Are we whores with EW scans? Probably. We can’t help that a) our readers are awesome and practically scanned the entire magazine for us and b) that EW still doesn’t have any of these images up in the magazine (here’s three more EW links just for the hell of it).
First up we have some new images of Paul Haggis’ “The Next Three Days” of which we saw the first trailer of yesterday. It stars Russell Crowe, obviously, and has a November 19 release. Then there’s a first look at Colin Firth and Helena Bonham Carter in Tom Hooper’s “The King’s Speech” (he directed “The Damned United’). It’s a Weinstein Company picture with a November 26 release date and Oscar on its mind. It will premiere at TIFF later this year and also stars the impressive cast of Guy Pearce, Michael Gambon and Geoffrey Rush, but we have to say TWC’s Oscar strengths are not what they were during the Weinstein’s Miramax days. Firth was justifiably nominated for his first Oscar for “A Single Man,” but TWC botched that Oscar campaign which otherwise should have lead to multiple nominations. Plus, one new photo of James Franco as mountain climber Aron Ralston in Danny Boyle’s “127 Hours.” The film is making its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival in September and hits regular theaters in November .
From there we have a new image of Ryan Reynolds in the Sundance hit “Buried,” which none of The Playlist team has seen (I think). We’re hoping it’s as good as the hype because 80-minutes in one location (a coffin buried under Iraqi soil) sounds hard to pull off. Its date: October 8. Next to it is a new photo of “Morning Glory,” a television dramedy where Rachel McAdams plays a hotshot TV producer tasked with helping out a ratings-ailing morning show that stars Harrison Ford and Diane Keaton. What was the last good behind-the-scenes TV-based film aside from “Anchorman”? “Broadcast News” in 1987? Nothing else comes to mind, and please don’t say “The Truman Show” or “Edtv.” Further reasons to care: hot screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna penned this one and J.J. Abrams is one of the producers. We pretty much just want to interview McAdams to see how many times she can try to diplomatically say Harrison Ford is “unique” and an “interesting” person to work with. Patrick Wilson and the inimitable Jeff Goldblum also co-star (BTW, when is someone going to do for his career what Wes Anderson and Quentin Tarantino did for Bill Murray and John Travolta respectively? It’s long overdue). The film is scheduled for a November 12th release.
Here’s your first official production still from Tony Scott’s “Unstoppable,” yet another train action-drama starring Denzel Washington (they went there already with the “The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3”), though that’s fairly relative since we’ve all already seen the trailer (which seemed to premiere prematurely on YouTube and not on Apple or Yahoo). Most of us are generally not fans of Scott’s increasingly schizoid and over-kinetic brand of cinema, but this writer has to say the “Unstoppable” trailer didn’t look half bad. The film also co-stars Chris Pine (Captain Kirk from the new “Star Trek”). This is another November 12th release.
Here’s three of the first official photos from James L. Brooks’ dramedy “How Do You Know,” a romantic triangle starring Reese Witherspoon, Paul Rudd, Owen Wilson and Jack Nicholson. Again, a “first look” is now rendered relative since the trailer was released yesterday (and looks fairly ungood). It hits theaters December 17.
