Considering the amount of flack Nicolas Cage received over his last time-bending flick, I am a little surprised that he decided to come back for Alex Proyas', Knowing. Coming Soon is now hosting some on-set photos from the sci-fi thriller starring Cage and Rose Byrne. Sources managed to snap the pics on location in Geelong, Australia, and while there are no shots of Cage or Byrne, at least we get to see some stuff blowing up.

Knowing centers on a time capsule buried in 1958 that was chock full of doom and gloom prophecies. When the capsule is dug up 50 year later, it lands in the hands of a young boy and his professor father (Cage) who becomes obsessed with decoding the messages and preventing all-out destruction.

The production has had a long history in Hollywood, ever since the film was first set up over at Columbia. There have been a few directors attached over the years, notably Richard Kelly and Rod Lurie. Proyas came on board in 2005, and after a few rewrites, the film went into production in 2007. As if a long and troubled production history wasn't enough of an obstacle, it is no secret that Cage's 'shine' has been slowly diminishing over the years (thank you very much, Ghost Rider), so Knowing could be a hard sell to audiences who might still be ticked over shelling out their hard-earned dollars for Next.

Knowing is scheduled to arrive in theaters in 2009.

Nicolas Cage has landed another Troy girl as a co-star -- this time it is Rose Byrne, who will be taking the lead in the sci-fi thriller Knowing.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Byrne will play a young woman whose mother buried a time capsule in 1962 which, when uncovered, predicts assassinations, the death of a professor's wife, and an imminent world apocalypse. Cage will be playing the professor, who discovers the contents and alerts Byrne. Initially skeptical, she begins remembering strange incidents from her childhood.

The movie will be directed by Alex Proyas, and the script has seen numerous revisions already. We all know what that can mean!

The last time Nicolas Cage tried to predict the future (and avert the end of the world), it didn't go so well. I would tell him he should study the past for his script mistakes -- but whenever he gets into the past, he makes another National Treasure. Can't he just stick with Charlie Kaufman?

I need to come up with a new phrase for comedies like Just Buried. Something like "not exactly laugh-out-loud funny, but certainly amiable, clever and diverting enough to warrant some attention." (But something shorter than that wordy mouthful.) Chaz Thorne's Just Buried offers a novel concept, several winning performances, and a few amusing surprises -- but I certainly wouldn't call it a fall-down-on-the-floor laugh riot. And that's OK with me. Sometimes a big batch of small chuckles, a few strong performances and a quietly amusing concept are enough to keep a comedy afloat, and that certainly seems to be the case here.

Jay Baruchel (best known for his hilarious lead performance in the awesome Undeclared) plays a nervous little twitcher of a nerd who inherits his estranged father's funeral home. Our jittery sorta-hero is completely unprepared for the gig: He can't stand to be around corpses, his professional demeanor is lacking at best, and he has this strange habit of bleeding from the nose whenever he gets nervous. But hey, Ollie's still willing to give the old funeral home a shot. (The presence of a lovely mortician called Roberta (Rose Byrne) definitely factors into his decision-making process.)

Is it bad that I just got around to seeing Casino Royale for the first time a couple weeks ago? Lame, I know, but I needed to work up to it in my Netflix queue. Nevertheless, I absolutely loved it and anticipate Bond 22 just as much -- if not more than -- my fellow Cinematical writers. As was the case in the months leading up to Casino Royale, most of the talk revolved around who would be cast as the next Bond girl. Things came right down the wire last time, with Eva Green and Caterina Murino landing major roles. This time around, the list of female contenders became available almost immediately after Royale left theaters. Sticking with that somewhat exotic, unfamiliar vibe, names like Carice van Houten, Abbie Cornish and Rose Byrne were being thrown around. And the most concrete rumor came in the form of an Aussie scoop that claimed Cornish had flew to Singapore to meet with producers about the role. Since then, nada.

Now, however, MTV is reporting that Rose Byrne may have let slip some major casting information during a recent interview with the actress. When they asked her whether she was up for the Bond girl role, the gal denied it but said: "I think Abbie Cornish's got it." Byrne and Cornish are both Aussies, but they're also friends -- which means it's quite likely that one would know which roles the other had landed. If Cornish has landed the role, there's a good chance negotiations are still ongoing and we won't hear about it for a little while. Cornish is known for going both brunette (A Good Year) and blonde (Candy, Somersault) in her roles, but I personally would like to see some blonde on blonde action between her and Daniel Craig. What about you?

Bonus trivia question: Name the last film that featured a blonde Bond girl?

The sun is dying in Sunshine, but the familiarity of Trainspotting director Danny Boyle's latest makes one think an equally dire death is the sci-fi genre's aptitude for invention. A gorgeously crafted intergalactic saga sorely lacking in originality or profundity, Boyle's film marries 2001 aesthetics with an Alien narrative to create a rather straightforward – and superficially entertaining – adventure devoid of much meaning. Talk of God, humanity and morality abound but Alex Garland's screenplay only lightly grazes such heady philosophical issues, instead investing most of its time and energy on decently drawn characters, an authentic sense of setting, reasonably taut set pieces, and custom-built showcases for dazzling CG sunscapes, twinkling light flares, and immense cascades of roiling fire hungry to fill the void of space. On a purely visceral level, Sunshine is never less than engaging, and frequently gripping. Yet the general emptiness of its head is frustrating given its pretensions of high-minded deepness, and the commonplaceness of its plot is ultimately dispiriting for a movie seemingly so in awe of the beguiling, near-incomprehensible mysteriousness of the vast universe.

Boyle's film charts the mission of those aboard Icarus II, who have been charged with traveling to the perishing sun and reigniting it with a nuclear bomb (dubbed the "Payload") in a last ditch effort to save Earth from the grip of a solar winter. Icarus II is a marvelously envisioned vessel, its interiors full of high-tech doodad-ery made raggedy after 16 months of use by its human inhabitants, and its exterior marked by a giant, circular solar-paneled shield that protects the craft from the sun's lethal rays. Less impressive is the standard-issue motley crew, comprised of a stoically heroic captain (Hiroyuki Sanada), a sensitive girl (Rose Byrne), an arrogant coward (Troy Garity), a nondescript nobody (Michelle Yeoh), an out-there shrink (Cliff Curtis), a cold pragmatist (Chris Evans), and a sympathetic hero (Cillian Murphy). Save for Evans, who finds himself stuck with the most thanklessly schematic of roles, the cast admirably infuses their sketchily conceived astronauts with a dollop of relatable personality. Their hopes, dreams, and quasi-religious musings, however, are mere specks on the cosmic windshield of Sunshine, whose primary focus always remains on its computer-generated intergalactic wonders.

Although my birthday present from Fox Searchlight arrived a bit late, it was well worth the wait -- Cinematical was just informed (via a press release) that Danny Boyle's Sunshine has had its release date pushed up to July 20; a move that put a huge smile on my face as we come to the end of a relatively tame Wednesday. For those slightly out of the loop on this one, Sunshine was originally supposed to be released this past March 16. And although the film arrived in theaters around the world (as planned) Fox Searchlight delayed its release here in the states, subsequently pushing it all the way back to December. To say us Boyle fans were a tad bummed out about that would be an understatement -- as our own Scott Weinberg proclaimed, "That's like walking into a kid's room on 12/15 and saying, 'Oh, we bumped Christmas back to September. Stop crying!'"

Fox provided no reason for either shift; originally, some of us thought that maybe they were prepping the flick for an Oscar run, but it didn't seem like the sort of film (futuristic sci-fi?) that Oscar voters chomp on for breakfast. Was it that bad that Fox wanted to re-tool the thing and hide it amongst a busy Compass-filled December? Not likely; the trailers rock, and the buzz has been pretty good. Nevertheless, I could care less at this point -- I just want to see the damn film as quickly as possible. In the pic, director Boyle and writer Alex Garland once again team up for a story about a group of astronauts (Rose Byrne, Chris Evans, Cillian Murphy, Troy Garity, etc ...) who are sent to help re-ignite the sun after the sucker begins to burn out. Mark your calendars people. Sunshine. July 20. Awesome stuff!

Well, even though the last "Australian" to attempt a boxing film wasn't exactly a raging success, you can't blame someone else for wanting to take a swing -- and yes, that pun was intended, I couldn't help myself. The Australian newspaper The Age posted a photograph from the Australian noir The Tender Hook. Written and directed by Jonathan Ogilvie, the film stars Rose Byrne, Matt Le Nevez (who made a name for himself as a serial killer in the Australian made-for-TV film The Society Murders) and Hugo Weaving. The story is less a sports tale and more of a "noir-ish" take on a love triangle between a young boxer, an aristocratic Englishman and Byrne's romantic opportunist. The film takes place in 1920s Redfern, Australia, and was expected to shoot on location. However, some local controversy sprung up when the production moved to Melbourne for the sake of some "incentives" to the filmmakers.

The photo is the first look at Le Nevez as the soulful boxer, with plenty of sepia tones to remind you that this is a period piece. Production started in February and Ogilvie is still filming, so a release date might still be a way off. Ogilvie has claimed that he has been trying to make this film for over ten years now, so I'm pretty sure that he's going to take his time to make sure he does it right.

The only thing I know for sure about the casting situation with The Tender Hook is that it's an Australians-only affair. An article in this morning's Herald Sun is re-affirming most of what we've already known -- that Rose Byrne has replaced Radha Mitchell as Iris, a woman in a noir-stylized 1920s Sydney who is fought over by two opposing boxers. Hugo Weaving, Ray Winstone and Matt Le Nevez are also still attached to the project, although official announcements have yet to be made. The project is being written and directed by Jonathan Ogilvie, whose last film, Emulsion, was unseen by me. Still, I have high hopes for any film that self-identifies as film noir, one of my favorite genres.

Byrne, who was the Duchesse de Polignac in last year's Marie Antoinette, has a full slate of high-profile films for 2007, including the sequel to Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later and the starring role in Boyle's highly-anticipated 'the sun is dying, what do we do?' science-fiction film, Sunshine. The paper also reports that The Tender Hook is set to be shot in Melbourne, which has recently become one of the hottest filming spots in all of Australia.

There aren't many directors who can go from a straight-up zombie flick to a cute little family tale featuring a couple of kids who stumble upon a bag full of money, and then to a sci-fi thriller about a group of people sent to revive the sun after it burns out. Sure, there are directors that can do it, but I'll bet you the bank they won't produce the high quality we've come to expect from Mr. Danny Boyle ... especially when he decides to team up with writer Alex Garland.

Boyle first teamed up with Garland on an adaptation of Garland's novel The Beach (which I strongly suggest reading instead of watching -- it's my belief that The Beach would have been a much better film had Leo DiCaprio not chosen the role as his Titanic follow-up). Following The Beach, the duo partnered on 28 Days Later -- the sequel to which (featuring Boyle and Garland in producer roles only) is coming out later this year. Now, Boyle and Garland are giving us Sunshine. And, based on the newly released trailer, I think it's safe to say this might wind up being one of the best films this year. The premise kind of reminds me of Michael Bay's Armageddon ... only without Ben Affleck and the cheesy Aerosmith soundtrack. Basically, it's 50 years from now, the sun has burnt out and earth is settling into a nice, long ice age. In an attempt to save the planet, a group of astronauts are sent into space on a mission to turn the sun back on ... so to speak.

As far as cast goes, we're looking at folks like Rose Byrne, Cillian Murphy, Chris Evans (who I couldn't help but think of Johnny Storm when his face popped up in the trailer) and Michelle Yeoh, among others. Definitely let us know what you think about the trailer, and be sure to start counting down the days Boyle fans as Sunshine hits theaters on March 16 ... but there's always a chance it will be moved -- after all, that is a crowded weekend.

Note: Cinematical's Scott Weinberg just IM'd me to say that (and I quote): "The Sunshine trailer gave me goose bumps and a mild but pleasant heart attack." There, I told you it was good! Go watch! Go! Now!

We hear it on the news twice a week, it seems: A young dead woman has been found on the road, in a ditch, back behind someone's barn, etc. We give the news a casual listen, perhaps offer a brief bit of sympathy to the girl's family, and then throw our focus back into our own lives. The world can be an ugly place; best not to dwell on the more horrific aspects of it ... until we have to.

Karen Moncrieff's follow-up to 2002's Blue Car is a decidedly unique take on the "serial killer movie." The Dead Girl is not a mystery, nor is it really a thriller. It's more of an anthology piece that introduces us to a collection of people on the periphery of a horrible murder. It's not a movie about the killer, per se, nor is it a character study of the victim ... except when it is. It's a tough movie to describe, a tougher movie to "enjoy," but an easy one to recommend -- provided you don't mind a little darkness, gloom and sobriety mixed in with your indie-style ensemble pieces.