The Hollywood Reporter and Variety tells us about two new upcoming film projects for Gaspard Ulliel:

"French actor Jean Reno will play the father of young co-star Gaspard Ulliel in Laurent Tuel's "Inside Ring," about a young man trying to break free from his father's gang. The film, produced by Thelma Films' Christine Gozlan and Alter Films' Alain Terzian, also co-stars Giocante and 2008 Cesar award-winner Sami Bouajila. Set to make it's market debut in Cannes, the films world sales agent, TF1 International, said."

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Also from Variety:

"A Jerusalem love-story "Survival of the Fittest," with Gaspard Ulliel and Jasmine Trinca, is directed by Alain Tasma who broke through with TV movie "October 17, 1961."

An article appearing at the New York Times is one of my favorite Gaspard Ulliel portraits. It's a very generous praise of the young actor's acting talents for the movie Strayed, coming from Elle magazine's film critic, Karen Durbin. Says Durbin:

Mr. Ulliel's Yvan, a surly, illiterate young man who rifles the bodies of the dead for anything useful, leads the family to refuge in an abandoned house deep in the woods. Odile is a deeply conventional woman; Yvan barely knows what a convention is. In a spirit of mutual need and distrust, they begin to form a family.

Yvan would be a challenge for the most seasoned actor. He's an incoherent character, and not only because nothing he says about himself is true. Behind his pathetically transparent lies, he remains mysterious, a work in progress, part man, part boy, part solitary savage. As Mr. Ulliel plays him, he's both tough and thin-skinned, poignant and frightening, and the deep hollows that scoop out his cheeks give him a permanently hungry look. His pleasure at the reading lessons Odile gives him is touching; so is the way he looks at her, with desire and incredulity, as if the presence of this exquisite woman in his life were a miracle or a trick. Yet he squabbles competitively with her 13-year-old son, and when his kit turns out to contain serious weapons, you wonder if he's a killer. Not yet 20, Mr. Ulliel has created a character who mirrors the range of human possibility.

More of Gaspard Ulliel in our tMF profile.

After the launch of a very successful hitlist, the tMF Top 50 hottest young actors, it's the girls' turn to be in the spotlight!

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From Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johansson and Keira Knightley to emerging stars such as Camilla Bell, Kristen Stewart and Shareeka Epps, tMF is once again rounding up the most exclusive list of the coolest actresses in cinema!

Stay tuned for the launch on May 18th. But hey, you can tell us your top three now! Be our guest and rave about your favorites!

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Starring: Denzel Washington, Forest Whitaker, Jurnee Smollett, Nate Parker
Director: Denzel Washington
DVD Release Date: May 13, 2008
Running Time: 123 min
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Distributor: The Weinstein Company

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Review by Jeremy Welsch

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When you pair up two great actors in a film you expect great performances from them. This seems like a simple idea, but it doesn’t always play out the way it should. The Great Debaters is touted as having two former winners of the Academy Award for Best Actor going head to head with each other, yet curiously they only share two scenes together, by my count. Both scenes work well but aren’t a true indication of how the movie plays. The Great Debaters follows the true story of Melvin B. Tolson (Denzel Washington), a no-nonsense debate coach and sometime political activist who drove his team to national prominence in 1935 by challenging and defeating some of the best debate schools, white or black, in the nation.

A Special Tribute to Stephenie Meyer
By Kaleb Nation
[ Exclusive article for the Twilight Guy Day, launched by the Twilight Lexicon ]

“Even though some of us have never met her, we feel like we know her...like she’s a friend from school.”

—Amy

Stephenie Meyer, like most superstar authors, carries an image.

[A Movie-fanatic’s take on Stephenie Meyer’s book, Twilight- Exclusive article for the Twilight Guy Day, launched by the Twilight Lexicon ]

I hope I don’t sound like Daniel, the interviewer in Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, or appear to mimic the famous ‘centuries-old’ vampire who wants to be a rock star. I’m much simpler and more common than that.

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I love reading books. That’s particularly obvious since tMF has already featured 50 books-to- movie adaptations. But here I have a confession…. While Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, Mary Renault’s The Last of the Wine and Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo are my all-time favorites, there is something so appealing and so heart-warming about Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight, that it is now fast becoming a favorite of mine.

But my becoming a Twilight fanatic did not happen overnight. I used to be a skeptic too…

A profile of one of Hollywood's most talented, yet under-rated actors, Ben Foster!
By Deana Martin

“I'm so sick of sarcasm and irony – I could kill! [laughs] Sincerely, the real root of things is love and sacrifice. Everything else is an illusion. I'm not trying to preach here; I can't tell anybody anything. But I will say, if you're available to them, there are so many great secrets in the world, so many signs. It's when we stop for a moment and listen that the world gets interesting.”

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Examining 28-year-old Ben Foster’s most recent roles as the vampire-obsessed lunatic in 30 Days of Night, the murderous Charlie in 3:10 to Yuma, and the meth-addicted skinhead in Alpha Dog, one might be surprised to hear such positive and uplifting thoughts from the up and coming actor. Foster may have gained notoriety over the past few years playing some of the most convincing villains to hit the screen in a long while, but his career actually began on a much lighter note.

Many of us have fond memories of Ben in his first role as Tucker in the teen show “Flash Forward”, a staple of the Disney Channel in the mid-90s. Even at a young age, Foster had a way of commanding the screen with his comedic timing and complete freedom of over-the-top facial expressions. He perfectly epitomized the kid in your class that you got really annoyed with every day, yet secretly had a crush on.

Starring: Emile Hirsch, John Goodman, Christina Ricci, Susan Sarandon, Matthew Fox
Director: Larry Wachowski and Andy Wachowski
Release Date: May 9, 2008
Running Time: 135 min
MPAA Rating: PG
Distributor: Warner Bros.

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Review by Jeremy Welsch

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Prior to this weekend, I could not think of a single pertinent reason that would justify making Speed Racer into a feature film apart from the obvious one of exploiting existing media for financial gain. I had every reason to dislike this film. Larry and Andy Wachowski, the force behind a couple of little indie films, Bound and The Matrix, had some splainin’ to do. Since being widely and rightfully accused of ruining The Matrix franchise, they have not set foot behind the camera. I would call this a good thing.

Speed Racer is more than just a movie by the Wachowski Brothers; it is their attempt at reinvention and they want to make a statement. What that statement is, though, is unclear. Do they want to be taken seriously once again, or do they want something that will put a middle finger in the face of anyone who questions their path? Either way, adapting an anime series with a cult following is a curious choice of material. But dig a little deeper and it’s not as much of a leap as you’d think. Look at their directorial efforts – Bound, The Matrix Trilogy, and now Speed Racer. All pretty different movies, but thematically they have a common thread: the observation of the traps people make of their lives and the revelation of their eventual transformation. Basic stuff, I know, but it becomes interesting when you consider that their career is starting to become molded to that same theme. Speed Racer is the Wachowski’s warm embrace of that idea.

But I am getting off track.

I got an email from a regular-guy-cum-moviegoer saying that perhaps it's tMF who alerted Twilighters to the flood of negative comments on Slashfilm's Twilight teaser trailer post. Now that 'they've been alerted', that movie site is being populated by 'tourists' and is therefore getting more than the usual amount of traffic. Shame on tMF, he says...

As stated in my previous post, it's the site's regular readers who seem to love bashing Twilight. Mr. Sciretta might have indicated his reservations regarding the movie, and wanted to ask his readers what they thought of the teaser trailer. As was obvious from his first Twilight post, he decided to restrict the comments since there was already a tremendous response from Twilighters, and it was affecting /films's servers. It might happen again since "Bashing Twilight Episode 2" is currently on display at /film right this minute.

The regulars (I assume they're young male film buffs, along with some aspiring film critics and several others as well) remain totally clueless as to why Twilight rocks. They could only come up with one explanation: Twilight fans are 14-year old girls who love to scream and giggle. How wrong could they be? Apparently, very wrong. It says a lot about what kind of a website slashfilm is, based on the comments of its regular readers.

Perhaps instead of being referred to as 'Twilight bashers', it might even sound cool to call them "Slashers"?

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Enjoy this awesome article from Lowestoft Journal:

From premieres in Berlin and Los Angeles to filming in New Zealand, Morocco and Alicante the jet-setting acting career of a rising star from Lowestoft is literally taking off.

Fresh from treading the red carpet at the premiere of 10,000 BC in March, it is continuing to be a busy schedule for Reece Ritchie as this week he received a double boost. For the Oulton Broad 21-year-old was flying to Alicante this week after he was picked to star with Colin Farrell for the film Triage.  The trip followed hard on the heels of being chosen for his latest assignment starring alongside Jake Gyllenhaal for the first-part of an expected trilogy in the film based on the video game Prince of Persia: Sands of Time.

tMF Special report on Twilight: Part 4 of a four-part series

What makes a movie worth waiting for? Is it the cast? The fact that you’re a big fan of the leading man? Or because you simply love the story? Perhaps you just enjoyed the teaser trailer(s) and really wanted to see the whole movie?

In the case of Twilight, if you’re big on the books, then there is every reason for you to want to see the movie.

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In Part 1, we talked about Stephenie Meyer. Next, we discussed the Twilight fandom and featured interviews with leading Twilighters. In Part 3, we put the spotlight on the upcoming movie and talked about the cast and crew. In this last installment, we'll talk about the future of the Twilight saga and its chances of becoming a successful film franchise. But in order to do that, we need to make a series of comparisons. Here’s what we said in our intro:

As JK Rowling's Harry Potter is about to end, enters Stephenie Meyer and her initial offering, Twilight - a movie that is already one of the most-anticipated of this year.

Why the comparison? The Harry Potter series is as big and as successful as it can get. Eragon, on the other hand, may boast a big fan base but the movie sucked big-time and talk of a ‘franchise’ now seem preposterous.

The question now is: can Twilight follow Harry Potter’s success or will it become the next big disappointment just like Eragon?

The Twilight teaser trailer was just released! What's the most striking part?

I find Robert Pattinson as Edward Cullen to be awesome! He has this preternaturally gorgeous yet dangerous look on his face, and his voice! While Anne Rice's the Vampire Lestat maybe the rock star, Edward Cullen is the ideal romantic vampire hero. No wonder, Pattinson was voted tMF's hottest young actor!

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Oh, I don't know about you, but the sexual tension between Kristen and Robert is almost palpable! Catherine Hardwicke has done it again!

Remember how The Joker promised the new movie trailer for The Dark Knight on Sunday? Well it’s now Sunday, and the movie trailer is officially online.

This new trailer features some great moments and great quotes. For example, Batman flying through the air 100 stories above the city, or Harvey Dent’s “Either you die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain” or The Joker’s “The City deserves a better class of criminal, and I’m gonna give it to them.” The trailer also seems to confirm that the film has taken a new approach to the Two-Face origin. Notice how Dent is being held face down in a puddle of gasoline as opposed to the traditional acid storyline.

Watch the new trailer in High Definition on WhySoSerious.

Our Twilight series is not yet over, but as tMF celebrates its first birthday this coming June, we want to give you even more!

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We have in-depth articles that go beyond simply covering this year's most anticipated movies. We know you want more than just the plot and the cast and crew, so aside from our two-part summer preview, we're launching a series of articles to celebrate a number of these upcoming films, and these will include tMF's comprehensive reports on:

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tMF continues its coverage of the summer movie season with Part Two of tMF 2008 Summer Movie Preview. Read Part One [ here ].