dear john Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Toy Story 3
Full length trailer for the Disney/Pixar sequel in which Andy goes off to college leaving Woody, Buzz and the gang to be donated to a daycare center. Looks like a worthy successor to the franchise. The toys start getting real again on June 18.

Serious Moonlight
In sort of a romantic comedy take on Misery, Meg Ryan plays a woman who duct tapes her cheating husband (Timothy Hutton) to the toilet and refuses to release him until he loves her again. Could be a cute idea but it's got a "wait for the DVD" feel. Watch for this one on December 4.

Dear John
Channing Tatum plays a soldier home on leave who falls in love with a college student (Amanda Seyfried) and carries on a long correspondence (hence the title) once he returns to duty. This is out on February 5.

The Missing Person
Filmnoir about a PI hired to tale a man who we eventually learn supposedly died on 9/11. I love the retro look and style of this one which will be out some time in 2009.

Broken Embraces
The synopsis for this one sounds intriguing -- a man chooses to ignore the life he lived before the accident that caused his blindness and killed his beloved -- but I don't see any of that in the trailer. On the plus side, Penelope Cruz is as stunning as ever. This will be playing New York on November 20 and Los Angeles on December 11.

New this week on AOL Moviefone:

• The Crazies - Remake of a George Romero film in which a small town is exposed to a chemical that drives the residents murderously insane.
• Disney's A Christmas Carol - Second trailer for the Disney holiday flick.
• Tooth Fairy - Dwayne Johnson stars as an unscrupulous hockey player who is forced to work as a tooth fairy.
• Shutter Island - Second trailer for Martin Scorsese's latest. Leonardo DiCaprio plays a Federal Marshall sent to investigate the disappearance of a dangerous inmate at a mental asylum.
  
• Alvin and the Chipmunks the Squeakquel - Second trailer for the second film starring Jason Lee and a trio of pop song singing CGI rodents.
  
• Red Cliff - Historical drama set in China in 208 A.D.
  
• The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus - Terry Gilliam's latest about a man who dares to thwart the devil not once but twice.
  
• The Book of Eli - 31 years after global war has ravaged the planet a man seeks to protect a book that could save humanity.
  
• The Messenger - Ben Foster and Woody Harrelson star as U.S. soldiers with the unenviable task of informing people that their loved one has been killed in action.

Click image below to view full poster

It's time for The Notebook fans to grab a box of tissues and plan for their Februaries and romance-filled Valentine's Day dates. Cinematical has just received this exclusive snuggle-centric poster for Dear John, which just so happens to be the latest adaptation from Notebook scribe Nicholas Sparks. Directed by Lasse Hallström (helmer behind The Cider House Rules) Dear John stars Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfried, and will be hitting screens on February 5.

This time around, Sparks' story focuses on a soldier home on leave (Tatum), and the "idealistic college student" he falls for during her Spring vacation (Seyfried). Over the course of seven years, they must face his increasingly dangerous deployments, seeing each other face-to-face rarely, but keeping the affair alive through overseas love letters that "eventually triggers fateful consequences." War movies might be the sore vein to tap in Hollywood, but something tells me this flick will fly free of those restraints.

Check out the full poster by clicking the image below.

Just a month ago, we learned that Adrien Brody and Michael Chiklis were heading back to High School -- a rather unique comedy about a high school valedictorian (Matt Bush) who gets high with the school stoner (Sean Marquette), and then tries to use his smarts to get out of an upcoming drug test. Rather then messing with his own results, he schemes to get the entire school stoned to beat the system. Brody's the drug dealer, Chiklis is the principal, and now The Hollywood Reporter posts that Lisa Simpson, aka Yeardley Smith, will play a homeroom teacher while Luis Chavez (Crash) plays a druggie friend of the valedictorian.

Meanwhile, Variety reports that Navy NCIS actress Cote de Pablo is making the jump to the big screen with Scott Speedman's The Last Rites of Ransom Pride. The Calgary Herald describes it as "a violent ransom about a woman trying to bring her lover -- a murdered outlaw -- home for burial." I've no idea how this will turn out, but it's got an interesting cast that also includes the V-loving Lizzy Caplan (True Blood), Jason Priestley, Peter Dinklage, Kris Kristofferson, and Dwight Yoakam.

And Richard Jenkins is putting aside his Burn After Reading gym ways to board Lasse Halstrom's Dear John, according to Variety. More dramatic romance from Nicholas Sparks, the film will follow a soldier who falls for a conservative college student while on leave. There's no word on Jenkins' role.

And: CSI:NY's A.J. Buckley is entering Skateland.

They've both been Mean Girls, both acted for Nick Cassavetes, both appeared in wedding movies and now both Rachel McAdams and Amanda Seyfried will have shared the honor of being the leading lady in a Nicholas Sparks adaptation. For McAdams, it was 2005's beloved weepy The Notebook; for Seyfried, rising fast after starring in the hugely popular Mamma Mia!, it's Dear John. According to Variety, the 22-year-old has been cast as Savannah, a virginal college student who falls in love with a soldier on leave (and named John, of course) immediately prior to 9/11. Kind of like Pearl Harbor but with more letters than explosions.

The soldier is being played by Channing Tatum, who will be fresh from G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra when Dear John hits theaters, likely a year from now. Meanwhile, Seyfried will have costarred in the third season of HBO's Big Love, which begins airing in January, and opposite Megan Fox in the Diablo Cody-scripted Jennifer's Body. Dear John is being directed by Lasse Hallström (Chocolat) from an adaptation scripted by Jamie Linden (We Are Marshall). Shooting begins next month in South Carolina.

I'm frankly surprised that Lasse Hallström hadn't tried his hand at a Nicholas Sparks adaptation before now. Sparks' middlebrow weepies (so far we've gotten Message in a Bottle, A Walk to Remember and The Notebook) are perfectly suited for Hallström's slick, crowd-pleaser style and his prestige-picture tastes. Hallström and the producers of the forthcoming Dear John have clearly realized this, as the director has signed on for the film, which starts shooting in December.

Dear John is like every Nicholas Sparks plot rolled into one, with a shamelessly sentimental treatment of 9/11 thrown in for good measure. It's about a rebellious kid (played by Channing Tatum in the film) who joins the army for lack of anything better to do, but falls in love with a family-oriented college student while on leave in North Carolina. He decides that after his tour of duty is over he'll settle down and start a family with his new love, but September 11th gums up their plans and he has to choose between love and country.

Hallström is currently wrapping up Hachiko: A Dog's Story, where Richard Gere plays a college professor who takes in an abandoned dog. And Sparks is responsible for this fall's Nights in Rodanthe, starring Gere and Diane Lane, about a love affair between an unhappily married woman and a doctor trying to reconcile with his estranged son. I think I just swooned a little bit.

As much as I would love to see the Judd Hirsch sitcom turned into a movie, New Line's Dear John is not based on a television show. As you can see from the headline, the movie is an adaptation of the Nicolas Sparks novel. And as we told you a few months ago, it's about a doomed long-distance romance between a college student and a U.S. soldier. The actress playing the student hasn't yet been revealed, but the soldier will be played by Channing Tatum, an actor who I'd like to see become more recognized and celebrated (if you haven't seen him in A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, do yourself a favor and queue the film up). As far as Sparks adaptations go, I hope Dear John is Tatum's Notebook instead of his Walk to Remember, because the former helped shoot Ryan Gosling to stardom while the latter did nothing for Shane West's career.

Dear John doesn't have a director, but producers Marty Bowen and Wyck Godfrey (The Nativity Story) have just hired a screenwriter: Jamie Linden, who penned We Are Marshall and an upcoming adaptation of Carolyn Parkhurst's novel The Dogs of Babel, which is about a man attempting to teach his dog to talk. All three stories deal with loss, although as far as I know Dear John doesn't deal with a tragedy like those dealt with in both Marshall and Dogs. It does center around 9/11, however, so I guess it doesn't need any more deaths. Of course, I do imagine the weepy irony of Sparks' novel to be that Tatum's character dies in the end, just as the student decides to retract her 'Dear John' letter. If this is what happens, don't spoil it for us. We can go into the theater prepared to cry, but that doesn't mean we want to know why we're going to cry.

Today I was sitting here, trying to decide what was missing in the world of cinema. It was then, by sheer fate and divine intervention, that I came upon news of the next Nicholas Sparks adaptation. While that name might not spark anything in your memory, I'm sure that his novel-turned-cinematic hit, The Notebook does. Yes, we're getting another dramatic romance that is sure to make Kleenex sales jump and many-a-boyfriend antsy. That latest to dive in front of the camera is Sparks' most recent novel -- Dear John.

The film will follow a soldier who falls for a sexy, conservative college student while home on leave. They want to get married, but time and distance threaten their commitment. Could they, perchance, be headed towards the infamous "Dear John" letter? Channing Tatum, the beefcake star of Step Up, has signed on to star as the lovesick soldier. Variety sources say that New Line paid high six figures against seven figures for the book, and it also appears that the novelist is a fan of Tatum. New Line's Toby Emmerich: "We talked about the things that were important to Nicholas, and it turns out he is a fan of Channing Tatum." Me, I'm always disappointed with the guy, because every time I hear his name, I think he's the lovechild of Stockard Channing and Tatum O'Neal.