In last year's Best Picture winner, No Country for Old Men, Tommy Lee Jones played a weary sheriff chasing after a man who was chasing after some money. Well, according to the San Antonio Express-News, Jones is now himself a weary man chasing after some money, specifically from the pockets of Paramount.

It appears that a contract signed by Jones between Paramount and its subsidiary, N.M. Classics, Inc. contained two "mistakes" that may have prevented him from garnering up to, and perhaps upwards of, $10 million in the wake of the film's success. What's worse is that he was still deducted for any number of expenses, despite alleged awareness of the errors on the part of Paramount. As such, Jones wants an auditor to go through their books and figure out just how much he is owed.

Naturally, neither side of the case has made much in terms of formal comment. As his character might say, if this ain't a mess, it'll do 'til the mess gets here.

[Thanks to Movie City News for the tip.]

How do you follow-up a broad comedy starring the biggest names in Hollywood, George Clooney and Brad Pitt? If you're the Coen brothers, you apparently hit the car in reverse and make your next effort a darker story and cast relative unknowns. Variety reports that the newly minted Oscar winning directors Joel and Ethan Coen have cast Tony-nominated stage actor Michael Stuhlbarg (The Pillowman) and TV's Richard Kind (Mad About You; Spin City) for the two lead roles in A Serious Man, their next film after this fall's Burn After Reading. The actors will play brothers in the 1967-set black comedy, which returns the Coens to Fargo territory by placing the story in their home turf of Minneapolis.

In fact, when we first learned of A Serious Man, more than a year ago (and almost a year before the Coens each won 3 Academy Awards, for writing, directing and producing No Country for Old Men), the script was described as being "in the vein of Fargo." Now we get a little inkling more about the plot of Serious: Stuhlberg will play a professor named Larry Gopnik, whose wife is leaving him and whose "socially inept" brother (Kind) won't leave the house. Hopefully, to further repeat the analogy to their double-Oscar-winning 1996 film, the Coens can cast Frances McDormand as the wife, she can then win another Academy Award and Kind (pictured above) can, like William H. Macy before him, finally go from near-obscurity to well-known, well-respected supporting actor within the next decade.

Cinematical is absolutely stoked to be premiering this exclusive poster for Burn After Reading (click to enlarge), written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen -- whose last film, No Country for Old Men, caused quite the stir last year online, in theaters and at the Academy Awards. Not sure if you heard of it ... something about a cowboy and a weird haircut? Yes? Maybe? Anyway, one thing the Coen boys are known for are their casts, and Burn After Reading is no exception; this flick boasts appearances from, well, read the poster. You've got Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich and Tilda Swinton. Need I say more? Or less? (Will this post self-destruct in sixty seconds?)

What's being touted as a "dark, spy-comedy," Burn After Reading looks to return the brothers to the kind of humor that was found in films like Raising Arizona or The Big Lebowski (two of my personal favs). The synopsis goes a little something like this: An ousted CIA official's (Academy Award nominee John Malkovich) memoir accidentally falls into the hands of two unwise gym employees intent on exploiting their find.

Burn After Reading will premiere at the 2008 Venice International Film Festival before arriving in theaters on September 12th.

Just when it was looking like No Country for Old Men had a monopoly on successful interpretations of Cormac McCarthy's drearily minimalistic prose, production on an adaptation of The Road suggests the possibility of healthy competition. The movie, which recently finished shooting in Pennsylvania and hits theaters in November, remains a wild card until post-production wraps. Nevertheless, if this colorful report from the set in The New York Times offers any indication, The Road appears poised to capture McCarthy's original gloomy lyricism. Reporter Charles McGrath points out the difficulties the filmmakers endured when the weather got too nice and the grass looked too green. In other words, they're working really hard to keep things bleak. The story, about a father and son wandering through desolate landscapes after a cataclysmic event destroys civilization, demands that the dark aura remain intact. However, it wouldn't work without two strong leads, and McGrath implies that with Viggo Mortensen and eleven-year-old Kodi Smit-Mcphee (the next Haley Joel Osment?), that need has been fulfilled.

The best match for The Road, however, is its director, John Hillcoat, whose work on The Proposition proves he's the man for the job. That woefully undervalued western had the intensity of a Sam Peckinpah movie in overdrive, and The Road screams for the same raw, stripped-down approach. It's nice to hear that Hillcoat sees the movie as an antithesis to Mad Max, meaning he wants to eschew cartoony violence in order to create a scarily realistic depiction of post-apocalyptic duress. Bring it on.

[Photo above: Kodi Smit-Mcphee on the set of The Road, courtesy of the New York Times]

After a long, hard-fought battle, the second official trailer for The Dark Knight took home top honors at this year's Golden Trailer Awards (with a margin of victory of 44%). The contest, held over at USA Today, tallied votes on films from several different categories -- all of which were chosen as this year's Golden Trailer winners earlier in the month. Among the top trailers users had a chance to vote on were Enchanted (Best Animation/Family), Tropic Thunder (Best Comedy), Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? (Best Documentary), No Country for Old Men (Best Drama), I am Legend (Best Horror) and Iron Man (Summer 2008 Blockbuster), among others. While there are certainly other trailers I would've picked to win their respective category (Pineapple Express, for one), I think we can probably all agree that The Dark Knight trailer is definitely tops.

Check out the trailer one more time above, then head on over to USA Today to see what else was nominated (as well as the official site for The Golden Trailer Awards). In your opinion, does anything beat The Dark Knight?

At a Cannes press conference for his WWII drama The Miracle at St. Anna, controversy hog Spike Lee took some swipes at Hollywood darlings Clint Eastwood and the Coen Brothers. Talking about the way he treated death in his first war film, Lee said: "I always treat life and death with respect, but most people don't... Look, I love the Coen brothers; we all studied at NYU. But they treat life like a joke. Ha ha ha. A joke. It's like, 'Look how they killed that guy! Look how blood squirts out the side of his head!' I see things different than that." And he targeted Eastwood for failing to put any black soldiers on screen in Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima: "If you reporters had any balls you'd ask him why. There's no way I know why he did that -- that was his vision, not mine. But I know it was pointed out to him and that he could have changed it. It's not like he didn't know."

I'm about 50 pages away from finishing The Road, and all I think about when I'm reading it (apart from praying the two stumble across another can of peaches -- just one more can of peaches, please!) is what director John Hillcoat is going to do with this sucker. It has the potential to be absolutely amazing, from a visual standpoint, and should make for an interesting comparison to Hillcoat's last film, The Proposition -- which, like The Road, was full of empty land and empty people. Needless to say, I cannot friggin' wait for this film to arrive in the fall.

Which brings us to this first image from The Road, courtesy of Row Three. The photo shows Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee as the father and son who attempt to head south across a post-apocalyptic United States, toward the coast. Along the way, they'll hide from cannibals, search for more food, clothing -- anything to keep them alive, really. The film, which is due out November 26, is based on the book by Cormac McCarthy (No Country for Old Men) and also stars Guy Pearce and Charlize Theron.

[via JoBlo]

When Heath Ledger passed away earlier this year, he left the planet as one of this generation's great actors; a guy who battled many personal demons off the screen, for sure, but one who gave everything to the role. And while we won't get to see his latest creation on the big screen until July 18th, early footage shows Ledger's version of Batman's arch-nemesis could go down as the darkest, baddest and craziest we've ever seen. My question to you, then, is: Will it be enough to land Ledger another Oscar nod come next year?

Sure, the Academy isn't all too keen on recognizing superhero movies unless we're talking about special effects or sound editing, but with bigger actors taking on riskier comic-related roles, isn't only a matter of time before one of these guys (or girls) turns out a performance worthy of a gold statue? Are these characters not meaty enough; are they not conflicted, troubled and crying out for a hug? If an Oscar can go to Javier Bardem for playing a sadistic, calculated murderer in No Country for Old Men, and Johnny Depp can be nominated for playing a sadistic, calculated murderer -- both in the same year -- I see no reason why Ledger's Joker can't be taken into consideration.

It's early still, I realize that -- but should this guy turn in the kind of performance we're all expecting, shouldn't he be recognized with an Oscar nomination? What are the chances here, folks?

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Right off the bat, I have issues with this list. Not so much for the fact that almost all of the films are sci-fi horror/thrillers, but because they left off a film with such a depressing ending that it still haunts me to this day. But first off, Den of Geek has compiled a list of what they feel are the 10 most depressing movie endings ever. Before you click over and check them out, be warned that massive amounts of spoilers await you. Here's their top ten: Soylent Green, The Elephant Man, The Descent, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Fly, Dead Ringers, Spider, Nineteen-Eighty Four, A.I. and -- drum roll please for number one -- The Mist.

Yes, valid points are made on all of them. Yes, they are depressing. But what about The Last American Virgin? Now there's a film with the most depressing ending I've ever seen (and if you've watched that film, you know exactly what I'm talking about). Off the top of my head, No Country for Old Men had a pretty depressing ending -- as did Goodfellas. There's Untamed Heart, Venus, Requiem for a Dream -- pretty much any film where someone is dying of an illness, but gets one last chance at love. Though it served as a bridge film, I thought Empire Strikes Back had a pretty depressing ending. Check out their list, then tell us which films were left off.

In your opinion, which film has the most depressing ending of all time? (Dammit, now I have The Last American Virgin ending stuck in my head. Sigh.)

UPDATE: Here's another list from our friend Alex on the 15 Bleakest Film Endings of All Time. A lot of the films you folks talked about in the comments are on his list, so hop on over and check it out.

Among my favorite film books is Michael J. Weldon's two-volume "Psychotronic" film guide. The first was published in 1983 and the second in 1996 (Michael hopes to publish a third at some point). Unlike Leonard Maltin's annual book, Weldon doesn't update an existing guide; each new guide is an entirely new volume. If you want to read about Halloween, you need Vol. 1 and if you want to read about Halloween 4, you need Vol. 2. A "Psychotronic" movie can be fairly easy to define. It's basically any of the "lower" film genres, dealing with the more questionable elements of society: horror, sci-fi, bikers, strippers, superheroes, zombies, kung-fu, vampires, comic books, drugs, sex, action heroes, rock 'n' roll, midnight movies, monsters, witches, cults, serial killers, magic, time travel, robberies, heists, contract killers, gladiators, Spaghetti Westerns, mad scientists, murder mysteries, pimps, voyeurs, etc.

Not many people care to admit it, but Hollywood is run by fear. Fear is an emotion generated by things that are not known or understood, and in the movie business, no one ever knows what's going to happen. (William Goldman was right when he said, "Nobody Knows Anything.") All those accountants, producers, publicists, entertainment TV shows, ad campaigns, etc. are all an attempt to get a handle on the unknown, an attempt to control the uncontrollable. Anything can happen. The world's biggest movie star can jump up and down on a couch and suddenly become a weirdo outcast. Or the star of a dismal turkey like Showgirls can turn around and find herself cast in a Woody Allen film. This fear, in essence, is why so many movies are so bad. The more investors and business people try to control their investment, the more they clamp down on it, and the more it gets smothered.

See, movies can live and breathe like an organic life form, but they have to have a chance. If brave producers step back and let the movie come to life in the hands of a genuine artist, they could wind up with something extraordinary like Joel and Ethan Coen's No Country for Old Men (229 screens), a film that somehow pleased critics both highbrow and middlebrow, won a handful of Oscars and has nearly grossed $75 million. This film has already entered the cultural canon as a classic of cinema. More or less the same can be said of Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood (224 screens), which, having lost the Oscar for Best Picture, is now in a position of being an underrated underdog. But those are exceptions to the rule. No one is immune to the fear: a few years back the Coen Brothers teamed up with sleazy producer Brian Grazer, of all people, and came up with their first dud, Intolerable Cruelty.

Looks like Ridley Scott and Leonardo DiCaprio are quite fond of one another, as both men have decided to team up once again on a new thriller called The Low Dweller. This script is being touted as a cross between The History of Violence and No Country for Old Men, and when the latter flick wins an Oscar for best picture -- well, you bet your you know what this is gonna be a hot property. And indeed it is; apparently, the script comes from some "twentysomething working as an insurance salesman in Pennsylvania," so says The Hollywood Reporter. Dude was just a random guy, plugging away on a spec script, and, whaddya know, it sparked up a huge bidding war between Warner Bros. and Sony before Relativity Media came in and swiped it up for a crisp $650,000 against $1 million.

Not bad for an insurance salesman from Pennsylvania.

According to HR, the film is set in Indiana during the mid-1980s, and it "centers on a man (DiCaprio) trying to assimilate into society after he's released from jail, only to find someone from his past pursuing him to settle a score." They add that another male character and a female love interest are also involved in some way. Sounds like it could be good, but then again that description doesn't give you all that much. Scott and DiCaprio just wrapped up Body of Lies, and each will now head to another project (Leo on Shutter Island and Scott on Nottingham) before returning for this one.

No Country for Old Men
There's nothing like the sweet relief of solid DVD choices, especially led by the Oscar-winning powerhouse, No Country for Old Men. There's a reason this film created so much buzz. Based on Cormac McCarthy's novel, the film is a mature and intricate story based on a premise that seems simple and over-done. Josh Brolin, continuing to prove his memorable acting chops, plays Llewelyn Moss, a man who comes upon an eerie drug deal gone bad -- where drugs, money, and bodies lay dust-covered and seemingly forgotten. The man takes the money, which, unsurprisingly, makes him the target of a sadistic killer played by Javier Bardem. While Llewelyn tries to escape, with a brow-raising amount of bad-guy know-how, Tommy Lee Jones' Sheriff Bell tries to come to the bottom of the story -- with the help of a bumbling Terminator, Garret Dillahunt.

Even this description doesn't really encapsulate the film, which is as powerful in its presentation as it is in its story. The silence of a score-free backdrop, and the calculated measure and release of information make the journey unique and worthy -- both as drama, and as a dark, sadistic comedy. You must throw yourself into the scene, and pick out the details as they unfold -- not in a Memento clue-fest, but in an environment where subtlety reigns.

But it's not only the men who shine. Kelly Macdonald proves her talents as a supportive, yet observant wife of Llewelyn, and Beth Grant steals her scenes as the bitching, troublesome mother of Macdonald's Carla Jean.

The DVD features 3 featurettes -- a making-of mini-doc, a short fluff piece about the directors, and a brief diary of the Country Sheriff.

Check out Patrick's review | Buy the DVD

With No Country For Old Men coming to DVD next Tuesday (3/11) in the final paces of the film's victory lap, it seems like a good time to note that when one of the film's Oscars went to Best Supporting Actor Javier Bardem, it came as the logical conclusion of a long-established fact for many Coen watchers: the brothers have a Midas touch when it comes to supporting parts -- writing them, casting them, directing them. Throughout their career, the writing-directing duo of Joel and Ethan Coen have always peppered their films with brief, brisk parts that both famous and lesser-known actors have turned into standout moments. Here, then, is a list of seven truly great Coen Brothers supporting parts, as well as runners-up from each film. As ever, these lists are highly subjective, and our comments section below awaits your thoughts. ...

1. The Dane (J.E. Freeman), Miller's Crossing

In Miller's Crossing (for my money, the the most overlooked and under-appreciated film in the Coen canon) the brothers pull a balancing act; they not only refuse, refute and re-invent gangster film styles, plots and archetypes, but they also freshen, fire up and fulfill those gangster film styles, plots and archetypes. So it is with J.E. Freeman's Eddie Dane, a fearsome tough guy whose simple, shark-like capacity for murder and mayhem drives the plot and whose complicated private life adds a few twists to the finale. Much is made of John Turturro's work in this film (as it should be) but it's The Dane who keeps sticking out in my mind whenever I re-visit Miller's Crossing, a small, self-contained example of why the film as a whole is so good.

(Runners-up: Bernie Bernbaum (John Turturro), Vera Bernbaum (Marcia Gay Harden) and Johnny Caspar (Jon Polito).

Oscar night is over, and everyone is basking in the glow of the winners. Or, excuse me, the "recipients" of the Oscars. Not too many years back, the politically-correct police changed the language from "and the winner is" to "and the Oscar goes to" because that made the losers sound less like losers. It's a joke now when someone says, "It's an honor just to be nominated," but I believe that's true. I think it would be unbelievably cool to be nominated, even if you were in the Best Documentary Short category and the bouncers tried to keep you from entering the theater. This week's column is dedicated to the losers that were honored just to be nominated.

My favorite film of the year, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, which is gone from theaters and available on DVD, received two nominations and lost both, which I expected. But this is a film that, like Anthony Mann's The Naked Spur and many other Westerns, will grow in stature despite its lack of Oscars. The year's other big Western, 3:10 to Yuma, also lost its twin nominations, but will probably endure as long as there remains a small, dedicated audience for Western adventures. On the other hand, I find that very few films in the "disease of the week" genre have much life after the Oscars. But The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (161 screens) will be different, for two reasons: 1) it was actually really, very good, and 2) it didn't win anything.