Awards Daily

Two days ago I jumped into the whisper chain about the new J.J. Abrams trailer set to debut with Iron Man 2. Several sources agreed with NY Magazine’s Vulture speculation that it involved a prequel to Cloverfield. Yesterday J.J. Abrams spoke to Vulture directly and told them they had it all wrong. Today there’s a detailed shot-by-shot description of the trailer circulating, but let’s first quote Abrams on the subject of keeping secrets — and the quandary of how to spring surprises while hinting there are surprises to be sprung:

“I don‚Äôt know if it would matter with you guys,” he said, laughing. “I don‚Äôt think it matters.” Is there a better way to keep secret monster movies under wraps? “I’m working on it,” he told us.

Setting the movie in 1970′s suburbia pays homage to Spielberg’s Amblin-era blockbusters like Close Encounters, ET, Gremlins, and Poltergeist — isn’t knowing that enough to get us amped? This morning you can find the teaser being picked apart like the carcass of an alien from a crash site, but won’t that kind of analytical overkill ruin it for you? On the other hand, if you weren’t planning on seeing Iron Man 2 tomorrow, don’t want to wait for a bootleg of the teaser on youtube, but still want to be in the know — then you can read about Super 8 right here as well as anyplace else. SPOILER, via slashfilm, after the cut.

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(via Living in Cinema)

Russell Crowe was in fine form last night. Apologies for the jagged edges of this edit, but you get a bonus Top 10 List just before Crowe comes out. Part 2 after the cut.

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It’s been two decades since Pedro Almodovar and Antonio Banderas made Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down. They now reunite for a revenge thriller, La Piel que habito (The Skin I Live In), scheduled to shoot later this year. From Variety via the Guardian:

Variety reports that the movie is loosely based on Thierry Jonquet’s 1995 novel Mygale and will star Banderas as a plastic surgeon on the trail of the man who raped his daughter. “It’s the harshest film I’ve ever written,” Almodovar told El Pais this week. “And Banderas’s character is brutal.”

“[The Skin I Live In]” will be a terror film without screams or scares,” the director explained to El Pais. “It’s difficult to define and although it comes close to the terror genre, something that appeals to me [and] that I’ve never done, I won’t respect any of its rules.”

Deadline reports that Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Films is teaming with HBO for a 7-hour miniseries about Martin Luther King. Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Robert Schenkkan, who wrote four episodes of HBO‚Äôs The Pacific, will adapt the King series from three novels — Parting The Waters, Pillar of Fire, At Canaan‚Äôs Edge — by Taylor Branch, who himself won a Pulitzer for the first book in his trilogy.

The story notes that the HBO project puts Oprah in direct competition with Lee Daniels who’s close to finding financing for his own MLK drama, Selma.

A year ago Steven Spielberg and DreamWorks secured rights to film the life story of Martin Luther King, from a script being written by Oscar-winner Ronald Harwood (The Pianist).

Harpo Film’s Kate Forte describes the scope of the HBO miniseries:

This really is America in the King years, from 1954-68. Dr. King is the most dominant character, but there are so many other players who figure prominently. That includes his relationships with two presidents, JFK and Lyndon Johnson, his relationship with Coretta Scott King and his family, Bobby Kennedy, Stokely Carmichael and SNCC. This will cover the freedom rides, the Birmingham campaign, Selma, and the poor people’s march on Washington that he was organizing when he was killed. It will be the seminal Civil Rights era film.

Not too hard to swallow. THR confirms yesterday’s rumors:

Lindsay Lohan has landed the lead role in an independent movie about 1970s porn star Linda Lovelace, one of the film’s producers said.

The 24-year-old actress will play Lovelace, who shot to fame with the landmark 1972 porno movie “Deep Throat,” while Bill Pullman will portray Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner in the period drama, producer Wali Razaqi told The Los Angeles Times.

The film, called “Inferno,” will be based on the events of Lovelace’s life and will delve into the “difficult stuff she went through and overcame,” Razaqi said.

“I would say it’s probably one of the most challenging roles any actor could play — and not because of the sexual content, necessarily — but more because she was so battered and beat up emotionally, that I think it’s gonna take everything Lindsay has to really be able to pull it off,” he told the Times.

Representing the very essence of “teaser” this tantalizing look at Copie Conforme from Abbas Kiarostami works its magic sans subtitles. Premiering at the Cannes Film Festival — where Kiarostami won the Palm d’Or in 1997 for Ta’m e guilass (Taste of Cherry).

Tanks to Jeremie. Playfully glamorous poster after the cut.

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Continuing today’s experiment of posting stuff and then advising you not to read it, we now have details of the not-so-secret-anymore trailer that was supposed to be a bonus surprise preceding screenings of IM2 on Friday. One more reason to buy a ticket for Iron Man 2 this weekend? From Vulture:

We have exclusive details on the trailer for the J.J. Abrams‚Äìproduced Super 8, which will unspool at 12:01 am Thursday night in front of Iron Man 2. We feel compelled to insert a spoiler alert ‚Äî read no further if you just want it to be a surprise! ‚Äî lest a livid Cloverfield fan hurl an icy Slusho! in our direction. Here’s what we know for certain …

Insiders familiar with the trailer tell us that it shows a bunch of kids who are shooting a movie with a Super 8 camera in the seventies or eighties. When they develop the film, they notice that there’s an alien creature in the frame. Our sources also say that Super 8 is absolutely connected to 2008′s Cloverfield (possibly a prequel, but not a sequel).

Whether the actual Super 8 movie will be set in the seventies, eighties, or present day is anyone’s guess. And yet, just this scrap of information will have fans obsessing for months. Advantage yours, Abrams.