If you don’t know what Friends With Kids is all about, check out this link for all you need to know. Are you back? Okay. The latest comedy featuring all those actors and actresses you’ve seen in loads of other comedies over the past few years will seemingly seek to portray and dissect the current state of play for parents in the US, with the slightly cynical (though for some realistic?) suggestion on this latest poster that you can’t have love, happiness and kids and that one of the three will have to go. Honestly, when did we all get so jaded?

Anyway, this is not a post about parenting, contentment, and having satisfaction in life, it’s a post about a new poster, so let’s talk about that. As you can see below, it’s another one of those “look who is in it” efforts, just without bothering to assemble them all at the same time for the photo-shoot. Just cobble them all together using photo-shop and stick the result up online. It’s clumsy and cheap (something that hopefully won’t be able to be said of the film) and no one seems to want to look anyone else in the eye. They all just look off into the middle distance in a slightly endearing or ambiguous way.

Ho Hum. Not every poster can be a work of art I suppose. IMP have this one.

Paramount have released this new commercial / trailer for Sacha Baron Cohen’s new movie, The Dictator which is set to hit the UK 18th May. It has an amazing cast which included Sacha Baron Cohen, Ben Kingsley, Jason Mantzoukas, Anna Faris, Fred Melamed, Rock Kohli, Megan Fox and John C. Reilly but after watching the previous trailer and this new TV spot, it seems to have one of the most risque scripts that we’ve seen from Cohen. The man is used to being sued and causing controversy however so I guess he’s not too worried.

This new clip comes courtesy of The Sun who have debuted the ad ahead of the Super Bowl this Sunday night.

We got our first look at the upcoming comedy Friends With Kids last summer, which sees Kristen Wiig and Jon Hamm returning to the screen together this year after a very well-received turn opposite each other in Bridesmaids, one of the number of films gearing up for the Oscars next month.

Written and directed by Jennifer Westfeldt, who also stars, the film revolves around the lives of a couple who decide to have a kid together without being in a relationship. Along with Wiig, Hamm, and Westfeldt, the film has a great cast that includes Adam Scott, Chris O’Dowd (who was also in Bridesmaids last year, and who is one of the five 2012 Orange BAFTA Rising Star finalists), Maya Rudolph, Edward Burns, and Megan Fox.

Yahoo Movies have put up the first trailer for the film, and it looks like it has potential. It also looks like they’ve not just filled the trailer with all the film’s best and funniest moments, which is definitely a good thing – essentially, we can look forward to more than two and a half minutes of worthwhile viewing when it hits the cinemas.

Friends With Kids will be out in the States on 9th March, but we here in the UK are yet to secure a release date. With a bit of luck, we’ll be getting it in the next few months too. The film marks Westfeldt’s directorial debut, and it looks to be a good one, which could certainly put her in good stead if she wants to continue in the director’s chair. Here’s the first trailer for your viewing pleasure.

Never did I think I’d see the day when Robin Williams, Megan Fox, William Fichtner, Josh Duhamel, Robin Williams, Billy Crystal and British ex-footballer come movie star Vinnie Jones, all appear in the same movie together…. Well, I guess they still haven’t really but they do all appear in this new trailer for The 84th Academy Awards or the Oscars as they are more commonly known.

We’ll be staying up all night as we usually do to blog the event as it happens and we’d love you to join us. It’s set to take place on Sunday February 26th at 7pm EST 4PM PST and that I think means coverage will being from midnight GMT but that will probably be red carpet arrivals and all the build up with the actual ceremony starting after that.

Anyway, here’s the trailer named ‘Off the grid’ that will blow your mind as much as it did mine!

We got the brilliant first trailer for Sacha Baron Cohen’s The Dictator yesterday, which immediately set up the controversy by opening the trailer with footage of a speech from Obama, and promised that fans of his earlier films can sleep safe in the assurance that this is going to be a lot of fun too.

Following on from that, we’ve now got the film’s first poster to share with you, via IMP Awards, in which Baron Cohen has posed for his immortalising portrait, whilst still wearing his green sunglasses. Brilliant.

The film reunites the leading man with Larry Charles, the director of Borat and Brüno, with a script coming from Baron Cohen and former Seinfeld writers Alec Berg, David Mandel, and Jeff Schaffer, all of whom have since been writing Curb Your Enthusiasm, for which Charles is executive producer and frequent director.

Alongside Baron Cohen will be Sir Ben Kingsley, Anna Faris, Megan Fox, John C. Reilly, and J.B. Smoove. Fox and Reilly both looked brilliant in the first trailer, and I think it was such a good move to keep Faris, the film’s female lead, out of our first look at the film yesterday.

I think a lot of trailers spoil the movie in some ways by putting in all the best bits, so when you go into a movie, you’ve seen most of what’s good about it already. With this, though, Faris being entirely absent from the trailer means we’ve still got a lot to look forward to that we’ve not yet seen anything of, and that is awesome in my books.

The Dictator is coming to our screens on 18^th May next year, which is a date I’m looking forward to even more now that we’ve seen the trailer. Couple it up with this new poster, and I think Baron Cohen and Charles have another success on their hands. As usual, click to enlarge.

Here we have our first look at Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest The Dictator and it’s not a subtle affair.

Following on from the wild and untamed successes of Borat and Bruno, not to mention a couple of supporting roles for Tim Burton and Martin Scorsese in the meanwhile,  this film reunites the actor with director Larry Charles and looks like a return to the character-fuelled outrage we’ve come to expect.

Lining up in support are his Hugo co-star Sir Ben Kingsley, Megan Fox, Anna Faris and John C. Reilly.

The trailer has Fox selling herself, a throwaway reference to a Kardashian and the usual conversative-baiting. It feels like more of the same, but it’ll be interesting to see Sacha Baron Cohen parading his latest creation alongside the assembled supporting cast, who may tame the bearded beast.

Moviefone have debuted the trailer, check out the man and his beard below,

Lionsgate has acquired ensemble comedy Friends with Kids for US distribution.

Written and directed by Jennifer Westfeldt, Friends with Kids stars Kristen Wiig, Jon Hamm, Megan Fox, Maya Rudolph, Adam Scott, Chris O’Dowd, Edwards Burns, Michael Dean and Westfeldt herself.

Friends with Kids is about a pair of thirtysomething best friends who observe the toll that having kids has taken on the couples they know and resolve to bypass that stress by having a child and then date other people.

The film premiered at the 36th Toronto Film Festival to middling reviews, and is expected to be released in the US later this year.

Source: Deadline

Earlier in the year, the world was treated to the awesome movie that is, Bridesmaids. If you’re a bloke and have been put off by the title of the film or the seemingly girlie subject matter, put all your masculinity aside and go and see it as it’s flippin awesome! Here we have some new images (again from the legends at The Playlist) giving us our first look at their new movie ‘Friends with Kids’ which unites Bridesmaids stars Jon Hamm and Kristen Wiig.

Friends with Kids also stars Anne Hathaway, Jennifer Westfeldt, Megan Fox, Adam Scott and is also directed by Westfeldt.

Synopsis: The project revolves around a pair of thirty something best friends who observe the toll that having kids has taken on the couples they know and resolve to bypass that stress by having a child and then date other people. Adam Scott and Jennifer Westfeldt will play the lead couple; Kristen Wiig and Jon Hamm will play another. Megan Fox will play a girl who Scott begins to date.

Check out the images below which have been released to coincide with the news that the movie will be playing at the Toronto International Film Festival later this year.

Tech Sergeant Epps and Captain Lennox quickly worked out in 2007′s Transformers that their conventional ammunition wasn’t going to cut it when it came to bringing down a Decepticon. Instead, they needed to use Rapier rounds (or something) because they burn at a higher temperature (or something). What neither of them knew then, what none of us could have known then, is that the franchise as a whole would evolve to become entirely bullet-proof within four short years.

For the most part, Transformers (2007) was well-received. Of course it was not everyone’s cup of tea and it was loud and silly, but the special effects were outstanding and the action sequences breath-taking, with a fairly arch and knowing script touching the right bases on its way from A to B. 2009′s sequel, Revenge of the Fallen, very much eschewed the “less is more” ethos in favour of “a lot more is a lot more”. We had lots more Decepticons, we didn’t really know who they were or what they were doing, Megan Fox gratuitously spread herself over a motorbike in order to keep teenage boys (and middle-aged fathers) happy, pyramids got trashed, outrageous racial stereotypes were perpetuated, we were treated to a giant swinging set of Decepticon testicles and Michael Bay just kept turning up the volume. As a film it had moments of fun and entertainment, but it fell way short of the first in terms of quality, coherence and cohesion and yet, here’s the thing; it made $836m to the $708m of the first instalment.

Clearly these films were becoming increasingly critic-proof, as Revenge of the Fallen was roundly lambasted by film journalists. Two stars seemed to be the order of the day (for whatever that is worth) and Mark Kermode in particular savaged the film as misogynistic, crass and racist. A year down the line, Bay himself confessed that ROTF had fallen short of expectations in terms of quality and that the next film, which by then was underway would correct its shortcomings as a way of making things up to the audience, who he acknowledged deserved better. This was quite an admission and heightened expectations that Dark of the Moon (as it came to be known) would be more akin to the 2007 in terms of quality. But consider those box office numbers again for a moment. No doubt Michael Bay has no desire to be known as some sort of hack who gets good box office but remains dismissed by the critics fraternity. He plays to his strengths (great set-pieces, high-quality action direction, lots of explosions), but he won’t be wholly indifferent to his critical reputation. Having said that, Paramount would have taken a long, hard look at those figures and, one would assume, leaned towards Bay’s ear to whisper, “if it ain’t broke…”. What they clearly had on their hands here was a combination of product and director with alchemic qualities, able to produce pure gold out of base components. It didn’t make any difference whether the critics liked it or not, audiences were pouring in, fortunes were made and all of a sudden the franchise became boxed in.

So here we are in 2011 and Dark of the Moon is now with us. It is every bit the bullet-proof juggernaut that its’ predecessor was. In excess of $400m in its first week, worldwide. This despite some unbelievably vitriolic reviews. Film Freak Central says:-

Transformers: Asshole holds the distinction of being the first movie this year I’m actually ashamed of. In it, I recognize every failing of we the people, paraded before us as though they were virtues.

Roger Ebert says:-

a visually ugly film with an incoherent plot, wooden characters and inane dialog. It provided me with one of the more unpleasant experiences I’ve had at the movies.

Mark Kermode had nothing nice to say at all, dismissing it as soft-core porn, crass, leering and obscene. Reviews were, in the interests of fairness and balance, more positive elsewhere, but certainly no-one hailed it as a masterpiece. Empire Magazine captured the inevitable outcome best with their summary:-

An improvement on Transformers 2, but then what isn’t? To paraphrase the Bard, it’s a tale, full of sound and fury and extremely stupid dialogue and nonsensical plotting and preposterous stunts and robots punching each other’s heads off, signifying nothing. Needless to say, it’s going to be huge.

Exactly. It didn’t matter what anyone thought of the film, it didn’t matter whether it was better or worse than the previous films, it didn’t matter whether Bay learned his lessons and gave us the Transformers film we deserved. It was bigger, louder, longer, more exciting, better-rendered and most importantly, in 3D. Yes, you get to wear uncomfortable shades for 160 minutes as well. To be honest, I quite enjoyed a lot of it, though Bay insistence on salivating over Rosie Huntington-Whiteley’s body every five minutes was dreary and unpleasant. But, IT DOESN’T MATTER. This franchise has become indestructible, death proof. The critics have turned on the film and it has made no difference at all.

Bear in mind that this isn’t the first critically-mauled, effects-heavy film to reach the cinema recently. Skyline performed wretchedly and Green Lantern has fared far worse than hoped by the studio. Neither of these could escape from the impact of negative reviews and ambivalent audience reactions. But where they stumbled and fell, Dark of the Moon has shrugged and carried on pounding. The difference must be that regardless of what it says about our taste in films, regardless of whether we should like it or not, Bay is giving the audience what they want and we are lapping it up. No-one is going to be able to convince Bay or Paramount that a wrong turn has been taken and that the franchise needs to be scaled back, rebooted and the quality improved (as seems to be happening now with Spider-Man). Successive franchise entries have been louder, longer and less refined and the money just keeps pouring in ever more abundantly.

I’m not sure what if anything can stop this juggernaut. Unless the studio decides to grasp some higher ideal of not sacrificing quality and artistic integrity on the altar of commercial success, we will surely just get more of the same. For these sorts of projects, money talks. It took the unmitigated failure of Batman & Robin to wrestle the franchise away from Schumacher and entrust it to Nolan, which has resulted in The Dark Knight, Oscar success and greater box office returns than any other entry in the franchise. Unless and until we stop watching these films, they won’t change. Why would they? Why should they? We have only ourselves to blame.

Megan Fox and John C. Reilly will both be taking cameo roles in Sacha Baron Cohen’s next venture, The Dictator, which is to star Baron Cohen, Anna Faris, and Sir Ben Kingsley, THR report.

The film is being directed by Larry Charles, who’s been working with Baron Cohen for the past few years, and also helmed 2006’s Borat and 2009’s Brüno with Baron Cohen of course playing the titular roles in both.

Fox and Reilly’s roles are being kept under wraps for the time being, but no doubt they’ll both be brilliant additions to what sounds like another hilarious and controversial Baron Cohen film. Following the success of his past two films, the actor decided to retire the characters because of their increased recognisability, and he’s now moved onto this project, which will tell,

“the heroic story of a dictator who risked his life to ensure that democracy would never come to the country he so lovingly oppressed.”

You can already feel the controversy. Add to that the fact that it’s a loose adaptation of the novel, Zabibah and the King, widely believed to have been written by Saddam Hussein, and it’s pretty much a sure thing that the film is going to be simultaneously criticised and hailed among critics and fans.

Reilly needs no introduction as an actor who can play both very serious and very funny roles, starring as Officer Jim Kurring in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia back in 1999, and starring opposite Will Ferrell in Step Brothers three years ago. He’ll also be playing the role of the father, Franklin, in the upcoming adaptation of bestselling novel, We Need To Talk About Kevin, due out on 21st October this year, and which is already being tipped as a contender for next year’s Academy Awards.

After leaving the role of Mikaela in the Transformers franchise, the projects Fox has most recently joined are both comedies, Friends With Kids and Judd Apatow’s next feature, This Is Forty. Both films are due out next year, along with The Dictator, so 2012 is set to be a year we see something a little different from Fox, being cast in funnier roles.

The Dictator has been scripted by Baron Cohen and former Seinfeld writers Alec Berg, David Mandel, and Jeff Schaffer, all of whom have been writing for the brilliant Curb Your Enthusiasm since then, and Schaffer was also part of the writing team for Brüno two years ago. With such excellent writers, a brilliant director, and an ingenious lead actor with excellent supports, and now great cameo roles confirmed, its release next year on 11^th May is shaping up to be something to look forward to.

Vulture have given us all a heads up to the brand new first trailer for the Mitch Glazer directed Passion Play which stars Mickey Rourke, Bill Murray, Rhys Ifans and Megan Fox. From what we’ve read about the movie, it’s not really on the list of films you must see this year as it has a limited run in the US and then heads to DVD basement buckets a couple of weeks later.

I’ve not actually found any UK release date for this one so it could be it never comes over here to cinema screens but no doubt you’ll be able to find it in the bargain bucket at Membury Services on the M4 in the not too distant future!

Synopsis: This strange and lyrical love story blends old-fashioned romanticism with all the fantasy of a fairy tale. It is also a welcome sight to see Mickey Rourke in a role that bores beneath his shambling gruffness to find a tender core. The slow-burning passion that gradually simmers between him and a darkly vulnerable Megan Fox showcases the talents of both actors with finesse. Finally there is Bill Murray, the counterpoint whose role is to act as a cold shower whenever heat blows between the two star-crossed lovers.
Nate (Rourke), a small-time jazz musician, is clearly a hard-luck case. Caught trying to break into a car, he is taken off into the desert where his assailant puts a gun to his head. Game over? Not quite. Stumbling into a circus pitched amidst the vast expanses of the southwest desert, Nate finds himself drawn to the exotic beauty of Lily (Fox), the Bird Woman. Lily is cold and dismissive; socializing with customers is not her scene. But it dawns on her that this gentle giant may well be her way out of a life of eccentric exposition. Nate is protective and understanding, and to him her aquiline beauty is a magic part of her uniqueness. As their bond deepens, Nate finds that his dreams of bliss are about to be thwarted by Happy Shannon (Murray), a cucumber-cool businessman with deep pockets and an eye for the bizarre.

Drawing on the remarkable talents of its high-powered cast, this wonderfully offbeat film is filled with surprises and proves that magic can be found in many places. Mitch Glazer balances the tough-guy moments and the rocky romance with the touch and feel of a high-wire artist. It makes for a spirited and uplifting spectacle with all the spirited colour of the circus.

EW have revealed the theatrical poster for drama-thriller Passion Play.

Writter and directed by Mitch Glazer, Passion Play stars Megan Fox (Disturbia), Bill Murray (Lost in Translation), Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler), Rhys Ifans (Hannibal Rising) and Kelly Lynch (The Jacket).

An angel (Fox) under the thumb of a ruthless gangster (Murray) is saved by a trumpet player (Rourke) down on his luck.

Passion Play will have a limited release in New York City and Los Angeles from May 6 before landing on DVD and Blu-ray on May 31.

Check out the poster below:

In January we reported on the news that current Hollywood man-one comedy hit factory Judd Apatow was revisiting a couple of characters from Knocked Up for a sequel of sorts.

Now The Hollywood Reporter has revealed that Megan Fox is in talks to join both Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann (who are reprising their roles of husband and wife from Apatow’s 2007 hit) for a new story involving the couple.

For the moment, Fox’s role is being kept under wraps, but don’t be surprised if she features as some kind of sexy young thing who offers a slice of fantasy escapism of sorts for Rudd’s older, repressed family man.

I woke up very late this today after staying up most the night to watch the Golden Globe Awards 2011. Overall it was a good show but not too many surprises but I thought I’d do a little post detailing my favourite parts of the evening which I’ll list below for your viewing pleasure!

If you missed the winners of the awards, you can check out the post here which I updated live as they were announced from Beverly Hills.

These come in no particular order:

Ricky Gervais

Not much more to say other than Ricky does it again. I love it that today’s headlines in many papers are ‘Gervais causes more controversy’ or words to that effect but isnt that why he was hired in the first place?! Have a watch of the intro speech in the first video and then a montage of ‘best bits’ courtesy of Vulture in the second.

Click to Play | View Details

Olivia Wilde’s Dress

I know absolutely nothing about fashion but this dress is immense! When she stood on stage with Robert Pattinson to present an award she took up most of it! After some scouring of the internet, sources tell me that the ensemble included:

Gold Christian Louboutin shoes, jewels by Tiffany’s and clutch by Judith Leiber. Interesting stuff!

Thor and Captain America on Stage Together

What more do I need to say? Two of the brightest new action heroes, Chris Hemsworth (Thor) & Chris Evans (Captain America) on stage at the same time. Love it!

Toy Story 3′s Big Baby at the Awards Ceremony

Toy Story 3 walked the award for Best Animation at the 2011 awards and director Lee Unkrich walked up on stage to collect the award but soon after tweeted this picture of Big Baby at the awards ceremony complete with the statue he helped to win!

Robert De Niro’s Speech

Doing his best to rival Ricky Gervais at this year’s awards, winner of the Cecil B. DeMille Life Time Achievement Award, Robert De Niro got up and performed an awesome speech. He poked fun at Little Fockers, as well as telling us that many of the foreign press were deported before the awards ceremony and that full body searches of Megan Fox will take place after the ceremony!

Have a watch of the video below….

Jonah Hex is released on DVD and Blu-ray 27th December and to celebrate, our friend Simon Thompson from Upbeat got to go and learn how to ride a horse and then how to catch a bull with a rope! All of this on one of the sets in which the movie was filmed.

Jonah Hex is directed by Jimmy Hayward and stars Josh Brolin, Megan Fox, John Malkovich, Michael Fassbender, Will Arnett and Michael Shannon.

Synopsis: Jonah Hex (Josh Brolin) is a scarred drifter and bounty hunter of last resort, a tough and stoic gunslinger who can track down anyone… and anything. Having survived death, Jonah’s violent history is steeped in myth and legend, and has left him with one foot in the natural world and one on the “other side.” His only human connection is with Leila (Megan Fox), whose life in a brothel has left her with scars of her own. But Jonah’s past is about to catch up with him when the U.S. military makes him an offer he can’t refuse: in exchange for his freedom from the warrants on his head, he must track down and stop the dangerous terrorist Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich). But Turnbull, who is gathering an army and preparing to unleash Hell, is also Jonah’s oldest enemy and will stop at nothing until Jonah is dead. Early rumors emerged about a zombie army or Quentin trying to rewin the war, but these were dismissed when producers said “Quentin is more of a terrorist upset about the outcome of the war not someone trying to fight and rewin it.”

Megan Fox has released four new images from her movie, Friends with Kids which is currently filming in New York City. The images were taken and released on Monday via Fox’s Facebook fanpage and were taken by Hayley Sparks.

Friends with Kids is based around a group of friends who decide to have children and then date other people and also stars Adam Scott, Jon Hamm and Kristen Wiig and is written and directed by Jennifer Westfeld. According to IMDb, we can expect it some time in 2012.

Megan Fox has been cast in Jennifer Westfeldt’s new ensemble comedy Friends With Benefits, THR are reporting.

Fox will star opposite Jon Hamm, Kristen Wiig, Adam Scott and Westfeldt herself.

Friends With Benefits revolves around a pair of thirtysomething best friends who observe the toll that having kids has taken on the couples they know and resolve to bypass that stress by having a child and then date other people.

Hamm will produce alongside real-life partner Westfeldt, with Mike Nichols and Jake Kasdan on board to executive produce.

Kasdan said of the film:

“Jen wrote one of the funniest and most original scripts I’ve read in a long time, the rare great generational character comedy.”

While Mickey Rourke may have found himself back on solid, if familiar, ground with roles in The Expendables and Iron Man 2, it was his role in Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler that reminded us of what a great on-screen presence the man can be.

Now we get a chance to see him in the first clip to emerge from Mitch Glazer’s Passion Play, courtesy of ET (via The Playlist).

A bewinged Megan Fox stars opposite Rourke and director Glazer has seen fit to throw Rhys Ifans, who recently impressed in Greenberg opposite Ben Stiller, Kelly Lynch and Bill Murray into the mix, making for an intriguing cast.

The film is appearing at Toronto and we’re looking forward to hearing some reactions to this one.

Here’s the clip.

Mickey Rourke (so good as the battered and bruised wrestler in Darren Aronosky’s film) continues on the comeback trail with this intriguing-looking period romance, entitled Passion Play.

The Playlist have posted this image of both Rourke and his love interest in the film Megan Fox, who is playing an angel who hooks up Mickey’s jazz trumpet player as they both try to evade being captured by a ruthless gangster played by Bill Murray (who replaces young up-and-coming Brit star Toby Kebbell).

Featuring an eclectic supporting cast (alongside Murray, there’s the likes of Rhys Ifans, Kelly Lynch, Rory Cochrane, and Harold and Maude’s Bud Cort), the film is set to receive it’s world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival next month and may also mark the first time an audience actually get to see Fox give a decent performance.

Could be worth the ticket price alone.

There’s something about cowboys that makes them irresistible- whether it’s the extravagant facial hair, or the super-machoism, or all that tarnished leather, there is certainly an unspoken desire in most men to be a bona-fide Wild West, six-shooter slinging cow boy. I remember, even up to my late teens, whenever I was asked what I aspired to be when I grew up I always went for choice number two- modern society just wouldnt have understood my burning desire to round up cows, wear chaps and chew tobacco. They would snear when I quoted my life influences as John Wayne, Clint Eastwood (before he hung up his cowboy boots) and Gary Cooper, and I would be pushed to the curb, forced to live life as a castaway, in my adult-sized Woody costume from the Disney Store. But the cowboy life is not one to be sniffed at- I mean, how else do you get someone like this to look at you without stirrups and a stetson…?

Sadly, in reality my life is a relatively barren wasteland of normality, robbed of the warming feeling I’m sure I’d get from a soundtrack of horses’ whinneys and the pings of a spitoon orchestra. What a liberating relief, then that Hollywood and video game makers still count the Western genre as a bankable one, even in the light of huge technological advances that some might have thought would spell the end for retrospective pieces in favour of the pomp and circumstance of CGI-heavy futurist projects.

Recent films like The Assassination of Jesse James, and 3:10 to Juma might offer revisionist takes on the genre but they still channel the exact same spirit, while  mad-cap offerings like The Good, The Bad & The Wierd and Sukiyaki Western Django make sure that the horribly named Noodle Western sub-genre does its own bit to keep that spirit alive. And they must be doing something right for films like Cowboys and Aliens, and Jonah Hex to be considered big enough prospects to warrant tent-pole release, and of course there’s the small matter of one half of Pixar’s world-seducing double act being a cowboy. I just hope these projects kick-start a passion within the film-making community for making Westerns, just like the vampire genre has found new blood to take over in the past few years.

Just for your consideration, my top five Westerns:

• True Grit
• Unforgiven
• The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
• The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
• The Searchers

Over the weekend, my love of the Old West spilled over, and I was forced to organise an impromptu gathering of like-minded cowboys and girls to celebrate our love together. It was also a massive excuse to take advantage of Red Dead Redemption coming back into stock at my local Blockbusters, which I saw as a momentous occasion, and one worthy of group celebration. To further enhance the enjoyment of the night, and to help get everyone in the mood, I also took advantage of being a T-Mobile customer and their link-up with Blockbusters to get a film alongside the game for a fiver.

The offer’s a cracker, if you’re on the network and since its launch I’ve now texted “NIGHT IN” to 3000 almost every weekend, mostly to test-run games before buying them, and rediscovering films that I had either forgotten or those which I had weighed up adding to my already bulging DVD and Blu-Ray collection. For a fiver, I couldn’t really go wrong, especially since the offer includes three other items for the money from the Blockbusters’ snack bar.

So, anyway, back to my cowboy night…

The film? Unforgiven. Had to be. It’s one of the most affecting Westerns ever committed to film, and it is vintage Clint Eastwood at its very best. Dark and somber in thematics and visuals, Unforgiven strips away the years of gloss that Hollywood has applied to the genre, and is a deeply personal work for director and star Clint Eastwood. He uses the film as an utterly compelling study of violence and its destrcutive influence, of the rule of the strong over the weak, with strong themes of courage and cowardice throughout, and also to desconstruct his violent filmic image and is the first step to Eastwood’s long on-screen apology for that violence that currently shapes every film he makes.

That the film was shot a long time after the Western genre’s heyday, and that it is revisionist do not spell trouble for Unforgiven- it is an incredible cinematic journey, hinged on a compelling retelling of traditional Western motifs and fantastic performances by Eastwood, Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman and Richard Harris. It is also a million dusty miles away from the frivolous, sometimes camp feel of some earlier generic examples, with the impetous heavily leaning on the idea of difficult morality, remorseless violence and a dark tone that is almost difficult to take at times, but it is still hugely entertaining, and an enormously rewarding film experience.

So, we sat down, our merry band of five wannabe cowboys to watch Eastwood scowl and shoot his way through his best film to date- a bag of popcorn, another of Starburst and a bottle of Coke making up the five items for a fiver from the TMobile/Blockbuster offer, though not exactly making good substitutes for authentic Western snacks. Some two hours later, a more sombre mood had landed on our prairie, and the time was definitely ripe for the appearance of Red Dead Redemption, the Western game that has been astounding critics and gamers alike since its release earlier this month. What better way to counter a self-reflective commentary on the nature of violence than spending a frankly appalling amount of time riding through open-world wilderness and cowboy towns shooting the blazes out of every bandit and wrongun?! I can think of none better.

Of course, this being Blockbusters, the offer only lasted two days, and I sadly had to return the DVD and the game- but have subsequently gone out and bought not only Red Dead Redemption and Unforgiven (which I was disgusted with myself for not actually owning yet), but also a raft of other Western titles, including Shane, The Shootist, A Fistful of Dollars and An American Tale: Fievel Goes West. Now, to get my chaps out and knuckle down for some more cowboy action.

It’s all got me suitably excited at the prospect of seeing Jonah Hex as soon as it hits British shores: it might not be the revisionist masterpiece of Unforgiven, but it will surely be close to the unbridled joy of Red Dead Redemption thanks to its comic book heritage. If you have a spare few hours, you could do far worse than revisit Unforgiven, the experience is its own reward.

For more information on the TMobile Night In offer, which I took advantage of to get my cowboy on, visit the phone company’s official page. Remember, the offer’s only open to TMobile customers though.