Another new (and improved, in my opinion) image of Samuel L. Jackson as The Octopus in The Spirit has been revealed, courtesy of Comic Con Magazine (click image to enlarge). Directed by Frank Miller (Sin City, 300), and based on the graphic novel by Will Eisner, The Spirit follows rookie cop Denny Colt (Gabriel Macht) who returns from the dead to fight crime in Central City. Jackson plays The Octopus, The Spirit's main nemesis -- a villain who plans to wipe out all of Central City and kills anyone unlucky enough to see his face. (That said, I guess we're all doomed -- damn you Comic Con magazine for showing us this dude's face!)

Also starring in the flick are Scarlett Johansson (as the Octopus' secretary, Silken Floss), Eva Mendes (as Sand Saref), Jaime King (as Lorelei Rox) and Paz Vega (as Plaster of Paris). Gotta love the names in this one. If I may recommend myself for the sequel; I could play Dynamo Clorox III. Sweet! The first trailer for The Spirit was released during New York Comic Con, and I'm sure the cast and crew will have plenty of goodies for the folks attending San Diego Comic Con in July.

The Spirit arrives in theaters on December 25 (Happy Birthday Jesus, indeed!). Check out our gallery below.



[via Coming Soon]

Remember how for the longest time whenever anyone talked about Samuel L. Jackson it was usually followed by the description of Jackson as one of the hardest working actors in the business? Well, it is not like he didn't earn that reputation -- Jackson currently has one film already headed to theaters and three other films in production. Variety reports that Jackson will add the spy thriller Unthinkable to the pile.

Gregor Jordan (The Informers) has already signed to direct the story of a "major threat to the United States when the locations of three nuclear devices are shrouded in secrecy by a single terrorist. With only two days before they are deployed, a black-ops interrogator and a female FBI agent have to decide how far they will go to find them" -- knowing Jackson's flair for interrogation I can only assume he will play the interrogator in the film.

Jackson is still filming the musical comedy Soul Men with Bernie Mac, so production on Unthinkable won't start until this fall in Minneapolis. But remember, Jackson likes to keep busy, so stay tuned for those Nick Fury updates -- because let's face it, Unthinkable will likely not be the Jackson film everyone is talking about in 2009.

If you'll permit me to embarrass myself for a moment: I'm the guy who liked Neil LaBute's redo of The Wicker Man. Well, maybe I'm not the only one -- if I recall correctly, Weinberg didn't hate it either. But I'm pretty sure that's it. Any movie where Nicolas Cage dropkicks Leelee Sobieski and then dons a bear suit for an extended stretch is okay by me, but most people seemed to think that LaBute was out of his element in the supernatural thriller genre. In that case, his next project finds him back in his wheelhouse: generating suspense by manipulating and exaggerating everyday social tensions. Lakeview Terrace involves an interracial couple (Patrick Wilson and Kerry Washington) who find an enemy in their new next-door neighbor (Samuel L. Jackson), an LAPD cop who disapproves of their relationship and becomes determined to drive them away.

A trailer for Lakeview Terrace has surfaced on the film's official website, and the movie looks like squirmy, uncomfortable fun -- the kind of material LaBute is most comfortable with. In addition to the racial angle, it looks like the film is going to explore another touchy subject: the near-omnipotence that comes with a police uniform. It takes some guts to make a cop the bad guy without also providing a virtuous foil (e.g. Ethan Hawke offsetting Denzel Washington in Training Day). But if anyone can pull it off, it's Neil LaBute.

[via Comingsoon.net]

UPDATE: Images have been removed at the request of the studio.

While she doesn't look all too excited, I'd gladly take this version of Scarlett Johansson as my nurse any day of the week. According to Egotastic!, the above image is part of three test shots of her character Silk N. Floss in Frank Miller's adaptation of Will Eisner's classic comic, The Spirit. In the film, Johansson will play a super sexy femme fatale; secretary and accomplice to the Octopus (played by Samuel L. Jackson). The Octopus is a villain who kills anyone unlucky enough to see his face. The Spirit also stars Gabriel Macht as Denny Colt (aka The Spirit); a rookie cop who returns from the dead to fight crime in Central City. Eva Mendes, Sarah Paulson, Jamie King and Paz Vega round out the cast. Check out more pics of Johansson in the gallery below.

The Spirit is scheduled to arrive in theaters on January 16, 2009.

So am I the only one who thinks that in the first picture for the musical comedy Soul Men, Samuel L. Jackson looks a lot like good old Ordell Robbie? But I guess there are only so many different hairstyles and beards you can try before you start running into some repeats. The first picture for Malcolm D. Little's film has popped up on the official site of music legend and former 'Chef' Isaac Hayes. Hayes, who will appear in the film as himself, stars alongside Jackson, Bernie Mac, Sean Hayes (Will and Grace), and Sharon Leal.

Soul Men centers on two feuding back-up singers named Louis (Jackson) and Floyd (Mac). When their band splits, Louis and Floyd go there separate ways with varying degrees of success. More precisely, Louis robs banks and becomes a convict and Floyd becomes a laundromat baron and retires in style. When the leader of their former band dies, the two men put aside their bad blood and go on a road trip to the Apollo Theater to hold a tribute concert.

OK, so a musical comedy starring Bernie Mac and Samuel L. Jackson has got to be a step up from a Tyler Perry movie, right? For Sharon Leal's sake, I certainly hope so. The Hollywood Reporter announced that Leal has joined the cast of Malcolm Lee's comedy musical Soul Men. The film centers on, "...bickering backup soul singers who haven't spoken in 20 years but reluctantly travel cross country together for a tribute concert to honor their famous former band leader." Leal will play Jackson's daughter Cleo, and thankfully will not serve as a love interest for either of the men. Leal starred in 2005's Dreamgirls as Michelle Morris, Effie White's replacement in the girl-group. Jackson and Mac will do all of their own singing and dancing for Soul Men, so I can only assume that since Leal has musical experience, she will be doing the same.

Christopher had first brought us news of the film last November. At that time, the only cast that had been announced was King of Comedy, Mac and Jackson. Surprisingly the project managed to escape being hit by the writer's strike that has been delaying productions left and right, and is set to start filming on January 21st (I guess Leal was hired just in time). The script was written by Robert Ramsey and Matthew Stone, whose other credits included the Coen's Intolerable Cruelty and Man of the House -- neither of which is probably the best calling card for a screenwriter. Soul Men is scheduled for release on October 10th, 2008.

You would have thought that if 20th Century Fox was going to go to all the trouble of staging a Jumper press event on top of the Luxor Hotel, then they might have at least included their latest international poster. But they didn't, and now Empire Online has the new poster for Doug Liman's film adaptation of Steven Gould's young adult sci-fi series. Jumper stars Hayden Christensen as David Rice, a young man with the ability to teleport himself. So of course, he catches the attention of a secret society that wants to kill off 'jumpers' everywhere, and he is dragged into one of those eternal battles -- the kind that always seems to be going on in the movies. Rachel Bilson also stars as Christensen's childhood love, and Samuel L. Jackson plays the head baddie.

The first poster for the film was definitely a little more 'kid friendly' but now it looks like they are definitely pushing the action angle again. Some of the more obvious tricks include name dropping The Bourne Identity and Mr. and Mrs. Smith. They have also thrown a leather coat into the mix, and suddenly Christensen has morphed into Neo -- and it's not like I'm the only one who has noticed this. Since I haven't read the original novels or obviously seen the movie yet, I'll have to reserve judgment on what Liman has planned. However, it always makes me a little nervous when it seems like the people who made the movie aren't even sure what the film is supposed to be. Jumper hits theaters on February 14th, 2008.

You know, you just can't trust the youth. They get all these lofty ideas about things and want to go changing all that you have carefully set up and organized, as if they know best. Samuel L. Jackson will be the latest to deal with meddlesome new ideas in a film that sounds like it could be some solid, serious work for the actor. The Hollywood Reporter has posted that Jackson has signed on to star in a fact-based film, being described as a Training Day-style thriller, called Unfinished Country -- penned by The Messengers scribe Mark Wheaton.

Jackson will play a man named Elton, who works as the chief administrator in the overcrowded, largest hospital in the world -- Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital, which is located in South Africa's violent Soweto ghettos. (And the people in Grey's Anatomy think they've got it bad.) "Elton's methods of treating patients are put into question when a young U.S. medical student arrives to do his residency, and the hospital gets caught in the crossfire of local gang warfare." The project will head to South Africa for filming, but first they've got to find a director and the young medical student, as neither were listed in the news piece. For now, you can check Jackson out in The Cleaner, a thriller that stars Jackson as a former cop who becomes a crime scene cleaner -- the film opens on the 14th.

Johnny To's Exiled grabbed me from its very first musical cue. The twang of a Spaghetti Western guitar reverberates, echoing through the empty streets outside a small home in Macau. Men with murder in mind have come to call on an old colleague. You just know that bullets will fly and blood will flow. As Scott Weinberg wrote, it's a "fast-paced and surprisingly amusing piece from a stunningly prolific Hong Kong moviemaker who really knows his genre stuff." The DVD hits shelves this week from Magnolia, with "making of" and "behind the scenes" features.

The great Bruce Lee made only a few films as an adult before his untimely and way too early death. His first celluloid outings came when he was just a sapling. The Kid features 10-year-old Lee as an orphan who is taken under the wings of a petty thief. A kindly factory owner, played by Lee's real-life father, tries to help him onto the path of the straight and narrow. Peter Nepstad of The Illuminated Lantern (a wonderful site) called it "a great example of early Cantonese cinema, a showcase of a little boy who grows up to become a huge star ... a movie not to be missed." The DVD comes courtesy of Cinema Epoch, though no feature details have surfaced.

Long before Samuel L. Jackson had his fateful encounter with hundreds of slithering reptiles, The Killer Snakes were crawling around cinemas. John Charles of Hong Kong Digital (another great site) described this 1974 Shaw Brothers production as an "incredibly sordid HK thriller [that] mixes gruesome horror, perverse sex, and animal cruelty into a most unsavory brew. ... Even almost 30 years after it was produced, this remains one potent and disturbing little picture." (He wrote his review of the Region 3 DVD several years ago.) Perhaps needless to say, no CGI was used. The newly-released Region 1 DVD from Image Entertainment contains a stills gallery and a collection of Shaw Brothers trailers.

Those of you anxious to see Samuel L. Jackson and Bernie Mac singing and dancing (without the aid of performance doubles) will be happy to know that Soul Men has not been affected by the strike. According to Variety, the musical road trip comedy is set to begin production January 21 with Undercover Brother director Malcolm D. Lee at the helm. Not to be confused with that beloved 1986 classic Soul Man starring C. Thomas Howell and Rae Dawn Chong, Soul MEN sounds more like a loose mix of The Blues Brothers and It Happened One Night (which one is Claudette Colbert, I wonder?). Written by Robert Ramsey and Matthew Stone (Man of the House), the movie will follow two estranged backup singers who are reunited after 20 years to pay homage to their recently deceased band leader.

It's pretty cool right now to get traditionally non-singing actors to perform their own vocals in musicals. Of course, it's a bit more exciting to think about Johnny Depp in Sweeney Todd than Jackson and Mac in Soul Men. Chances are, the most interesting thing about this movie will be the few moments we get to actually see the duo performing, while the rest of the road trip banter will be uninspired and tedious. Maybe it's just easy to be skeptical because of Jackson's last antagonistic team up, with Eugene Levy, or Mac's team up with any one (rather than any eleven, or twelve, or thirteen). Considering not even the Coen Brothers with George Clooney were able to salvage a movie scripted by Ramsey and stone, there simply can't be much hope for Lee, Jackson and Mac.

Imagine musical reunification from the likes of A Mighty Wind, add in some traveling entertainment, perhaps like the upcoming Walk Hard, and top it off with a little soul. What do you get? Soul Men. Variety has reported that, believe it or not, Samuel L. Jackson and Bernie Mac have signed on to star in the musical comedy. Robert Ramsey and Matthew Stone, who penned Intolerable Cruelty, wrote the feature, which is about two men who used to be backup soul singers who were part of a famous group. They haven't been in contact with each other for 20 years, but when the band leader dies, they agree to reunite and travel together for a tribute reunion tour.

That's right -- Jackson will be singing and dancing right along with Mac, and it looks like they're going to do it to songs from the Stax Records catalog (unless that will just be background music). This is probably the last thing that I ever thought the Pulp Fiction star would be involved with, especially since Mac's starring flicks don't work half as well as his ensemble stints (Guess Who -vs- the Ocean's series). Nevertheless, we'll soon see him belting out the tunes and being wacky with Mac. While I'd like to see Jackson singing on-stage, I'm not so sure about this whole plan. How about you? Are you ready for Sam and Bernie, the soul singers?

As evidenced by our Resurrecting the Champ insert caption entries last week, 99 percent of which included a swear word or some variation of "motherf***ing," all it takes is a photo of Samuel L. Jackson to turn even the most docile blue-haired granny into an f-bomb-dropping badass. Without further motherf***ing ado, here are this week's gloriously foul-mouthed winners:

1. "Hehe, well sh**. Maybe I should've said no to Snakes on a Plane. Hindsight. Got a quarter?"
-- Curt

2. "Ah man, I can't wait to wipe my ass with this."
-- Aaron Lopez

3. "What!! Half off at SuperCuts!!?? Out-Mother-F&%!ing-Standing!!!"
-- Shanec

See full image and all captions

This week, we bring you a photo of a mulletted Dan Fogler and a purple-robe-clad Christopher Walken from the upcoming Ping-Pong comedy-epic Balls of Fury. So let the male genitalia puns commence and hit us (not in the Balls, please) with your best caption. Winners will receive Balls of Fury underwear briefs, T-shirt, Ping-Pong paddle and a pack of balls -- just in case, you know, you don't have any of your own.

Read the official rules for this contest

Never one to sidestep controversy, writer/director Rod Lurie recently caused film purists to perk up their ears when he seemed to suggest during an interview that his upcoming remake of Sam Peckinpah's revenge thriller Straw Dogs would be tantamount to a moral improvement over the original film, since it would purposefully not rehash the ultra-controversial moment from the Peckinpah original when Susan George, playing the wife of Dustin Hoffman's character, begins to express pleasure during a brutal rape sequence. Lurie was more than ready to expand on his statement and explain exactly what he meant when I spoke with him recently -- he's out promoting his new sports journalism drama, Resurrecting the Champ, which opens in theaters today. During the course of our conversation, we talked about that film and what it says about the state of journalism today, we talked about his career path and how he wants to alter it, and I got his thoughts on the decline of the print film critic and the rise -- for better or worse -- of the Internet film critic. Here's the interview.

Cinematical: What are you up to today?

RL: Today's the day before the release of my film, so I'd like to say I'm just chilling out, but really we're watching all the reviews come in and all the box-office tracking and all that. It's a tense day, to say the least.

Cinematical: I wanted to ask, did you catch that article in the American Journalism Review this month, about film critics?

RL: No, I didn't.

Cinematical: Pretty interesting. It talks about print critics being offered buyouts or being simply let go at a lot of places, in favor of coverage from the wire services and all that. The underlying premise, I think, was that the trend was escalating.

RL: You know, I think about it a lot, because you know, I was a film critic for many years.

Cinematical: Right.

RL: There but for the grace of God go I, sort of thing, Ryan. You know, the Internet is a wondrous thing. It's the space travel of our time. By that, I mean it's the sort of thing that, twenty years ago was sort of unfathomable and it's done a lot of wonderful things, but it's also destroyed a lot of things. Print journalism is going to disappear, obviously, in the not too distant future. And part of the war of attrition on print journalism is getting rid of the non-essentials. Not that movie criticism is non-essential, but movie critics are, in the sense that there are plenty of wire services and we use Roger Ebert's reviews in 400 newspapers and the Associated Press and Reuters. It's a little sad, because I think it's nice for every town to have its own critic, its judge, its representative, its own community standards held up by the candle of that particular critic. So that's definitely going away, and it's too bad -- it really is.