The Playlist

'Captain America' Star Hayley Atwell Joins Ray Winstone & Plan B In TV Cop Remake 'The Sweeney'

By Oliver Lyttelton
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October 28, 2011 1:37 AM
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5 Comments

'Homeland' Lead Damian Lewis & Steven Mackintosh Also In Cast"Captain America: The First Avenger" was a funny one, wasn't it? The first half was the best superhero of the year, the second, a plotless, uneven mess. But it had many pleasures, and first among them was Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter. Given an unusually well-drawn female character for a comic book movie to get her teeth into, the British actress, a relative unknown in the U.S. who took the role after it was turned down by the likes of Keira Knightley and Emily Blunt, knocked it out of the park, proving feisty, kick-ass, and vulnerable, often within the same scene, showing wider audiences what many have known since her debut in BBC drama "The Line of Beauty" -- she's going to be a massive star.

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Review: '13' Remake Proves To Be One Unlucky Number (To Put It Mildly)

By Gabe Toro
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October 27, 2011 8:21 AM
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4 Comments

It’s unfortunate, but there’s a Movie Content Hierarchy. Great filmmakers don’t pretend this exists -- Darren Aronofsky makes a horror movie and genre-hating critics love it, and former Fangoria mainstay David Cronenberg maintains his integrity and themes of perversion and body modification while becoming a boutique festival filmmaker. But more often than not, directors, screenwriter and producers are beholden to the unimaginative thought of “this is how it is meant to be done.” More specifically, films from other parts of the world, particularly smaller ones, have their own vocabulary, their own rhythms and idiosyncrasies. Gela Babluani’s “13 Tzameti” is one of those films, a slow burn thriller from France shot in stark black and white and featuring minimal accoutrement in terms of score, outsized performances, or onscreen violence. It’s a picture that aims low but with laser-sharp precision, to the point where you felt that Babluani was a major storytelling talent with little affection for sentimentality or empty showmanship.

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Martin Scorsese's Unfinished 'Hugo' Is An Enchanting Fairytale & Affectionate Loveletter To Cinema

By The Playlist
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October 11, 2011 3:51 AM
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1 Comment

Filmmaker Introduces Work-In-Progress 3D Film At Surprise New York Film Festival ScreeningWhat else could it have been? When Monday's New York Film Festival "secret" screening was announced last week, speculation went into overdrive. Most missed the fact that the picture would be a 2011 release which greatly narrowed down the field. Clint Eastwood's "J.Edgar"? The NYFF/Eastwood relationship is a close one, but the picture is already promised to the AFI festival in early November. David Fincher's "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" was another big theory, but that film's still in the editing room. That left either Martin Scorsese's "Hugo" or one of Steven Spielberg's fall pictures, but considering Scorsese already debuted his George Harrison doc this month, it seemed rather obvious, even before the secret was unveiled this afternoon.

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Ray Winstone Is Eddie Marsan's Twin In 'Snow White And The Huntsman'

By Kevin Jagernauth
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June 22, 2011 7:45 AM
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2 Comments

You gotta give it up to Universal. While their Snow White film will come in second to whatever Tarsem is currently cooking up, they've gone ahead with a batch of genius casting that vaults "Snow White And The Huntsman" right ahead of the competition. With Ian McShane, Eddie Izzard, Toby Jones, Bob Hoskins, Eddie Marsan and Stephen Graham all set to board, the Rupert Sanders film has gone ahead and found one more amazing Brit character actor which pretty much puts every one of our favorite Blighty thespians in one movie. Nice move.

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Ray Winstone & Gillian Anderson To Star In Sexed-Up 'Great Expectations' For Brit TV

By Sam Price
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June 1, 2011 1:51 AM
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0 Comments

A zeitgeisty role like Agent Dana Scully may cast a long shadow, but Gillian Anderson seems determined not to have the first line of her obituary read “that redheaded gal off 'The X-Files.'" Lurching in recent years between respectable British TV costume dramas and mirthless crime fare (“Straightheads” won’t be one to tell the grandkids about), Anderson is now in talks to take the most iconic role in a new adaptation of Charles Dickens’ classic novel “Great Expectations” as Miss Haversham, alongside eternal Cockney bruiser Ray Winstone as the novel's duplicitous Magwitch. Like everything else nowadays, though, don’t expect this to be your mother’s rainy Sunday afternoon "Great Expectations". Oh no, The Daily Mail reports that this three-part miniseries threatens to be “sexually charged”.

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Stephen Dorff, Ray Winstone & Michelle Monaghan To Star In David Jacobson's 'Boot Tracks'

By Oliver Lyttelton
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May 25, 2011 1:21 AM
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1 Comment

Matt Dillon No Longer AttachedBeing cast as the lead in Sofia Coppola's "Somewhere" didn't immediately seem to give Stephen Dorff the big career boost that he might have hoped, mainly due to the film being a hollow, tedious experience. But the actor, who for some time had languished in DTV hell, is certainly on the up, with roles in Tarsem's "Immortals" and the Emile Hirsch indie "The Motel Life" on the way, and it seems to have legitimized the actor as a leading man in the independent world again.

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Remake/Sequel Update: 'The Long Good Friday,' 'Waiting To Exhale' & 'Juice'

By Kevin Jagernauth
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April 22, 2011 9:35 AM
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1 Comment

It wouldn't be Hollywood if there weren't numerous remakes and sequels happening, so here's some updates on a few that have been flying somewhat, if not totally under, the radar.

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Ben Drew (aka Plan B) To Star Opposite Ray Winstone In 'The Sweeney'

By Oliver Lyttelton
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April 5, 2011 1:24 AM
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2 Comments

'Trainspotting' Writer John Hodge To Pen ScriptAs a seminal British TV cop show, "The Sweeney," which followed Flying Squad members Carter (Dennis Waterman) and Regan (John Thaw) as they bust heads across London, has long proved influential in the genre -- it's more or less the total inspiration for popular sci-fi series "Life on Mars" -- and it's no surprise that a big-screen reboot has been in the works for years. The film came within weeks of filming in 2008, with Ray Winstone as Regan and Michael Fassbender as Carter, but Fox Searchlight balked at a relatively high (for the U.K.) $16 million budget, and the plug was pulled.

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Ray Winstone, Jim Sturgess & Lesley Manville Team For Noir 'Ashes'; Film Co-Financed By Coldplay

By Kevin Jagernauth
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March 17, 2011 5:30 AM
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0 Comments

We're not sure what's going on in the Chris Martin household, but Apple's parents are looking to be switching up their careers. With Gwyneth Paltrow making strides into the music biz, Martin and his bandmates are now dipping their toes into the hard knock world of film financing.

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