I stumbled out of Hellboy II: The Golden Army feeling as if my imagination had eaten too much. In terms of sheer spectacle and visual invention, Hellboy II is an absolute knockout, frames stuffed with bizarre creatures and mystic runes and arcane weaponry and wondrous design. And yet, Hellboy II has more than a little heart to it; it's scrappy and self-aware, and never out of touch with what it is. Adapting Mike Mignola's post-superhero retro-styled comic series Hellboy for the second time, writer-director Guillermo del Toro corrects some of the mistakes of the first Hellboy, makes a few mistakes of its own, picks itself up, keeps going. And, on the way, knocks the back of your eyeballs for a loop. As our British friends say, Hellboy II: The Golden Army does what it says on the tin: It is a sequel about a character named Hellboy (Ron Perlman), and yes, an army of golden warrior-robots is involved, the mystical weapon of mass destruction that the elf-prince Nuada (Luke Goss) hopes to seize control of so as to wage war against humanity ... I know I'm getting ahead of myself. Then again, so does Hellboy II, right from the jump, and it doesn't slow down.

A whole crop of new Hellboy II: The Golden Army photos have popped up over at Yahoo Movies. Like, a lot of them. There's also the promise of a new trailer premiering tomorrow, so make sure you head back there for that. Hellboy II: The Golden Army, of course, is the sequel to Hellboy -- and it's directed by the always-nutty Guillermo del Toro. Starring Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Doug Jones and Luke Goss, Hellboy II once again follows the planet's toughest, roughest superhero as he goes to battle against a merciless dictator and an unstoppable army of creatures. This just has awesome written all over it. You can check out another image below, then click on either to check out Yahoo's gigantic gallery.

Hellboy II: The Golden Army hits theaters on July 11.

It sounded a bit creepy when news about the black comedy Driving Lessons first hit. The film was said to focus on "a troubled family who gets a second chance at happiness when the mother (Davis) suffers a memory loss and can't recall the last 15 years of her life." Now, as more cast sign on, it's sounding entirely different. The Hollywood Reporter has posted that Max Thieriot (Nancy Drew), Bow Wow (The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift), Evan Ross (Life Support), Chi McBride (Boston Public), Gabrielle Anwar (The Tudors), Madeline Zima (Californiacation), Brittany Robertson (Dan in Real Life), Jermaine Williams (Stomp the Yard), and John Patrick Amedori (Stick It) have already signed on for parts, and that Selma Blair is in final negotiations.

As it's being described now, Bunnie (Hope Davis' mother character) is "given a second chance at her unhappy marriage to Jack (Dermot Mulroney) after losing her memory. It conveniently helps her to forget an interracial affair with her burly next-door neighbor Simon (McBride)." Go, Chi! Then, things get more weird -- Thieriot will play her "religious, right-wing teenage son," Robertson is the "sexually adventurous daughter," and Blair is finally beyond playing super-young girls and instead, she'll be "a sarcastic lesbian high school teacher having an affair with a student (Zima)." Anwar, meanwhile, will be "Jack's sexy, power-crazed co-worker," while Ross plays McBride's son, and Bow Wow and Williams will be meddlesome thugs. There's no word on Amedori's role. It's definitely a strange selection of random bits, and whether it'll all work together -- we'll have to wait and see. Production gears up next month in LA.

Granted, it's not like Selma Blair's Liz Sherman is some strange creature covered in prosthetics, but I find it amusing that the first picture we're getting of her, which has gone up on the Hellboy II: The Golden Army website, is just of her face. Well, her face and neck, so you can see her necklace. Selma looks great, serious, and a good deal of tough, but I wish we could see more of her -- something recognizable from the Hellboy universe, instead of just digitally-created smoke. Without the environment, and clothing, she's just Selma Blair, not Liz Sherman. Fortunately, this is only the beginning of the images coming our way this week. In the next few days, Universal will be releasing pics of Abe Sapien and Hellboy. Stay tuned!

We could really use a new adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. It could be a faithful film, which would have certain relevance in a time when genetic research and other culturally debated scientific progresses, medical or not, continue to mark us as a God-aspirant species. Or it could be an updated or altered adaptation, to make the relevance more obvious. I think James Whale's films about the doctor and the monster are terrific, and we already have the greatest variation -- Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein -- but I'd personally like to see a new take on the original novel. Well, according to JoBlo, the guy who would most like to take the reigns on that idea is Guillermo Del Toro. During a visit to the set of Hellboy 2: The Golden Army, JoBlo's Jason Adams quoted Del Toro as saying he "would kill to make" a faithful "Miltonian tragedy" version.

Apparently when Kenneth Branagh tried to do this 13 years ago with his Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, there was an unshot version of the script by Frank Darabont. Del Toro claims that draft was, according to Adams, "pretty much perfect." I admit I never bothered with Branagh's film. I'd rather watch "Johnny 5" play the monster than Robert DeNiro (or at least watch the robot read the book, as he does in Short Circuit 2). So, I can't directly say what didn't work about the adaptation. All I know is that it seems to have been pretty much disregarded by everyone. That said, I'm also not the biggest Del Toro enthusiast in the world. I'm not going to exclaim that he needs to make this and that he would deliver the best Frankenstein ever. I would, however, love to see him make the attempt.

On November 20, for the first time ever, a movie will be exclusively distributed via iTunes. Yes, we already heard about this briefly when our own Kevin Kelly talked with Edward Burns at ComicCon. But at the time, Burns had said he would be given a trial run, in which his latest film, Purple Violets, would be available on iTunes for four weeks beginning on October 9. That date has come and gone, and now the New York Times has revealed that the film will actually get a full, exclusive release on November 20. That means you won't be able to see it in theaters, or on DVD, or on Cable. Yet, anyway. Personally, I'm a bit shocked the idea didn't happen sooner. There's tons and tons of indie films out there that can't get good distro. Going with iTunes sounds like a great opportunity to get notice. Plus, with iTunes still only offering less than 1000 movies, and still unable to get titles from all the studios, the service would do well to increase its library with exclusives like this. The idea certainly worked for companies like Netflix, which started exclusive distribution via its Red Envelope Entertainment moniker. Maybe one day, like Red Envelope, iTunes could even produce its own movies.

The Times goes into detail about iTunes distribution, mentioning the strategy of putting Wes Anderson's Hotel Chevalier up for free download, which sparked extra interest in The Darjeeling Limited. It also points out the benefit of having short films on iTunes in general, not just for well-knowns like Anderson. The move can affect DVD rentals, though, according to Burns, who has had difficulty securing video distribution for Purple Violets now that it will be available on iTunes. The movie, which stars Burns, Debra Messing, Patrick Wilson and Selma Blair, premiered earlier this year at the Tribeca Film Festival, where Eric called it Burns' "best film since The Brothers McMullen ... a more mature film than anything Burns has done in the past."

No director alive can make family melodramas as brilliantly as Douglas Sirk once did, but I'd suggest that Robert Benton comes the closest. Though filmmakers continue to grind out weepies by the truckload, it's extremely difficult to find that exact thread between heavy and hammy, perhaps even more difficult than making a funny comedy. Weepies generally tell depressing stories, about death, disease, failed romances, unrequited romances, estranged romances, etc. The trick is not to make the film itself depressing. Most directors make the mistake of shooting the material head-on, which has the effect of bludgeoning the audience rather than coaxing them in. Part of Sirk's genius was his timing; he made his best films in the 1950s when you couldn't show everything. He used his skills, his palate of colors, space and the elements, to suggest, rather than tell, his stories.

Admittedly, Benton isn't as visually astute as Sirk, but he's a good writer, good with words and characters. He has lots of different kinds of films on his resume -- he's often attracted to crime stories -- but his melodramas almost always hit home: Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), for which he won a Best Director Oscar, Places in the Heart (1984), and Nobody's Fool (1994). Even his previous film, The Human Stain (2003), worked on a basic, emotional level, though critics generally dismissed it because of its failure to live up to Philip Roth's novel and its mismatched casting of Wentworth Miller as a young Anthony Hopkins. Benton's new movie has less of a pristine literary pedigree, and so perhaps it will go down easier.

Cinematical has just received an assortment of exclusive images from the upcoming indie drama Feast of Love. This is one of those ensemble pieces in which the lives of a community of friends in Oregon (don't see many flicks set in Oregon) intertwine to form a narrative about love, romance, loss and redemption. Feast of Love arrives in theaters on September 28, and here's the straight synopsis in case you're interested (then check out the gallery below, or click here):

From venerable Academy Award® winning director Robert Benton (KRAMER VS. KRAMER), comes a kaleidoscopic ode to life and love in all its funny, sad, sexy, crazy, heartbreaking and life sustaining facets: FEAST OF LOVE. In a coffee shop in a tight-knit Oregon community, local professor Harry Stevenson (Academy Award® winner Morgan Freeman) witnesses love and attraction whipping up mischief among the town's residents. From the unlucky in love, die-hard romantic coffee shop owner Bradley (Academy Award® nominee Greg Kinnear) who has a serial habit of looking for love in all the wrong places, including with his current wife Kathryn (Selma Blair); to the edgy real estate agent Diana (Radha Mitchell) who is caught up in an affair with a married man (Billy Burke) with whom she shares an ineffable connection; to the beautiful young newcomer Chloe (Alexa Davalos) who defies fate in romancing the troubled Oscar (Toby Hemingway); to Harry himself, whose adoring wife (Jane Alexander) is looking to break through his wall of grief after the wrenching loss of a beloved . . . they all intertwine into one remarkable story in which no one can escape being bent, broken, befuddled, delighted and ultimately redeemed by love's inescapable spell .

I've always been a bit hard on Edward Burns, but only because I think he has potential as a filmmaker. In my opinion, there's no one else out there right now who knows how to capture New York the way Eddie does. The man lives for this city; it is, and will always be, his muse. However, because he always insists upon wearing so many different hats (writer, director, star and sometimes producer) during each of his films, something always suffers. And as I've approached each one, I sort of go in wondering what Eddie will screw up this time. Will it be a poorly-written script? Wooden acting? Bad direction? All of the above? That being said, I'm happy to report that Purple Violets is his best film since The Brothers McMullen (the 1995 Sundance hit that helped launch Eddie's career behind the camera). It's genuine, it's from the heart and -- I can't believe I'm saying this about an Edward Burns film -- it includes terrific performances from well-written female characters.

When I told a friend of mine that I was going to see the new Eddie Burns film Purple Violets, they were immediately turned off -- as if a bad odor had just entered the room. "You mean, Eddie directed a film called Purple Violets? I don't get it, did he have a sex change operation? Is he now a woman? What's up with that girly title?" For those that love Eddie for his take on masculine Irish-American life in the blue-collar suburbs of New York, Purple Violets might not go down as smoothly as that pint of Coors Light. Yet, the beauty of this film lies in its title. Purple and violet are often confused as being the same color, but they're not. It's almost like meeting someone with whom you were friends with 12 years ago, and trying to re-establish the same type of relationship you had with them back then. However, they've changed, you've changed and while on the surface you both kind of look the same, inside you're both very different people. Thus is the premise for Purple Violets: Four old friends reunite after 12 years apart, while attempting to heal old wounds and ignite new memories.

Where in the world is Lori Petty? It might surprise you to know that she is actually still around. Although she's pretty much fallen off the radar after the early 90's when she starred with Madonna in A League of Their Own and the beloved Tank Girl with Naomi Watts, she's still been working. Unfortunately, I haven't seen many of her roles since then. Last I saw the tough girl, she was Faith, a lesbian rocker in Prey for Rock & Roll, who was dating Shelly Cole -- she played Rory's friend Madeline on Gilmore Girls. However, things seem to be speeding up for the actress right now.

Ms. Petty has somehow found time after being the "First Murderer" in the upcoming Richard III, and nabbing starring roles in the upcoming Coming Soon, Broken Arrows and The Last Guy on Earth, to plan her directorial debut. The Poker House, which she also co-wrote with David Alan Grier, is about a 14-year-old girl and her two younger sisters in 1976 who have to "make their way through the tragedy that seems to be their life." Whether the title is a metaphor, or poker is involved, I don't know. The feature is already lensing in Chicago, and will star Petty and Grier, as well as Selma Blair, Bokeem Woodbine from Ray and Jennifer Lawrence. Which Lawrence it is, I don't know, since there are three. However, I'll go out on a limb and say it is this one, and if so, she'll probably be one of the sisters.