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Steven Spielberg's Abraham Lincoln pic will definitely have a run for its money if it ever gets made. Robert Redford is cooking up one hell of a roster for his drama The Conspirator, which focuses on Mary Surratt's involvement with the assassination. Now Variety reports that the filmmaker has lined up the rest of his cast. First, as we already learned: Robin Wright Penn will play Mary Surratt, "the only female charged in the conspiracy to kill" Lincoln. She was said to have given John Wilkes Booth and David Herold weapons. James McAvoy, meanwhile, will play Frederick Aiken, the war hero and man tapped to defend her in court. And now:

Tom Wilkinson -- Reverdy Johnson, a Surratt sympathizer and mentor to Allen, who was the former attorney general and U.S. senator.

Evan Rachel Wood -- Anna Surratt, daughter of Mary. She later had to fight for her mother's remains.

Kevin Kline -- Edwin Stanton, Lincoln's War Secretary who took charge of the crime scene after the assassination. He was very involved in the entire proceeding, including concocting a rather unique and painful hood for the accomplices while on trial.

Alexis Bledel -- Sarah Weston, the young Aiken's wife.

Justin Long -- "a role" ... The trade outlined everyone's role but his. Will this be, I dare say, Lincoln? (hah.)

Frankly, Kline would be enough to sell me, but I'm impressed both by the fresh story picked (and all the aspects Redford has to choose from), and the heaps of talent laid on it -- a mixture of names we'd expect and some surprises as well. Could this be a big twist for Long, perchance?

Bit by very slow bit, we're learning more about Roman Polanski's next film. Current legal woes might have him occupied, but the world of casting moves on. Variety reports that Tom Wilkinson and Jim Belushi are rounding out the cast of the director's next film, The Ghost.

The feature (previously covered here and here) follows an ex-British Prime Minister who shacks up on an island and writes a memoir while his aide drowns, "triggering political and sexual intrigue." At one time, it was going to be Brosnan as the ex PM, and Cage as the writer. Now, things have changed, and Variety notes that the cast consists of Wilkinson and Belushi, plus Kim Cattrall, Ewan McGregor, and Olivia Williams. I imagine that Ewan is taking over the writerly gig, but it still sucks -- it would've been nice to see Cage putting aside his action and getting creative once again. I guess we'll still have to wait.

Nevertheless, Polanski's film should prove intriguing. Production begins next month in Berlin. Think Polanski will have his legal issues figured out by then?

Best known as the writer of The Usual Suspects, Christopher McQuarrie has an impressive number of films on his resume (including his criminally overlooked directorial debut, The Way of the Gun), but Valkyrie -- opening nationwide this week -- saw him also serve as a producer alongside director Bryan Singer and star Tom Cruise. A thriller about the 1944 plot inside the German military to try and assassinate Adolph Hitler, Valkyrie turns one of history's nightmares into a taut modern thriller -- a tricky balancing act that the film pulls off: "What we tried to do was to always maintain the focus that this was a movie about an event, that this was a movie about the events of July 20th (1944), and remain focused on that. We weren't making a bio-pic, we weren't making a film about the Holocaust -- all of those things were happening ... (but) this movie is about this incredible event that happened. ... And at the same time, maintaining a sense of responsibility."

McQuarrie spoke with Cinematical from New York about working alongside the German government, how producing a mega-million war film was like "drinking from a firehose," forgoing German accents, his possible future take on superheroic franchise The Champions and much more. You can listen to the podcast here at Cinematical by clicking below:



You can also download the interview in full right here -- and those of you with RSS Podcast readers can find all of Cinematical's podcast content at this link.

Reuniting after 2004's Closer, it appears that stars Julia Roberts and Clive Owen, along with Bourne writer Tony Gilroy, are all out to have a bit more fun with Duplicity; the trailer just went up over at Apple.

If anything, it comes off as more of a zippy heist film of sorts than the thriller I took it to be from the earliest synopsis on, even though corporate espionage remains the name of the game. Then again, maybe we're overdue for another Thomas Crown Affair-like outing, and between the cast (which also includes Tom Wilkinson, who was in Gilroy's Michael Clayton, and Paul Giamatti, who shared the screen with Clive in Shoot 'Em Up) and the crew, I'm pretty much sold.

(If Billy Bob Thornton is still in this, though, as Monika reported last January, he sure isn't showing up here, and IMDb remains mum.)

Duplicity opens on March 20th of next year -- about a month after Clive's bang-ier espionage efforts in The International.

Saw some movies last weekend. Some trailers, too. One was for a kidnapping thriller called Taken. A young woman is kidnapped, presumably for ransom, but little do the criminals know that their captive's father is some sort of secret agent badass who will stop at nothing to get his daughter back. Distressingly standard-issue stuff. Even worse, arguably, was The Uninvited -- just the title is so trite it practically begs you to forget it. I mean, this is at least the twelfth movie called The Uninvited. (For the record, there have only been seven Takens.) The plot concerns a teenager who returns home following the death of her mother to find that dad has shacked up with a new girlfriend who, it would appear, is a serial murderess. Also, there are ghosts, J-horror style.

This is not promising. Ordinarily I'd drag myself to these movies out of a sense of obligation, or skip them altogether. (Well, Luc Besson's involvement in Taken would probably ensure a viewing.) But wait -- who are those actors? What is Liam Neeson doing lending his gravitas to a Jason Bourne-style figure with a personal vendetta? And is that Elizabeth Banks, taking time out from being charming and hilarious to play an evil step mother/serial killer who threatens to choke Emily Browning with a pearl necklace?

You'd think that being married to Madonna, Guy Ritchie would have picked up on the value of occasionally reinventing oneself. But no, he keeps making the same movie, the same ultra-cool exercises in British gangster violence and stylish criminal shenanigans, and RockNRolla is the latest entry. Then again, the one time he did try something different, the result was Swept Away, so maybe he's wise to stay in his comfort zone.

At any rate, RockNRolla inspires strong feelings of "meh" in me. It's not nearly as clever, funny, or stylish as Snatch or Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, though the accents are a lot less indecipherable this time around, so that's nice. It's also not as good as Gangster No. 1 or Sexy Beast or many of the other gritty British gangster capers that have come around in the last several years. It feels like a rerun -- which isn't necessarily a bad thing, after all. People watch reruns all the time.

Our narrator is Archie (Mark Strong), who works as the calm, suave right-hand man to Lenny (Tom Wilkinson), the most powerful money-lender and underworld boss in London. Half the city's councilors, judges, and cops are in Lenny's pocket, and he has leveraged this influence into a massive fortune in real estate.

Lenny is not a figure to be messed with, but the Russians don't know that. A new mover and shaker named Uri (Karel Roden) has come to town to strike a deal with Lenny -- it involves paying Lenny to bribe city officials to get a construction project underway -- and he's a formidable figure himself. Lenny is old school; Uri is dangerously modern.

Oddly enough we're told it's Justin Theroux, who's making his screenwriting debut with Tropic Thunder a bit later this summer. Yes, that would be the same Justin Theroux who played the immortal role of Adam Kesher in Mulholland Dr. and the badass Irishman Seamus O'Grady in Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle. The trade piece breaking the story gives no hint of why Marvel Studios thought of Theroux for the project, and I couldn't find out anywhere else, but I'm sure someone will give an interview soon enough.

Last year, Theroux directed an indie called Dedication from someone else's script, starring Tom Wilkinson and Billy Crudup. It got mediocre reviews and I missed it, despite my eagerness to watch anything with Wilkinson. If a career change is what the actor was after, he certainly got it: writing Iron Man 2 is a pretty plum gig. Can you imagine?

Of course, I tend to doubt that the sequel -- which is set for release in April, 2010 -- is going to wind up with just one screenwriter when all is said and done. Theroux's draft will probably be reworked, retouched and polished a dozen times. But it's cool that the actor-turned-director-turned-scribe will at least take a first crack.

Sorry silicone lovers -- this is not a case of actresses getting bustier, or joining a film about the porn industry or silicon implants. If you remember, last November I blogged about Ray Winstone's upcoming films, one of which was 44 Inch Chest, which would have him acting alongside Ian McShane, John Hurt, and Tim Roth. According to Variety, even more have signed on for the British gangster film -- namely, Tom Wilkinson, Stephen Dillane (who recently kicked butt as Thomas Jefferson in John Adams), Joanne Whalley, and Melvil Poupaud.

Written by Sexy Beast writers Louis Melles and David Scinto, and being directed by Melcolm Venville, the film stars Winstone as a gangster "who seeks revenge on his wife and young French lover." I think it would be safe to say that Whalley (Willow) will play the wife, and Poupaud (Goodboy in Speed Racer) will play the lover, since, well, his name in the film is "Loverboy."

The film is currently in production in London, and some distribution agreements have already been reached -- Alliance will handle the release in Canada and the UK, and Momentum will handle Spain.

When I first posted about the film back in November, I said that the upcoming Clive Owen and Julia Roberts-starring Duplicity filled me with curiosity and dread. The curiosity (and a little excitement, I must admit) came from the fact that it was re-teaming two stars from Closer -- a film I really enjoy. On the other hand, I hear "Duplicity," and I think of the similar-sounding Derailed. That makes me want to run for my life. (Famous last words said before watching the latter: It's got Owen. It can't be all bad.)

All that said, there's two more great actors joining the cast, which should start to erase those Derailed fears. The Hollywood Reporter has posted that Tom Wilkinson and Billy Bob Thornton are looking into joining the cast. (Wilkinson is in negotiations, and THR doesn't say whether BB has officially signed on yet.) This will re-team Wilkinson with Michael Clayton director Tony Gilroy, who also wrote the script, so I imagine he'll sign on the dotted line soon enough -- Tom's role in the film did nab him an Oscar nod for supporting actor, after all.

The thriller focuses on Roberts and Owen's characters, "who are longtime lovers and rival corporate spies who team to pull off an elaborate con." (Sounds like Mr. & Mrs. Smith meets Ocean's 11.) Wilkinson is set to play the CEO of a large company, while Thornton's role is said to be "a more maverick type of CEO." The film will shoot this spring in the Big Apple.