sorts -- how, they're not saying. We know that De Bankolé will play an outlaw doing some sort of job in Spain, and Reuters adds that he's a loner, but that's it. Since the road comes into play, I imagine either he'll try to hook on to some innocent roadtrippers to escape the area, or maybe they'll be his accomplices -- but that latter doesn't work with the loner deal. The film shoots this month in Spanish cities like Seville, Madrid, and Almeria, so hopefully we'll hear more soon.

Meanwhile: Swinton has been busy all over the literary world, from filming Burn After Reading, to some Narnia, to Lewis Carroll and a stint as Lady Macbeth, Bill's spent some time getting Smart and leading the City of Ember, and Bernal has been busy with a number of foreign projects from Mammoth to Pedro Paramo.

The best movie year since 1999, 2007 offered a staggering bounty of cinematic delights. I keep track of all the movies I see in a given year and give each a letter grade, "A" through "F". Usually my Top Ten list consists of all of the "A's" and a few "B's." This year, "A" pictures made up my top twenty. With so many great films, I won't wallow through a "Worst of the Year" list, I'll simply present you with a few that didn't fully satisfy:

The Biggest Disappointment: The Darjeeling Limited -- A Louis Vuitton commercial stretched to feature length. The Darjeeling Limited is a perfect title for the film because it makes plain what a limited filmmaker the once great Wes Anderson has become. Hey Wes, people running in slow-motion while a Kinks song plays is always going to look pretty neat. But if there's absolutely nothing else going on in the scene, then that's all it is -- people running in slow-motion while a Kinks song plays. We all think it's really cool that you like The Kinks. Hell, I love those guys! The Rolling Stones are awesome, too! But I wouldn't ask them to do my job for me.

and...

The Biggest Question Mark: There Will Be Blood

Undoubtedly one of the year's most impressive technical achievements, There Will Be Blood is frequently stunning. It's so stunning, in fact, that it's easy to overlook how infuriatingly empty it all is. The film focuses on two main characters, and neither one changes a lick in thirty years and 158 minutes. How did Paul Thomas Anderson, creator of such deeply emotional rides as Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and Punch Drunk Love come up with a movie completely devoid of human emotion? (I'm not counting greed.) Beautiful, brilliant, and boring in equal doses, I've seen Blood twice, and I still don't know if it's a masterpiece or a mess. I just know I felt...nothing watching it. It's as hollow, as frustrating, as difficult to know as its "hero," Daniel Plainview.

On to my list. First, ten that didn't quite make the cut. Here's #20 through #11: (#20) Breach, (#19) Once, (#18) The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, (#17) Sicko, (#16) Sweeney Todd, (#15) The Lives of Others, (#14) Eastern Promises, (#13) Zodiac, (#12) Atonement, (#11) Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

And my Top Ten is after the jump...

George Clooney is one of the busiest men in Hollywood. He's currently promoting his excellent new legal drama Michael Clayton. He's wrapping up acting and directing duties on Leatherheads, a 1920's football romantic comedy with John Krasinski and Renee Zelwegger. He's shooting the Coen Brothers' Burn After Reading, a CIA comedy co-starring Brad Pitt, Tilda Swinton (so great in Clayton), John Malkovich, and Frances McDormand. In addition to all that, he's got to fly around the world in a jet made of gold and make the women of the world swoon 24/7. So yeah, the guy's got a lot going on. In fact, he's just decided that he has too much going on.

Entertainment Weekly is reporting that Clooney has just dropped out of Joe Carnahan's White Jazz, a gritty tale of police corruption set in 1950s Los Angeles. Clooney was set to star in the independent film, which is based on the James Ellroy (L.A. Confidential) novel. White Jazz was expected to begin filming early next year, and was scheduled for a 2009 release date. Grant Heslov, Clooney's producing partner, says "It just simply came down to scheduling. George continues to believe in the project and in Joe." Clooney was set to be a producer on the film, and whether he'll remain involved in that capacity has not been announced. And those of you excited about the film, myself included, might not be too happy with this last sentence. According to a spokesperson at Warner Independent, where the film was set up -- White Jazz has dropped off its slate. Currently, there's no word from Carnahan, who, as of a couple days ago, was pretty pumped about starting production in January.

I walked out of Michael Clayton feeling something like 'let down,' although a brief examination of my expectations got to the root of the matter. Walking into Michael Clayton, I was hoping for a film along the lines of classic '70s Sidney Lumet or Alan J. Pakula; what I got was something more along the lines of an above-average '90s John Grisham adaptation.

And even that's not necessarily dismissing Michael Clayton; when you realize that it's gone off track from the destination it tried to reach, you're still gladly along for the ride. George Clooney plays the title character -- a New York lawyer with a fairly specific brief. Clayton's been at the big-time firm of Kenner, Back and Ledeen for years, but he's not a partner, and he hasn't set foot in a courtroom in a long time. He's a troubleshooter, a fixer; when a client's in the glue, Clayton's the guy with enough grease to just maybe get him unstuck. That's how we first meet him -- driving in the middle of the night to the house of a client who's gotten in trouble. Clayton can brace the man for what's coming, and guide him through it, but he can't make it go away: "I'm not a miracle worker; I'm a janitor."

And so, we get a fast understanding of Clayton: He knows how the law works -- even if he may not necessarily like it. He can fix anything -- except, it seems, his own life. He's not crazy about his work -- but it pays the bills, and he's got plenty of them. The film (after an unexpected development) flashes back a few days, to show just how Clayton got to where he is right at the moment ...

All next week, I'll be bringing you reviews from the Human Rights Watch Film Festival, going on in Manhattan from June 14 to the 28th. One of the first films I've seen is Strange Culture, a weird and unique documentary from Lynn Hershman-Leeson that tells the story of Steve Kurtz, a professor at the University of Buffalo whose life was turned upside one morning in 2004 when he awoke to find his wife Hope lying dead of a heart attack in bed beside him. The police and medical responders who came to the scene were more than a little alarmed to find that Kurtz's home was a sort of armamentarium of biochemical and DNA-extraction equipment, specimens of things as exotic as E. coli and other stuff you wouldn't expect to find in the home of an art professor. Before Kurtz could convince the authorities that he was involved in a unique art movement known as Bio-art, that exhibits real equipment for presentations on topics ranging from terrorism to genetically modified food, his entire block was being sealed off and invaded by men in hazmat suits.

There's a fictional thread to Strange Culture, in which Kurtz and his wife are played by Thomas Jay Ryan (Henry Fool) and Tilda Swinton, but to say that the wall between drama and documentary is broken would be an understatement. As much as we see them acting, we see the actors speaking as themselves about Kurtz's situation. Sometimes we even see the real Kurtz commenting on their performances, as the movie is going on. We're told that the main reason for a fictional component is that Kurtz, who is embroiled in the legal system to this day because of his ordeal, is constrained from talking about certain topics on camera. The feds were never able to make any terrorism-related charge stick to Kurtz, since he's not a terrorist, but they were able to catch him on mail fraud since he and a colleague at another university allegedly broke some laws by mailing biochemical samples back and forth without following proper notification procedures. Kurtz and the colleague are currently awaiting trial sometime in 2007 on those charges.

You know the summer blockbuster season has begun when Hollywood is already looking ahead to their serious Fall fare. First Showing.net is now hosting the first trailer for the legal thriller Michael Clayton, written and directed by Tony Gilroy (The Bourne Ultimatum). The film stars George Clooney as a mysterious employee of a high-powered law firm sent to clean up a scandal left in the wake of a lawyer's breakdown. For once the trailer actually leaves some things to the imagination; there are some inklings of a deadly corporate conspiracy and maybe just a dash of politics -- but would you expect any less from Clooney? The film also stars Tom Wilkinson (who looks to be just a tad loony here), Tilda Swinton, and Sydney Pollack -- whose scenes in this trailer look almost identical to his other legal drama Changing Lanes, but I'm sure it's just a coincidence.

This is the first of many projects for Clooney this year. On top of the imminent release of the latest installment of the Ocean's franchise, the actor/director has already signed for the Coen brothers CIA film Burn after Reading alongside fellow "rat packer" Brad Pitt, and the dark comedy remake of Our Brand Is Crisis. Just recently word came that Clooney was also planning a film version of the strange true-life story of a FBI sting operation that posed as a film production to free hostages in Tehran. Oh, and we should also mention his football flick Leatherheads (which he directed) and the much-talked about White Jazz. But first up is Clayton, which is set for release September 28. Well, he might not be the next Cary Grant, but he certainly seems to have a similar work ethic.

Hope Davis has had a pretty remarkably consistent career considering the amount of work she's done, giving understated performances in a variety of great films. I loved her in two recent little-seen gems: The Matador and The Weather Man, and especially in American Splendor and About Schmidt -- which is one of my favorite films. She's got two movies due out this year: John August's The Nines, which I told you a bit about here, and Charlie Bartlett, a comedy with Robert Downey, Jr, due out August 3rd. Today brings more word on two upcoming projects for Davis. First, she has joined Synecdoche, New York, screenwriter extraordinaire Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut. Philip Seymour Hoffman will star and Davis joins an excellent (and very pale!) female supporting cast that includes Samantha Morton, Catherine Keener, Michelle Williams, and Tilda Swinton. Hoffman will play "a theater director in crisis over work and the women in his life," Davis will play his therapist. Synecdoche begins shooting this month.

After that project wraps, Davis will move on to Genova, a new film from Michael Winterbottom, director of the great Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story and 24 Hour Party People. Winterbottom also directed Angelina Jolie in A Mighty Heart, out this summer -- check out James' Cannes review of that film here. Monika told you about Davis' addition to the Genova cast last week. That film is a ghost story said to have mystery and horror elements. It tells the story of "a British man who moves with his two American daughters to Italy as he tries to recover from his wife's death." Davis will star alongside Colin Firth, Willa Holland of The OC and Perla Haney-Jardine of Spider-Man 3. Catherine Keener is in that one as well -- maybe she and Davis can share a cab from New York to Italy after the Kaufman film wraps.

Stephanie Daley revolves around the actions of its titular character, a quiet, well-spoken sixteen-year-old girl played by Amber Tamblyn, who gets herself pregnant on the first try, carries the child to term and then delivers it in an isolated bathroom during a ski trip and suffocates it with toilet paper. Collapsing from blood loss in the snow minutes afterwards, her situation is immediately discovered and becomes a sensation for the media, which tags her with one of those disposable, insensitive monikers designed to grab a fickle audience and hold them for a few minutes: 'the ski mom.' In a neat dramatic contrivance, Daley, as preparation for her criminal trial, is ordered to be evaluated by 40-something forensic psychologist Lydie Crane (Tilda Swinton) who is heavily pregnant after a long and draining struggle to be so -- a struggle that included a prior pregnancy resulting in stillbirth. We eventually learn that, against the wishes of her now distant husband, Lydie chose to have that stillborn disposed of like medical waste rather than be given a name or a funeral service.

Tamblyn's role in Stephanie Daley's double act is largely a thankless one, since her task is to be mostly inscrutable during her interview sessions with Swinton's character, giving the audience no 'in' as to why an otherwise mannered, seemingly thoughtful girl would take such a drastic step to rid herself of a baby instead of seeking out an abortion or carrying and then giving it up for adoption. When Stephanie does speak, she often talks about being judged by God or spouts one-liners so loaded as to make the audience feel that they may be watching a character trying to make a play for an insanity defense -- at one point, she casually references a 'jinx' that hovers over her existence. Are we supposed to view Stephanie as remarkably contemplative for her age or just as a teenager who has seen enough Law & Order to know that she better come up a damn good reason for why she did what she did? That there's no clear answer is dramatically intriguing up to a point, but it's also frustrating.

Back when the news came out about the cast for the Hitcher remake, I lamented the fact that Sean Bean has somehow turned into the foreign guy that Hollywood tends to cast as a heavy in pretty much anything (either that or he's a really boring, barely-written token male), a tendency that is very much at odds with both his early career and a lot of the TV work he does in England. Well, today comes news that he's been cast in a part that might actually allow him to, you know, act a little bit -- hooray!

Variety is reporting that Bean and fellow Brit Tilda Swinton will play the leads in Come Like Shadows, and independently-financed project being produced by the WB-based Milk & One Sugar. The film is a version of the Macbeth story that, while it will be set during an appropriate time, is expected to be (and this is where things get a little wonky) "user-friendly to a contemporary audience." God only knows what that means, but it makes me a little nervous, just because we can handle Shakespeare that isn't dumbed down, dammit! For Bean, the gig is a return to Macbeth -- he played the role on stage in London three years ago.

Both Steven Soderbergh and Luc Besson are involved in the film as well (the former will executive produce, and post-production will take place in Besson's EuropaCorp facilities), which makes it sound like it might be sort of big and shiny and, just maybe, good. Production begins this fall in Scotland; director will be John Maybury.

Starting April 20th, the 49th annual San Francisco International Film Festival is shaping up to be a terrific fest -- and a lot livelier than in the past under the hand of new Executive Director Graham Leggat. How lively? Well, there's not just the usual screenings at city theaters this time around; there's also going to be a series of 'satellite screenings' at various venues around town -- plus live 'film remixing,' silent films with live orchestral accompaniment and a few other surprises. Sure, some of the extraneous events may seem a little gimmicky -- Do we need Tilda Swinton's face projected three stories high on various municipal buildings? -- but there's a great catalog of films screening, as well as an awards night honoring Werner Herzog, Ed Harris and Jean-Claude Carrière. Not only is the Festival's site jam-packed with info and how to get tickets, but Festival parent The San Francisco Film Society has also  launched, in conjunction with the good folks at Indiewire, SF360.org -- a brand-new, year-round guide to film happenings and news in the Bay Area, including the festival picks of the inestimable B. Ruby Rich. Add in announced guests like Guy Madden and Tilda Swinton, and you've got a very new, very different SFIFF ... Cinematical's on-the-ground coverage starts next week with previews of films and more -- and you might want to get your tickets now.

Stephanie Daley is the strongest proof I've seen this year that the Sundance Lab – designed to give emerging filmmakers the creative and financial support they need to raise their game – is doing something right. The film is beautifully – and by all appearances expensively – shot, and its cast (toplined by executive producer Tilda Swinton and Amber Tamblyn, whose rabid Joan of Arcadia fanbase surely helped to get this film made) is full of name actors, and from afar it has every visual marker of a high-gloss, commercial thriller. But writer-director Hilary Brougher (she was last here in 1997, with her debut, The Sticky Fingers of Time) has hardly made a Hollywood confection. Daley is essentially a non-linear case study of the psychological swirl around two parellel pregnancies: that of Lydie, a 40-ish forensic psychologist whose marriage and psyche are still recovering from a stillbirth, and the mysterious case of the title character (Tamblyn), a high schooler on trial for throwing her newborn daughter in a trash can. Right before her scheduled pregnancy leave, Lydie is asked by the prosecutor's office to conduct a series of examinations with Stephanie, who claims innocence and refuses to take a plea deal. It's Liddy's job to get Stephanie to talk, and the young girl's story, told through flashback, is woven through the older woman's trepidatious third trimester, as she worries for health, doubts her husband's fidelity, and tries to come to terms with the child she's already lost. The material, in different hands, could have easily have drifted into Lifetime movie territory, but Brougher brings a fearless spirit to the thing. There's a rawness to Stephanie Daley that we rarely see in American film – it paints slick composition and beautiful, bleeding color on the kind of story about sex and faith that no one has told well since before Lars Von Trier decided to tackle American imperialism with Brechtian critique.

Before the events in question, Stephanie's only tragedy is that she's sadly ordinary. A shy but precocious teen, she's young enough to still feel bound to her religious mother and internet-addict father, but just old enough to start pursuing an urgent curiosity about sex. One summer night, she follows "faster" friend Rhana (The Squid and the Whale's Halley Feiffer, again doing impeccably natural work) to a party. A friend of a friend of a friend's parents are out of town; an older brother has picked up a keg; and Stephanie has tarted herself up in eyeshadow and miniskirt, more to impress Rhana than any particular boy. Add in Stephanie's simultaneous desperate need to be touched, and near total sexual naivety, and it's not hard to imagine what's going to happen when the cute boy manning the keg cocks his head and asks her name. Sure enough, there's an empty master bedroom upstairs, and sure enough, young Cory wants to do more than kiss. Stephanie's deflowering comes to an end with a loud pounding on the door – another pair of young "lovers" want their turn – and with those ever-assuring three little words from the mouth of her suitor: "I didn't come." Nine months later, on a school ski trip, she's collapsed from blood loss in the snow; five months after that, she's pushed to Liddy's door.