Some more names have been added to the cast of John Hillcoat’s follow-up to The Road, including an actor who involvement will make this the third collaboration with the director.

Guy Pearce and Gary Oldman are onboard for The Wettest County in the World, another adaptation for the director and based on the novel of the same name by Matt Bondurant, which follows the true-life tale of a pair of bootlegging siblings in Prohibition-era Virginia.

Pearce (who appeared in Hillcoat’s The Proposition and The Road) will play a violent deputy who comes down hard on the two protagonists (played by the already-cast Shia LaBeouf and Tom Hardy), while Oldman is down to play a gangster who seeks out the lead character’s help to deliver alcohol.

The Kids Are All Right and Alice in Wonderland star Mia Wasikowska has also signed on, alongside Jason Clarke (US TV’s Chicago Code).

News via The Hollywood Reporter

Tom Hardy continues his ascension up the Hollywood ladder with news coming in that he’ll be teaming up with another young star (Transformers man Shia LaBeouf) for John Hillcoat’s next feature.

According to the LA Times, the two are set to star in the director’s follow up to The Road – a period thriller called The Wettest County in the World. Judging by the title, one would presume that the film’s location is over here in the UK, but it’s an adaptation from a novel by Matt Bondurant, set around the prohibition era in the US, and focusing on a family of bootleggers and the various crimes they commit and their run-ins with the law.

Written by Nick Cave (who preformed scoring and scriptwriting duties on Hillcoat’s The Proposition), the film is aiming for a start date next spring, which presumably, is the next time there’s a space in Hardy’s incredibly busy schedule.

The writing/directing duo behind the hugely successful indie comedy Juno are set to reunite for a new film project, tentatively titled Young Adult.

Jason Reitman will direct from a script by Diablo Cody, who has been garnering huge acclaim since Juno propelled her into the public eye, having written Jennifer’s Body and episodes The United States of Tara in it’s aftermath.

Young Adult will be Reitman’s fourth feature film, and follow-up to 2009′s critically-acclaimed Up In The Air, which received three Academy Award nominations.

Charlize Theron has inked a deal to star as the ghost-writer, her first live-action role since The Road. Expect the full cast list to be revealed at a later date.

The synopsis, according to Deadline, is as follows:

A ghost-writer (Theron) of young adult novels realizes she has no identity with her pseudonym and plots to re-discover herself. Her campaign involves going back and rekindling a relationship with her high school boyfriend–who’s freshly married, is a new father, and wants no part in her life. While she works on her plan, the ghost-writer re-engages with high school acquaintances and their experiences in trying to carry out all those high school hopes and dreams that often get crushed by the realities of life.

Mandate Pictures and Indian Paintbrush will co-produce Young Adult, with filming expected to kick off in November, if all goes to plan.

Deadline had the scoop on this one.

The Road was one of the best movies that we saw last year and I’m now pleased to tell you that it’s now available to watch throughout the UK in your local cinema. Our friend James Kleinmann has been interviewing the celebs again and this time he has sent us audio interviews with the lead actor, Viggo Mortensen and the writer of the screenplay, fellow Brit, Joe Penhall. Both great interviews are below.

The Road is directed by John Hillcoat and also stars Charlize Theron, Robert Duvall, Guy Pearce and Kodi Smit-McPhee. You can read Jon’s review here. If you’ve seen the movie, tell us what you thought.

[gplayer href="http://www.heyuguys.co.uk/audio/the_road/mortensen_mono.mp3"] Interview with Viggo Mortensen: [/gplayer]

[gplayer href="http://www.heyuguys.co.uk/audio/the_road/penhall_mono.mp3"] Interview with Joe Penhall: [/gplayer]

This week sees the US release of The Road. Adapted from the Cormac McCarthynovel, it follows the story of a man and his son struggling to survive in a post-apocalyptic environment. The man is played by Viggo Mortensen.

Relatively unknown before winning the role of Aragorn in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, he has done well to shake off the shadow of the popular series with critically acclaimed roles in films like A History of Violence. Pre-LOTR his biggest part was in Young Guns II, riding alongside a pre-CSI William Petersen. Then his first major supporting role, in the 1998 thriller A Perfect Murder.

Michael Douglas is Steven Taylor, a successful business man. His complex investment portfolio is starting to collapse, meaning he will need his wife’s financial stability to remain afloat. Unfortunately, his younger wife Emily (Gwyneth Paltrow) has embarked on a tumultuous affair with a struggling artist, Mortensen’s David Shaw. Steven is aware of his wife’s infidelity, and confronts David.

Anxious to stop his wife from leaving him, and keen to get his hands on her personal fortune, he proposes a deal with the penniless artist. A trade of sorts. Steven will pay David half a million dollars, on the condition he disappears. Oh, and murders Emily. David has a dark past, a confidence trickster working under an assumed identity. Despite his developing feelings for Emily, he might find the pull of the money on offer too tempting to turn down. Steven has a plan carefully laid out, allowing himself an airtight alibi. However, in the movie world, all good plans are doomed to failure.

On the surface a by-the-numbers thriller, at it’s heart lies a dark tale of reprehensible people living terrible lives. The relationship between Steven and Emily is strained from the beginning, a marriage built on lies and paranoia. The blossoming relationship between David and Emily seems genuine at first, until the revelations about his past cause you to question his motivations, and keep you guessing about whether he has plans of his own, or is a petty crook in over his head.

Douglas plays the spiteful, rich executive to perfection, having had much practice as the iconic Gordon Gecko in the eighties, and would revisit another similar role in David Fincher’s The Game. He exudes a genuinely mean air with but a look. Paltrow does a decent job of playing the scared but feisty target of Douglas’ malice.

Mortensen? He does a good job of conveying an ambiguous character. He agrees to the plan, but looks conflicted in the lead-up. But there’s really no portent of the great performances to come in later films. This is due in large part to the the role not being particularly demanding. As the true villain of the piece, this movie belongs to Douglas. Apart from that, there is also no real spark about Mortensen, nothing remarkable on display.

A remake of the 1954 Alfred Hitchcock film Dial M For Murder, there is nothing really new here. The twists aren’t revolutionary, and little attempt has been made to subvert the genre. The main plot twist occurs fairly early on, meaning you guess immediately that something is up. With all three characters guilty of some dishonest or malicious act, there is only the story to root for, and in the end it lets the viewer down.

This is the kind of unambitious movie Mortensen doesn’t have to attach himself to now, and he’ll be glad of that. Whereas a big role like Aragorn would have made it hard for lesser actors to move on to different roles, for Mortensen it has turned out to be a true blessing, and we can all be thankful for that.

The Road opens in the US this Friday 27th November, and in the UK in January 2010.

A Perfect Murder is available on DVD now.

Bazmann – You can now follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/baz_mann

The second trailer has been released for Viggo Mortensen’s latest movie, The Road. Jon was lucky enough to see this movie at the London Film Festival and as soon as it finished text me to say it’s the movie of the year. You can read his review here. The Road is based on the book by Cormack McCarthy, is directed by John Hillcoat and also stars Kodi Smit-McPhee, Molly Parker, Charlize Theron, Guy Pearce and Robert Duvall.

Here’s the synopsis in a nutshell:

An epic post-apocalyptic tale of the survival of a father and his young son as they journey across a barren America that was destroyed by a mysterious cataclysm. It imagines a future in which men are pushed to the worst and the best that they are capable of — a future in which a father and his son are sustained by love.

The Road is out in the UK 8th January 2010 and I can’t wait to see it. Check out the trailer embedded below or head over to Yahoo to view in HD.

If you haven’t already checked it out, head over to Jon’s review of The Road which stars Viggo Mortensen, Robert Duvall, Charlize Theron, Guy Pearce and Kodi Smit-McPhee. The Road is directed by John Hillcoat and is based on the novel written by Cormac McCarthy.

After Jon saw it, he rang me to tell me that it’s the best film of the year, then to go on to say that he cried from start to finish! I’m not sure I should be divulging these inside secrets of Jon’s weeping habits but the fact he loved it so much says a lot!

Anyway, here’s a new poster that The Weinstein Company has released for the movie. It’s out  8th January over here so still a while to wait but from Jon’s report, it is definitely one worth waiting for!

Click the image to enlarge.

The Road defeated me. It crushed and destroyed me. It broke my heart in the first fifteen minutes and spent the next hour and a half trampling it through the dead and dusty ground. It is a haunting and poetic work, soulful and subtle in its tone and the dark, elegiac cadences. Director John Hillcoat and screenwriter Joe Penhall have adapted Cormac McCarthy’s apocalyptic novel with a masterful touch and the result is incredibly powerful and moving.

The beginning is the end. With a soulful, almost sleepy, melody the films awakes to The Man and his Wife in their house. She is pregnant as is the mood, with a tangible anxiety. Then outside we hear the plumes of panic in the air, people screaming, unearthly lights and the Earth’s deep, portentous rumble. As in the novel we are never told what happened, director John Hillcoat keeps the fire behind closed curtains or beyond the scant protection of a tent’s cover; the world ends through a glass, darkly. But the apocalyptic events seen are a dream, and we wake with Virgo Mortensen’s character to a barren, derelict world; the forests are gone, the ground is scorched and the death rattle of the world continues far off. The world is dying, slowly.

Javier Aguirresarobe’s melancholic cinematography paints a exhausted world with grace and sadness. Witness The Man and The Boy pushing their belongings in a shopping trolley in the darkest silhouette against the horizon  consumed by a furious fire or the ashen, empty streets under blackened skies littered with skeletons and the detritus of the human world in savage evacuation. One scene in particular is beautiful and a poignant reminder of what has become of us – walking through a small town’s main street The Man and The Boy walk under the shadows of dozens of telegraph poles listing and slanted like broken masts of shipwrecked ships in a storm ravaged sea. The poetry of the images imbue each step on the road with such power it becomes hard to breathe. The sudden rush of colour of the flashbacks are impactful to the point of physical recoiling, and in this new world even the rainbow cast by a discovered waterfall is muted and temporary.

The music by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, uniting again with the John Hillcoat after their work on The Proposition, is mournful and in fractured harmony with the vacant world. The sonic landscape is beautifully scored with a haunting touch which whispers along with each scene like a chorus of ghosts and contributes everything it should. Bereft of its images the score draws the ear and conjures up a succession of slow moving emotions: hope and despair, lightness and the blackest night; it is the perfect accompaniment to Hillcoat’s bleak cynicism.

While the score is an essential part of the world it is in the deep silences when the film’s power becomes apparent. Each silence brings the terrifying potential of the next threat, be it the footsteps of another interloper in this dead world (the danger of cannibalism is the greater fear), or the groaning of the Earth as it gives up its forests one tree at a time. The world is complete, and it is jarring. I thought of the computer generated destruction of Roland Emmerich’s disaster films, shown with such overblown, voyeuristic detail in the trailer for 2012 and realised that there is nothing more terrifying than hearing the hollow silence after the end.

Hillcoat is a master of presenting a wide open landscape and finding the detail that colours our perception of the whole. The realistic tone of this world turned on its head is startling, and while the events and characters encountered on the road are routine their impact on the central figures is conveyed powerfully. Robert Duvall’s old man is a heart breaking study of acceptance and loss in the face of utter defeat, as is the brutal accosting of The Boy by a cannibal and its equally brutal denouement. The wedding ring held aloft on the vast, vacant elevated freeways is a perfect example of the smallest object having the greatest significance in this world. His direction is solid and elicits a overwhelming emotion connection to the events on this futile journey.

The true heart of this film is the gentle relationship between The Man and The Boy, played with sublime grace by Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee. The dynamic of the piece necessitates the central characters and the actors who play them must be believable as they carry so much  of our engagement on their shoulders. Viggo Mortensen has praised the performance and humanity of Smit-McPhee, who was able to bring a child’s natural enthusiasm and curiosity to this other Earth, the only world he knows; it is an integral part of the film’s effectiveness and works on every level and at every moment. You believe each heart breaking interaction as The Man prepares his son for a time when he won’t be there to protect him, and Mortensen evokes an incredible depth to his performance, there is a true sadness in his eyes as as he shepherds The Boy through the badlands of the world his depleted energy is a cruel testament to the incompatibility of the bond of love in this crestfallen world. One brief surprisingly uplifting moment occurs when The Man upends an old vending machine to find a dusty can of Coke its in bowels, and The Boy’s surprise at its alien taste and, once his begrudgingly accepts a taste, there is the briefest moment when The Man looks off into an imagined distance, recalling a lost time. It rips through what is left of your heart.

Each performance is perfect, and the moral questions it raises of how to survive and at the same time maintain the human part of you is oppressive and magnetic. The film contains moments of panic, hope, courage and endurance played out in a world that is a shadow of the world we enjoy. It is a harrowing and painful journey, one that we will all walk in our lives and the questions which face The Man and his Boy will be asked of us too. To create a film so intimate and encompassing is a true achievement; a masterpiece of melancholia this substantial and stirring is worth your time.

This film, like all films, is a love story. Witness The Man taking up a blanket which has lain over the skeleton of its former owner and wrapping it around The Boy in a moment of functional, parental love and this is merely one moment in a multitude that will touch your heart.

The Road is a triumphant adaptation of a powerful work. It is dark and poetic, beautifully bleak and desolate and will stay with you forever.

The Road opens in UK cinemas on the 8th of January 2010. Don’t be afraid. Take the first step and the film will do the rest.