Another gory mafia story from David Cronenberg, this time set not in America's heartland but in the Russian immigrant community of London. Eastern Promises stars Viggo Mortensen as a limo driver and hired muscle for the mob whose life gets very complicated when a young woman is raped and murdered, but not before she leaves behind some crucial evidence that could tie the crime to the mob -- her newborn baby. She also leaves behind a diary, which falls into the hands of a London midwife, played by Naomi Watts. Whereas A History of Violence had a strong forward momentum and a relatively streamlined story, Eastern Promises is sprawling, with more characters to juggle, crosses and double-crosses to keep straight and the kind of attention to detail -- there's a whole Russian mafia 'making' ceremony, for example -- that some will find interesting and others will find tedious. It's a dense, tightly-wound and plotty picture that stops here and there for a bit of blood-curdling violence that will have undoubtedly some audience members on the verge of throwing up.

The film's cast does a uniformly fine job, with Viggo Mortensen never letting his accent slip. Even though we know intellectually that he's putting it on, we can still persuade ourselves to buy him as a Russian import from a tougher, more heartless culture where being the least-talkative person in the room is always some kind of sign of good sense. I especially liked his habit of plunking down his cigarettes wherever he finishes them, which says more about his underlying character than a lot of the dialogue he's given. Among the rest of the cast, Vincent Cassel is a standout as Kirill, the boss's son who thinks he can slap around anyone he wants with impunity and expects to inherit his father's empire. Cassel has been turning in good performances for years and doesn't get nearly as much credit as he deserves, but hopefully more roles in high-profile films like this one will fix that. As for Naomi Watts, she has a more or less thankless role as the straight woman reacting to events around her and trying to protect the baby.

• James Aljian (c.1932-2007) - Vice President of finance for MGM Studios in the 1970s and then for MGM/UA in the early 1980s. He died of cancer April 12, in Los Angeles. (Variety)
• Dick Arnall (1944-2007) - British animator who worked on Yellow Submarine and produced the BAFTA-nominated shorts A is for Autism and Home Road Movies. He died of pneumonia as a consequence of a brain tumor February 6. (Guardian)
• Nair Belo (1931-2007) - Brazilian actress who appears in Heart and Guts and Alberto Cavalcanti's Simon the One-Eyed. She died of heart disease April 17, in Rio De Janeiro. (Globo)
• Ariane Borg (1915-2007) - French actress who appears in The Phantom Wagon. She died April 16, in Couilly-Pont-Aux-Dames, Seine-et-Marne, France. (IMDb)
• Kitty Carlisle Hart (1910-2007) - Actress best known for starring alongside the Marx Brothers in A Night at the Opera. She also starred opposite Bing Crosby in She Loves Me Not and Here Is My Heart and appeared as herself in Hollywood Canteen. After more than forty years away from the movies, she made appearances in Radio Days and Six Degrees of Separation. She was also the widow of Moss Hart. She passed away following a battle with pneumonia April 17, in New York City. (MSNBC)
• Jean-Pierre Cassel (1932-2007) - French actor (pictured) who worked with many of the great masters of cinema. He starred in Melville's Army of Shadows, Bunuel's The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, Renoir's The Elusive Corporal, Clément's Is Paris Burning? and multiple films by Chabrol and by de Broca. He also appears among the ensemble casts of Superman II, Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, Murder on the Orient Express, Prêt-à-Porter, the upcoming Asterix at the Olympic Games and the 1973 version of The Three Musketeers and its follow-ups, The Four Musketeers and The Return of the Musketeers. His son is actor Vincent Cassel, with whom he appears in Matthieu Kassovitz's Café au Lait and The Crimson Rivers. He died April 19. (Playfuls)

Odds and ends from Wednesday:

• With a script from Steve Knight (Dirty Pretty Things) and David Cronenberg taking care of things behind the camera, I think it's safe to say I'm already looking forward to Eastern Promises. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Vincent Cassel has just signed on to play a man whose family owns a Russian brothel. The actor joins Naomi Watts and Viggo Mortensen.
• Okay, the following news is from Tuesday, not Wednesday -- but I won't tell anyone if you don't. Max Thieriot has hopped onboard Doug Liman's Jumper, where he'll be playing a younger version of Hayden Christiansen's character. Pic revolves around a kid (Christensen) who has the ability to teleport and uses the power to track down the person who murdered his mother.
• Don't you love it when studios throw the first few minutes of a film online and all they consist of are the opening credits? Hey, I'm all for a sneak peak of your film, but at least give me a nice, exciting scene. In saying that, Sony Pictures has been cool enough to debut the first three minutes of The Covenant over on the film's official website. Enjoy! [via Coming Soon]

• Bukowski: Born in to This - There is a morbidly fascinating fly-on-the-wall vibe that pervades John Dullaghan's profile of the late Beat writer Charles Bukowski, a base familiarity that parallels the Ham On Rye author's own inimitable hard-lived life and style. Epic in scope (and length), first-time director Dullaghan compiles dozens of meticulously screened hours of archival footage, coupling the best of it with new interviews with Bukowski survivors to present a terrifically real character study of a little-studied real character. The watchable Chuck-alike Happy Hour, starring Anthony LaPaglia as a booze-addled writer, is also just out.