Having been one of the ten people on earth who hasn't read The Da Vinci Code or Angels and Demons, it's no surprise that I'm not terribly amped for the follow-up flick from Ron Howard. But, I know I am in the minority here, so feast your eyes on a new batch of photos (courtesy of Trovacinema) of Tom Hanks and company hard at work on the big-screen Angels and Demons. Most of the cast is pictured in the photos, and by the looks of it, everyone seems to be having a grand old time on location in Rome.

Demons will center on Robert Langdon (Hanks), who's smack dab in the middle of a fight between The Vatican and The Illuminati. Once again, the Harvard professor will have to take down an ancient conspiracy, but this time they have an eye on assassinating high-ranking members of the church. Casting finally finished back in April with the addition of Ewan McGregor (which is a good thing for me, because if anyone can make me sit through a film I normally wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole, it's McGregor), and Ayelet Zurer as the daughter of a CERN physicist looking to solve her father's murder.

Shooting on the picture just began last week, and Howard will finish up location shots in the next three weeks. Then the production will move back to the states where they can complete interior shoots on the Sony lot. So as long as a SAG strike can be avoided, Howard should be able to get the production in on time.

Angels and Demons is scheduled for release on May 15th, 2009.

I saw into the casting future, and it was through Dlisted. The Hollywood Reporter has announced that Rodrigo Santoro, last seen tall and glittery in 300, has been cast as Jim Carrey's lover in I Love You,Phillip Morris.

He is not the titular Phillip Morris, however. That honor still belongs to Ewan McGregor. If you have forgotten the plot of this love caper, a married Jim Carrey is sent to prison, where he falls in love with his cellmate. When Morris is released, the infatuated Carrey escapes three times to be with him. Somewhere in the middle, though, he hooks up with Santoro.

While this is just now hitting the legitimate newswire, on Tuesday Dlisted had a photo of the happy couple. (Don't ask me what I was doing on Dlisted, I don't have an answer!) So he has already been in the film long enough to get a wardrobe -- if that counts as wardrobe.

Since this is from the team of Bad Santa, and has Leslie Mann as Carrey's dumped wife, I think there's potential even with the erratic Carrey. And I'm anxious to see McGregor in a bonafide comedy, as he was by far the best thing about Down With Love. And it is rather fitting that he's the man Carrey changes teams for -- McGregor has topped that list for most of the guys I know. I bet we'll be seeing the full monty, too.

Deception, starring Hugh Jackman and Ewan McGregor, is being sold as an "erotic thriller." Any experienced cinemagoer knows that this phrase, which promises two things, usually indicates a film that will fail to deliver either. American studio films either tiptoe around sex or stomp on it with clown shoes, and the modern thriller often relies on activities that are not, and cannot ever be, thrilling -- electronic funds transfers, typing, mouse-clicking. Deception, directed by Marcel Lanegger from a script by Mark Bomback, begins as Ewan McGregor's lonely auditor Jonathan McQuarry labors late into the night in a huge conference room, vast windows looking out over the lights of the city. Shut in, walled-away, cut-off, Jonathan is worse than miserable; he's invisible. But then Hugh Jackman's brash, blunt Wyatt Bose waltzes in, makes some small talk, sparks up a joint. It's not what Jonathan's used to. Then again, he hates what he's used to.

Even the most enthusiastic devotee of big-budget Hollywood is bound to have a few movies which he trudges to see out of a sense of duty rather than excitement. For me it's (among other things) Ron Howard's Da Vinci Code franchise, based on the borderline illiterate but ultra-popular books by Dan Brown. It is out of that same sense of obligation that I report to you the impending recruitment of Ewan McGregor to star alongside Tom Hanks in Angels & Demons, the prequel to the first film. McGregor will play Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca, a Papal aide who helps Hanks's intrepid symbologist stop an attack on the Vatican. As we suspected yesterday, Munich's Ayelet Zurer is also on board to play Vittoria Vetra, the daughter of a murdered physicist who tags along with the hero scientist. (This is contrary to earlier reports that Naomi Watts had scored the part.)

The main reason I have little hope for Angels & Demons is that, as with the first film, the screenplay will be written by Akiva Goldsman, who may be my least favorite working screenwriter. Ewan McGregor is a splendid actor, but Goldsman's dull, leaden dialogue managed to defeat even Sir Ian McKellen. As The Da Vinci Code proved, Goldsman and Brown are one deadly combination.

We've got a ways to go: Angels & Demons comes out next May. I think I'll go back to not thinking about it now, if you don't mind.

Everyone who took part in last week's competition, myself included, failed to foresee The Forbidden Kingdom outdoing Forgetting Sarah Marshall, but the martial arts actioner was the clear winner. Prom Night held on to third place, content in the knowledge that it had already earned back its $20 million budget last week. Here's the rundown:

1. The Forbidden Kingdom: $20.9 million
2. Forgetting Sarah Marshall: $17.3 million
3. Prom Night: $9.1 million
4. 88 Minutes: $6.8 million
5. Nim's Island: $5.7 million

Opening this week, we have:

What's It All About: Tina Fey plays an executive dying to be a mother, and when she finds out she's unable to conceive, she must turn to a flaky but fertile Amy Poehler
Why It Might Do Well: Fey is awesome on 30 Rock, and though I usually get flack for saying this, I thought the Fey/Poehler Weekend Update team on SNL was one of the best in the show's history. And with a supporting cast that includes Sigourney Weaver, Steve Martin and Maura Tierney, I am so there. The 88% fresh rating from Rottentomatoes.com is icing on the cake.
Why It Might Not Do Well: The poster is so darn zany I could just puke.
Number of Theaters: 2,500
Prediction: $18 million

You know that feeling you get when something looks so familiar but you just can't put your finger on it? Well, that's how I felt after I saw the latest poster release for Marcel Langenegger's, Deception (see to the right, and click to enlarge). After a furious search to try and figure out just what it was about the poster that was so familiar, I came up empty. Luckily, the sharp eyes over at the Ropes of Silicon boards noticed the poster was almost identical to The Prestige.

Ewan McGregor stars as Jonathan, a buttoned down accountant who is swept up in a mysterious sex club called 'The List'. Hugh Jackman plays his lawyer friend who leads Jonathan down the 'rabbit hole' involving a missing girl and a million dollar fraud. There aren't that many differences between this latest poster release and the previous release -- in fact, there are only a few minor differences. The most noticeable being that Jackman had a lot more real estate on the first poster than he does now. On the upside, we actually get to see McGregor's face this time around.

After watching the trailer, I'll admit that there is no way I would see this film if Jackman and McGregor were not starring (it just has a late night, skinemax vibe). Plus, the film bears a striking resemblance to the 1990 thriller Bad Influence (it even looks like McGregor borrowed James Spader's glasses). Deception is set for release on April 25th, and I can't help but wonder if Fox released this poster in hopes of drumming up some much-needed business.

Before I get started, I just wanted to say that anyone who was undecided as to whether or not Knocked Up was sexist, probably wasn't really paying too close attention to Leslie Mann's performance. Mann's portrayal of a woman forced into being the bad cop because her husband isn't into the whole 'grown up' thing was one of the best things about that film. Now she's heading for another 'wronged wife' role, and The Hollywood Reporter announced that Mann has joined the cast of I Love You, Phillip Morris.

Phillip Morris is based on the true life story of Steven Russell (as played by Jim Carrey). Russell was a married family man whose criminal exploits landed him in the Texas prison system. While incarcerated, Russell fell in love with his cell mate, Phillip Morris (Ewan McGregor). After Morris' release, Russell concocted a variety of bizarre escape attempts in hopes of reuniting with the love of his life.

One of the films I've been itching to see, which can't even seem to get itself in front of the camera, is Jodie Foster's Flora Plum. For at least the last ten years, there has been buzz about this film, which was originally going to star Claire Danes, out of My So-Called Life and into Yale, and Russell Crowe. But just like bad luck has loomed in Terry Gilliam's world of filmmaking, Foster just can't seem to get it made.

Crowe injured himself and production stopped. He never returned to the project and later in 2002, there was word that Ewan McGregor was taking over. Again, it stopped. Yet Foster is still determined to get the film made. She talked with MTV, and is still very invested in getting it made. However, she's being wary about how much she says, for fear that she'll jinx herself. "My new superstition is to never mention it, because every time I do, my film falls apart." From there, she talks about finally jumping behind the camera again, over a decade since her last directorial effort, Home for the Holidays.

The trailer for Deception, the much-renamed thriller starring Hugh Jackman and Ewan McGregor has finally hit the net -- just as I was beginning to wonder what ever happened to the movie. The embedding links from MSN are not working, so you'll have to go watch it here. If that doesn't work, the official site also has it. McGregor plays an accountant, who is introduced to an exclusive sex club by his lawyer friend, played by Jackman. Of course, not everything is as it seems -- and poor McGregor finds himself a prime suspect in a woman's disappearance.

I won't say any more than that, as I think too much is already given away in this trailer. It has a suspiciously slick look, suggesting it might have been straight-to-DVD if not for the star power. I'm trying to sound critical, because my attention was admittedly diverted by the combination of Jackman-McGregor-sex club. It's amusing to think either of them would ever need one.

You're going to see a lot of bad reviews of Woody Allen's Cassandra's Dream, as I did before I went to see it. But having gone in with lowered expectations, I came out thrilled. I liked Cassandra's Dream a great deal. I went back and looked at some of the reviews, and I couldn't see how what they said related to the film. It seemed that most of the bad reviews were directed at Allen himself, his habits and ideas, or perhaps an expectation of Allen, or an expectation of the crime genre, rather than the film itself. This leads to a complex discussion of Allen's career, which goes much deeper than I'll ever have room for here. But suffice it to say that Allen has had a far more difficult time pleasing moviegoers than he did before he broke up with Mia Farrow and married Soon-Yi Previn.

I am a longtime fan, and in the past I have willingly put myself in the position of defending Allen's work even when there wasn't much to defend. I have written rave reviews only to revisit the films later and realize that I may have been wrong. But I believe he has tried harder, and tried more different kinds of things, in recent years than he did when he was younger and far more popular. I also believe that in the future, Allen's work, like Ozu's or Fassbinder's, may make up a far more coherent whole than it will a collection of individual masterpieces. That said, Cassandra's Dream is the third of Allen's British series. It ignores the previous entry, Scoop (2006), and harkens back to Match Point (2005), which most critics considered a successful comeback and a reinvigoration for Allen. It also revisits the themes that bubbled through Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), wondering not how one accomplishes a crime but how one deals with the concept of having accomplished a crime.