Based on Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight follow-up, The Host trades sparkling skin for bizarro eyes and Kristen Stewart for an actress you don’t want to kick down a flight of stairs. When Earth is invaded by an advanced race of brain parasites, there are only a small number of sexy teens left to fight for the fate of mankind. Damn those brain slugs and their technological advancements and betterment of society. They won’t get away with that!

There’s no word yet if the young stars are an actual couple in real life or not, but I’m sure we’ll hear about it if they start banging.

“[Byzantium] details the story of a mother vampire who turns her own daughter into a vampire and the pair form a lethal partnership, sometimes posing as sisters.”

The original script is apparently based on a “youth theater play” (whatever that is), but according producers the movie is going into a “more adult, darker level.” So be warned: These aren’t just sexy vampires, these are really sexy vampires. (The Hollywood Reporter)

Niccol has a slightly more proven track record as a screenwriter than a director, but it was his work as both on the film Gattaca that led Meyer to feel comfortable lending her work to him for adaptation.

For those unfamiliar, The Host follows a girl named Melanie Stryder (Ronan) in a time when parasitic aliens invade human’s bodies, erasing their personalities and consciousness. However, Stryder proves to be more resistant in giving up fellow humans once she is “invaded,” inspiring the inhabitant soul to reconnect with elements of her old life, including her boyfriend (OMG!).

It helps to understand it if you’re an alienated 14 year-old that wishes they’d never been born. (Variety)

Now we know who’s going to play Melanie, the main character and leader of the human resistance against the body-snatchers (called “Souls,” but “body-snatcher” is way cooler and more accurate) – Hanna star Saoirse Ronan. She’s also playing “Wanderer,” who appears to be the chief body-snatcher, and who finds that Melanie doesn’t go as easy as her human compatriots do.

The script is by Andrew Niccol, famous for Gattaca and his script for The Truman Show. He originally wrote the script with an eye to direct, then dropped out, and is now back in as a possible director again. Maybe his erratic behavior can be explained by his being controlled by aliens. (Deadline)

“Keira’s confirmed, Jude Law’s confirmed, Aaron Johnson’s confirmed, Kelly Macdonald’s confirmed, Benedict Cumberbatch is confirmed. I’m still waiting on Saoirse and James,” Wright told The Playlist.

Of course, Saoirse and James refers to Seahorse Rainman Saoirse Ronan and James McAvoy. The Wright alums are up for unspecified roles, but it has been revealed that Keira Knightley will play the title role, Jude Law will chill as her drip of a husband, and Aaron Johnson will play the young soldier who she allows to crawl on top of her while naked. When the book was first released, their affair was deemed very illicit by Russian society. So let’s assume things will get pretty kinky. We’re talking Dirty Sanchezes, Glass Bottom Boats, and the potentially-fatal “Cumberbatch.”

Hanna is the kind of action movie I enjoy, where you understand the visual language. You see a lot without explanation, and what you don’t quite see often tells more of the story. Modern audiences may call this revolutionary. Let’s go with “old school.”

In her first scene hunting a deer, Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) disappears instantly with a camera move. We always see stealthy killers disappearing in a cut, but it means a lot more to show it fluidly. Hanna’s been trained out in the snow by her father, Erik (Eric Bana). If the deer didn’t convince you, her fight with Erik shows you she’s got skills.

Marisa Wiegler (Cate Blanchett) is introduced dramatically, from behind during her daily routine. That pays off later when she brushes her teeth with less confidence. Wiegler provides a brief dossier, something genetic about Hanna and covert about Erik. She’s the bad guy.

I’m being glib because I think it’s perfect that they don’t over explain too much. Eventually you learn exactly what’s special about Hanna but only when it dramatically pays off. As far as I’m concerned they could leave it vague. We just need to know there’s a basic relationship and antagonism. The story and the actors deliver the gravitas without explaining this is why they’re acting this way.

You completely understand the methodology of Hanna’s skills. When she escapes, you don’t exactly see all her moves but you know what she’s doing and how she’s leveraging her opponents. In a flashback for Wiegler, you hear a car crashing off camera, because what’s important is Wiegler’s action. A gunfight has all to do with Wiegler reaching her gun some distance ahead of her.

Hanna is not just an action thriller though. Hanna hooks up with a traveling family in an RV. Their daughter, Sophie (Jessica Barden), is such a spoiled brat it’s an adorable counterpoint. When her mom (Olivia Williams) asks Hanna how her mom, her blunt honesty is priceless.

This is all a very technical way of saying Hanna is awesome. The action is cool, the characters are memorable and it’s made in a clear, exciting way.

Director: Joe Wright

Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Cate Blanchett, Eric Bana

Synopsis: A 16-year-old who was raised by her father to be the perfect assassin is dispatched on a mission across Europe, tracked by a ruthless intelligence agent and her operatives.

Release Date: April 8, 2011

In case you don’t have your “upcoming Snow White adaptation” scorecard, this is the one directed by Tarsem Singh (The Cell) with Julia Roberts as the evil queen, not the one that Viggo Mortensen told to go to hell. As for the title character, it’s not set in stone yet, but Saoirse Ronan is reportedly being looked at to play Snow White opposite Hammer. Hammer and Ronan both have big movies coming out, with the former appearing in Clint Eastood’s J. Edgar Hoover biopic, and the latter in Hannah. (via Deadline)

“One of the reasons why I was excited to make the film was the formal challenge of shooting action,” Wright said at a reception for the film. “I think action is like pure cinema because it can’t be replicated in any other medium. With drama, you can put people on a stage. With photography, you can put it in a gallery. With action, it really only works in cinema and that’s because of montage. So I really enjoyed playing with the ellipses and the magic of Hanna’s action. It’s as much about what you don’t see as it is about what you do see.”

Hanna won’t look like the glossy Jerry Bruckheimer action movies, or even the gritty Bourne style that’s become all the rage. Wright is friends with Paul Greengrass and admires his game changer for the genre, but he looked to more obscure sources.

“I wanted to avoid the normal clichés of action stuff, so I looked at Robert Bresson’s film Pickpocket. I think his economy of action, the whole train station sequence, is extraordinary. Also Alwin Kuchler, my wonderful DoP, showed me Boy Meets Girl, his kind of very expressionistic action sequences, long running in those movies and I really enjoyed the idea of playing with the reality of what we were doing. When she’s running in the strobe lights for instance where she’s running on a running machine. She’s not actually moving at all. The lights and the camera created the movement and she’s actually staying completely still.”

The music of Hanna gives the film a unique voice too. Longtime friends with The Chemica Brothers, Wright hired them to do the score. “Before filming, I asked them to compose a couple of tracks. I told them that I wanted a kind of fucked up fairy tale theme that could be kind of whistled by the baddies throughout the movie later on. I kind of gave them cues and gave them bits of ideas. So once we had those tracks, we would play them while we were filming on a big sound system, or I’d just play their albums to give a rhythm. My editor, Paul Tothill who’s wonderful with music, so during post production, I send them a rough cut of the scene, they send me a track, I recut their track, send it back to them so there’s a constant kind of dialogue going on between us.”

Hanna hits theaters April 8.

This new trailer shows Hanna as more of a fish-out-of-water and insinuates at the end that should could be just plain evil, but I don’t buy that for a second. Not our Hanna.

Either way, this video just affirms my belief that this movie is going to be really great. Which is what a trailer is supposed to do, so…good job, Team Hanna. (/Film)

The lovelessness was short-lived, however. With Ronan’s recent pedigree and looks, it’s hard to rule her out of any casting decisions, even if those decisions involve little people kickin’ it in Middle Earth. Ronan has garnered buzz for her starring role in Hanna in which she is compelled to assassinate her own father, played by Eric Bana. That role follows well-received turns in both Atonement and The Lovely Bones, which indicate that she might want to go with a comedy next time out to prove she has the whole package. I hear Rob Schneider‘s been wanting to work with her for ages. (/Film)

In the film, Ronan plays a Swedish teenage assassin who was trained by her father, an ex-CIA spook. He sends her out on a mission, shit gets real, she bolts, and agents dispatched by ruthless operative Blanchett give chase. You mess with Blanchett’s stand-in, you mess with Blanchett herself. Or someone playing her.

Personally, I don’t even like walking to the TV when I can’t find the remote, let alone across a tundra, desert, and over mountains. But I guess that’s what seperates me from the Ed Harrises and Jim Sturgesses of the world. In this new trailer for Peter Weir‘s The Way Back, we follow a group of soldiers imprisoned in Siberia.

Deciding that prison sucks because it’s too cold and they’re tired of watching one another sh*t, they team up to escape. And then they walk really far. Through the Arctic, the Gobi desert, and over the Himilayas. Why though? Was the prison really looking that hard for them after a few days of searching? They probably could have just moved a few towns over and grown mustaches. Dummies.

Walk it out after the jump…

Director Peter Weir is back with The Way Back, another tale of epic proportions. The film stars Jim Sturgess, Colin Farrell, and Ed Harris, and tells of prisoners escaping from a Soviet gulag who have to brave the harsh elements to get back home.

We’ve seen survival stories such as this dozens of times, but Weir usually never disappoints. I’m big fan of The Truman Show, Master and Commander, and of course Dead Poets Society. The Way Back doesn’t feature a bearded and dramatic Robin Williams, mind you, but I’ll check it out anyway.

The Way Back opens December 29th in Los Angeles to make the Oscar cut, and then rolls out across the rest of the country in January.

Check out the trailer below.

The Way Back – Trailer
Uploaded by ThePlaylist. – Classic TV and last night’s shows, online.

(ThePlaylist)

Director: Peter Weir

Cast: Colin Farrell, Ed Harris, Jim Sturgess, Saorise Ronan

Synopsis: A fact-based story centered on soldiers who escaped from a Siberian gulag in 1940.

Release Date: December 29, 2010