Carnage - New Trailer

New trailer for Roman Polanski's adaptation of the Tony winning play. Of course it's all about the way the writing and performances pull off the complex characters. A surprising black comedy mined from a very straightforward situation. The performances should be good fun.

Emmy Winners!

Winners indicated in bold. An interesting, unpredictable mix, with some welcome surprises - Kyle Chandler for Friday Night Lights, Melissa McCarthy for Mike & Molly - and some lamentable oversights - missing the last chance to give Steve Carrell at least one Emmy for seven great years of being Michael Scott on The Office. But then, they also gave Emmys to Peter Dinklage & Margo Martindale, so there's more good than bad. 

Outstanding Drama Series

 Boardwalk Empire

Dexter

Friday Night Lights

Game of Thrones

The Good Wife

*Mad Men

Outstanding Comedy Series

Big Bang Theory

Glee

*Modern Family

The Office

Parks and Recreation

30 Rock

Outstanding TV Miniseries or Movie

Cinema Verite

*Downton Abbey

The Kennedys

Mildred Pierce

The Pillars of the Earth

Too Big To Fail

Outstanding Actress in a Drama

Kathy Bates, Harry’s Law

Connie Britton, Friday Night Lights

Mireille Enos, The Killing

Mariska Hargitay, Law and Order: SVU

*Julianna Margulies, The Good Wife

Elisabeth Moss, Mad Men

Outstanding Actor in a Drama

Steve Buscemi, Boardwalk Empire

*Kyle Chandler, Friday Night Lights

Michael C. Hall, Dexter

John Hamm, Mad Men

Hugh Laurie, House

Timothy Olyphant, Justified

Outstanding Actress in a Comedy

Edie Falco, Nurse Jackie

Tina Fey, 30 Rock

Laura Linney, The Big C

*Melissa McCarthy, Mike & Molly

Martha Plimpton, Raising Hope

Amy Poehler, Parks and Recreation

Outstanding Actor in a Comedy

Alec Baldwin, 30 Rock

Louis C.K., Louie

Steve Carrell, The Office

Johnny Galecki, The Big Bang Theory

Matt LeBlanc, Episodes

*Jim Parsons, The Big Bang Theory

More after the cut:

Carnage - Trailer

Four Oscar winners, an Oscar nominee & an award-winning play bring you:

Kate Winslet. Matt Damon. Steven Soderbergh. Contagion.

Steven Soderbergh's latest is a virus epidemic thriller with a killer cast, including Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, Marion Cotillard, Laurence Fishburn, Jennifer Ehle, John Hawkes, Elliott Gould & Bryan Cranston. Looks like fun, in a horrible catastrophe kind of way.

This is Soderbergh's 5th film with Damon (and they team up again next year for Liberace, with Michael Douglas as the celebrated titular pianist, and Damon as his lover, Scott Thorson).

Soderbergh capitalises on his cast in the gritty character posters below:

Polanski's Carnage - Preview

Based on the Tony-nominated play, God of Carnage, Roman Polanski's Carnage replaces the play's excellent cast (Marcia Gay Harden, James Gandolfini, Hope Davis & Jeff Daniels) with a new, equally intriguing cast of Kate Winslet, John C Reilly, Jodi Foster & Christoph Waltz. A very eclectic set of actors with very little in common besides the 4 Oscars between them (2 belong to Foster, none to Reilly).

The story roughly concerns two sets of parents who get together to talk after their sons are involved in a schoolyard brawl. The witty script is set entirely inside a single New York apartment. Needless to say, Polanski did not shoot in New York, as the warrant for his arrest was not overruled by his Oscar, but it will be interesting to see what he and his cast bring to the table. Foster seems a touch too intense for comedy, but we shall see.

    

Jason Reitman's Young Adult & Labor Day

Jason Reitman has very quickly become Hollywood gold, with 3 great, biting films proving he has much more to offer than his father's surname (his father is Ivan Reitman, once legendary director of Stripes & Ghostbusters, recently director of, um, My Super Ex-Girlfriend & No Strings Attached).

Reitman teamed up with Oscar-winning Juno screenwriter, Diablo Cody, to direct Young Adult, starring Charlize Theron as a divorced fiction writer returning to her small home town to rekindle a romance with her now-married ex boyfriend, played by Patrick Wilson.

Any resemblance to Never Been Kissed may or may not be intentional. It will be interesting to see what Diablo Cody dishes up next (after camping up sexy teen horror in Jennifer's Body & turning Toni Collette into everyone's favourite schizofrenic American mom on Dreamworks TV's United States of Tara), but with Reitman & Theron on board, there is no reason to believe it will be anything less than great.

Wasting no time, Reitman has already cast Kate Winslet & Josh Brolin for his next feature, an adaptation of Joyce Maynard's novel, Labor Day. The novel follows bored, horny teenager Henry and his depressed, divorced mother, Adele, who allow a mysterious convict, Frank, to take them hostage in their own home & learn important life lessons, like how to throw a baseball, how to make a perfect piecrust, how to handle jealousy & betrayal & still put loved ones before yourself and that true love is worth waiting for.

Just a touch of Eastwood's A Perfect World. Reitman's last novel adaptation was Up in the Air, so add this one to your watch list.

The Making of Todd Haynes' Mildred Pierce

With I'm Not There, Far From Heaven & Safe on his CV, Todd Haynes is some kind of legend.

Fascinating 'making of' doc for his upcoming HBO mini-series adaptation of Mildred Pierce.