Every year, the passing of famous actors and actresses takes us by surprise, but, with this list, maybe we’ll be a little more prepared, perhaps even expecting some of these deaths. Even if we’re wrong, it will be an interesting sociological experiment to see how celebrities navigate the year when everyone is expecting, if not hoping, for them to die.

William H. Macy

– Suicide by cop

Nick Nolte

– Mange

Sarah Jessica Parker

– Tortured to death by interrogators trying to determine “how she does it”

Michael K. Williams

– Gunned down by actor Jamie Hector

Taylor Lautner

– Accidental drowning (bucket of water)

Robert Pattinson

– Also mange

Mary Steenburgen

– Friendly fire (Afghanistan)

Charlie Sheen

– Undiagnosed shellfish allergy

Bradley Cooper

– Not content with being “Sexiest Man Alive,” kills self to become “Sexiest Man Dead” as well

Kirk Douglas

– Kept forgetting he was alive until he saw himself on Oscar telecast, died of heart attack when he realized, with the rest of America, that he hadn’t died yet

Ted Danson

– Flies to Afghanistan to avenge wife Mary Steenburgen’s death; is killed by insurgents almost instantly

Wanda Sykes

– Complications arising from sass poisoning

Russell Brand

– Attention deficit disorder (the kind where if you don’t get enough attention, you die)

Parker Posey

– Runner-up, 1st Annual Hollywood Hunger Games

Dakota Fanning

– AIDS…just kidding. Little Dakota’s gonna be just fine in 2012

Kathy Griffin

– Kicked by mule

Kevin Kline

– Overdose snorting bath salts

Zach Braff

– Beaten by angry mob for reasons unknown

Mila Kunis

– Killed by Macauley Culkin for failing to acknowledge the couple’s murder-suicide pact

Macauley Culkin

– See above

Casey Affleck, Mena Suvari, Garry Shandling, Bruce Bruce, Carey Mulligan, Lucy Liu, Masi Oka

– Participation Award, 1st Annual Hollywood Hunger Games

ParaNorman is scheduled for an August, 2012 release, so expect lots more information to come between now and then. Below you can also see a (kind of bland) poster for the movie. (The Playlist)

Also favored to join the project is Camilla Belle in the lead role of Eve. It’s a role a lot of young actresses wanted but as of now, it’s rumored to be hers. Such a shame that they could only pick one hot, young actress to walk dressed only in carefully placed leaves. Hollywood can be unfair sometimes. (Variety and Deadline)

Movies like New Year’s Eve should take note. THIS is how you make a comedy with an ensemble cast. You use likable actors like Matthew Broderick. That way, audiences are happy and the Broderick-Parker children are still fed. Everyone wins!!

“Liotta will play Mark ‘Markie’ Trattman, the unfortunate hustler who runs the game in a motel room and finds things only going downhill from there.”

Between Henry Hill and Tony Soprano, this is shaping up to be a new gangster classic. Maybe they can get some Vanilla Ice on the soundtrack! (via The Hollywood Reporter)

Don’t throw away your The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford commemorative jacket just yet (in case you were planning on doing that). The film has new relevance! It looks like director Andrew Dominik and stars Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck had so much fun playing Wild West cowboys together that they may schedule another playdate.

Pitt is attached to the lead role (opposite Affleck) in Cogan’s Trade, a Boston-based story about an enforcer tasked with tracking down whoever robbed a high stakes mafia poker game. Like on that episode of "The Sopranos." Schedules are still being ironed out, as Dominik was slated to begin shooting Naomi Watts in the Marilyn Monroe biopic Blonde this January. More importantly, when is Brad Pitt going to get around to making World War Z? We need that film before the zombie thing gets completely beaten back into the Earth. (THR)

Tower Heist keeps inching closer to becoming a movie by picking up talent left and right. Matthew Broderick is now on board to play a Wall Street suit who joins Ben Stiller in the plot to get revenge against Alan Alda’s Madoff-like character. Fake documentarian Casey Affleck is also joining up as Stiller’s best friend/voice of reason. He’ll help complicate the would-be robbery when he takes a firm stance against it. Judd Hirsch will play an unspecified role in the film. Let’s just assume he’ll play an old school New Yorker. Or a cop. Or a guy who looks like a Cookie Puss ice cream cake.

The resemblance is quite haunting. (via /Film)

Breaking News: Casey Affleck has admitted that his Joaquin Phoenix documentary, I’m Still Here, is fake. Affleck followed that bombshell by admitting that he and Ben Affleck ar brothers, and that he really likes Boston. He then went on to give the dumbest quote in the history of man (or in at least the past two days):

“I never intended to trick anybody…The idea of a quote, hoax, unquote, never entered my mind.”

Really, that’s weird. Usually when I’m lying out my teeth while taking part in an elaborate hoax, it crosses my mind. Then again, I’m not the type of person who says "quote/unquote" out loud, so maybe I can’t relate because I’m not a pretentious #sshole. Although I find that hard to believe, considering my love of A Prairie Home Companion…the radio show, of course, not the movie. (NYT via /Film)

We finally have a first look at I’m Still Here, the "documentary" that chronicles Joaquin Phoenix‘s slow transformation into Zach Galifianakis. Directed by Casey Affleck, we’re given a front row seat to Phoenix’s imaginary breakdown. Absolutely riveting (in an imaginary way).

The trailer has a pretty cool voice-over. Is that Edward James Olmos? I think it is. If so, somebody get that guy a job selling Ford trucks immediately.

Check it out after the jump…

Director: Casey Affleck

Cast: Joaquin Phoenix

Synopsis: A documentary on Joaquin Phoenix‘s transition from the acting world to a career as an aspiring rapper. 

Release Date: September 10th 2010

Four young actresses are in the running to play opposite Casey Affleck in The F Word. Rebecca Hall, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Rose Byrne, Deborah Ann Woll are expected to camera test for the female lead in the quirky, romantic comedy that appeared on the 2008 Black List. It tells the story of a couple who would like to date, but decide to be friends instead while wrestling with their attraction to one another over a long period of time.

Personally, I think all of these actresses are perfect choices for the project and would like to see their careers take off. Sadly, there can be only one. It all depends on who tests best on-camera and freaks out the least when a naked Affleck crawls into her bed in the middle of the night. I think Rebecca Hall has a leg-up on this one. (Production Weekly via The Playlist)

^{"You serious, bro?"}

A little backstory: Joaquin Phoenix went crazy, grew a beard, quit acting, started rapping, and Casey Affleck was there with a camera to capture it all. Online speculation has been that the entire breakdown is fake (and crazy). Now, we will have the opportunity to judge for ourselves this September.

Deadline reports that Magnolia has bought the distribution rights to Casey Affleck’s I’m Still Here: The Lost Year of Joaquin Phoenix. Or, as it should be called I Get Pooped On: That Time Somebody Pooped On Joaquin Phoenix.  That’s right. The film is said to include cocaine use, hookers, oral sex with a publicist, loads of full frontal male nudity, and somebody poops on Joaquin as he sleeps. We’re not naming any names, but c’mon.

The Killer Inside Me
R, 108min., 2010
Cast: Casey Affleck, Jessica Alba, Kate Hudson, Simon Baker, Elias Koteas, Ned Betty, and Bill Pullman
Directed by Micheal Winterbottom
Screenplay by John Curran based upon the novel by Jim Thompson
 
The Killer Inside Me is a faithfully adapted, dark, and twisted gem of an exercise in B-movie noir.
 
From the faded pop color opening credit sequence, director Michael Winterbottom and his perfectly suited cast takes us back to 1950s West Texas, where Central City, Sheriff Deputy Lou Ford (played by Casey Affleck, giving one of his finest and scariest performances to date) doesn’t carry a gun and ‘sweet talks’ his way out of any bad problems. Well, that’s what Lou wants you to believe as behind his earnest smile he is one of the most disturbed and violently psychological complex characters this side of the Rio Grande.

MORE AFTER THE JUMP…

As with Jim Thompson’s acclaimed pulp novel, where we meet the local sweaty and steamy towns folk of Central City, like the two gorgeous women in Lou’s life, sexy prostitute Joyce Lakeland (Jessica Alba) and sweet school teacher Amy Stanton (Kate Hudson), the local union boss Joe Rothman (Elias Koteas), District Attorney Howard Hendricks (Simon Baker), and real estate tycoon Chester Conway (the always reliable hog in a hat, Ned Betty).
 
In another 50s noir, these characters would be the villains or the femme fatales, yet here they are as crooked as they come, but are tainted victims of Lou’s violent outbursts and diabolic schemes. When a character is hit or shot we feel their pain and see their suffering on screen in moments containing some of the most brutal violence in recent screen memory.
 
However, this film is not another excise in torture porn. Director Winterbottom and screenwriter John Curran should be championed for bringing their visually precise adaptation of Thompson’s writing. Here all of Thompson’s sex, dry commentary, and sadistic violence is brought to the screen with such a fine scope that we are reliving the macabre humor and horror of these hardboiled characters.
 
Still, we feel for them as they lay batter and bloodied on screen; Affleck’s long drawl voice festers under your skin leaving you with almost hypnotic trance for a guy, who beats Alba’s screen angel presence into a one-punch, two-punch, several-punches makeover and turns on sweet Hudson in a moment of shocking masochistic violence. Affleck plays all of his acting cards right on point with his leading ladies, from loving them in his own twisted tender way – he likes to spank his women really hard with his leather pressed belt – to his striking manic acts of violence. This is a performance from Affleck not to be missed.
 
As the film builds to the blazing inferno of a climax, we’re given another key character performance by Bill Pullman as a slick union lawyer Billy Boy Walker, a character Lou finds to be a priest of some sort, confessing all of his past sins, before finding himself in a ring of fire. The scene between Affleck and Pullman has real moments of actor chewing quality that it  makes the film an ever valued time capsule of grit and sweat in 50s noir movies.
 
While The Killer Inside Me may be rooted in the pulp novels and B-movie film noir of the 1950s, this piece is by far one hell of a film ride into the dark nature of humans and their primal feelings.
 
Grade: A-

Director: Michael Winterbottom

Cast: Casey Affleck, Jessica Alba, Kate Hudson

Synopsis: A West Texas deputy sheriff is slowly unmasked as a psychotic killer.